octor, it hasn't got any moral."

"Humph! That's so. Good morning. Drive on, John."

MY FRIEND, THE TRAMP

I had been sauntering over the clover downs of a certain noted New
England seaport. It was a Sabbath morning, so singularly reposeful and
gracious, so replete with the significance of the seventh day of rest,
that even the Sabbath bells ringing a mile away over the salt marshes
had little that was monitory, mandatory, or even supplicatory in their
drowsy voices. Rather they seemed to call from their cloudy towers,
like some renegade muezzin: "Sleep is better than prayer; sleep on, O
sons of the Puritans! Slumber still, O deacons and vestrymen! Let, oh
let those feet that are swift to wickedness curl up beneath thee! those
palms that are itching for the shekels of the ungodly lie clasped
beneath thy pillow! Sleep is better than prayer."

And, indeed, though it was high morning, sleep was still in the air.
Wrought upon at last by the combined influences of sea and sky and
atmosphere, I succumbed, and lay down on one of the boulders of a
little stony slope that gave upon the sea. The great Atlantic lay
before me, not yet quite awake, but slowly heaving the rhythmical
expiration of slumber. There was no sail visible in the misty horizon.
There was nothing to do but to lie and stare at the unwinking ether.

Suddenly I became aware of the strong fumes of tobacco. Turning my
head, I saw a pale blue smoke curling up from behind an adjacent
boulder. Rising, and climbing over the intermediate granite, I came
upon a little hollow, in which, comfortably extended on the mosses and
lichens, lay a powerfully-built man. He was very ragged; he was very
dirty; there was a strong suggestion about him of his having too much
hair, too much nail, too much perspiration; too much of those
superfluous excrescences and exudations that society and civilization
strive to keep under. But it was noticeable that he had not much of
anything else. It was The Tramp.

With that swift severity with which we always visit rebuke upon the
person who happens to present any one of our vices offensively before
us, in his own person, I was deeply indignant at his laziness. Perhaps
I showed it in my manner, for he rose to a half-sitting attitude,
returned my stare apologetically, and made a movement toward knocking
the fire from his pipe against the granite.

"Shure, sur, and if I'd belaved that I was trispassin on yer honor's
gro