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-Project Gutenberg's The Autobiography of a Thief, by Hutchins Hapgood

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: The Autobiography of a Thief

-

-Author: Hutchins Hapgood

-

-Release Date: March 18, 2014 [EBook #45169]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ASCII

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A THIEF ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed

-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

-produced from images generously made available by The

-Internet Archive)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-Transcriber's Note:

-

-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have

-  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

-

-  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

-

-

-

-

-The Autobiography of a Thief.

-

-

-

-

-     The Autobiography of

-     a Thief

-

-     Recorded by

-     HUTCHINS HAPGOOD

-     Author of "The Spirit of the Ghetto," etc.

-

-

-     NEW YORK

-     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY

-     1903

-

-

-

-

-     Copyright, 1903, BY

-     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY

-

-     Entered at the Library of Congress, Washington, U. S. A.

-

-     Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.

-

-     Published May, 1903.

-

-

-

-

-"_Oh, happy he who can still hope to emerge from this sea of error!_"

-

-                                                               FAUST.

-

-"_There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to

-purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like; therefore

-why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And

-if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but

-like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch because they can do no

-other._"

-

-                                                                 BACON.

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS.

-

-

-  CHAPTER                                                       PAGE

-              Editor's Note                                        9

-  I.          Boyhood and Early Crime                             15

-  II.         My First Fall                                       34

-  III.        Mixed Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards      50

-  IV.         When the Graft Was Good                             73

-  V.          Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds                      89

-  VI.         What the Burglar Faces                             107

-  VII.        In Stir                                            132

-  VIII.       In Stir (Continued)                                154

-  IX.         In Stir and Out                                    182

-  X.          At the Graft Again                                 202

-  XI.         Back to Prison                                     228

-  XII.        On the Outside Again                               255

-  XIII.       In the Mad-House                                   300

-  XIV.        Out of Hell                                        332

-              Editor's Postscript                                348

-

-

-

-

-Editor's Note.

-

-

-I met the ex-pickpocket and burglar whose autobiography follows soon

-after his release from a third term in the penitentiary. For several

-weeks I was not particularly interested in him. He was full of a desire

-to publish in the newspapers an expose of conditions obtaining in two

-of our state institutions, his motive seeming partly revenge and partly

-a very genuine feeling that he had come in contact with a systematic

-crime against humanity. But as I continued to see more of him, and

-learned much about his life, my interest grew; for I soon perceived

-that he not only had led a typical thief's life, but was also a man

-of more than common natural intelligence, with a gift of vigorous

-expression. With little schooling he had yet educated himself, mainly

-by means of the prison libraries, until he had a good and individually

-expressed acquaintance with many of the English classics, and with some

-of the masterpieces of philosophy.

-

-That this ex-convict, when a boy on the East Side of New York City,

-should have taken to the "graft" seemed to me, as he talked about

-it, the most natural thing in the world. His parents were honest, but

-ignorant and poor. One of his brothers, a normal and honorable man,

-is a truck driver with a large family; and his relatives and honest

-friends in general belong to the most modest class of working people.

-The swell among them is another brother, who is a policeman; but Jim,

-the ex-convict, is by far the cleverest and most intelligent of the

-lot. I have often seen him and his family together, on Saturday nights,

-when the clan gathers in the truckman's house for a good time, and

-he is the life of the occasion, and admired by the others. Jim was an

-unusually energetic and ambitious boy, but the respectable people he

-knew did not appeal to his imagination. As he played on the street,

-other boys pointed out to him the swell thief at the corner saloon, and

-told him tales of big robberies and exciting adventures, and the prizes

-of life seemed to him to lie along the path of crime. There was no one

-to teach him what constitutes real success, and he went in for crime

-with energy and enthusiasm.

-

-It was only after he had become a professional thief and had done time

-in the prisons that he began to see that crime does not pay. He saw

-that all his friends came to ruin, that his own health was shattered,

-and that he stood on the verge of the mad-house. His self-education in

-prison helped him, too, to the perception that he had made a terrible

-mistake. He came to have intellectual ambitions and no longer took

-an interest in his old companions. After several weeks of constant

-association with him I became morally certain that his reform was

-as genuine as possible under the circumstances; and that, with fair

-success in the way of getting something to do, he would remain honest.

-

-I therefore proposed to him to write an autobiography. He took up

-the idea with eagerness, and through the entire period of our work

-together, has shown an unwavering interest in the book and very decided

-acumen and common sense. The method employed in composing the volume

-was that, practically, of the interview. From the middle of March to

-the first of July we met nearly every afternoon, and many evenings,

-at a little German cafe on the East Side. There, I took voluminous

-notes, often asking questions, but taking down as literally as

-possible his story in his own words; to such a degree is this true,

-that the following narrative is an authentic account of his life, with

-occasional descriptions and character-sketches of his friends of the

-Under World. Even without my explicit assurance, the autobiography

-bears sufficient internal evidence of the fact that, essentially, it is

-a thief's own story. Many hours of the day time, when I was busy with

-other things, my friend--for I have come to look upon him as such--was

-occupied with putting down on paper character-sketches of his pals

-and their careers, or recording his impressions of the life they had

-followed. After I had left town for the summer, in order to prepare

-this volume, I wrote to Jim repeatedly, asking for more material on

-certain points. This he always furnished in a manner which showed his

-continued interest, and a literary sense, though fragmentary, of no

-common kind.

-

-     H. H.

-

-

-

-

-The Autobiography of a Thief.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER I.

-

-_Boyhood and Early Crime._

-

-

-I have been a professional thief for more than twenty years. Half

-of that time I have spent in state's prison, and the other half in

-"grafting" in one form or another. I was a good pickpocket and a fairly

-successful burglar; and I have known many of the best crooks in the

-country. I have left the business for good, and my reasons will appear

-in the course of this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire

-frankness. I shall not try to defend myself. I shall try merely to tell

-the truth. Perhaps in so doing I shall explain myself.

