Chapter I: Front Matter

A HANDY GUIDE FOR BEGGARS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO

A HANDY GUIDE
FOR BEGGARS
ESPECIALLY THOSE OF
THE POETIC FRATERNITY

_Being sundry explorations, made while afoot and
penniless in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
These adventures convey and illustrate
the rules of beggary for poets and some others._

BY VACHEL LINDSAY

_Author of “The Congo,” “The Art of The Moving
Picture,” “Adventures while Preaching
the Gospel of Beauty,” etc._

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
PUBLISHERS MCMXVI

COPYRIGHT, 1916,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE author desires to express his indebtedness to _The Outlook_ for permission to reprint the adventures in the South and to Charles Zueblin for permission to reprint the adventures in the East.

The author desires to express his indebtedness to the _Chicago Herald_ for permission to reprint _The Would-be Merman_, and to _The Forum_ for _What the Sexton Said_, and to _The Yale Review_ for _The Tramp’s Refusal_.

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Mr. George Mather Richards, Miss Susan Wilcox, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ide and Miss Grace Humphrey for their generous help and advice in preparing this work.

DEDICATION AND PREFACE OF A HANDY GUIDE FOR BEGGARS

THERE are one hundred new poets in the villages of the land. This Handy Guide is dedicated first of all _to them_.

It is also dedicated to the younger sons of the wide earth, to the runaway boys and girls getting further from home every hour, to the prodigals who are still wasting their substance in riotous living, be they gamblers or blasphemers or plain drunks; to those heretics of whatever school to whom life is a rebellion with banners; to those who are willing to accept counsel if it be mad counsel.

This book is also dedicated to those budding philosophers who realize that every creature is a beggar in the presence of the beneficent sun, to those righteous ones who know that all righteousness is as filthy rags.

Moreover, as an act of contrition, reënlistment and fellowship this book is dedicated to all the children of Don Quixote who see giants where most folks see windmills: those Galahads dear to Christ and those virgin sisters of Joan of Arc who serve the lepers on their knees and march in shabby armor against the proud, who look into the lightning with the eyes of the mountain cat. They do more soldierly things every day than this book records, yet they are mine own people, my nobler kin to whom I have been recreant, and so I finally dedicate this book _to them_.

These are the rules of the road:--

(1) Keep away from the Cities;

(2) Keep away from the railroads;

(3) Have nothing to do with money and carry no baggage;

(4) Ask for dinner about quarter after eleven;

(5) Ask for supper, lodging and breakfast about quarter of five;

(6) Travel alone;

(7) Be neat, deliberate, chaste and civil;

(8) Preach the Gospel of Beauty.

And without further parley, let us proceed to inculcate these, by illustration, precept and dogma.

VACHEL LINDSAY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS,
November, 1916.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

THE DEDICATION AND PREFACE vii

FOLLOW THIS THISTLEDOWN xi