"No more haven't I," said the tramp
conclusively; "not a mag."

There ensued an ambiguous and, to me,
somewhat terrifying silence. I feared that my
companion was indignant at my poverty, and
that, on the principle of having meal if he
couldn't get malt, he would have three-
pennorth of jacket, or three-pennorth of waistcoat,
or three-pennorth of blood. But I was
agreeably disappointed; the villanous
countenance of my companion cleared up; and he
said, condescendingly—

"I'm a traveller."

"And a very evil-looking traveller, too," I
thought.

"If you had got thruppence, and I had got
thruppence," he went on to say, "I knows a
crib down yonder where we might a snoozed
snug. But if you ain't got nuffin, and I ain't
got nuffin," the traveller continued, quite in a
didactic style, "we must turn in at the Union.
Do you know what the Union is?"

I had heard of the repeal of the Union,
and the Union Jack, and one of our boy's
fathers was a member of the Union Club.
I had an indistinct notion, too, of an Union
workhouse; but my fellow tramp had some
difficulty in explaining to me that the Union
was a species of gratuitous hotel; a caravansary
kept by the Poor Law Commissioners
for the special relief of the class of travellers
known in ordinary parlance as tramps and in
the New Poor Law Act as "casual paupers;"
and where, in consideration of doing an hour's
work in the morning, I could be provided
with supper and a bed.

We walked together to the house of the
relieving officer to obtain tickets of admission.
The functionary in question lived in a pretty
little cottage, with a shining brass door-plate
much too large for the door, and a fierce
bell; which, every time it pealed, shook the
little house to its every honeysuckle. The
parochial magnate was not at home; but a
rosy girl—with an illuminated ribbon and
a species of petrified oyster as a brooch, and
who was his daughter, I suppose—came to
a little side window in the wall in answer
to our summons; and, scarcely deigning to
look at us, handed us the required tickets.
Ah me! A twitch, a transient twitch came
over me when I thought that there had been
days when Master Somebody in a prodigious
lay-down collar and white ducks, had walked
with young ladies quite as rosy, with brooches
quite as petrified, and had even been called
by them, "a bold boy."

Misery, they say, makes a man acquainted
with strange bed-fellows; but shall I ever
again, I wonder, sleep in company with such
strange characters as shared the trusses of
straw, the lump of bread, and slab of Dutch
cheese, that night, in the casual ward of
Kingston workhouse? There was a hulking
fellow in a smock frock, who had been a
navigator, but had fallen drunk into a lime-
pit and burnt his eyes out, who was too lazy
to beg for himself, and was led about by a
ragged, sharp-eyed boy. There were two
lads who tramped in company: they had been
to sea and were walking from Gosport to
London. My fellow, the man with the
wrench, had been born a tramp and bred a
tramp; his father was a tramp before him,
and I dare say his children are tramps now.

"Yer see," he deigned to explain to me,
after he had dispatched his supper, "I likes
change. I summers in the country, and
winters in London. There's refuges and
'ressipockles,'" (by which, I presume, he meant
receptacles) "in winter time, and lots of
coves as gives yer grub. Then comes spring
time; I gets passed to my parish—the
farther off the better, and I gets a penny a
mile. When I gets there I goes 'cross
country, on quite another tack. I knows
every Union in England. In some they gives
you bread and cheese, and in some broth, and
in some skillygolee. In some they gives you
breakfast in the morning, and in some they
doesn't. You have to work your bed out.
Here, Kingston way, you wheels barrows; at
Guildford you pumps; at Richmond you
breaks stones; at Farnham you picks oakum;
at Wandsworth they makes you grind corn
in a hand-mill till your fingers a'most drops
off at yer wristés. At Brighton now, they 're
a good sort, and only makes you chop up
firewood; but Portsmouth's the place! You're
a young un," he pursued, looking at me
benignantly," and green. Now, I'll give you a
wrinkle. If you're a-going to Portsmouth,
you manage to get there on a Saturday night;
for they keeps you all day Sunday, and they
won't let you do no work; and they gives
you the jolliest blow-out of beef and taters
as ever passed your breastbone. The taters
is like dollops o' meal!"

With this enthusiastic eulogium on the way
in which they managed matters at
Portsmouth, the traveller went to sleep—not
gradually, but with a sudden grunt and jerk
backward. The blind navigator and his
guide had been snoring valorously for half-
an-hour; and the two sailor lads, after an
amicable kicking match for the biggest heap
of straw, soon dropped off to sleep, too.
There was an unsociable tinker in the corner,
who had smuggled in a blacking-bottle full of
gin, notwithstanding the personal search of
the workhouse porter. He gave no one,
however, any of the surreptitious cordial, but
muddled himself in silence; merely throwing
out a general apothegm to the auditory that
he preferred getting drunk in bed, as "he
hadn't far to fall." He did get drunk, and
he did fall. I was too tired, I think, to sleep;
but none of my companions woke during the
night, save an Irish reaper who appeared
more destitute than any of us; but whom I
watched, in the dead of the night, tying up
some gold and silver in a dirty rag.

Next morning was Sunday—a glorious
sunshiny, bird-singing, tree-waving Sunday.