s that I
can give you, or if you have a taste for satire I yield second place to
none in my interpretation of Juvenal. On the pre-Cadmean alphabets I
am--in my humble way--quite an authority. But these magnificent
talents," he added with a self-depreciatory smile, "do not enable me to
run a business as successfully as a Greek fruit peddler or a Russian Jew
vender of old clothes."

"You could teach," suggested Hamilton.

"Only my friends," replied the scholar. "To teach requires pedagogy and
numerous devices for improving the youthful mind. I do not greatly
admire the youthful mind and it bores me. I am informed that I also bore
it. Hence I prefer rather to wander than to teach. I do not claim
originality in this role; there have been 'scholar gypsies' before this.
The phrase sounds better than 'educated hobo,' but the meaning is the
same."

"And you?" queried Hamilton of the third speaker.

"Plain American," the other said simply, "born and raised in Ohio. Not a
Yankee, not a Westerner, not a Southerner,--nothin', jest plain
Middle-West American."

"Well," suggested Hamilton, "I think you chaps ought to let me put you
down in the schedule here. We need white men in this country badly
enough in all conscience, and we might as well make the strongest
showing we can. Two Americans and an Englishman will help the average
just that much. Part of the 'white man's burden,'" he added with a
laugh.

"If you put it that way," said 'Hatchet Ben,' "I calc'late after all I'm
elected for one. Anything I can do to put down, even on paper, these
foreigners that live on nothin' and drive a decent man out of a job,
I'll do. I'm down on this jabberin' mob from the south o' Europe bein'
dumped down here by the hundred thousand every year, an' you can take
that straight from me."

"It's a little curious," said Hamilton, noting down the facts as they
came up in conversation, not wanting to work directly upon the schedule
for fear of rebuffs, "that two of you should be Americans and one an
Englishman. Somehow, one always thinks of an American as making good,
not tramping it."

"Nearly all hoboes are Americans," 'Hatchet Ben' explained, "there's a
few English, and a few Swedes. Lots of races in this country you never
meet on the road."

"Trampdom," said 'Windy,' "is a most exclusive circle. For example, you
never saw a Jew hobo, did you?"

"No," Hamilton said. "Never."

"And you're never likely to," 'Hatchet Ben' interjected, "