I Had The Road To Myself And Thoroughly Enjoyed The Peaceful Beauty Of The Scene; But Now This Railroad Has Come With Its Mushroom Towns, And All The Charm Has Gone.

Never again for me!

This is my last trip!"

I have not the slightest doubt that sheer love of the road - and only a tramp knows what those words mean - is the controlling influence which keeps fifty per cent of the fraternity its willing slaves. What was Senhouse - that most fascinating of Maurice Hewlett's creations - but a tramp? A gentleman tramp, if you please, but still a tramp. What is the reason that Senhouse appeals so strongly to the imagination? Simply because he loved Nature. And in this matter-of-fact period when poetry is dead and even a by-word, the man who loves Nature, if not a poet, at least has poetry in his soul. In a decadent age symbolized by the tango and the problem play, it is at least an encouraging sign for the future that such a character as Senhouse came to the jaded reader of the erotic fiction of the day, as a whiff of sea breeze on a parched plain, and was hailed with corresponding delight.

Of course there are "hoboes" and "hoboes," as in any other profession, but so far as my experience goes, the "hobo" is an idealist. Of the many reasons he has taken to the road, not the least is the freedom from the shackles of convention and the "Gradgrind" methods of an utilitarian and materialistic age.

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