Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 01:57:16 -0400

From: "Barry A. Popik" Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM

Subject: HOBO: another antedate



I might as well get this stuff out somehow. You never know when

Hurricane Fran's going to come and completely destroy your life's work.

"Hobo" was extremely popular around the turn of the century, much as

"homeless" is now. The dictionaries have 1889, from American English.

This is from the New Orleans Picayune, 19 August 1848, pg. 2, col. 4:





SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE PICAYUNE [By J.E.D.-ed.]

NEW YORK, August 1, 1848.



Well, here I am once more in Gotham, after three years' absence--three

years which have passed as agreeably as time usually passes with people in

this digging world. During that period I have floated about and circulated

round to some considerable extent. A two years' residence in the goodly

Crescent City has made something of a Southerner of me--intercourse with the

New Orleans Creoles has prejudiced me a little, and a years' bronzing and

"ho-boying" about among the mountains of that charming country called Mexico,

has given me a slight dash of the Spanish. And yet I come back again and

find a whole host of old familiar faces, with whom time has dealt most

leniently.....