



Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
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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, the beginning of socialism, is the father
of America. He has little pity, little tolerance, little charity. In
what States in America is there any poor law? Only an emigration agent,
hungry for steamship percentages, will declare there are no poor there
now. The survival of the fit is the survival of the strong; every man
for himself and the devil take the hindmost might replace the legend on
the silver dollar and the golden eagle, without any American denying it
in his heart.

But if America as a whole is the dumping ground and Eldorado combined of
the harder extruded elements of Europe, the same law of selection holds
good there as well. With every degree of West longitude the fibre of the
American grows harder. The Dustman Destiny sifting his cinders has his
biggest mesh over the Pacific States. If charity and sympathy be to seek
in the East, it is at a greater discount on the <DW72>. The only
poor-house is the House of Correction. Perhaps San Francisco is one of
the hardest, if not _the_ hardest city in the world. Speaking from my
own experience, and out of the experience gathered from a thousand
miserable bedfellows in the streets, I can say I think it is, not even
excepting Portland in Oregon. But let it be borne in mind that this is
the verdict of the unsuccessful. Had I been lucky it might have seemed
different.

I came into the city with a quarter of a dollar, two bits, or one
shilling and a halfpenny in my possession. Starvation and sleeping on
boards when I was by no means well broke me down and at the same time
embittered me. On the third day I saw some of my equal outcasts
inspecting a bill on a telegraph pole in Kearny Street, and on reading
it I found it a religious advertisement of some services to be held in a
street running out of Kearny, I believe in Upper California Street. At
the bottom of the bill was a notice that men out of work and starving
who attended the meeting would be given a meal. Having been starving
only some twenty-four hours I sneered and walked on. My agnosticism was
bitter in those days, bitter and polemic.

But I got no work. The streets were full of idle men. They stood in
melancholy groups at corners, sheltering from the rain. I knew no one
but a few of my equals. I could get no ship; the city was full of
sailors. I starved another twenty-four hours, and I went to the service.
I said I went for the warmth of the room, for I was ill-clad and wet. I
found the place half full of out-o'-works, and sat down by the door. The
preacher was a man of a type especially disagreeable to me; he looked
like a business man who had cultivated an aspect of goodness and
benevolence and piety on business principles. Without being able to say
he was a hypocrite, he struck me as being one. He was not bad-looking,
and about thirty-five; he had a band of adoring girls and women about
him. I was desolate and disliked him and went away.

But I returned.

I went up to him and told him brutally that I disbelieved in him and in
everything he believed in, explaining that I wanted nothing on false
pretences. My attitude surprised him, but he was kind (still with that
insufferable air of being a really first-class good man), and he bade me
have something to eat. I took it and went, feeling that I had no place
on the earth.

But a little later I met an old friend from British Columbia. He was by
way of being a religious man, and he had a hankering to convert me.
Failing personally, he cast about for some other means, and selected
this very preacher as his instrument. Having asked me to eat with him at
a ten-cent hash house, he inveigled me to an evening service, and for
the warmth I went with him. I became curious about these religious
types, and attended a series of services. I was interested half in a
morbid way, half psychologically. Scott, my friend, found me hard, but
my interest made him hope. He took me, not at all unwilling, to hear a
well-known revivalist who combined religion with anecdotes. He told
stories well, and filled a church every night for ten days. During
these days I heard him attentively, as I might have listened to any
well-told lecture on any pseudo-science. But my intellect was
unconvinced, my conscience untouched, and Scott gave me up. I attended a
number of services by myself; I was lonely, poor, hopeless, living an
inward life. The subjective became real at times, the objective faded. I
had a little occasional work, and expected some money to reach me early
in the year. But I had no energy, I divided my time between the Free
Library and churches. And it drew on to Christmas.

It was a miserable time of rain, and Christmas Day found me hopeless of
a meal. But by chance I came across a man whom I had fed, and he
returned my hospitality by dining me for fifteen cents at the "What
Cheer House," a well-known poor restaurant in San Francisco. Then
followed some days of more than semi-starvation, and I grew rather
light-headed. The last day of the year dawned and I spent it foodless,
friendless, solitary. But after a long evening's aimless wandering about
the city I came back to California Street, and at ten o'clock went to
the Watch-Night Service in the room of the first preacher I had heard.

