Transcriber's note: Obvious printer errors have been repaired, but spelling has notbeen standardized. Any missing page numbers are those that are not shown in theoriginal text.
This eBook is dedicated to the memory of Mary Cole Akers.
The Autobiography
of a Super-Tramp
THE NEWEST BORZOI BOOKS
- ASPHALT
- By Orrick Johns
- BACKWATER
- By Dorothy Richardson
- CENTRAL EUROPE
- By Friedrich Naumann
- CRIMES OF CHARITY
- By Konrad Bercovici
- THE BOOK OF SELF
- By James Oppenheim
- RUSSIA'S MESSAGE
- By William English Walling
- THE ECHO OF VOICES
- By Richard Curle
- THE BOOK OF CAMPING
- By A. Hyatt Verrill
- MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY
- By Alexander Kornilov
- THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING
- By Alexandre Benois
- THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI
- (1895-1899)
- THE COLLECTED POEMS OF
- WILLIAM H. DAVIES
Preface by
Bernard Shaw
PREFACE
I hasten to protest at the outset that I have nopersonal knowledge of the incorrigible Super-trampwho wrote this amazing book. If he isto be encouraged and approved, then British moralityis a mockery, British respectability an imposture, andBritish industry a vice. Perhaps they are: I havealways kept an open mind on the subject; but stillone may ask some better ground for pitching themout of window than the caprice of a tramp.
I hope these expressions will not excite unreasonableexpectations of a thrilling realistic romance, ora scandalous chronicle, to follow. Mr. Davies' autobiographyis not a bit sensational: it might be thePost Office Directory for the matter of that. A lesssimple minded supertramp would not have thoughtit worth writing at all; for it mentions nothing thatmight not have happened to any of us. As to scandal,I, though a most respectable author, have neverwritten half so proper a book. These pudent pagesare unstained with the frightful language, the debaseddialect, of the fictitious proletarians of Mr.Rudyard Kipling and other genteel writers. Inthem the patrons of the casual ward and the dosshouse VIIIargue with the decorum of Socrates,