A TRAMP’S HANDS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1725, 17 April 1888, Page 3

A TRAMP’S HANDS.

One of the essential points of success in my profession, said a dilapidated old tramp who was talking to a reporter, is to keep his hands in good order. You don’t understand what I mean, eh,? What I mean by keeping the hands in good order Is this: Of course, in tramping from town to town a man is liable to he arrested for vagrancy at any time. He must tell a story of how he has just been thrown out of work, and is looking for employment, which, as yet, he has not been able to find. In nine cases out of ten the magistrate will ask him to show up his hands, and when he does produce them they must be horny and toilworn. Understand, do you ? So you see it is part of my business to keep my hands looking as though they belonged to a man who was accustomed to work three hundred and thirteen days in the year. For that purpose I carry with me this small piece of willow wood, which is round and very smooth.

About twice a day I take it between my palms and rub them 10 that the friction will make them hard and callous. In that way, you see, I produce the real result, with very little trouble and annoyance. There is a bottle of brown liquid, which I occasionally use for staining the back part of my hands a beautiful sunbrown color, and there you are. When I show up my hands and tell the magistrate that I am a hard-working man, thrown out of employment by strikes or bad trade, what can they do but believe me? The trick has saved me many a day in gaol, and I flatter myself in a strictly original idea, though it is spreading rapidly. The profession, you see, is beginning te realise that it will never do,: to show up to a hard-hearted Magistrate, a pair of tender lily-white hands .—Exchange.