Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1909 — A TRAMP'S ONE CHANCE. [ARTICLE]

A TRAMP'S ONE CHANCE.

I am a tramp. I’ve always been a tramp, qnd I suppose I’ll always be a tramp. I had a chance once to be something better, or, supposed I bad. but I didn’t avail myself of it. The reason I didn’t was because I could not. Anyway if I had succeeded in making a new start I doubt if I’d have kept up the effort. There are people fitted for statesmen, soldiers, business —professional- men, sailors, roustabouts, servants and tramps. I was made for a tramp. The chance I refer to was this: I was in my traveling carriage one day —I mean on the truck under a railway car —when I espied a paper that had been caught in a crevice. It looked like a bank hill, and its denomination appeared to be a dollar. I- couldn’t reach it till the train stopped, and I was afraid it would become detached before that. I was half an hour looking at it, wondering all the while how it got there. It had probably been dropped by some one, most likely at a station, had been sucked up when the train was in motion and got lodged in the crevice, the sides of which had been compressed from some cause or other to hold it. As soon as the train came to a stop I reached for it. What was my astonishment to find that the “1” I had been looking at was followed by three naughts. I was the possessor of a thousand dollar bill. No sooner had I become conscious of my good fortune than I crumpled it in my fist and made for a field near the station at which the train had stopped. Seeing a barn, I went to it, climbed into the moiy and, reclining on the hay, thought what I should do with my find. I spent a whole afternoon thinking. We tramps take a lot of pleasure in thinking, just as other people take pleasure in acting. The tramp to enjoy his profession should be a castle builder. The afternoon I spent conjuring up fortunes obtained with my thousand dollars was the happiest in my life. I would go to the city, buy out a little shop, be economical and industrious, enlarge my business, make money, invest it and in time become a multimillionaire. It wouldn’t do for one that all the world could see was a tramp to offer a thousand dollar bill for a railroad ticket. The agent couldn’t change it if he would. So I tramped to the city. When I got there I thought the first thing for me to do would be to fix myself up. Going into a mammoth store where they sold clothing, I asked to see a suit about my size. The clerk went away and came back with a spick and span fellow —a sort of floor I reckon —who hemmed and hawed and said that goods were only sold there for cash. I pulled out my bill and showed it to him, asking if he could change it. He looked at it dumfounded and said he’d see. What I was suffering from most about that time was a vacant stomach. I went to a restaurant and took a seat at a table. None of the waiters cams near me, but presently the proprietor did and asked me if I had not got into the wrong place. What could I do—ask him if he’d give me a meal on a thousand dollar bill? Not much. I told him I had thought the place a restaurant, but was mistaken; sorry I’d intruded. And" I went" out. Somehow I didn’t see where I was going to begin. Besides I couldn’t be an all-fired while finding out, for I had no place but the park to sleep in and not a crust to put in me. You see, I wasn’t used to city life. If I tried to buy out a shop or rent one and buy a stock of goods to put in it the moment I showed my bill the gentlemanly owner would ask me to sit down while he got the change and would telephone the police. I went about trying to get someone to give me a meal, but city servants are not used to beggars, except those who beg for money, and they' all shut the door in my face. Finally when I was nearly starved I struck a little house where my ring was answered by a girl about 19 years old. That girl was either a fool or she was altogether out of place In this world. I never struck such a green hue even in the country. She took me In and gave me what she had to eat, then sat down and talked to me, looking all the while out of her sympathetic eyes at me to cheer me up. She must have known that misery loves company. She told me that she was In love with a young fellow who wasn’t getting along very well and was going to lose his position. Her employer wanted 11,000 in his business and was going to take In another clerk with that amount and make a partner of him. “Is that all he wants?’’ I says. "Could you git married If your feller had >1,000?” "Of course we could,” "Well, >I,OOO Isn’t very much. I reckon I can spare you that In return for your meal and your kindness and confidence.** I pulled out by bill and gave it to her, and before her eyes got down from their big focus so as to see me I’d gone out and away. - In less than an hour I waa In the country and at home, tramping, as I*ve always tramped, because that’s the life that suits me. But I’ve had many a good time In a haymow thinking of the comfort my bill was to that grass-green girl.—Alexander Ely.