tanks, take water on the fly, that’s goin’ some.”  “The Northern Pacific’s a bad road now.”  “Salinas is on the ‘hog,’ the ‘bulls’ is ‘horstile.’” “I got ‘pinched’ at El Paso, along with Moke Kid.”  “Talkin’ of ‘poke-outs,’ wait till you hit the French country out of Montreal—­not a word of English—­you say, ‘Mongee, Madame, mongee, no spika da French,’ an’ rub your stomach an’ look hungry, an’ she gives you a slice of sow-belly an’ a chunk of dry ‘punk.’”

And I continued to lie in the sand and listen.  These wanderers made my oyster-piracy look like thirty cents.  A new world was calling to me in every word that was spoken—­a world of rods and gunnels, blind baggages and “side-door Pullmans,” “bulls” and “shacks,” “floppings” and “chewin’s,” “pinches” and “get-aways,” “strong arms” and “bindle-stiffs,” “punks” and “profesh.”  And it all spelled Adventure.  Very well; I would tackle this new world.  I “lined” myself up alongside those road-kids.  I was just as strong as any of them, just as quick, just as nervy, and my brain was just as good.

After the swim, as evening came on, they dressed and went up town.  I went along.  The kids began “battering” the “main-stem” for “light pieces,” or, in other words, begging for money on the main street.  I had never begged in my life, and this was the hardest thing for me to stomach when I first went on The Road.  I had absurd notions about begging.  My philosophy, up to that time, was that it was finer to steal than to beg; and that robbery was finer still because the risk and the penalty were proportionately greater.  As an oyster pirate I had already earned convictions at the hands of justice, which, if I had tried to serve them, would have required a thousand years in state’s prison.  To rob was manly; to beg was sordid and despicable.  But I developed in the days to come all right, all right, till I came to look upon begging as a joyous prank, a game of wits, a nerve-exerciser.

That first night, however, I couldn’t rise to it; and the result was that when the kids were ready to go to a restaurant and eat, I wasn’t.  I was broke.  Meeny Kid, I think it was, gave me the price, and we all ate together.  But while I ate, I meditated.  The receiver, it was said, was as bad as the thief; Meeny Kid had done the begging, and I was profiting by it.  I decided that the receiver was a whole lot worse than the thief, and that it shouldn’t happen again.  And it didn’t.  I turned out next day and threw my feet as well as the next one.

Nickey the Greek’s ambition didn’t run to The Road.  He was not a success at throwing his feet, and he stowed away one night on a barge and went down river to San Francisco.  I met him, only a week ago, at a pugilistic carnival.  He has progressed.  He sat in a place of honor at the ring-side.  He is now a manager of prize-fighters and proud of it.  In fact, in a small way, in local sportdom, he is quite a shining light.