Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1893 — The Talented Tramp. [ARTICLE]

The Talented Tramp.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “Sometimes there is some jyood in h tramp,” said Edwin Wood, an oldtime telegrapher, at the Lindell yesterday. “I remember a fellow named Harrison. We used to hear of him all over the country. He was a splendid operator, and those of us that didn’t know him liked him because he was a first-rate fellow to have at the other end of the line. We’d work with him, say, to-night in New Orleans, a couple of nights later he’d be in Atlanta or Jacksonville. Then, he’d be in Savannah, and the next week he’d have a key in the Washington office. Then we’d lose sight of him. and the first thing we’d hear of him in Portland, Ore. Well, one day 1889, he came into Chicago. I was sitting in the Sherman House. He got to talking with me, and told me he had left Frisco a few days before without a cent and had landed in Chicago with $2, and had lived well on the way and traveled in sleepers. He was well dressed, cteaTi, in the fashion in everything. You’d readily take him for a well-to-do business man. Well, the day he struck town was pay-day. Tasked him what he was going to do, and he said he was going to Europe to take in the Paris Exposition. He went around among the boys and collected about sl2 and left for New York. I heard from him a few days later over the wire. He said he had made a deal and was going to the Exposition as the agent for a New York electrical concern. He spoke French pretty fairly, and did well over there. After the Exposition he traveled all over Europe putting in electric-light plants. He got tired of that and came back to America about a year ago, and now has got a big thing with Edison. He’s settled down completely now, and yet a few years ago he was only a tramp. Truth can fool fiction every time, I tell you."