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.” Published in 1919, this is poet Vachel Lindsay’s description of his travels “afoot and penniless” across the southern and eastern United States, staying with strangers, reciting or trading poetry for dinner, and along the way, describing in stories and poetry, mostly stories, the people and places he encountered. Think “Travels With Charlie,” minus the dog and the Winnebago, and much, much earlier. From the Dedication and Preface: “There are one hundred new poets in the villages of the land. This Handy Guide is dedicated to the younger sons of the wid earth, to the runnaway boys and girls getting further from home every hour, to the prodigals still wasting their substance in riotous living, be they gamblers or blasphemers or plain drunks; to the 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.” If you remember the 1960’s, you’ll feel right at home. If you wish you remembered the 1890’s, here’s your chance. You might also feel right at home, at that.