They is many kinds of hobos and tramps, per-
fessional and amachure, and lots of kinds of bums,
and lots of young fellers working their way around
to see things, like I was, and lots of working men in
hard luck going from place to place, and all them
kinds is humans. But the real yeggman ain't
even a dog.
And oncet I went all the way from Chicago to
Baltimore with a serious, dern fool that said he was
a soshyologest, whatever them is, and was going
to put her all into a book about the criminal classes.
He worked hard trying to get at the reason I was
a hobo. Which they wasn't no reason, fur I wasn't
no hobo. But I didn't want to disappoint that
feller and spoil his book fur him. So I tells him
things. Things not overly truthful, but very
full of crime. About a year afterward I was into
one of these here Andrew Carnegie lib'aries with
the names of the old-time presidents all chiselled
along the top and I seen the hull dern thing in print.
He said of me the same thing I have said about
them yeggmen. If all he met joshed that feller
the same as me, that book must of been what you
might call misleading in spots.
One morning I woke up in a good-sized town in
Illinoise, not a hundred miles from where I was
raised, without no money, and my clothes not much
to look at, and no job.
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