high, and bois, wood. In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden
musical instrument of two-foot tone, I believe, played with a double
reed, an oboe, in fact. You remember in 'Henry IV'--

"'The case of a treble hautboy
Was a mansion for him, a court.'

"From this to ho-boy is but a step, and for that matter the English
used the terms interchangeably. But--and mark you, the leap
paralyzes one--crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City,
hautboy, or ho-boy, becomes the name by which the night-scavenger is
known. In a way one understands its being born of the contempt for
wandering players and musical fellows. But see the beauty of it! the
burn and the brand! The night-scavenger, the pariah, the miserable,
the despised, the man without caste! And in its next incarnation,
consistently and logically, it attaches itself to the American
outcast, namely, the tramp. Then, as others have mutilated its
sense, the tramp mutilates its form, and ho-boy becomes exultantly
hobo. Wherefore, the large stone and brick cells, lined with double
and triple-tiered bunks, in which the Law is wont to incarcerate
him, he calls the Hobo. Interesting, isn't it?"

And I sat back and marvelled secretly at this encyclopaedic-minded
man, this Leith Clay-Randolph, this common tramp who made himself at
home in my den, charmed such friends as gathered at my small table,
outshone me with his brilliance and his manners, spent my spending
money, smoked my best cigars, and selected from my ties and studs
with a cultivated and discriminating eye.

He absently walked over to the shelves and looked into Loria's