-

-I was born on the east side of New York City in 1868, of poor but

-honest parents. My father was an Englishman who had married an Irish

-girl and emigrated to America, where he had a large family, no one of

-whom, with the exception of myself, went wrong. For many years he was

-an employee of Brown Brothers and Company and was a sober, industrious

-man, and a good husband and kind father. To me, who was his favorite,

-he was perhaps too kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember

-that when I was five years old he bought me a twenty-five dollar suit

-of clothes. I was a vigorous, handsome boy, with red, rosy cheeks and

-was not only the pet of my family, but the life of the neighborhood as

-well.

-

-At that time, which is as far back as I can remember, we were living

-on Munro Street, in the Seventh Ward. This was then a good residential

-neighborhood, and we were comfortable in our small, wooden house. The

-people about us were Irish and German, the large Jewish emigration

-not having begun yet. Consequently, lower New York did not have such

-a strong business look as it has now, but was cleanly and respectable.

-The gin-mills were fewer in number, and were comparatively decent. When

-the Jews came they started many basement saloons, or cafes, and for the

-first time, I believe, the social evil began to be connected with the

-drinking places.

-

-I committed my first theft at the age of six. Older heads put me up to

-steal money from the till of my brother's grocery store. It happened

-this way. There were several much older boys in the neighborhood who

-wanted money for row-boating and theatres. One was eighteen years old,

-a ship-caulker; and another was a roustabout of seventeen. I used to

-watch these boys practice singing and dancing in the big marble lots

-in the vicinity. How they fired my youthful imagination! They told me

-about the theatres then in vogue--Tony Pastor's, the old Globe, Wood's

-Museum and Josh Hart's Theatre Comique, afterwards owned by Harrigan

-and Hart.

-

-One day, George, the roustabout, said to me: "Kid, do you want to go

-row-boating with us?" When I eagerly consented he said it was too bad,

-but the boat cost fifty cents and he only had a ten-cent stamp (a small

-paper bill: in those days there was very little silver in circulation).

-I did not bite at once, I was so young, and they treated me to one of

-those wooden balls fastened to a rubber string that you throw out and

-catch on the rebound. I was tickled to death. I shall never forget that

-day as long as I live. It was a Saturday, and all day long those boys

-couldn't do too much for me.

-

-Towards evening they explained to me how to rob my brother's till. They

-arranged to be outside the store at a certain hour, and wait until I

-found an opportunity to pass the money to them. My mother watched in

-the store that evening, but when she turned her back I opened the till

-and gave the eight or ten dollars it contained to the waiting boys. We

-all went row-boating and had a jolly time. But they were not satisfied

-with that. What I had done once, I could do again, and they held out

-the theatre to me, and pretended to teach me how to dance the clog.

-Week in and week out I furnished them with money, and in recompense

-they would sometimes take me to a matinee. What a joy! How I grew to

-love the vaudeville artists with their songs and dances, and the wild

-Bowery melodramas! It was a great day for Indian plays, and the number

-of Indians I have scalped in imagination, after one of these shows, is

-legion.

-

-Some of the small boys, however, who did not share in the booty grew

-jealous and told my father what was doing. The result was that a

-certain part of my body was sore for weeks afterwards. My feelings were

-hurt, too, for I did not know at that time that I was doing anything

-very bad. My father, indeed, accompanied the beating with a sermon,

-telling me that I had not only broken God's law but had robbed those

-that loved me. One of my brothers, who is now a policeman in the

-city service, told me that I had taken my ticket for the gallows. The

-brother I had robbed, who afterwards became a truckman, patted me on

-the head and told me not to do it again. He was always a good fellow.

-And yet they all seemed to like to have me play about the streets with

-the other little boys, perhaps because the family was large, and there

-was not much room in the house.

-

-So I had to give up the till; but I hated to, for even at that age I

-had begun to think that the world owed me a living! To get revenge I

-used to hide in a charcoal shed and throw pebbles at my father as he

-passed. I was indeed the typical bad boy, and the apple of my mother's

-eye.

-

-When I couldn't steal from the till any more, I used to take clothes

-from my relatives and sell them for theatre money; or any other object

-I thought I could make away with. I did not steal merely for theatre

-money but partly for excitement too. I liked to run the risk of being

-discovered. So I was up to any scheme the older boys proposed. Perhaps

-if I had been raised in the wild West I should have made a good trapper

-or cow-boy, instead of a thief. Or perhaps even birds' nests and fish

-would have satisfied me, if they had been accessible.

-

-One of my biggest exploits as a small boy was made when I was eight

-years old. Tom's mother had a friend visiting her, whom Tom and I

-thought we would rob. Tom, who was a big boy, and some of his friends,

-put me through a hall bed-room window, and I made away with a box of

-valuable jewelry. But it did me no good for the big boys sold it to a

-woman who kept a second-hand store on Division Street, and I received

-no part of the proceeds.

-

-My greatest youthful disappointment came about four weeks later. A boy

-put me up to steal a box out of a wagon. I boldly made away with it and

-ran into a hall-way, where he was waiting. The two of us then went into

-his back-yard, opened the box and found a beautiful sword, the handle

-studded with little stones. But the other boy had promised me money,

-and here was only a sword! I cried for theatre money, and then the

-other boy boxed my ears. He went to his father, who was a free mason,

-and got a fifty cent "stamp." He gave me two three-cent pieces and

-kept the rest. I shall never forget that injustice as long as I live.

-I remember it as plainly as if it happened yesterday. We put the sword

-under a mill in Cherry Street and it disappeared a few hours later. I

-thought the boy and his father had stolen it, and told them so. I got

-another beating, but I believe my suspicion was correct, for the free

-mason used to give me a ten cent stamp whenever he saw me--to square

-me, I suppose.

-

-When it came to contests with boys of my own size I was not so meek,

-however. One day I was playing in Jersey, in the back-yard of a boy

-friend's house. He displayed his pen-knife, and it took my fancy. I

-wanted to play with it, and asked him to lend it to me. He refused,

-and I grabbed his hand. He plunged the knife into my leg. I didn't like

-that, and told him so, not in words, but in action. I remember that I

-took his ear nearly off with a hatchet. I was then eight years old.

-

-About this time I began to go to Sunday School, with what effect on my

-character remains to be seen. One day I heard a noted priest preach.

