Wicked Humor — A Great Satire On The Ways of Tramps

1878

A Sarcastic Mendicant

"I'm very hungry," said a haggard tramp, with very red eyes, as he stood obsequiously at the side entrance of a Court street house. "Won't you please, ma'am, be so good as to give me a little something to eat? Anything will do — odds and ends — cold or warm — it don't matter, for I'm not one of them high-toned fellers."

"My husband has forbidden me to encourage idleness by giving away any more provisions," replied the lady of the house. " He says you fellows have a sort of Free Masonry way of letting others know every house at which you have been fed, and it is sure to bring a troop of lazy vagabonds upon us who would starve before they'd lift a hand to work. So you will have to move on and get your breakfast some place else."

"But I'm not a vagabond, ma'am; I'm a hard-working, industrious man. I came up on a boat from Memphis to see my sick mother who lives out near Camden, and isn't expected to live. I was robbed on the boat of every cent I had and all my clothes, while I was in bed. The captain gave me these old things. I don't like to beg, but Camden is a good stretch from here, and I can't walk it on an empty stomach. Think of the outstretched arms of a poor sick mother toward her absent child, and put wings on my feet with a few cold potatoes. I'm just at that point where I can eat 'em without salt."

"I can't do it. They all have a story about like that. The last man I fed had to go to Columbus inside of twenty-four hours to save an innocent man from hanging, but two days afterward I saw him down town so drunk he couldn't hold his mouth shut."

"Well, I never drink. If I hadn't been robbed I could show you my Murphy ribbon that I've worn till it's raveled into strings. Long years ago I swore at my mother's bended knee — the same one who moans on her couch of pain because I'm not with her — that I would never touch the blighting cup, and I hain't, from that time up to this minute. Can't you help me to get there in time to comfort her declining hours with the joyful tidings that I have been steadfast through all temptation, by giving me the cold grub you had intended to dump into the garbage box? I'm awful hungry."

"I can't help it. I must obey my husband — his orders were positive," said the woman, snappishly.

"Well, you're the most extraordinary woman I ever saw if you do. But say, can't you give me the paper the beefsteak was brought home in, to chew as I go along. It may fool my stomach for awhile and make it brace up by thinking something better will be along presently. You'll do that much toward easing a fond parent's anxious heart, won't you?"

"No, I won't."

"Well, then give me a newspaper and let me sit by the fire and read the advertisement of a meat market, and show me the place where it tells all about provisions. Even that would give me a feast — for the imagination — which has been about the extent of my living lately. You won't believe it, maybe, but it's a fact, that all the nourishment I've had for two days is the bill of fare painted on the outside of the Fifth-street restaurant. Can you think of that and keep your stale bread on the inside of your cupboard?"

"Yes, I can; and I want you to make yourself scarce without any more palaver, or I shall send my boy to call a policeman," exclaimed the indignant woman.

"Even the photograph of a chicken would be some comfort," said the man, by way of banter, as he moved off, "and if you don't use soap in your dishwater a few potatoes sliced up in it would be regular barbecue for me." — Cincinnati Breakfast Table.