One evening, near Cumberland, Pennsylvania, I was an unwilling witness of one of the worst scenes that can be imagined.  In company with eight hoboes, I was in a freight-car attached to a slowly moving train.  A colored boy succeeded in scrambling into the car, and when the train was well under way again he was tripped up and “seduced” (to use the hobo euphemism) by each of the tramps.  He made almost no resistance, and joked and laughed about the business as if he had expected it.  This, indeed, I find to be the general feeling among the boys when they have been thoroughly initiated.  At first they do not submit, and are inclined to run away or fight, but the men fondle and pet them, and after awhile they do not seem to care.  Some of them have told me that they get as much pleasure out of the affair as the jocker does.  Even little fellows under 10 have told me this, and I have known them to willfully tempt their jockers to intercourse.  What the pleasure consists in I cannot say.  The youngsters themselves describe it as a delightful tickling sensation in the parts involved, and this is possibly all that it amounts to among the smallest lads.  Those who have passed the age of puberty seem to be satisfied in pretty much the same way that the men are.  Among the men the practice is decidedly one of passion.  The majority of them prefer a prushun to a woman, and nothing is more severely judged than rape.  One often reads in the newspapers that a woman has been assaulted by a tramp, but the perverted tramp is never the guilty party.

I believe, however, that there are a few hoboes who have taken to boys because women are so scarce “on the road.”  For every woman in hoboland there are a hundred men.  That this disproportion has something to do with the popularity of boys is made clear by the following case:  In a gaol, where I was confined for a month during my life in vagabondage, I got acquainted with a tramp who had the reputation of being a “sod” (sodomist).  One day a woman came to the gaol to see her husband, who was awaiting trial.  One of the prisoners said he had known her before she was married and had lived with her.  The tramp was soon to be discharged, and he inquired where the woman lived.  On learning that she was still approachable, he looked her up immediately after his release, and succeeded in staying with her for nearly a month.  He told me later that he enjoyed his life with her much more than his intercourse with boys.  I asked him why he went with boys at all, and he replied:  “’Cause there ain’t women enough.  If I can’t get them I’ve got to have the other.”