My Life

I have often wondered whence and wherefore that queer--what shall I call it, satisfaction, pride?--which I think a good many of us feel at being on nodding or talking terms with...

In the foregoing chapters I have tried to give some idea of the kind of boy I was, say by the time I had reached my fifteenth year, or the calendar year 1884. There is no use de...

Not long after my father died our family deserted the old brown house which remains in my memory still as the one independent home I have known in life. The old building has lon...

It has been my experience, and I suppose that of most men, that the attainment of a purpose is always accompanied by a touch of disappointment, weariness of spirit, even disgust...

Twenty years ago, and probably at an earlier date still, the traveler bound for Europe on any of the ships, sailing from Hoboken, might have seen, had he been curious enough to...

Perhaps the pleasantest break in my university studies came in the summer of 1894, when I went to Switzerland, and, later in the year, to Italy. My writings had begun to bring m...

Hoboland--Gay-Cat Country--The Road--what memories these names bring to mind! Years ago they stood for more than they do now. There were not so many _bona fide_ out-of-works or...

My old nurse once told me that I came into this world with a "cowl," which had to be snatched off quickly, else I should have laid there to be a prophet. Why a state of blindnes...

If some one could only tell us exactly what should, and should not, be done in a reform school a great advance would be achieved in penalogy, which at present is about as much o...

In the early nineties it was easier for foreigners to get into the Berlin University than it is now. To-day, I am told, certificates and diplomas from other institutions must be...

gentleman, received in Stettin, Germany, just as I was sailing for St. Petersburg, suggesting a meeting in Pittsburg. This was a number of weeks before my final departure from G...

In midsummer of 1896 I learned to know Tolstoy. It was at the time of the National Exhibition at Nijni-Novgorod. Cheap excursion tickets on the railroads and river boats were to...

In the autumn of 1892 my university days were interrupted by a visit to London. Political economy, as taught and written in German, was becoming more and more of a puzzle to me,...

That Western village in which I grew up and struggled with so many temptations and sins deserves a chapter to itself. Doubtless there are some very good descriptions extant of s...

The Berlin of the late eighties was a very different city from the Berlin of to-day. There is probably no other Continental city which has undergone so many changes in the same...

A friend, on receiving word that this book was being written, and that it was intended as a wind-up, for the time being at least, of my Under World reportings, wrote to me as fo...

A police raid that I attended in St. Petersburg, although not directly connected with any tramp experience there, has remained memorable, and, after all, was due to my interest...

Years and years ago, when Luther was giving us, or rather demanding of us, two strong legs and an obstinate "No" when it was our duty to say "No," there were thousands of young...

It is a far cry from Count Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana to General Kuropatkin and Central Asia, but while dealing with men and things Russian I might as well tell here as elsewhe...

At that time there was a collection of men, called the "Lake Shore Push." These men thought that they had the Lake Shore Railroad in their hands, from the criminal end of it, or...

A good illustration of Tolstoy's irresponsibility on the estate, or what he meant to be such, is the way he invited me to stop one night at his house. I had gone swimming with t...

As I have said, my friends and acquaintances in New York were comparatively few at the start. As I hark back over the beginning year in that city I do not believe that I knew in...

Another circle of friends during my British Museum days, which I found entertaining, was the "Bloomsbury Guards," as they call themselves. This company of men, or "cla-ass," is...

Two experiences in Germany stand out very distinctly in my recollections of my tramp life there. The first occurred in Berlin, where, although I was officially still a student i...

As the years have gone by I have tried, whenever I have been in London, to look up the Guards that I knew during my first visit, as well as to make acquaintance with the new mem...

In the early spring of 1898 I made up my mind once and for all that it was high time for me to leave Europe and get back to my own country if I ever intended to get to work with...

Taking up life anew in New York City, after many years abroad, is not an easy game. In my case it was particularly disagreeable, because for a while I had a homesick feeling for...