-I had one dollar and eighty cents in my pocket which I had stolen from

-my brother. I thought that each coin in my pocket was turning red-hot

-because of my anxiety to spend it. While the good man was talking of

-the Blessed One I was inwardly praying for him to shut up. He had two

-beautiful pictures which he intended to give to the best listener among

-the boys. When he had finished his talk he called me to him, gave me

-the pictures and said: "It's such boys as you who, when they grow up,

-are a pride to our Holy Church."

-

-A year later I went to the parochial school, but did not stay long,

-for they would not have me. I was a sceptic at seven and an agnostic

-at eight, and I objected to the prayers every five minutes. I had

-no respect for ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination in

-the slightest, partly because I learned at an early age to see the

-hypocrisy of many good people. One day half a dozen persons were

-killed in an explosion. One of them I had known. Neighbors said of him:

-"What a good man has gone," and the priest and my mother said he was

-in heaven. But he was the same man who had often told me not to take

-money from the money-drawer, for that was dangerous, but to search my

-father's pockets when he was asleep. For this advice I had given the

-rascal many a dollar. Ever after that I was suspicious of those who

-were over-virtuous. I told my mother I did not believe her and the

-priest, and she slapped my face and told me to mind my catechism.

-

-Everything mischievous that happened at the parochial school was laid

-to my account, perhaps not entirely unjustly. If a large firecracker

-exploded, it was James--that was my name. If some one sat on a bent

-pin, the blame was due to James. If the class tittered teacher Nolan

-would rush at me with a hickory stick and yell: "It's you, you devil's

-imp!" and then he'd put the question he had asked a hundred times

-before: "Who med (made) you?"

-

-I was finally sent away from the parochial school because I insulted

-one of the teachers, a Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing

-him whenever he studied his catechism, which I believed he already

-knew by heart. This brother's favorite, by the way, was a boy who used

-to say his prayers louder than anybody else. I met him fifteen years

-afterwards in state's prison. He had been settled for "vogel-grafting,"

-that is, taking little girls into hall-ways and robbing them of their

-gold ear-rings. He turned out pretty well, however, in one sense, for

-he became one of the best shoe-makers in Sing Sing.

-

-Although, as one can see from the above incidents, I was not given to

-veneration, yet in some ways I was easily impressed. I always loved old

-buildings, for instance. I was baptized in the building which was until

-lately the Germania Theatre, and which was then a church; and that

-old structure always had a strange fascination for me. I used to hang

-about old churches and theatres, and preferred on such occasions to

-be alone. Sometimes I sang and danced, all by myself, in an old music

-hall, and used to pore over the names marked in lead pencil on the

-walls. Many is the time I have stood at night before some old building

-which has since been razed to the ground, and even now I like to go

-round to their sites. I like almost anything that is old, even old men

-and women. I never loved my mother much until she was an old woman. All

-stories of the past interested me; and later, when I was in prison, I

-was specially fond of history.

-

-After I was dismissed from the parochial school, I entered the public

-school, where I stayed somewhat longer. There I studied reading,

-writing, arithmetic and later, grammar, and became acquainted with

-a few specimens of literature. I remember Longfellow's _Excelsior_

-was a favorite of mine. I was a bright, intelligent boy, and, if it

-had not been for conduct, in which my mark was low, I should always

-have had the gold medal, in a class of seventy. I used to play truant

-constantly, and often went home and told my mother that I knew more

-than the teacher. She believed me, for certainly I was the most

-intelligent member of my family.

-

-Yes, I was more intelligent than my parents or any of my brothers and

-sisters. Much good it has done me! Now that I have "squared it" I see a

-good deal of my family, and they are all happy in comparison with me.

-On Saturday nights I often go around to see my brother the truckman.

-He has come home tired from his week's work, but happy with his twelve

-dollar salary and the prospect of a holiday with his wife and children.

-They sit about in their humble home on Saturday night, with their pint

-of beer, their songs and their jovial stories. Whenever I am there,

-I am, in a way, the life of the party. My repartee is quicker than

-that of the others. I sing gayer songs and am jollier with the working

-girls who visit my brother's free home. But when I look at my stupid

-brother's quiet face and calm and strong bearing, and then realize my

-own shattered health and nerves and profound discontent, I know that

-my slow brother has been wiser than I. It has taken me many years on

-the rocky path to realize this truth. For by nature I am an Ishmaelite,

-that is, a man of impulse, and it is only lately that wisdom has been

-knocked into me.

-

-Certainly I did not realize my fate when I was a kid of ten, filled

-with contempt for my virtuous and obscure family! I was overflowing

-with spirits and arrogance, and began to play "hooky" so often that I

-practically quit school about this time.

-

-It was then, too, that we moved again, this time to Cherry Street, to

-the wreck of my life. At the end of the block on which we lived was a

-corner saloon, the headquarters of a band of professional thieves. They

-were known as the Old Border Gang, and among them were several very

-well-known and successful crooks. They used to pass our way regularly,

-and boys older than I (my boy companions always had the advantage of me

-in years) used to point the famous "guns" out to me. When I saw one of

-these great men pass, my young imagination was fired with the ambition

-to be as he was! With what eagerness we used to talk about "Juggy,"

-and the daring robbery he committed in Brooklyn! How we went over again

-and again in conversation, the trick by which Johnny the "grafter" had

-fooled the detective in the matter of the bonds!

-

-We would tell stories like these by the hour, and then go round to

-the corner, to try to get a look at some of the celebrities in the

-saloon. A splendid sight one of these swell grafters was, as he stood

-before the bar or smoked his cigar on the corner! Well dressed, with

-clean linen collar and shirt, a diamond in his tie, an air of ease and

-leisure all about him, what a contrast he formed to the respectable

-hod-carrier or truckman or mechanic, with soiled clothes and no collar!

-And what a contrast was his dangerous life to that of the virtuous

-laborer!

-

-The result was that I grew to think the career of the grafter was the

-only one worth trying for. The real prizes of the world I knew nothing

-about. All that I saw of any interest to me was crooked, and so I began

-to pilfer right and left: there was nothing else for me to do. Besides

-I loved to treat those older than myself. The theatre was a growing

-passion with me and I began to be very much interested in the baseball

-games. I used to go to the Union grounds in Brooklyn, where after the

-third inning, I could usually get admitted for fifteen cents, to see

-the old Athletics or Mutuals play. I needed money for these amusements,

-for myself and other boys, and I knew of practically only one way to

-get it.