The hall was a big square one, capable of seating some three hundred
people. There was a raised platform at the end; a broad passage way all
round the room had seats on both sides of it, and made a small square of
seats in the centre. I sat down in the middle of this middle square, and
the room was soon nearly full. The service began with a hymn. I neither
sang nor rose, and I noticed numbers who did not. In peculiar isolation
of mind my heart warmed to these, and I was conscious of rising
hostility for the creatures of praise. There was one strong young fellow
about three places from me who remained seated. Glancing behind the
backs of those who were standing between us I caught his eye, which met
mine casually and perhaps lightened a little. He had a rather fine face,
intelligent, possibly at better times humorous. I was not so solitary.

A man singing on my left offered me a share of his hymn-book. I declined
courteously. The woman on my right asked me to share hers. That I
declined too. Some asked the young fellow to rise, but he refused
quietly. Yet I noticed some of those who had remained seated gave in to
solicitations or to the sound or to some memory, and rose. Yet many
still remained. They were all men, and most of them young.

After the hymn followed prayer by the minister, who was surrounded on
the dais by some dozen girls. I noticed that few were very good-looking;
but in their faces was religious fervour. Yet they kept their eyes on
the man. The prayer was long, intolerably and trickily eloquent and
rhetorical, very self-conscious. The man posed before the throne. But I
listened to every word, half absorbed though I was in myself. He was
followed in prayer by ambitious and emotional people in the seats. One
woman prayed for those who would not bow the knee. Once more a hymn
followed, "Bringing home the sheaves."

The air is not without merit, and has a good lilt and swing. I noted it
tempted me to sing it, for I knew the tune well, and in the volume of
voices was an emotional attraction. I repressed the inclination even to
move my lips. But some others rose and joined in. My fellow on the left
did not. The sermon followed, and I felt as if I had escaped a
humiliation.

What the preacher said I cannot remember, nor is it of any importance.
He was not an intellectual man, nor had he many gifts beyond his rather
sleek manner and a soft manageable voice. He was obviously proud of
that, and reckoned it an instrument of success. It became as monotonous
to me as the slow oily swell of a tropic sea in calm. I would have
preferred a Boanerges, a bitter John Knox. The intent of his sermon was
the usual one at such periods; this was the end of the year, the
beginning was at hand. Naturally he addressed himself to those who were
not of his flock; it seemed to me, as it doubtless seemed to others,
that he spoke to me directly.

The custom of mankind to divide time into years has had an effect on us,
and we cannot help feeling it. Childhood does not understand how
artificial the portioning of time is; the New Year affects us even when
we recognise the fact. It required no florid eloquence of the preacher
to convince me of past folly and weakness; but it was that weakness that
made me weak now in my allowing his insistence on the New Year to affect
me. I was weak, lonely, foolish. Oh, I acknowledged I wanted help! But
could I get help here?

It was past eleven when they rose to sing another hymn. Many who had not
sung before sang now. Some of the girls from the platform came down and
offered us hymn-books. A few took them half-shamefacedly; some declined
with thanks; some ignored the extended book. And after two hymns were
sung and some more prayers said, it was half-past eleven. They announced
five minutes for silent meditation. Looking round, I saw my friend on
the left sitting with folded arms. He was obviously in no need of five
minutes.

In the Free Library I had renewed much of my ancient scientific reading,
and I used it now to control some slight emotional weakness, and to
explain it to myself. Half-starved, nay more than half-starved, as I
was, such weakness was likely; I was amenable to suggestion. I asked
myself a dozen crucial questions, and was bitterly amused to know how
the preacher would evade answering them if put to him. Such a creature
could not succeed, as all great teachers have done, in subduing the
intellect by the force of his own personality. But all the same the
hour, the time, and the song followed by silence, and the silence by
song, affected me and affected many. What had I to look forward to when
I went