countryman, and you will often come upon the
poor fellow, while he is endeavouring to
decipher the inscription on a milestone—- quite a
fruitless endeavour, for he cannot read. He
asks your pardon, he truly does (he is very slow
of speech, this tramp, and he looks in a
bewildered way all round the prospect while he
talks to you), but all of us shold do as we
wold be done by, and he'll take it kind if
you'll put a power man in the right road fur to
jine his eldest son as has broke his leg bad in
the masoning, and is in this heere Orspit'l as is
wrote down by Squire Pouncerby's own hand as
wold not tell a lie fur no man. He then
produces from under his dark frock (being always
very slow and perplexed) a neat but worn old
leathern purse, from which he takes a scrap of
paper. On this scrap of paper is written, by
Squire Pouncerby, of The Grove, " Please to
direct the Bearer, a poor but very worthy man,
to the Sussex County Hospital, near Brighton"
—- a matter of some difficulty at the moment,
seeing that the request comes suddenly upon you
in the depths of Hertfordshire. The more you
endeavour to indicate where Brighton is —- when
you have with the greatest difficulty remembered
—- the less the devoted father can be made
to comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares
at the prospect; whereby, being reduced to
extremity, you recommend the faithful parent
to begin by going to Saint Albans, and present
him with half-a-crown. It does him good, no
doubt, but scarcely helps him forward, since you
find him lying drunk that same evening in the
wheelwright's sawpit under the shed where the
felled trees are, opposite the sign of the Three
Jolly Hedgers.

But the most vicious, by far, of all the idle
tramps, is the tramp who pretends to have been
a gentleman. "Educated," he writes from the
village beer-shop in pale ink of a ferruginous
complexion; " educated at Trin. Coll. Cam.—-
nursed in the lap of afluence —- once in my
small way the pattron of the Muses," &c. &c.
&c. —- surely a sympathetic mind will not
withhold a trifle, to help him on to the market-town
where he thinks of giving a Lecture to the
fruges consumere nati, on things in general?
This shameful creature lolling about hedge
taprooms in his ragged clothes, now so far from
being black that they look as if they never can
have been black, is more selfish and insolent
than even the savage tramp. He would sponge
on the poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn
him when he had got it; he would interpose
(if he could get anything by it) between
the baby and the mother's breast. So much
lower than the company he keeps, for his maudlin
assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal
blights the summer road as he maunders on
between the luxuriant hedges: where (to my thinking)
even the wild convolvulus and rose and
sweetbriar, are the worse for his going by, and
need time to recover from the taint of him in
the air.

The young fellows who trudge along barefoot,
five or six together, their boots slung over
their shoulders, their shabby bundles under their
arms, their sticks newly cut from some roadside
wood, are not eminently prepossessing, but
are much less objectionable. There is a tramp-
fellowship among them. They pick one another
up at resting stations, and go on in companies.
They always go at a fast swing—- though they
generally limp too —- and there is invariably one
of the company who has much ado to keep up
with the rest. They generally talk about horses,
and any other means of locomotion than walking:
or, one of the company relates some recent
experiences of the road —- which are always disputes
and difficulties. As for example. " So as I'm
a standing at the pump in the market, blest if
there don't come up a Beadle, and he ses,
' Mustn't stand here,' he ses. ' Why not?' I
ses. ' No beggars allowed in this town,' he ses.
'Who's a beggar?' I ses. 'You are,' he ses.
' Who ever see me beg? Did you?' I ses. ' Then
you're a tramp,' he ses. 'I'd rather be that,
than a Beadle,' I ses." (The company express
great approval.) " ' Would you,' he ses to me.
' Yes I would,' I ses to him. ' Well,' he ses,
' anyhow, get out of this town.' ' Why, blow
your little town!' I ses, 'who wants to be in it?
Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin'
and stickin' itself in the road to anywhere?
Why don't you get a shovel and a barrer, and
clear your town out o' people's way?' " (The
company expressing the highest approval and
laughing aloud, they all go down the hill.)

Then, there are the tramp handicraft men.
Are they not all over England, in this Midsummer
time? Where does the lark sing, the corn
grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they are
not among the lights and shadows, tinkering,
chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock-mending,
knife-grinding? Surely, a pleasant thing,
if we were in that condition of life, to grind our
way through Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. For
the first six weeks or so, we should see the
sparks we ground off, fiery bright against a
background of green wheat and green leaves. A
little later, and the ripe harvest would pale our
sparks from red to yellow, until we got the dark
newly-turned land for a background again, and
they were red once more. By that time, we
should have ground our way to the sea cliffs,
and the whirr of our wheel would be lost in the
breaking of the waves. Our next variety in
sparks would be derived from contrast with the
gorgeous medley of colours in the autumn woods,
and, by the time we had ground our way round
to the heathy lands between Reigate and Croydon,
doing a properous stroke of business all
along, we should show like a little firework in
the light frosty air, and be the next best thing
to the blacksmith's forge. Very agreeable, too,
to go on a chair-mending tour. What judges we
should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with
a sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back) we
should lounge on bridges, looking over at osier-
beds. Among all the innumerable occupations
that cannot possibly be transacted without the
assistance of lookers-on, chair-mending may take a
station in the first rank. When we sat down