The Road | Page 2

the very poor for
my food. The very poor constitute the last sure recourse of the hungry
tramp. The very poor can always be depended upon. They never turn
away the hungry. Time and again, all over the United States, have I
been refused food by the big house on the hill; and always have I
received food from the little shack down by the creek or marsh, with its
broken windows stuffed with rags and its tired-faced mother broken
with labor. Oh, you charity-mongers! Go to the poor and learn, for the
poor alone are the charitable. They neither give nor withhold from their
excess. They have no excess They give, and they withhold never, from
what they need for themselves, and very often from what they cruelly
need for themselves. A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the

bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.
There was one house in particular where I was turned down that
evening. The porch windows opened on the dining room, and through
them I saw a man eating pie -a big meat-pie. I stood in the open door,
and while he talked with me, he went on eating. He was prosperous,
and out of his prosperity had been bred resentment against his less
fortunate brothers.
He cut short my request for something to eat, snapping out, "I don't
believe you want to work."
Now this was irrelevant. I hadn't said anything about work. The topic of
conversation I had introduced was "food." In fact, I didn't want to work.
I wanted to take the westbound overland that night.
"You wouldn't work if you had a chance," he bullied.
I glanced at his meek-faced wife, and knew that but for the presence of
this Cerberus I'd have a whack at that meat-pie myself. But Cerberus
sopped himself in the pie, and I saw that I must placate him if I were to
get a share of it. So I sighed to myself and accepted his work-morality.
"Of course I want work," I bluffed.
"Don't believe it," he snorted.
"Try me," I answered, warming to the bluff.
"All right," he said. "Come to the corner of blank and blank streets" --
(I have forgotten the address) -- "to-morrow morning. You know where
that burned building is, and I'll put you to work tossing bricks."
"All right, sir; I'll be there."
He grunted and went on eating. I waited. After a couple of minutes he
looked up with an I-thought-you-were-gone expression on his face, and
demanded:

"Well?"
"I... I am waiting for something to eat," I said gently.
"I knew you wouldn't work!" he roared.
He was right, of course; but his conclusion must have been reached by
mind-reading, for his logic wouldn't bear it out. But the beggar at the
door must be humble, so I accepted his logic as I had accepted his
morality.
"You see, I am now hungry," I said still gently.
"To-morrow morning I shall be hungrier. Think how hungry I shall be
when I have tossed bricks all day without anything to eat. Now if you
will give me something to eat, I'll be in great shape for those bricks."
He gravely considered my plea, at the same time going on eating, while
his wife nearly trembled into propitiatory speech, but refrained.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said between mouthfuls. "You come to
work to-morrow, and in the middle of the day I'll advance you enough
for your dinner. That will show whether you are in earnest or not."
"In the meantime --" I began; but he interrupted.
"If I gave you something to eat now, I'd never see you again. Oh, I
know your kind. Look at me. I owe no man. I have never descended so
low as to ask any one for food. I have always earned my food. The
trouble with you is that you are idle and dissolute. I can see it in your
face. I have worked and been honest. I have made myself what I am.
And you can do the same, if you work and are honest."
"Like you?" I queried.
Alas, no ray of humor had ever penetrated the sombre work-sodden
soul of that man.
"Yes, like me," he answered.

"All of us?" I queried.
"Yes, all of you," he answered, conviction vibrating in his voice.
"But if we all became like you," I said, "allow me to point out that
there'd be nobody to toss bricks for you."
I swear there was a flicker of a smile in his wife's eye. As for him, he
vas aghast--but whether at the awful possibility of a reformed humanity
that would not enable him to get anybody to toss bricks for him, or