This duty performed, I started to walk across the bridge over the Susquehanna to the west shore.  I forget the name of the railroad that ran down that side, but while lying in the grass in the morning the idea had come to me to go to Baltimore; so to Baltimore I was going on that railroad, whatever its name was.  It was a warm afternoon, and part way across the bridge I came to a lot of fellows who were in swimming off one of the piers.  Off went my clothes and in went I. The water was fine; but when I came out and dressed, I found I had been robbed.  Some one had gone through my clothes.  Now I leave it to you if being robbed isn’t in itself adventure enough for one day.  I have known men who have been robbed and who have talked all the rest of their lives about it.  True, the thief that went through my clothes didn’t get much—­some thirty or forty cents in nickels and pennies, and my tobacco and cigarette papers; but it was all I had, which is more than most men can be robbed of, for they have something left at home, while I had no home.  It was a pretty tough gang in swimming there.  I sized up, and knew better than to squeal.  So I begged “the makings,” and I could have sworn it was one of my own papers I rolled the tobacco in.

Then on across the bridge I hiked to the west shore.  Here ran the railroad I was after.  No station was in sight.  How to catch a freight without walking to a station was the problem.  I noticed that the track came up a steep grade, culminating at the point where I had tapped it, and I knew that a heavy freight couldn’t pull up there any too lively.  But how lively?  On the opposite side of the track rose a high bank.  On the edge, at the top, I saw a man’s head sticking up from the grass.  Perhaps he knew how fast the freights took the grade, and when the next one went south.  I called out my questions to him, and he motioned to me to come up.

I obeyed, and when I reached the top, I found four other men lying in the grass with him.  I took in the scene and knew them for what they were—­American gypsies.  In the open space that extended back among the trees from the edge of the bank were several nondescript wagons.  Ragged, half-naked children swarmed over the camp, though I noticed that they took care not to come near and bother the men-folk.  Several lean, unbeautiful, and toil-degraded women were pottering about with camp-chores, and one I noticed who sat by herself on the seat of one of the wagons, her head drooped forward, her knees drawn up to her chin and clasped limply by her arms.  She did not look happy.  She looked as if she did not care for anything—­in this I was wrong, for later I was to learn that there was something for which she did care.  The full measure of human suffering was in her face, and, in addition, there was the tragic expression of incapacity for further suffering.  Nothing could hurt any more, was what her face seemed to portray; but in this, too, I was wrong.