The Happy Wayfarer

From The Birmingham Age-Herald, January 26, 1913.
 

 Bill Wanders was smoking
 And thusly he spake:
 The high cost of living
 Ne’er keeps me awake,
 I travel wherever
 It suits me to go—
 Far south when the blizzards
 Of winter time blow,
 Then north in the summer,
 To ‘scape from the heat.
 I sleep when it pleases,
 I’ve plenty to eat.
 
 I never pay money
 For riding on trains,
 A fight with the brakeman
 The worst of my pains.
 No hotel clerk flaunts me,
 No head waiter frowns,
 I tarry quite cheaply
 In dozens of towns.
 ’Tis true that my garments
 Aren’t always well pressed;
 It frequently happens
 I’m carelessly dressed.
 
 And needing a bath and
 A shave, maybe, too.
 But granted these hardships,
 My troubles are few.
 O glad is the life of
 A knight of the road,
 Though little respected
 At home or abroad.
 Let socialists rave and
 Economists fight,
 Bill Wanders will tell you
 This world is all right!