-

-If we could not get the money at home, either by begging or stealing,

-we would tap tills, if possible, in the store of some relative; or tear

-brass off the steps in the halls of flats and sell it at junk shops. A

-little later, we used to go to Grand Street and steal shoes and women's

-dresses from the racks in the open stores, and pawn them. In the old

-Seventh Ward there used to be a good many silver plates on the doors of

-private houses. These we would take off with chisels and sell to metal

-dealers. We had great fun with a Dutchman who kept a grocery store

-on Cherry Street. We used to steal his strawberries, and did not care

-whether he saw us or not. If he grabbed one of us, the rest of the gang

-would pelt him with stones until he let go, and then all run around the

-corner before the "copper" came into sight.

-

-All this time I grew steadily bolder and more desperate, and the day

-soon came when I took consequences very little into consideration.

-My father and mother sometimes learned of some exploit of mine, and a

-beating would be the result. I still got the blame for everything, as

-in school, and was sometimes punished unjustly. I was very sensitive

-and this would rankle in my soul for weeks, so that I stole harder

-than ever. And yet I think that there was some good in me. I was

-never cruel to any animals, except cats; for cats, I used to tie their

-tails together and throw them over a clothesline to dry. I liked dogs,

-horses, children and women, and have always been gentle to them. What

-I really was was a healthy young animal, with a vivid imagination and

-a strong body. I learned early to swim and fight and play base-ball.

-Dime and nickel novels always seemed very tame to me; I found it much

-more exciting to hear true stories about the grafters at the corner

-saloon!--big men, with whom as yet I did not dare to speak; I could

-only stare at them with awe.

-

-I shall never forget the first time I ever saw a pickpocket at work.

-It was when I was about thirteen years old. A boy of my own age, Zack,

-a great pal of mine, was with me. Zack and I understood one another

-thoroughly and well knew how to get theatre money by petty pilfering,

-but of real graft we were as yet ignorant, although we had heard many

-stories about the operations of actual, professional thieves. We used

-to steal rides in the cars which ran to and from the Grand Street

-ferries; and run off with overcoats and satchels when we had a chance.

-One day we were standing on the rear platform when a woman boarded the

-car, and immediately behind her a gentlemanly looking man with a high

-hat. He was well-dressed and looked about thirty-five years old. As

-the lady entered the car, the man, who stayed outside on the platform,

-pulled his hand away from her side and with it came something from her

-pocket--a silk handkerchief. I was on the point of asking the woman

-if she had dropped something, when Zack said to me, "Mind your own

-business." The man, who had taken the pocket-book along with the silk

-handkerchief, seeing that we were "next," gave us the handkerchief and

-four dollars in ten and fifteen cent paper money ("stamps").

-

-Zack and I put our heads together. We were "wiser" than we had been

-half an hour before. We had learned our first practical lesson in the

-world of graft. We had seen a pickpocket at work, and there seemed to

-us no reason why we should not try the game ourselves. Accordingly a

-day or two afterwards we arranged to pick our first pocket. We had,

-indeed, often taken money from the pockets of our relatives, but that

-was when the trousers hung in the closet or over a chair, and the owner

-was absent. This was the first time we had hunted in the open, so to

-speak; the first time our prey was really alive.

-

-It was an exciting occasion. Zack and I, who were "wise," (that is,

-up to snuff) got several other boys to help us, though we did not tell

-them what was doing, for they "were not buried" yet, that is, "dead,"

-or ignorant. We induced five or six of them to jump on and off the rear

-platform of a car, making as much noise and confusion as possible, so

-as to distract the attention of any "sucker" that might board. Soon I

-saw a woman about to get on the car. My heart beat with excitement, and

-I signalled to Zack that I would make the "touch." In those days women

-wore big sacques with pockets in the back, open, so that one could

-look in and see what was there. I took the silk handkerchief on the

-run, and with Zack following, went up a side street and gloried under

-a lamp-post. In the corner of the handkerchief, tied up, were five

-two-dollar bills, and for weeks I was J. P. Morgan.

-

-For a long time Zack and I felt we were the biggest boys on the block.

-We boasted about our great "touch" to the older boys of eighteen or

-nineteen years of age who had pointed out to us the grafters at the

-corner saloon. They were not "in it" now. They even condescended to be

-treated to a drink by us. We spent the money recklessly, for we knew

-where we could get more. In this state of mind, soon after that, I met

-the "pick" whom we had seen at work. He had heard of our achievement

-and kindly "staked" us, and gave us a few private lessons in picking

-pockets. He saw that we were promising youngsters, and for the sake

-of the profession gave us a little of his valuable time. We were proud

-enough, to be taken notice of by this great man. We felt that we were

-rising in the world of graft, and began to wear collars and neckties.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER II.

-

-_My First Fall._

-

-

-For the next two years, until I was fifteen, I made a great deal

-of money at picking pockets, without getting into difficulties with

-the police. We operated, at that time, entirely upon women, and were

-consequently known technically as Moll-buzzers--or "flies" that "buzz"

-about women.

-

-In those days, and for several years later, Moll-buzzing, as well as

-picking pockets in general, was an easy and lucrative graft. Women's

-dresses seemed to be arranged for our especial benefit; the back

-pocket, with its purse and silk handkerchief could be picked even by

-the rawest thief. It was in the days when every woman had to possess

-a fine silk handkerchief; even the Bowery "cruisers" (street-walkers)

-carried them; and to those women we boys used to sell the handkerchiefs

-we had stolen, receiving as much as a dollar, or even two dollars, in

-exchange.

-

-It was a time, too, before the great department stores and delivery

-wagon systems, and shoppers were compelled to carry more money with

-them than they do now, and to take their purchases home themselves

-through the streets. Very often before they reached their destination

-they had unconsciously delivered some of the goods to us. At that time,

-too, the wearing of valuable pins and stones, both by men and women,

-was more general than it is now. Furthermore, the "graft" was younger.

