TRAMPS i2i 



myrmidons of power are much too fond of making 

 free with the liberties of the roving subject. Un- 

 pleasant perquisitions are instituted into papers, passes, 

 amateur tickets-of-leave, and promiscuous vouchers of 

 respectability. Vagrants of unimpeachable respecta- 

 bility are apt to be arbitrarily taken care of in the 

 interests of society and their own, with small regard 

 to their individual likings or opinions, and the coinci- 

 dence of a brood of chickens disappearing from a 

 neighbouring poultry-yard may provide compulsory 

 State accommodation for the houseless wanderers 

 scattered through half a dozen parishes. Germany 

 ought to be a pleasant country to tramp, but vagrancy 

 in the Fatherland is much of a class privilege, and 

 seldom goes lower than the gangs of Handelsburschen 

 the young artisans on their promotion. In Holland 

 the people are too busy, too little tolerant of inactivity ; 

 there is work for every one, and it is impossible to 

 shirk it in a country where there are no hills, and 

 nothing higher than an occasional tulip-bed, to screen 

 the skulker from observation. In Belgium there is 

 literally no elbow-room for the stroller to turn in. 

 His case is as hard as that of the negro in Barbadoes, 

 forbidden by the monopoly of the sugar patch to squat 

 at his employer's cost, like his happier brother of 

 Jamaica. Even if he turned up some pleasant valley 

 by the banks of Meuse or the skirts of Ardennes, one 

 of the rare bits of impracticable soil abandoned to 

 woodland, he would be warned back by the ring of 

 the hammer from some sequestered foundry. Fancy 



