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THE ROAD

By Jack London

1907

(New York: Macmillan)

TO

JOSIAH FLYNT

The Real Thing, Blowed in the Glass

Confession

There is a woman in the state of Nevada to whom I once lied continuously, consistently, and shamelessly, for the matter of a couple of hours. I don’t want to apologize to her. Far be it from me. But I do want to explain.

Unfortunately, I do not know her name, much less her present 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 was filled 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 back doors 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 missed many a meal, in spite of the fact that I could «throw my feet» with the next one when it came to «slamming a gate» for a «poke-out» or a «set-down,» or hitting for a «light piece» on the street. Why, I was so hard put in that town, one day, that I gave the porter the slip and invaded the private car of some itinerant millionnaire.

The train started as I made the platform, and I headed for the aforesaid millionnaire with the porter one jump behind and reaching for me.

It was a dead heat, for I reached the millionnaire at the same instant that the porter reached me. I had no time for formalities.

«Gimme a quarter to eat on,» I blurted out.

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 a dollar.

I know that I’d have got it. I swung off the platform of that private car with the porter manoeuvring to kick me in the face.

He missed me. One is at a terrible disadvantage when 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 the face with a number eleven.