-There were not so many in the business, and the system of police

-protection was not so good. Altogether those were halcyon days for us.

-

-The fact that we were very young helped us particularly in this

-business, for a boy can get next to a woman in a car or on the street

-more easily than a man can. He is not so apt to arouse her suspicions;

-and if he is a handsome, innocent-looking boy, and clever, he can go

-far in this line of graft. He usually begins this business when he

-is about thirteen, and by the age of seventeen generally graduates

-into something higher. Living off women, in any form, does not appeal

-very long to the imagination of the genuine grafter. Yet I know

-thieves who continue to be Moll-buzzers all their lives; and who are

-low enough to make their living entirely off poor working girls. The

-self-respecting grafter detests this kind; and, indeed, these buzzers

-never see prosperous days after their boyhood. The business grows

-more difficult as the thief grows older. He cannot approach his prey

-so readily, and grows shabbier with declining returns; and shabbiness

-makes it difficult for him to mix up in crowds where this kind of work

-is generally done.

-

-For several years we youngsters made a great deal of money at this

-line. We made a "touch" almost every day, and I suppose our "mob,"

-composed of four or five lads who worked together, averaged three or

-four hundred dollars a week. We worked mainly on street cars at the

-Ferry, and the amount of "technique" required for robbing women was

-very slight. Two or three of us generally went together. One acted as

-the "dip," or "pick," and the other two as "stalls." The duty of the

-"stalls" was to distract the attention of the "sucker" or victim, or

-otherwise to hide the operations of the "dip". One stall would get

-directly in front of the woman to be robbed, the other directly behind

-her. If she were in such a position in the crowd as to render it hard

-for the "dip," or "wire" to make a "touch," one of the stalls might

-bump against her, and beg her pardon, while the dip made away with her

-"leather," or pocket-book.

-

-Shortly before I was fifteen years old I was "let in" to another kind

-of graft. One day Tim, Zack and I were boasting of our earnings to an

-older boy, twenty years of age, whose name was Pete. He grinned, and

-said he knew something better than Moll-buzzing. Then he told us about

-"shoving the queer" and got us next to a public truckman who supplied

-counterfeit bills. Our method was to carry only one bad bill among

-several good ones, so that if we were collared we could maintain our

-innocence. We worked this as a "side-graft," for some time. Pete and I

-used to go to mass on Sunday morning, and put a bad five dollar bill

-in the collector's box, taking out four dollars and ninety cents in

-change, in good money. We irreverently called this proceeding "robbing

-the dago in Rome." We use to pick "leathers," at the same time, from

-the women in the congregation. In those days I was very liberal in my

-religious views. I was not narrow, or bigoted. I attended Grace Church,

-in Tenth Street, regularly and was always well repaid. But after a

-while this lucrative graft came to an end, for the collector began

-to get "next". One day he said to me, "Why don't you get your change

-outside? This is the fourth time you have given me a big bill." So we

-got "leary" (suspicious) and quit.

-

-With my big rosy cheeks and bright eyes and complexion I suppose I

-looked, in those days, very holy and innocent, and used to work this

-graft for all it was worth. I remember how, in church, I used tracts or

-the Christian Advocate as "stalls"; I would hand them to a lady as she

-entered the church, and, while doing so, pick her pocket.

-

-Even at the early age of fifteen I began to understand that it was

-necessary to save money. If a thief wants to keep out of the "pen"

-or "stir," (penitentiary) capital is a necessity. The capital of a

-grafter is called "spring-money," for he may have to use it at any

-time in paying the lawyer who gets him off in case of an arrest, or in

-bribing the policeman or some other official. To "spring," is to escape

-from the clutches of the law. If a thief has not enough money to hire

-a "mouth-piece" (criminal lawyer) he is in a bad way. He is greatly

-handicapped, and can not "jump out" (steal) with any boldness.

-

-But I always had great difficulty in saving "fall-money," (the same as

-spring-money; that is money to be used in case of a "fall," or arrest).

-My temperament was at fault. When I had a few hundred dollars saved

-up I began to be troubled, not from a guilty conscience, but because

-I could not stand prosperity. The money burned a hole in my pocket. I

-was fond of all sorts of amusements, of "treating," and of clothes.

-Indeed, I was very much of a dude; and this for two reasons. In the

-first place I was naturally vain, and liked to make a good appearance.

-A still more substantial reason was that a good personal appearance is

-part of the capital of a grafter, particularly of a pickpocket. The

-world thinks that a thief is a dirty, disreputable looking object,

-next door to a tramp in appearance. But this idea is far from being

-true. Every grafter of any standing in the profession is very careful

-about his clothes. He is always neat, clean, and as fashionable as

-his income will permit. Otherwise he would not be permitted to attend

-large political gatherings, to sit on the platform, for instance, and

-would be handicapped generally in his crooked dealings with mankind.

-No advice to young men is more common in respectable society than

-to dress well. If you look prosperous the world will treat you with

-consideration. This applies with even greater force to the thief. Keep

-up a "front" is the universal law of success, applicable to all grades

-of society. The first thing a grafter is apt to say to a pal whom he

-has not seen for a long time is, "You are looking good," meaning that

-his friend is well-dressed. It is sure flattery, and if a grafter wants

-to make a borrow he is practically certain of opening the negotiations

-with the stereotyped phrase: "You are looking good;" for the only time

-you can get anything off a grafter is when you can make him think you

-are prosperous.

-

-But the great reason why I never saved much "fall-money" was not

-"booze," or theatres, or clothes. "Look for the woman" is a phrase, I

-believe, in good society; and it certainly explains a great deal of a

-thief's misfortunes. Long before I did anything in Graftdom but petty

-pilfering, I had begun to go with the little girls in the neighborhood.

-At that time they had no attraction for me, but I heard older boys say

-that it was a manly thing to lead girls astray, and I was ambitious to

-be not only a good thief, but a hard case generally. When I was nine or

-ten years old I liked to boast of the conquests I had made among little

-working girls of fourteen or fifteen. We used to meet in the hall-ways

-of tenement houses, or at their homes, but there was no sentiment in

-the relations between us, at least on my part. My only pleasure in it

-was the delight of telling about it to my young companions.

