100 years ago today in Spokane: Hobo turns boxcar sleeps into palace dreams

A “boxcar denizen” (aka hobo) was apprehended in a freight car at the Spokane International Depot, along with some intriguing reading material.

Roscoe Nichols, 27, was reading “The Truth About Mind Reading.”

When the officer asked him about the book, Nichols said the book had been a “great comfort” to him since he left home in Tonasket.

“I have had to sleep sometimes in hard places,” he said. “I have so trained my mind by the use of that little book that I can sleep almost any place in comfort. If I lay down in a freight car, I imagine that I’m in a palace car, so strong is the power of mind over matter, when properly trained by that book.”

Police were holding him as a suspect until they could determine whether he had stolen anything from the “palace car,” that is, freight car.

From the fugitive beat: A fugitive draft evader who escaped from a Philadelphia jail rode into Spokane in disguise, according to a St. Paul judge who was on the same train.

The judge told authorities that he sat next to the man, who acted suspiciously by changing his clothes numerous times and wearing a pair of false glasses.

The judge did not realize that it might have been the fugitive until he arrived in Seattle and read descriptions of the man. By then, it was too late.

The fugitive apparently did not exit the train during the Spokane stop. If he had, he would have seen his photo displayed prominently at the police headquarters and the sheriff’s office.