I hope that woman in Reno will read these lines and forgive me my gracelessness and unveracity.  I do not apologize, for I am unashamed.  It was youth, delight in life, zest for experience, that brought me to her door.  It did me good.  It taught me the intrinsic kindliness of human nature.  I hope it did her good.  Anyway, she may get a good laugh out of it now that she learns the real inwardness of the situation.

To her my story was “true.”  She believed in me and all my family, and she was filled with solicitude for the dangerous journey I must make ere I won to Salt Lake City.  This solicitude nearly brought me to grief.  Just as I was leaving, my arms full of lunch and my pockets bulging with fat woollen socks, she bethought herself of a nephew, or uncle, or relative of some sort, who was in the railway mail service, and who, moreover, would come through that night on the very train on which I was going to steal my ride.  The very thing!  She would take me down to the depot, tell him my story, and get him to hide me in the mail car.  Thus, without danger or hardship, I would be carried straight through to Ogden.  Salt Lake City was only a few miles farther on.  My heart sank.  She grew excited as she developed the plan and with my sinking heart I had to feign unbounded gladness and enthusiasm at this solution of my difficulties.

Solution!  Why I was bound west that night, and here was I being trapped into going east.  It was a trap, and I hadn’t the heart to tell her that it was all a miserable lie.  And while I made believe that I was delighted, I was busy cudgelling my brains for some way to escape.  But there was no way.  She would see me into the mail-car—­she said so herself—­and then that mail-clerk relative of hers would carry me to Ogden.  And then I would have to beat my way back over all those hundreds of miles of desert.

But luck was with me that night.  Just about the time she was getting ready to put on her bonnet and accompany me, she discovered that she had made a mistake.  Her mail-clerk relative was not scheduled to come through that night.  His run had been changed.  He would not come through until two nights afterward.  I was saved, for of course my boundless youth would never permit me to wait those two days.  I optimistically assured her that I’d get to Salt Lake City quicker if I started immediately, and I departed with her blessings and best wishes ringing in my ears.

But those woollen socks were great.  I know.  I wore a pair of them that night on the blind baggage of the overland, and that overland went west.

HOLDING HER DOWN

Barring accidents, a good hobo, with youth and agility, can hold a train down despite all the efforts of the train-crew to “ditch” him—­given, of course, night-time as an essential condition.  When such a hobo, under such conditions, makes up his mind that he is going to hold her down, either he does hold her down, or chance trips him up.  There is no legitimate way, short of murder, whereby the train-crew can ditch him.  That train-crews have not stopped short of murder is a current belief in the tramp world.  Not having had that particular experience in my tramp days I cannot vouch for it personally.