-

-When I was twelve years old I met a little girl for whom I had a

-somewhat different feeling. Nellie was a pretty, blue-eyed little

-creature, or "tid-bit," as we used to say, who lived near my home on

-Cherry Street. I used to take her over on the ferry for a ride, or

-treat her to ice-cream; and we were really chums; but when I began

-to make money I lost my interest in her; partly, too, because at that

-time I made the acquaintance of a married woman of about twenty-five

-years old. She discovered me one day in the hallway with Nellie, and

-threatened to tell the holy brother on us if I didn't fetch her a pint

-of beer. I took the beer to her room, and that began a relationship

-of perhaps a year. She used to stake me to a part of the money her

-husband, a workingman, brought her every Saturday night.

-

-Although the girls meant very little to me until several years later,

-I nevertheless began when I was about fifteen to spend a great deal of

-money on them. It was the thing to do, and I did it with a good grace.

-I used to take all kinds of working girls to the balls in Walhalla Hall

-in Orchard Street; or in Pythagoras, or Beethoven Halls, where many

-pretty little German girls of respectable families used to dance on

-Saturday nights. It was my pride to buy them things--clothes, pins, and

-to take them on excursions; for was I not a rising "gun," with money in

-my pocket? Money, however, that went as easily as it had come.

-

-Perhaps if I had been able to save money at that time I might not

-have fallen (that is, been arrested) so early. My first fall came,

-however, when I was fifteen years old; and if I was not a confirmed

-thief already, I certainly was one by the time I left the Tombs, where

-I stayed ten days. It happened this way. Zack and I were grafting,

-buzzing Molls, with a pal named Jack, who afterwards became a famous

-burglar. He had just escaped from the Catholic Protectory, and told us

-his troubles. Instead of being alarmed, however, I grew bolder, for if

-Jack could "beat" the "Proteck" in three months, I argued I could do

-it in twenty-four hours. We three ripped things open for some time;

-but one day we were grafting on Sixth Avenue, just below Twentieth

-Street, when I fell for a "leather." The "sucker," a good-looking Moll

-was coming up the Avenue. Her "book," which looked fat, was sticking

-out of her skirt. I, who was the "wire," gave Jack and Zack the tip

-(thief's cough), and they stalled, one in front, one behind. The girl

-did not "blow" (take alarm) and I got hold of the leather easily.

-It looked like a get-away, for no one on the sidewalk saw us. But as

-bad luck would have it, a negro coachman, standing in the street by

-the pavement, got next, and said to me, "What are you doing there?" I

-replied, "Shut up, and I'll give you two dollars." But he caught hold

-of me and shouted for the police. I passed the leather to Jack, who

-"vamoosed." Zack hit the negro in the face and I ran up Seventh Avenue,

-but was caught by a flyman (policeman), and taken to the station house.

-

-On the way to the police station I cried bitterly, for, after all,

-I was only a boy. I realized for the first time that the way of the

-transgressor is hard. It was in the afternoon, and I spent the time

-until next morning at ten, when I was to appear before the magistrate,

-in a cell in the station-house, in the company of an old grafter. In

-the adjoining cells were drunkards, street-walkers and thieves who had

-been "lined up" for the night, and I spent the long hours in crying and

-in listening to their indecent songs and jokes. The old grafter called

-to one of the Tenderloin girls that he had a kid with him who was

-arrested for Moll-buzzing. At this they all expressed their sympathy

-with me by saying that I would either be imprisoned for life or be

-hanged. They got me to sing a song, and I convinced them that I was

-tough.

-

-In the morning I was arraigned in the police court. As there was

-no stolen property on me, and as the sucker was not there to make a

-complaint, I was "settled" for assault only, and sent to the Tombs for

-ten days.

-

-My experience in the Tombs may fairly be called, I think, the turning

-point of my life. It was there that I met "de mob". I learned new

-tricks in the Tombs; and more than that, I began definitely to look

-upon myself as a criminal. The Tombs of twenty years ago was even less

-cheerful than it is at present. The Boys' Prison faced the Women's

-Prison, and between these two was the place where those sentenced to

-death were hanged. The boys knew when an execution was to take place,

-and we used to talk it over among ourselves. One man was hanged while

-I was there; and if anybody thinks that knowledge of such things helps

-to make boys seek the path of virtue, let him go forth into the world

-and learn something about human nature.

-

-On my arrival in the Tombs, Mrs. Hill, the matron, had me searched for

-tobacco, knives or matches, all of which were contraband; then I was

-given a bath and sent into the corridor of the cells where there were

-about twenty-five other boys, confined for various crimes, ranging

-from petty larceny to offenses of the gravest kind. On the second day

-I met two young "dips" and we exchanged our experiences in the world

-of graft. I received my first lesson in the art of "banging a super,"

-that is, stealing a watch by breaking the ring with the thumb and

-forefinger, and thus detaching it from the chain. They were two of the

-best of the Sixth Ward pickpockets, and we made a date to meet "on the

-outside." Indeed, it was not many weeks after my release before I could

-"bang a super," or get a man's "front" (watch and chain) as easily as

-I could relieve a Moll of her "leather".

-

-As I look back upon the food these young boys received in the tombs,

-it seems to me of the worst. Breakfast consisted of a chunk of poor

-bread and a cup of coffee made of burnt bread crust. At dinner we had

-soup (they said, at least, there was meat in it), bread and water;

-and supper was the same as breakfast. But we had one consolation. When

-we went to divine service we generally returned happy; not because of

-what the good priest said, but because we were almost sure of getting

-tobacco from the women inmates.

-

-Certainly the Gerry Society has its faults; but since its organization

-young boys who have gone wrong but are not yet entirely hardened, have

-a much better show to become good citizens than they used to have. That

-Society did not exist in my day; but I know a good deal about it, and I

-am convinced that it does a world of good; for, at least, when it takes

-children into its charge it does not surround them with an atmosphere

-of social crime.

-

-While in the Tombs I experienced my first disillusionment as to the

-honor of thieves. I was an impulsive, imaginative boy, and that a

-pal could go back on me never seemed possible. Many of my subsequent

-misfortunes were due to the treachery of my companions. I have learned

-to distrust everybody, but as a boy of fifteen I was green, and so the

-treachery I shall relate left a sore spot in my soul.

