Damn you,
KirkBrentai!
In the early nineteenth century, it was customary for the winner of a gentleman's' duel to perform one kindness for the loser. As pocketwatches of the time were fragile and prone to being damaged by the blows exchanged in a duel, the winner would traditionally have the loser's pocketwatch repaired and cleaned afterwards; hence the term "to clean one's clock."
This custom after duels in the early 19th century is also responsible for the development of many other popular terms and phrases in the English language. At least two are due to the fact that hobos of the same era would often try to exploit this gentleman's tradition for their own personal gain. A hobo attempting the ploy would seek out a wealthy individual and then attempt to initiate a duel with them via a wild and unprovoked assault with the intention of immediately taking a dive as soon as their prey responded with a blow of any kind. They would then demand the traditional favour from the victor of their "duel"; hence the term "
to bumrush".
Of course bumrushing proved far more successful at providing hobos with their staples of cold beans and whiskey than simple begging or fence painting and it didn't take long before hobos everywhere were relying almost exclusively on it for all their monetary needs. By the early 20th century the railroad stations boxcar jumpers frequented had become the sites of endless one-sided brawls as travelers had to wade through wave after wave of hobo chins and kidneys, their knuckles raw and their pockets empty by the time their trains carried them away from the station. The severity of the situation is thought to be why so many travelers began braving forms of conveyance previously thought too dangerous, too
crazy to ever truly catch on such as air travel, hi-ways and bizzare, long coaches drawn by large teams of runty or otherwise suboptimal greyhounds thought too slow for dog racing. The Railroad Industry has never fully recovered.
Eventually it would be President Herbert Hoover who put an end to the madness by officially changing the rules of gentlemanly dueling.
"My fellow Americans, although it pains me deeply to rob respectable losers of gentlemanly duels of the prospect of a newly repaired and cleaned timepiece, I fear our nation has no other option. Let this alteration, this change to the rules of gentlemanly dueling be known as the
Spare Change so that it may spare the good people of this country from being suddenly and often wildly duped into altercations that do little for their honour and simply empty their pockets and bruise their knuckles on a nearly daily basis." -Pres. H. Hoover
As the idea and institution of "gentlemanly" behaviour has eroded, so has our society's memory of this fatefull amendment to its rules. But hobos and tramps all over North America still resent Hoover's "Spare Change", muttering its name under their breath whenever someone they perceive as a modernday gentleman passes by them. They half raise their dukes in nostagic preparation for a bumrush, often removing their hats to further expose their vulnerable chins before realizing the futility of the action in this modern age. Still, some gentlemen take pity on them, offering them some small sum of money that never seems to amount to what a bumrusher could earn with a single bruise on the cheek and a convincing drop to the ground.