I was never a prushun, for I did not take kindly to possession.  I was first a road-kid and then a profesh.  Because I started in young, I practically skipped my gay-cat apprenticeship.  For a short period, during the time I was exchanging my ’Frisco Kid monica for that of Sailor Jack, I labored under the suspicion of being a gay-cat.  But closer acquaintance on the part of those that suspected me quickly disabused their minds, and in a short time I acquired the unmistakable airs and ear-marks of the blowed-in-the-glass profesh.  And be it known, here and now, that the profesh are the aristocracy of The Road.  They are the lords and masters, the aggressive men, the primordial noblemen, the blond beasts so beloved of Nietzsche.

When I came back over the hill from Nevada, I found that some river pirate had stolen Dinny McCrea’s boat. (A funny thing at this day is that I cannot remember what became of the skiff in which Nickey the Greek and I sailed from Oakland to Port Costa.  I know that the constable didn’t get it, and I know that it didn’t go with us up the Sacramento River, and that is all I do know.) With the loss of Dinny McCrea’s boat, I was pledged to The Road; and when I grew tired of Sacramento, I said good-by to the push (which, in its friendly way, tried to ditch me from a freight as I left town) and started on a passear down the valley of the San Joaquin.  The Road had gripped me and would not let me go; and later, when I had voyaged to sea and done one thing and another, I returned to The Road to make longer flights, to be a “comet” and a profesh, and to plump into the bath of sociology that wet me to the skin.

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS

A “stiff” is a tramp.  It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks with a “push” that numbered two thousand.  This was known as “Kelly’s Army.”  Across the wild and woolly West, clear from California, General Kelly and his heroes had captured trains; but they fell down when they crossed the Missouri and went up against the effete East.  The East hadn’t the slightest intention of giving free transportation to two thousand hoboes.  Kelly’s Army lay helplessly for some time at Council Bluffs.  The day I joined it, made desperate by delay, it marched out to capture a train.

It was quite an imposing sight.  General Kelly sat a magnificent black charger, and with waving banners, to the martial music of fife and drum corps, company by company, in two divisions, his two thousand stiffs countermarched before him and hit the wagon-road to the little burg of Weston, seven miles away.  Being the latest recruit, I was in the last company, of the last regiment, of the Second Division, and, furthermore, in the last rank of the rear-guard.  The army went into camp at Weston beside the railroad track—­beside the tracks, rather, for two roads went through:  the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, and the Rock Island.