The chance use of the word 'Tramp' in my last paper, brought that numerous fraternity so
vividly before my mind's eye, that I had no sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion
was upon me to take it up again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all
the summer roads in all directions.
Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his legs in a dry ditch;
and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back.
Yonder, by the high road, glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of
turf under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the highway, the tramp of the
order savage, fast asleep. He lies on the broad of his back, with his face turned up to the
sky, and one of his ragged arms loosely thrown across his face. His bundle (what can be
the contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while to carry it about?) is
thrown down beside him, and the waking woman with him sits with her legs in the ditch,
and her back to the road. She wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the front of her head,
to shade her face from the sun in walking, and she ties her skirts round her in
conventionally tight tramp-fashion with a sort of apron. You can seldom catch sight of
her, resting thus, without seeing her in a despondently defiant manner doing something to
her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you between her fingers. She does not often go to
sleep herself in the daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside the man. And his
slumberous propensities would not seem to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the
bundle, for she carries it much oftener and further than he. When they are afoot, you will
mostly find him slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily behind with
the burden. He is given to personally correcting her, too - which phase of his character
develops itself oftenest, on benches outside alehouse doors - and she appears to become
strongly attached to him for these reasons; it may usually be noticed that when the poor
creature has a bruised face, she is the most affectionate. He has no occupation whatever,
this order of tramp, and has no object whatever in going anywhere. He will sometimes
call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an imaginary flight. He
generally represents himself, in a vague way, as looking out for a job of work; but he
never did work, he never 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;