-

-It happened this way. On a May day, about two months before I was

-arrested, two other boys and I had entered the basement of a house

-where the people were moving, had made away with some silverware, and

-sold it to a Christian woman in the neighborhood for one twentieth of

-its value. When I had nearly served my ten days' sentence for assault,

-my two pals were arrested and "squealed" on me. I was confronted with

-them in the Tombs. At first I was mighty glad to see them, but when

-I found they had "squealed," I set my teeth and denied all knowledge

-of the "touch." I protested my innocence so violently that the police

-thought the other boys were merely seeking a scape-goat. They got

-twenty days and my term expired forty-eight hours afterwards. The

-silverware I stole that May morning is now an heirloom in the family of

-the Christian woman to whom I sold it so cheap.

-

-If I had always been as earnest a liar as I was on that occasion in the

-Tombs I might never have gone to "stir" (penitentiary); but I grew more

-indifferent and desperate as time went on; and, in a way, more honest,

-more sincerely a criminal: I hardly felt like denying it. I know some

-thieves who, although they have grafted for twenty-five years, have not

-yet "done time"; some of them escaped because they knew how to throw

-the innocent "con" so well. Take Tim, for instance. Tim and I grafted

-together as boys. He was not a very skilful pickpocket, and he often

-was on the point of arrest; but he had a talent for innocence, and the

-indignation act he would put up would melt a heart of stone. He has,

-consequently, never been in stir, while I, a much better thief, have

-spent half of my adult life there. That was partly because I felt,

-when I had once made a touch, that the property belonged to me. On

-one occasion I had robbed a "bloke" of his "red super" (gold watch),

-and made away with it all right, when I carelessly dropped it on the

-sidewalk. A crowd had gathered about, and no man really in his right

-mind, would have picked up that super. But I did it, and was nailed

-dead to rights by a "cop." Some time afterwards a pal asked me why

-the deuce I had been so foolish. "Didn't the super belong to me," I

-replied, indignantly. "Hadn't I earned it?" I was too honest a thief.

-That was one of my weaknesses.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER III.

-

-_Mixed-Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards._

-

-

-For a time--a short time--after I left the Tombs I was quiet. My

-relatives threw the gallows "con" into me hard, but at that time I

-was proof against any arguments they could muster. They were not able

-to show me anything that was worth while; they could not deliver the

-goods, so what was the use of talking?

-

-Although I was a disgrace at home, I was high cock-a-lorum among the

-boys in the neighborhood. They began to look up to me, as I had looked

-up to the grafters at the corner saloon. They admired me because I was

-a fighter and had "done time." I went up in their estimation because

-I had suffered in the good cause. And I began to get introductions to

-the older grafters in the seventh ward--grafters with diamond pins and

-silk hats. It was not long before I was at it harder than ever, uptown

-and downtown. I not only continued my trade as Moll-buzzer, but began

-to spread myself, got to be quite an adept in touching men for vests

-and supers and fronts; and every now and then "shoved the queer" or

-worked a little game of swindling. Our stamping-ground for supers and

-vests at that time was Fulton, Nassau, Lower Broadway and Wall Streets,

-and we covered our territory well. I used to work alone considerably.

-I would board a car with a couple of newspapers, would say, "News,

-boss?" to some man sitting down, would shove the paper in front of his

-face as a stall, and then pick his super or even his entire "front"

-(watch and chain). If you will stand for a newspaper under your chin

-I can get even your socks. Many is the "gent" I have left in the car

-with his vest entirely unbuttoned and his "front" gone. When I couldn't

-get the chain, I would snap the ring of the watch with my thumb and

-fore-finger, giving the thief's cough to drown the slight noise made

-by the breaking ring, and get away with the watch, leaving the chain

-dangling. Instead of a newspaper, I would often use an overcoat as a

-stall.

-

-It was only when I was on the "hurry-up," however, that I worked alone.

-It is more dangerous than working with a mob, but if I needed a dollar

-quick I'd take any risk. I'd jump on a car, and tackle the first sucker

-I saw. If I thought it was not diplomatic to try for the "front," and

-if there was no stone in sight, I'd content myself with the "clock"

-(watch). But it was safer and more sociable to work with other guys.

-We usually went in mobs of three or four, and our methods were much

-more complicated than when we were simply moll-buzzing. Each thief had

-his special part to play, and his duty varied with the position of the

-sucker and the pocket the "leather" was in. If the sucker was standing

-in the car, my stall would frequently stand right in front, facing him,

-while I would put my hand under the stall's arm and pick the sucker's

-leather or super. The other stalls would be distracting the attention

-of the sucker, or looking out for possible interruptions. When I had

-got possession of the leather I would pass it quickly to the stall

-behind me, and he would "vamoose." Sometimes I would back up to the

-victim, put my hand behind me, break his ring and pick the super, or I

-would face his back, reach round, unbutton his vest while a pal stalled

-in front with a newspaper, a bunch of flowers, a fan, or an overcoat,

-and get away with his entire front.

-

-A dip, as I have said, pays special attention to his personal

-appearance; it is his stock in trade; but when I began to meet boys

-who had risen above the grade of Moll-buzzers, I found that the dip, as

-opposed to other grafters, had many other advantages, too. He combines

-pleasure and instruction with business, for he goes to the foot-ball

-games, the New London races, to swell theatres where the graft is good,

-and to lectures. I have often listened to Bob Ingersoll, the greatest

-orator, in my opinion, that ever lived. I enjoyed his talk so much

-that I sometimes forgot to graft. But as a general rule, I was able to

-combine instruction with business. I very seldom dropped a red super

-because of an oratorical flourish; but the supers did not come my way

-all the time, I had some waiting to do, and in the meantime I improved

-my mind. Then a dip travels, too, more than most grafters; he jumps

-out to fairs and large gatherings of all descriptions, and grows to be

-a man of the world. When in the city he visits the best dance halls,

-and is popular because of his good clothes, his dough, and his general

-information, with men as well as women. He generally lives with a Moll

-who has seen the world, and who can add to his fund of information. I

-know a dip who could not read or write until he met a Moll, who gave

-him a general education and taught him to avoid things that interfered

-with his line of graft; she also took care of his personal appearance,

-and equipped him generally for an A No. 1 pickpocket. Women are much

-the same, I believe, in every rank of life.

