I might be walking down the track to the water-tank to lie in wait for a passing freight-train, when I would chance upon a bunch of "alki-stiffs." An alki-stiff is a tramp who drinks druggist's alcohol.

Immediately, with greeting and salutation, I am taken into the fellowship.

The alcohol, shrewdly blended with water, is handed to me, and soon I am caught up in the revelry, with maggots crawling in my brain and John Barleycorn whispering to me that life is big, and that we are all brave and fine--free spirits sprawling like careless gods upon the turf and telling the two-by-four, cut-and-dried, conventional world to go hang..