



Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from scanned images of public domain
material from the Google Print project.)






A TRAMP'S NOTE-BOOK

BY

MORLEY ROBERTS

AUTHOR OF

"RACHEL MARE," "BIANCA'S CAPRICE," "THE PROMOTION OF THE ADMIRAL."


LONDON

F. V. WHITE & CO. LTD.

14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.

1904




CONTENTS


                                                        PAGE

A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO                     1

SOME PORTUGUESE SKETCHES                                  16

A PONDICHERRY BOY                                         40

A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS                                    51

MY FRIEND EL TORO                                         61

BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST                                   71

A VISIT TO R. L. STEVENSON                                79

IN CAPETOWN                                               88

VELDT, PLAIN AND PRAIRIE                                  95

NEAR MAFEKING                                            101

BY THE FRASER RIVER                                      110

OLD AND NEW DAYS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA                     118

A TALK WITH KRUGER                                       128

TROUT FISHING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CALIFORNIA         136

ROUND THE WORLD IN HASTE                                 142

BLUE JAYS AND ALMONDS                                    162

IN CORSICA                                               167

ON THE MATTERHORN                                        176

AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS                      186

AT LAS PALMAS                                            194

THE TERRACINA ROAD                                       204

A SNOW-GRIND                                             216

ACROSS THE BIDASSOA                                      230

ON A VOLCANIC PEAK                                       238

SHEEP AND SHEEP HERDING                                  244

RAILROAD WARS                                            256

AMERICAN SHIPMASTERS                                     263

TRAMPS                                                   267

TEXAS ANIMALS                                            275

IN A SAILORS' HOME                                       282

THE GLORY OF THE MORNING                                 293




A Tramp's Note-Book




A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO


How much bitter experience a man keeps to himself, let the experienced
say, for they only know. For my own part I am conscious that it rarely
occurs to me to mention some things which happened either in England or
out of it, and that if I do, it is only to pass them over casually as
mere facts that had no profound effect upon me. But the importance of
any hardship cannot be estimated at once; it has either psychological or
physiological sequelae, or both. The attack of malaria passes, but in
long years after it returns anew and devouring the red blood, it breaks
down a man's cheerfulness; a night in a miasmic forest may make him for
ever a slave in a dismal swamp of pessimism. It is so with starvation,
and all things physical. It is so with things mental, with
degradations, with desolation; the scars and more than scars remain:
there is outward healing, it may be, but we often flinch at mere
remembrance.

But time is the vehicle of philosophy; as the years pass we learn that
in all our misfortunes was something not without value. And what was of
worth grows more precious as our harsher memories fade. Then we may bear
to speak of the days in which we were more than outcasts; when we
recognised ourselves as such, and in strange calm and with a broken
spirit made no claim on Society. For this is to be an outcast indeed.

I came to San Francisco in the winter of 1885 and remained in that city
for some six months. What happened to me on broad lines I have written
in the last chapter of _The Western Avernus_. But nowadays I know that
in that chapter I have told nothing. It is a bare recital of events with
no more than indications of deeper miseries, and some day it may chance
to be rewritten in full. That I was of poor health was nothing, that I
could obtain no employment was little, that I came to depend on help was
more. But the mental side underlying was the worst, for the iron
entered into my soul. I lost energy. I went dreaming. I was divorced
from humanity.

America is a hard place, for it has been made by hard men. People who
would not be crushed in the East have gone to the West. The Puritan
element has little softness in it, and in some places even now gives
rise to phenomena of an excessive and religious brutality which tortures
without pity, without sympathy. But not only is the Puritan hard; all
other elements in America are hard too. The rougher emigrant, the
unconquerable rebel, the natural adventurer, the desperado seeking a
lawless realm, men who were iron and men with the fierce courage which
carries its vices with its virtues, have made the United States. The
rude individualist of Europe who felt the slow pressure of social atoms
which precedes their welding