ertain words sound like caresses. "thou vagabond!" must have been at some time or other a gentler appellation than our rude transition would make it. why not? "rogue" and "truant" have yet their playful uses. though we translate illy such endearments of antiquity, we may read in gascoigne:—
"o abraham's brats! o brood of blessèd seed!"
the "goodly and virtuous young imps" of old citation, we should also construe but saucily. besides, "vagabond" lendeth itself gracefully to the affectionate diminutives of alien tongues, which, to a philologist, may be as good as an argument: what can be tenderer than vagaböndchen, vagabondellino, and a like musical play of syllables over the solid english rock?
the vagabond is the modern representative of the knight-errant, shorn of his romance, inasmuch as both fall neatly under the definition of a stroller, a free lance, whom the domestic lar does not allure or attach to any one fireside. the immortal don of la mancha, revived in this age, should figure as a tramp in the police station, before he had adorned public life twenty-four hours. but the vagabond proper has an asiatic cousin, who gets princelier treatment. the rônin of chivalrous japan is a gentleman of leisure, who, not averse to a chance of seasonable employment, roams at large, settling his private differences, and serving heaven unmolested, according to his lights. vagabonds are legally denominated "such as wake on the night, and sleep on the day; and haunt customable taverns and ale-houses, and rout about; and no man wots whence they come nor whither they go:" a comprehensive statement in three parts, which has, moreover, a covert whimsical reference categorically to actors, politicians, and bank-clerks. a vagabond, primarily, was merely an idle person;and if his name has come to imply variations of decorum, and a questionable standing in polite circles, it is to be accounted for only on the worn adage that satan takes personal care of undedicated energies.
our friend is vagrant as the swallow, "born in the eighth climate, and framed and constellated unto all." he is the world's freeman. he strays at his fancy, sign-boards and mile-stones his only ritual, and changes of weather the sole political economy of his study, by which he abides. everybody's property is his in fief. terminus and his stakes were never set up for him. he has no particular reason for moving on the first of may, nor for passing the winter in warm quarters. when he is very weary, since he has no tent to strike, nor bed to make, he unconcernedly "lays his neck on the lap of his mother." neither landlord nor tenant is he; and never has he known a spring-cleaning, nor packed a trunk, nor priced a door-plate. he trolls out that joyful strophe which richard brome wrote for his forefathers, as he swings past inland villages:
"come away! why do we stay?
we have no debt or rent to pay,
no bargains or accompts to make,
nor land nor lease, to let or take:
or if we had, should that remore us,
when all the world's our own before us,
and where we pass and make resort,
there is our kingdom and our court!"
he has his choice of professions: he may have a natural disposition to beg, yet, on the whole, consider it genteeler to steal. he is exempt from adam's curse. nobody expects him to work, save in a moment of inspiration. when he has no funds, he travels on his dignity. there is that in his eye which awes the merchantman, and mesmerizes the maid at the hostel gate.
the vagabond, "extravagant and erring spirit," as horatio would call him, has had his court-painter, who took the portraits of several of his eccentric family in the year of waterloo, and exposed them for sale in covent garden under the title: "etchings of remarkable beggars, itinerant traders, and other persons of notoriety," drawn from the life in london town. there glisten perennially the seraphic upturned eyes of "hot peas!" there you may see the hogarthian face and attitude of the one-armed vender of gasping "live haddock!" the pastoral cousin offering "young (toy) lambs!" the dealer in pickled cucumbers, his arms akimbo, a fork stuck in the dish on his head, and a surreptitious wink in his well-conducted eye; the flying pie-man, smirking like malvolio, and starched and skirted like a dignitary of bluff hal's; the reduced beau, sweeping crossings, with his yet fastidious air; and the humble bespectacled painter, his own drayman, changing quarters on holy luke's day, so festooned with torsos, casts, brushes, phials, easels, that he seems a perambulating studio.
the vagabondistic sect is of exceedingly mutable nature. it distends, it contracts; it swears in, now a person of probity, not of wealth; now a sinner, like the rest of us, who seldom moves in good society: an odd congregation, comprising dozens that have no business among the elect, and lacking a proportionate number who stray untethered into other folds. on this showing, not only all mendicants, pedlers, street-singers, pick-pockets, and uneasy minds are accepted rascals, but poor queer b., who wrote poetry, and went veiled like the great mokanna, distraught to know whether the aggregate stare of her fellow-citizens was attributable to her renown, or to her scarce hellenic beauty, falls into the same category; and the venerable campaigner, who tacks on to her hurdy-gurdy a certificate of army membership signed by napoleon (presumably to be referred to her fighting spouse, deceased),—that wrinkled and taciturn spook of what was once french vivacity and grace, faithfully grinding "partant pour la syrie," in snow and sun, within a fixed radius of boston common,—even she must emerge, despite the music of austerlitz and jena, nothing short of a naturalized yankee vagabond! there are laws yet unrepealed, céleste! for thy suppression; prices set on the innocuous heads of "minstrels and useless persons."
we could wish that a new plutarch should write up the patron-saint of vagabonds,—one bampfylde moore carew, a devonshire celebrity born under william and mary, a most conscientious, well-bred person, and of good parts, who became a gentleman at large only under irresistible conviction; and who, after a series of adventures before which an arabian tale covers its head, rose to be king of the gypsies, and great high joss of beggars and mimics, henceforward: a pleasant, adroit creature, familiar with the wildernesses of what were not yet the atlantic states, reckless enough to be kindly-disposed towards his fellows, and successful in everything he undertook, living, "gray as a wharf-rat, and supple as the devil," to a consistent and edifying old age.
we have a sneaking kindness for him and his votaries. a congenital affinity softens us towards suspicious characters. we were early aware that we startled shop-keepers with our roving thumb, how or whence we know not; but we have come to love the indiscreet something in us which calls forth puritan vigilance, and we should violently resent a change of tactics. more than once a jeweller (who might have made a mad wag if-111- he had not been so choked with virtue) refused to give back our repaired watch, eying us with grewsome distrust, and absolutely disclaimed having beheld our cockney countenance before! we enter a warehouse, only to await identification, as they are pleased to call it, from tom, dick, and harry, and only by force of eloquence, or by literal making of faces (honest, ingenuous, reliable, unevasive faces, out of use, but quite as good as new, and triumphantly effective), do we succeed in securing the household necessities. reading once, of a windy day, seated on the sea-wall of the charles, through a chance waiting-hour, in cloistral privacy, we were accosted across lots by a sombre policeman, and mysteriously lured back to the confines of civilization; whereupon the misguided creature, scanning our cheerful lineaments,—cheerful from the pages of "travels with a donkey,"—burst into uncanny laughter, and presently explained that he had been detailed to save yon despondent crank from plunging into the hungry river!
our career of vagabond by brevet had wellnigh closed. seriously, sir or madam, you may stand by that harbor-mouth, and have an inkling into the tragedies of the strollers of whom "men wot not whence they come, nor whither they go." but, to keep you on the liberal side of compassion, you who are not of the faith must also be made aware that aldebaran is a gracious star to his own; and that "wild and noble sights" are vouchsafed to the outer and inner eye of shabbiest bohemianism, "such as they that sit in parlors never dream of."
