A Tramp Through the Bret Harte

le. Some Reflections on

walked ten miles before reaching a tree, or anything that cast a shadow, if you except the telephone poles. For the first time I realized there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the shade of the telephone poles as a possibility! Fortunately a light breeze sprang up-the fag end of the trade wind-and, though hot, it served to dispe

ed to give me a lift. I thanked him politely but declined. He seemed amazed. "Why don't you ride when you can?" he asked. "Because I prefer to walk," I answered. This fairly staggered him. The idea of a man p

hereupon he threw back his head and burst into peal after peal of such hearty laughter that, from pure contagion, I perforce joined in the chorus. In the days of Fielding and Sam Johnson, this fellow would have been dubbed "a lusty va

haps it is because he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his back that infuriates the average d

d the domestic affections come clamoring around you for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp, cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and respectable world in its most hostile form. There

sented, from the college professor to the ex-pugilist. I have "hit the ties" in company with a so-called "hobo" who quoted Milton and Shakespeare by the yard, interspersed with exclamations appreciative of his enjoyment of the country through which we were passing. And once when on a tramp along the coast from San Francisco to Monterey, I fell in at Point San Pedro with a professional, who bitter

tramp, if you please, but still a tramp. What is the reason that Senhouse appeals so strongly to the imagination? Simply because he loved Nature. And in this matter-of-fact period when poetry is dead and even a by-word, the man who loves Nature, if not a poet, at least has poetry in his soul.

many reasons he has taken to the road, not the least is the freedom from the shackles of convention and the "Gradgrind" methods of an utili

bles, he says: "We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts (Concord, Massachusetts) practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom and independence which are the c

to his office and back from the ferry boat. When you urge him for perhaps the twentieth time, to essay a tramp with you, he will say he would like to very much, but unfortunately so-and-so renders it impossible. And then looking you in the e

iles of Marysville, they gave me a distinct thrill. I could hardly believe my eyes and thought of mirages; for those pointed, isolated peaks rise precipitously from the floor of the Sacramento valley; in fact, t

spiral upward course, previous to final disintegration, smile at the persistent energy with which an hour ago you systematically worked the town from end to end, anxiously peering in the windows of uninviting restaurants until you finally found that little "hole in the wall" for which you were looking, with the bottle of Tipo Chianti, the succulent chops and the big red tomatoes, in the window. It is always to be found if you have the necessary perseverance. The genial Italian proprietor, with the innate politeness of his countrymen, will not bore you with questions as to where you have come from, whither you are going

made their pile," they began the process-subsequently completed in Sacramento and San Francisco-of reducing it to a negligible quantity. That, of course, is merely a reminiscence, but as the center of one of the most prosperous grain and fruit-raising sections of the Sacramento Valley, Marysville is still a place of considera