These tramps were gathered together on a definite plan, and I was invited to join them in it:  the plan was, to go, en masse, from town to town, and systematically exploit it; one day one man would go to the butcher shops, the next, another man would take them, and the first would, let’s say, beg at the baker’s ... and each day a different man would take a different section among the houses.  Then all the food so procured would be put together and shared in common.

As usual, there was among them an individual who held them together—­the originator of the idea.  He was a fat, ruddy-faced alcoholic ex-cook, who had never held a job for long because he loved whiskey so much.

Besides being the presiding genius of the gang, he also did all the cooking.  He loved to cook.  Each day he jumbled all the mixable portions of the food together, and, in a big tin wash-boiler which he had rescued from “the dump” outside of town, he stewed up quite a palatable mess which we called “slum” or “slumgullion,” or, more profanely, “son-of-a-b——.”

For plates we used old tomato cans hammered out flat ... for knives and forks, our fingers, pocket-knives, and chips of wood.

It was a happy life.

One afternoon mysteriously our leader and cook disappeared—­with a broad grin on his face.  Soon he returned, rolling a whole barrel of beer which he had stolen during the night from the back of a saloon ... and had hidden it nearby in the bushes till it was time to bring it forth....

We held a roaring party, and had several fights. ("Slopping up” is what the tramps call a drinking jamboree.) This was the first time I got drunk in my life.  It took very little to set me off ...  I burned a big hole in my coat.  I woke lying in the mud near the willows ... and with a black eye ... a fellow tramp affectionately showed me his finger that I had bitten severely ... for a day we had bad nerves, and lay about grumbling....

We kept quite clean.  The tramp is as clean as his life permits him to be ... usually ... the myth about his dirtiness is another of the myths of the newspaper and magazine world ... though I have seen ones who were extraordinarily filthy....

We “boiled up” regularly ... and hung our shirts and other articles of apparel on the near-by willows to dry....

After about ten days of scientific exploitation of them, the “natives” of the town on the verge of which we were encamping, began to evidence signs of restlessness.

So we moved on to another town by means of a local freight.

Settled there in “the jungles,” we hilariously voted to crown the cook our king.  We held the ceremony, presenting him with a crown made out of an old tin pan, which one of the more expert among us hammered into a circlet and scoured bright with sand....

* * * * *

But soon I grew tired of the gang and started on alone.