[2] He would later say that his earliest memory was of fleeing his nurse after being beaten "for some small offense"; the flight brought him "a ... measure of unalloyed joy.

[2] In 1884, when his mother and sisters left for Europe, he was sent to a college in Illinois where he found success in history and modern languages.

[2] Shortly after returning to the United States in 1898, he received an invitation from railroad executive L. F. Loree to return to tramping and spy on the tramps using the railroad, as well as the private policemen who were supposed to be enforcing the anti-tramp rules.

His further works dealing with the lower and criminal classes include The Powers that Prey (1900), a collection of short stories written in collaboration with Alfred Hodder (writing pseudonymously as Francis Walton), Notes of an Itinerant Policeman (1900), The World of Graft (1901), a volume of short stories, and The Little Brother (1902), his only sustained attempt in fiction.

He was in Chicago for Cosmopolitan, working on a story about pool gambling when he fell ill, locked himself in a hotel room, and stayed until he died on January 20, 1907.