Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1878 — A Sharp Trick by Two Tramps. [ARTICLE]

A Sharp Trick by Two Tramps.

Flood and Bruce are peripatetic printers, widely known. They have a habit of turning up here and elsewhere when least expected, coming without warning and departing even as the wind. By a rare chance they have just been heard from at Danville, 111., tramping from St. Louis, and headed in this direction. They came within view of that city last Sunday, weary with travel and sorely hungered. The road they came has beeij overworked. The erstwhile hospitable farmer now sets his dog on the wayfaring man instead of welcoming him to his family. Through this departure from the customs of the fathers, they walked and ate not. Thoroughly discouraged at their repeated failures to procure food, they yet concluded to make one more trial on this beautiful Sunday morning, and cautiously entered the yard of a decent farm-house, peering about them to see that Towser did not come suddenly around a corner. They knocked on*the front door; no At the side door;uo ans wer They went in. Thert) was not a soul at home. A table spread and a most substantial meal was before them. It was like a dream from the Arabian nights. The dinner was, doubtless, awaiting the return of the family from church. The pedestrians fsl to, and their knives and forks soon smoked with the friction of execution. To say that they fared surttptuously would convey ho idea of the amount they ate nor the intense satisfaction with which the viands were received. As they were finishing the feast a knock was heard. Bruce, with unparalleled cheek, went to the door. There stood two 1 other tramps, who asked for something to eat. Bruce, in a rare spirit of mischief, questioned them closely in regard to their travels, and finally asked if they would chop wood for "dmners. They answered yes. He then took them to a wood-pile that he had noticed in the rear Of the house, and thev went to work. Bruce and Flood, ‘filling their pockets with victuals, stole out the side way from ttte house and went to -a neighboring hill, where thej- had a full view of the wood-pile and the toiling tramps. There they gloated over the picture. To make their measure of enjoyment’ tun over,“the owner of the farmhouse with several daughters and two stalwart sons arrived on the scene, the devastation of the dinner was discovered,

and the two sweating tramps at the wootj-pile seized as the depredators. All was seen by the two on the hill, from the arrival of the family to the ignominious expulsion of the wood-cut-ters.— Indianapolis News.