o laugh.

"Madam," I said, "good morning!"

So I left her standing there by the fence looking after me, and I went
on down the road.

"Well," I said, "she'll have something new to talk about. It may add a
month to her life. Was there ever such an amusing world!"

About noon that day I had an adventure that I have to laugh over every
time I think of it. It was unusual, too, as being almost the only
incident of my journey which was of itself in the least thrilling or out
of the ordinary. Why, this might have made an item in the country paper!

For the first time on my trip I saw a man that I really felt like
calling a tramp--a tramp in the generally accepted sense of the term.
When I left home I imagined I should meet many tramps, and perhaps learn
from them odd and curious things about life; but when I actually came
into contact with the shabby men of the road, I began to be puzzled.
What was a tramp, anyway?

I found them all strangely different, each with his own distinctive
history, and each accounting for himself as logically as I could for
myself. And save for the fact that in none of them I met were the
outward graces and virtues too prominently displayed, I have come back
quite uncertain as to what a scientist might call type-characteristics.
I had thought of following Emerson in his delightfully optimistic
definition of a weed. A weed, he says, is a plant whose virtues have
not been discovered. A tramp, then, is a man whose virtues have not been
discovered. Or, I might follow my old friend the Professor (who dearly
loves all growing things) in his even kindlier definition of a weed.
He says that it is merely a plant misplaced. The virility of this
definition has often impressed me when I have tried to grub the
excellent and useful horseradish plants out of my asparagus bed! Let
it be then--a tramp is a misplaced man, whose virtues have not been
discovered.

Whether this is an adequate definition or not, it fitted admirably the
man I overtook that morning on the road. He was certainly misplaced, and
during my brief but exciting experience with him I discovered no virtues
whatever.

In one way he was quite different from the traditional tramp. He walked
with far too lively a step, too jauntily, and he had with him a small,
shaggy, nondescript dog, a dog as shabby as he, trotting close at his
heels. He carried a light stick, which he occasionally twirled over in
his hand. As I drew nearer I could hear him