I didn't think it was no use writing out my
resignation fur the perfessor. But I got quite a bit
of grub from Biddy Malone to make a start on, fur
I didn't figger on spending no more money than I
had to on grub. She asts me a lot of questions, and
I had to lie to her a good deal, but I got the grub.
And at ten that night I was in an empty bumping
along south, along with a cross-eyed feller named
Looney Hogan who happened to be travelling the
same way.
Riding on trains without paying fare ain't always
the easy thing it sounds. It is like a trade that has
got to be learned. They is different ways of doing
it. I have done every way frequent, except one.
That I give up after trying her two, three times.
That is riding the rods down underneath the cars,
with a piece of board put acrost 'em to lay yourself on.
I never want to go ANYWHERES agin bad enough to
ride the rods.
Because sometimes you arrive where you are going
to partly smeared over the trucks and in no condi-
tion fur to be made welcome to our city, as Doctor
Kirby would say. Sometimes you don't arrive.
Every oncet in a while you read a little piece in a
newspaper about a man being found alongside the
tracks, considerable cut up, or laying right acrost
them, mebby. He is held in the morgue a while and
no one knows who he is, and none of the train crew
knows they has run over a man, and the engineer
says they wasn't none on the track.
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