does, and he never will. It is a favourite fiction with him,
however (as if he were the most industrious character on earth),
that YOU never work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you
looking at your flowers, you will overhear him growl with a strong
sense of contrast, ‘YOU are a lucky hidle devil, YOU are!’
The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same
injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you
possess, and never did anything to get it: but he is of a less
audacious disposition. He will stop before your gate, and say to
his female companion with an air of constitutional humility and
propitiation – to edify any one who may be within hearing behind a
blind or a bush – ‘This is a sweet spot, ain’t it? A lovelly spot!
And I wonder if they’d give two poor footsore travellers like me
and you, a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib?
We’d take it wery koind on ’em, wouldn’t us? Wery koind, upon my
word, us would?’ He has a quick sense of a dog in the vicinity,
and will extend his modestly-injured propitiation to the dog
chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate,
‘Ah! You are a foine breed o’ dog, too, and YOU ain’t kep for
nothink! I’d take it wery koind o’ your master if he’d elp a
traveller and his woife as envies no gentlefolk their good fortun,
wi’ a bit o’ your broken wittles. He’d never know the want of it,
nor more would you. Don’t bark like that, at poor persons as never
done you no arm; the poor is down-trodden and broke enough without
that; O DON’T!’ He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving
away, and always looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the
road and down the road, before going on.
Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the
hard-working labourer at whose cottage-door they prowl and beg,
have the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in good
health.
There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright
summer day – say, on a road with the sea-breeze making its dust
lively, and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the slope of
Down. As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective at
the bottom of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that
appears to be sitting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and
disengaged manner. As you approach nearer to it, you observe the
figure to slide down from the gate, to desist from whistling, to
uncock its hat, to become tender of foot, to depress its head and
elevate its shoulders, and to present all the characteristics of
profound despondency. Arriving at the bottom of the hill and
coming close to the figure, you observe it to be the figure of a
shabby young man. He is moving painfully forward, in the direction
in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with his
misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you are
close upon him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of you, you
discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a
remarkably well-spoken young man. You know him to be well-behaved,
by his respectful manner of touching his hat: you know him to be
well-spoken, by his smooth manner of expressing himself. He says
in a flowing confidential voice, and without punctuation, ‘I ask
your pardon sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so
addressed upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags
though it as not always been so and by no fault of his own but
through ill elth in his family and many unmerited sufferings it
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would be a great obligation sir to know the time.’ You give the
well-spoken young man the time. The well-spoken young man, keeping