128 TRAMPS 



shoulders by this . time, and been thankful for a bit of 

 bacon once in the week. As it is, all through the 

 pleasant season his wandering life is a perpetual picnic. 

 It is probable that he is no great admirer of sylvan 

 beauties, preferring the bench before the ale-house door, 

 where he can listen to the echo of the laughter from the 

 bar and the trolling of the skittle-balls in the alley, to 

 the murmur of half-hidden brooks and the soft cooing 

 of the wood-pigeons. Yet even in taking his ease at 

 his inn he seems to be guided by some rude instinct of 

 the picturesque ; at all events, he has the good taste to 

 look for shade, and that cool freshness of the green 

 which weighs gently on the sinking eyelids. Sun- 

 tanned and weather-beaten, ragged and dust-stained, 

 with his open shirt-bosom and his hobnailed bluchers, 

 he might sit out the central figure in some village group 

 by a modern English imitator of the Dutch masters. 

 There is the signboard swinging in rusty chains from 

 the great gnarled bough of the old chestnut over the 

 way ; and underneath it the long water-trough, where 

 the horses cast loose from the brewer's dray are " dis- 

 tending their leathern sides with water." Overpowered 

 by heat and grateful weariness rather than by strong 

 drink- though if he is temperate it is on constraint 

 rather than on principle his heavy head is nodding on 

 his hirsute chest, and his clasp-knife, which has been 

 making play with the bread and beef, has slipped from 

 his relaxing grasp to fall rattling on the gravel at his 

 feet. 



We should be inclined to define the tramp proper as 



