Beggars of Life Read Online Free

work hell out of them.” I again thought of Boroff and his daughter Ivy. Neither Ivy nor myself had reached the age of puberty though we had desire for each other. Boroff was a religious fanatic every winter and he would go to revival meetings and often take his half-crazy wife with him, leaving me with Ivy. Alone in the house, Satan would come to tempt us right near the large family Bible. While Boroff sang hosannas to his God I would lie in Ivy’s arms, Ivy asked me not to tell, and I didn’t, and neither did Ivy. She went to Sunday-school every Sunday and kept her secret well. I often smile when I hear people say that a woman cannot keep a secret.
    Ivy was a lovely little girl. Her breasts were as round and hard as apples and her limbs were white as marble. I met her years later and she gave all she had tried to give as a child. But I digress. Women are such fascinating subjects. Ivy had long black hair and sharp and pretty features. Her cheeks glowed red and her breath was hot. She died later of quick consumption.
    At one station, after we had finished unloading the freight, a trainman told a smutty story. He used words I did not like, and a revulsion came over me. Strange, down, far down in the gutters where nothing but the sludge and murk of life rolled by, I was never to overcome my revulsion from the filth of it all. If my clothing was lousy I watched clouds sailing across the moon and heard linnets chirping and larks singing.
    Even though the dupe of destiny I was a lover of beauty and saw it everywhere. The present adventure clouded all other feelings backward save those of sentiment.
    Thinking of all things under the murk-hidden sun, I reached the end of my first journey.
    It took all day to make the trip, and we arrived in Muncie from the east at about the time a driving snow storm came from the west. The snow fell steadily for hours, and was driven by the wind in all directions. Finally the wind abated and the snow stopped falling. It became intensely cold. Darkness came. The train crew had long since gone to warm shelter, and supperless, I searched for a warm place, which I found in a sand-shed at the edge of the railroad yards.
    The shed was crowded with hoboes. They lolled on boxes, and broken chairs, and in the sand, which was boarded up like loose grain in one-half of the place. A large, round stove was splashed cherry red with the heat. The warmth in the room melted the snow on the roof, and the water dropped through a small space above and fell with a monotonous clatter on a piece of tar-paper in a corner of the sand bin. Coffee boiled in a granite vessel on top of the stove. Some battered cooking utensils were in a store-box which also contained many varieties of food. There were some small lunches wrapped in paper, which the hoboes called “lumps” and “handouts.” These lunches had been given them by kind-hearted people at houses where they had begged.
    â€œHello, ’Bo,” said a derelict, as I entered.
    The speaker’s mouth sagged at one corner, where a red scar led downward from his lower lip, as though a knife had cut it. He wore a black satine shirt, and a greasy red necktie. His coat was too small for him, and his muscular shoulders had ripped it in the arm-pits.
    A decrepit, middle-aged hobo sat near him. He wore a black moustache and several weeks’ growth of beard. His collar was yellow and black, and much too large for him. His few remaining teeth were snagged and crooked. A half-dozen other men looked cautiously at me.
    After I had greeted them, the first individual spoke again, “She’s a tough night, Mate. I come in over the Big Four to-day from Saint Louie. I wanta make it to Cincy an’ beat it south.”
    â€œI met Frisco Red in Cincy t’other day,” said the yellow-collared tramp, “an’ he tells me they’re horstile down south. Pinchin’ ev’ry tramp they see.”
    â€œIt ain’t bad in New