Jack London

The Road Jack London

There is a woman in the state of Nevada to whom I once lied continuously, consistently, andshamelessly, for the matter of a couple of hours. I don't want to apologize to her. Far be itfrom me. But I do want to explain. Unfortunately, I do not know her name, much less herpresent address. If her eyes should chance upon these lines, I hope she will write to me. It was in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1892. Also, it was fair-time, and the town wasfilled with petty crooks and tin-horns, to say nothing of a vast and hungry horde of hoboes. It was the hungry hoboes that made the town a "hungry" town. They "battered" the backdoors of the homes of the citizens until the back doors became unresponsive. A hard town for "scoffings," was what the hoboes called it at that time. I know that I missedmany a meal, in spite of the fact that I could "throw my feet" with the next one when itcame to "slamming a gate" for a "poke-out" or a "set-down," or hitting for a "light piece" onthe street. Why, I was so hard put in that town, one day, that I gave the porter the slip andinvaded the private car of some itinerant millionnaire. The train started as I made theplatform, and I headed for the aforesaid millionnaire with the porter one jump behind andreaching for me. It was a dead heat, for I reached the millionnaire at the same instant thatthe porter reached me. I had no time for formalities. "Gimme a quarter to eat on," I blurtedout. And as I live, that millionnaire dipped into his pocket and gave me ... just ... precisely ...a quarter. It is my conviction that he was so flabbergasted that he obeyed automatically, and it has been a matter of keen regret ever since, on my part, that I didn't ask him for adollar. I know that I'd have got it. I swung off the platform of that private car with theporter manoeuvring to kick me in the face. He missed me. One is at a terrible disadvantagewhen trying to swing off the lowest step of a car and not break his neck on the right of way, with, at the same time, an irate Ethiopian on the platform above trying to land him in theface with a number eleven. But I got the quarter! I got it!But to return to the woman to whom I so shamelessly lied. It was in the evening of my lastday in Reno. I had been out to the race-track watching the ponies run, and had missed mydinner (i.e. the mid-day meal). I was hungry, and, furthermore, a committee of public safetyhad just been organized to rid the town of just such hungry mortals as I. Already a lot of mybrother hoboes had been gathered in by John Law, and I could hear the sunny valleys ofCalifornia calling to me over the cold crests of the Sierras. Two acts remained for me toperform before I shook the dust of Reno from my feet. One was to catch the blind baggageon the westbound overland that night. The other was first to get something to eat. Evenyouth will hesitate at an all-night ride, on an empty stomach, outside a train that is tearingthe atmosphere through the snow-sheds, tunnels, and eternal snows of heaven-aspiringmountain