From The Rise and Fall of the Mustache, and other “Hawk-eyetems,” by Robert J. Burdette, illustrated by R. W. Wallis; Burlington Publishing Company, Burlington, Iowa; 1877; pp. 79-82.
IT was a poor, dejected looking tramp, who came limping wearily into town on the Fort Madison road, and, with the instinct of his class, made his way directly toward Main Street, where stimulants and company are most numerous. He had a very tired look, and his poorly shod feet seemed to weigh a ton a piece. The sun had burned his face to a deeper brown than even the knotty hands that swung listlessly at his side. He did not even carry the inevitable stick; and the little bundle, without which the tramp’s outfit is never complete, although heaven only knows what is in it, was swung from his shoulders by a heavy twine string, like a rude knapsack. No man is alive now that wore clothes when the hat he wore was made. It was a fearful and wonderful hat, and attracted more attention than anything he had on or about him. He limped along Main Street from Locust, diving into private houses in occasional forays for bread, which were generally successful, for his poor, dejected, sorrowful looking face threw a great deal of silent eloquence into his pleading, and the women could not bear to send the low-voiced man away hungry. These forays were varied by occasional dives into places of refreshment, where he vainly pleaded for a small allowance of ardent spirits for a sick man; the general result being that he was courteously refused and gently but firmly kicked out by the urbane barkeeper, who saw too many of him every day to be much moved. The poor fellow limped along till he got a little above Division 80 Street, when he had to pass a knot of young men, and one of them, a smart looking chap, in a very gamey costume, and carrying a broad pair of shoulders and a bullet head, surmounted with a silver-gray plug hat, hung on his right ear, sang out,
“Oh, shoot the hat!”
The poor tramp only looked more dejected than ever, if possible, and shook his head meekly and sorrowfully, and limped on. But the young sport shouted after him:
“Come back, young fellow, and see how you’ll trade hats!”
The outcast paused and half turned, and said in mournful tones:
“Don’t make game of a onfortnit man, young gents, I’m poor and I’m sick, but I’ve the feelin’s of a man, an’ I kin feel it when I’m made game of. If you could give me a job of work, now —”
A chorus of laughter greeted the suggestion, and the smartest young man repeated the challenge to trade hats, and finally induced the mendicant to limp back.
“Take off your hat,” said the young man of Burlington, “and let’s see whose make it is. If it isn’t Stetson’s, I won’t trade.”
“Oh, that’s Stetson’s,” chorused the crowd. “He wouldn’t wear anything but a first -class hat.”
But the tramp replied, trying to limp away from the circle that was closing around him.
“Indeed, young gents, don’t be hard on a onfortnit man. I don’ believe I coud git that hat off’n my head; I don’t indeed. I haint had it off fur mor’n two months, indeed I haint. I don’t believe I kin git it off at all. Please let me go on.”
But the unfeeling young men crowded around him more closely and insisted that the hat should come off, 81 and the smartest young man in company said he’d pull it off for him.
“Indeed, young gent,” replied the tramp, apologetically, “I don’t believe you could git if off. It’s been on so long I don’t believe you kin git it off; I don’t really.”
The young man advanced and made a motion to jerk off the hat, but the tramp limped back and threw up his hands with a clumsy frightened gesture.
“Come young gents,” he whined, “don’t play games on a poor fellow as is lookin’ for the county hospital. I tell ye, young gents, I’m a sick man, I am. I’m on the tramp when I ought to be in bed. I can’t hardly stand, and I haint got the strength to be fooled with. Be easy on a poor ——”
But the sporting young man cut him off with “Oh, give us a rest and take off the hat.” And then he made a pass at the poor sick man’s hat, but his hand met the poor, sick tramp’s elbow instead. And then the poor man lifted one of his hands about as high as a derrick, and the next instant the silver-gray plug hat was crowded so far down on the young man’s shoulders that the points of the dog’s eared collar were sticking up through the crown of it. And then the poor sick man tried his other hand, and part of the crowd started off to help pick the young man out of a show window where he was standing on his head, while the rest of the congregation was trying its level best to get out of the way of the poor sick tramp, who was felling about him in a vague, restless sort of way that made the street lamps rattle every time he found anybody. Long before any one could interfere the convention had adjourned sine die, and the poor tramp, limping on his way, the very personification of wretchedness, sighed as he remarked apologetically to the spectators.
82“I tell you, gents, I’m a sick man; I’m too sick to feel like foolin’; I’m jest so sick that when I go gropin’ around for somethin’ to lean up again I can’t tell a man from a hitchin’ post; I can’t actually, and when I rub agin anybody, nobody hadn’t ought to feel hard at me. I’m sick, that’s what I am.”