BART KENNEDY,-TRAMP!

North Otago Times, 1 November 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

BART KENNEDY,-TRAMP!

A GIIAT ABOUT THE MOST IN-

TERESTING MAN OP THE

MOMENT, ' .J.

Like likes like. I like Bart Ken-1 nedy's books. They are so eminently, original ; so quite unlike any other books that ever were written. | .So it lias been with his earlier works, and so it is with this, his latest, Listen to this, for example. "When I was seventeen J left home to faee the world. 1 walked out of the house one morning, and didn't come back again for fifteen years. Poverty drove me from home, but I can't say. that I felt very downhearted about it. It is a fine thing to face life. 1 was glad as I tramped along the road from Manchester to Liverpool. All sorts of fancies were in my head. I seemed to bo walking on air. It was so fine to feel free and to be going out into the Unknown. Even now I often feel- that I would almost like to drop everything and go out into the middle of the changes and chances of tho unknown life."

"I never had such grand health as when I was a tramp, and slept often out in the open air, I think, on the whole, that those days were the happiest days of my life. I had no care, no sorrow-no bothering my mind as to what would happen next day or week or month. Of course I had certain disadvantages) to contend with—irregular meal-hours was one of them; but when I come toreckon everything up, tho finest time I ever had in my life was when I was a tramp," But then, of course, tramping in America is very different from tramping in England, The living is better, for one thing'. Why, I remember once striking a tramp camp down on the Gulf of California, close to a place called Gunymas, in Mexico. W r c used to gather oysters by the thousand, and we had them every day ; stewed, roasted, raw—but mostly stewed. They were delicious. We trapped wild ducks, too, by the score, and we shot doer—there was (tin old muzzle-loading rifle amongst our outfit —and when the wind was in a certain qifarter great green turtles "floundered' into the bay and grounded, and wo dined sumptuously on turtle steaks and supped on turtle soup,

FISHING EXTRAORDINARY. Fish, too, we had in abundance, although I fear our method of catching them would hardly appeal to the sportsman. One of our party had commandeered a number of sticks of dynamite from a neighbouring mine, and wo used to fling a bit, with a lighted fuse attached, into the shallow pools when the tide was low. Some we ate, and others wo traded oft' with the Yaqui Indians for codec, corn bread, and tobacco," 13art Kennedy's tramp camps were mostly inland, so he had not all shesc luxuries; but he did have that luxury of all luxuries—to the tramp —barbocucd. pig. lie does not, however, call it barbecued pig, but roasted pig. "We roasted," he says "a pig every day. The way we managed it was simple. A rough, open oven of stones was built, about four feet high, It formed three sides of a square, and was about four feet and a half across. Over the top of it were laid three thick bars of iron, upon which the pig rested, All we had to do was to feed the fuel into the side of the oven—and . wait patiently, Dried wood was used for fuel. It was fine to see the pig gradually get brown and luscious and beautiful, I can remember the grateful odour of it to this very day. How it crackled and spluttered. It made one hungry just to look at it,

AX APOSTLE OF ELI A, "When it was (lone," ho con-1 tiiuies, "we drew the fire from under it and levered it very gently and very carefully off the iron bars and on to the door of a box-car. Then we carved it with an axe." To many this may seem an exageration, or even the product, of a fertile writer's brain, It is exact fact, I have helped to cook and cat many a similar meal. So, also, has every genuine American "hobo." And what llart says about its fine flavour is perfectly true, Closed-tip ovens only spoil food. Things should be roasted in the open, so that plenty of air can play around them. Then tlicy have a flavour that is truly delicious. To partake of a pig that has been foraged for, and cooked in the open over a dried wood fire, is I to partake of a food fit for the gods,

JACK OF ALL TRADES

Mr. Kennedy, even in his book, and it contains but an autobiographical fraction of a most varied career, is many things—oyster-pirate, canvas man at a circus, crane-man, a hoer of tobacco, a cutter of corn, and property man to a travelling theatrical company, liul lie is perfectly frank about these lapses Into work. He did not fall into them because his inclination lay that way. but because hunger drove him. And sooner or later lie invariably, to use his own words, "got the sack." "I was," he says, "a big, powerful man who was often given work on my looks. I would ask a boss for a job, and if there was at all a chance he would put me on. But' he usually repented after a short trial. For I was skilled in the subtle art of doing as little as possible while appearing to be working my best."

JOVS OF THE ROAD,

Of sucli is the cult of the tramp. And Hurt Kennedy, is its premier apostle. Hear his paean in praise of it.. "What matters to the trnmp to-morrow or the day after? What matters the thing that is called death ? Before you are being unfolded Hie Hccrals of life and of the world. Before you is passing the titanic pageant, changing and winding, and turning here and turning there, and crossing and re-crossing, and going with order and without order—a sounding, illimitable, immeasurable pageant, winding and rewinding, and turning and re-turning. You see before you the world changing and rc-clianging. Voices of men come and go. Faces conic and go. The sounds of towns stretch out to you, and lo ! they are gone, and skies come and go, and here is the water and here is the land. And slowly there is coming to you tlio inner knowledge. The light comes to your eyes, lleforc this you weie as one blind. Before this you were as one standing in darkness. You knew not the wonder and the glory and the magic of the world. It is being revealed to you now. In going along." All of which is bad philosophy, of course ; but it is excellently fino writing, and 'perfectly tuie into the bargain.