Читать книгу The Color of a Great City онлайн

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For, say what you will, it does take something that is not social, and most certainly independent, either in the form of thought or temperament, to permit one to thus brazenly brave the notions and the moods, to say nothing of the intellectual convictions, of those who look upon the things above described as essential and permanent. These astonishingly strange men, with their matted hair over their eyes, their dirty skins, their dirty clothes, their large feet encased in torn shoes, their hats with holes in them and their hair actually protruding—just as though there were rules or conventions governing them in the matter of dress. Along railroad tracks and roads outside the large cities of the country I have seen them (curiously enough, I have never seen a woman tramp), singly or in groups, before a fire, the accredited tin can at hand for water, a degenerate pail brought from somewhere in which something is being cooked over a fire. And on occasion, as a boy, I have found them asleep in the woods, under a tree, or in some improvised hole in a hay or straw stack, snoring loudly or resting as only the just and the pure in heart should rest.