There's an erroneous "Where no man has to work" in the final stanza of the 1895 "Wandering Willy" text. Mea culpa. "The Hobo's Prayer" in the Norfolk [Va.] Ledger-Dispatch (Nov. 2, 1909), p. 4, is about the same as the 1894 text, but the final stanza is a little different. It's printed as prose: "Hark! I hear her whistling! I must catch her on the fly! Farewell, pardner, I must leave you. It's not so hard to die." The hobo stopped. His head fell back. He'd sang [sic] his last refrain. So his pardner swiped his hat and shoes and caught the eastbound train." This hobo's sweetheart is from Norfolk. The poem is credited to "W.G. Hardcastle, U.S.S. Virginia," a battleship based at Norfolk through most of 1909.
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