A Tramp Got Wet

A Literary Tramp Drifts Into the City and Out Again

There are tramps and tramps. One of these genus of tramp who is not of the ordinary class takes periodic trips to this city. He floats in every year or two, stays for a day or such a matter, and floats on. He generally makes his appearance at the Argus office with a woebegone cast of countenance. He is a little dried up specimen, a graduate of Harvard, a man who could make his way in newspaper work if he could get the liquor out of him long enough to become himself once more. He has held down some good newspaper positions in his short periods of reform - but not for any length of time, the tramping fever seizes him and he is up and away. He usually asks for a slip of paper when he comes in, and writes his request. He always carries a pencil. His note on his last visit to the Argus office was as follows:

Mr. Beek: A man who only drops around at intervals of half a decade can hardly be deemed a nuisance whatever his errand. I am in my normal state of financial deficiency and in quite an abnormal state of shyness of provender. I beg to be given a chance to earn a lunch and a shave. Orders for same quite as acceptable as cash. Am willing to do any kind or quality of work in requital. Please compassionate. Resemble and emulate Whittier's Arab raising the flap of his tent at night-fall and shouting into the depths of the desert waste: "Whoever thou art, whose need is great, In the name of Allah, the compassionate, And merciful me, - For thee I wait. " DAVID W. HARNETT.

On one visit here Harnett came back two or three times and when remonstrated with he said: "Well, give me some oíd newspapers for bedding. I am going to leave town and you won't see me again for a year. " The next morning when the editor came down to the office Harnett was waiting on the streets, and when greeted with the remark, "I thought you were not coming back for a year," he said: "All I want is some more old newspapers. I started out all right last night and got out a little ways on W. Huron St. when I thought I would pass the night under a tree. So I spread out my papers and lay down. You know it rained during the night and I failed to arouse from my slumbers, and when morning dawned I found myself in a )pool of water. The newspapers had collected it and prevented the water 'from soaking into the ground, so I came back to town to get some more bedding. " Such are some of the delights of tramping.