Girl Tramp Likes Road's Philosophy

1915

Pretty, Convent Bred and of Good Family, Irene Lane Prefers "Freedom"

St. Louis, Mo., (special) — An attractive girl with every indication of education, but with hair cut close to her head and a strange masculine carriage and manner of speaking has provided an interesting study for the police of this city. She gives her name as Irene Lane, admits that her real name, if known would "astonish the east" and boasts of the fact that she is and has been for more than a year a "tramp." Not a common tramp, but an associate of the leaders of the tramp world.

"Miss Lane" was arrested on Monday by a policeman who saw her running near the railroad tracks. She was dressed in feminine attire for the first time in many months, and as she jumped over the railroad ties, ran up a coal pile and dragged herself quickly up by the handles of a freight car the policeman decided that there was something strange about the matter and decided to investigate.

"Miss Lane" went to police headquarters without complaint, and when there amazed the police officials with her description of the life she had been living and of the philosophy which she had developed in her contact with "the road."

She explained that she was a convent graduate and readily convinced her questioners of it. Tired of teaching school and instructing class after class of foreign pupils in the use of English she said, she had made an arrangement with a young man of her acquaintance who was in ill health to take "a fling about the country in the open." He became discouraged after a few weeks, she explained.

—The Bayard Advocate, Bayard, Iowa, January 7, 1915, page 7.