I could scarcely keep from laughing.
"I assure you," I said, "that if you travel a thousand miles you will find no one stranger than I am--or you are--nor anything more wonderful than all this--" and I waved my hand.
This time she looked really alarmed, glancing quickly toward the house, so that I began to laugh.
"Madam," I said, "good morning!" So I left her standing there by the fence looking after me, and I went on down the road.
"Well," I said, "she'll have something new to talk about.

It may add a month to her life.

Was there ever such an amusing world!" About noon that day I had an adventure that I have to laugh over every time I think of it.

It was unusual, too, as being almost the only incident of my journey which was of itself in the least thrilling or out of the ordinary.

Why, this might have made an item in the country paper! For the first time on my trip I saw a man that I really felt like calling a tramp--a tramp in the generally accepted sense of the term.
When I left home I imagined I should meet many tramps, and perhaps learn from them odd and curious things about life; but when I actually came into contact with the shabby men of the road, I began to be puzzled.
What was a tramp, anyway?
I found them all strangely different, each with his own distinctive history, and each accounting for himself as logically as I could for myself.