-

-It was at this time, when I was a kid of fifteen, that I first met

-Sheenie Annie, who was a famous shop-lifter. She was twenty-one years

-old, and used to give me good advice. "Keep away from heavy workers,"

-(burglars) she would say; "there is a big bit in that." She had lived

-in Graftdom ever since she was a tid-bit, and she knew what she was

-talking about. I did not work with her until several years later,

-but I might as well tell her sad story now. I may say, as a kind of

-preface, that I have always liked the girl grafter who could take care

-of herself instead of sucking the blood out of some man. When I find

-a little working girl who has no other ambition than to get a little

-home together, with a little knick-knack on the wall, a little husband

-and a little child, I don't care for her. She is a nonentity. But such

-was not Sheenie Annie, who was a bright, intelligent, ambitious, girl;

-when she liked a fellow she would do anything for him, but otherwise

-she wouldn't let a man come near her.

-

-The little Jewish lassie, named Annie, was born in the toughest part

-of New York. Later on, as she advanced in years and became an expert

-pilferer, she was given the nickname of "Sheenie." She was brought

-up on the street, surrounded by thieves and prostitutes. Her only

-education was what she received during a year or two in the public

-school. She lived near Grand Street, then a popular shopping district.

-As a very little girl she and a friend used to visit the drygoods

-stores and steal any little notion they could. There was a crowd of

-young pickpockets in her street, and she soon got on to this graft,

-and became so skilful at it that older guns of both sexes were eager

-to take her under their tuition and finish her education. The first

-time I met her was in a well-known dance-hall--Billy McGlory's--and we

-became friends at once, for she was a good girl and full of mischief.

-She was not pretty, exactly, but she was passable. She was small, with

-thick lips, plump, had good teeth and eyes as fine and piercing as any

-I ever saw in man or woman. She dressed well and was a good talker, as

-nimble-witted and as good a judge of human nature as I ever met in her

-sex.

-

-Sheenie Annie's graft broadened, and from dipping and small

-shop-lifting she rose to a position where she doubled up with a mob

-of clever hotel workers, and made large amounts of money. Here was a

-girl from the lowest stratum of life, not pretty or well shaped, but

-whom men admired because of her wit and cleverness. A big contractor

-in Philadelphia was her friend for years. I have seen letters from him

-offering to marry her. But she had something better.

-

-For she was an artist at "penny-weighting" and "hoisting." The police

-admitted that she was unusually clever at these two grafts, and they

-treated her with every consideration. Penny-weighting is a very "slick"

-graft. It is generally worked in pairs, by either sex or both sexes.

-A man, for instance, enters a jewelry store and looks at some diamond

-rings on a tray. He prices them and notes the costly ones. Then he

-goes to a fauny shop (imitation jewelry) and buys a few diamonds which

-match the real ones he has noted. Then he and his pal, usually a woman,

-enter the jewelry store and ask to see the rings. Through some little

-"con" they distract the jeweler's attention, and then one of them (and

-at this Sheenie Annie was particularly good) substitutes the bogus

-diamonds for the good ones; and leaves the store without making a

-purchase.

-

-I can give an example of how Sheenie Annie "hoisted," from my own

-experience with her. On one occasion, when I was about eighteen years

-old, Sheenie and I were on a racket together. We had been "going it"

-for several days and needed some dough. We went into a large tailoring

-establishment, where I tried on some clothes, as a stall. Nothing

-suited me.--I took good care of that--but in the meantime Annie had

-taken two costly overcoats, folded them into flat bundles, and, raising

-her skirt quickly, had hidden the overcoats between her legs. We left

-the store together. She walked so straight that I thought she had got

-nothing, but when we entered a saloon a block away, and the swag was

-produced, I was forced to laugh. We "fenced" the overcoats and with the

-proceeds continued our spree.

-

-Once Sheenie "fell" at this line of graft. She had stolen some costly

-sealskins from a well-known furrier, and had got away with them. But

-on her third visit to the place she came to grief. She was going out

-with a sealskin coat under her skirt when the office-boy, who was

-skylarking about, ran into her, and upset her. When the salesman,

-who had gone to her rescue, lifted her up, she lost her grip on

-the sealskin sacque, and it fell to the floor. It was a "blow," of

-course, and she got nailed, but as she had plenty of fall-money, and a

-well-known politician dead to rights, she only got nine months in the

-penitentiary.

-

-Sheenie Annie was such a good shop-lifter that, with only an

-umbrella as a stall, she could make more money in a week than a poor

-needle-woman could earn in months. But she did not care for the money.

-She was a good fellow, and was in for fun. She was "wise," too, and

-I liked to talk to her, for she understood what I said, and was up to

-snuff, which was very piquant to me. She had done most of the grafts

-that I had done myself, and her tips were always valuable.

-

-To show what a good fellow she was, her sweetheart, Jack, and another

-burglar named Jerry were doing night work once, when they were unlucky

-enough to be nailed. Sheenie Annie went on the stand and swore perjury

-in order to save Jack. He got a year, but Jerry, who had committed the

-same crime, got six. While he was in prison Annie visited him and put

-up a plan by which he escaped, but he would not leave New York with

-her, and was caught and returned to "stir." Annie herself fell in half

-a dozen cities, but never received more than a few months. After I

-was released from serving my second bit in the "pen," I heard Annie

-had died insane. An old girl pal of hers told me that she had died a

-horrible death, and that her last words were about her old friends and

-companions. Her disease was that which attacks only people with brains.

-She died of paresis.

-

-Two other girls whom I knew when I was fifteen turned out to be

-famous shop-lifters--Big Lena and Blonde Mamie, who afterwards married

-Tommy, the famous cracksman. They began to graft when they were about

-fourteen, and Mamie and I used to work together. I was Mamie's first

-"fellow," and we had royal good times together. Lena, poor girl, is

-now doing five years in London, but she was one of the most cheerful

-Molls I ever knew. I met her and Mamie for the first time one day as

-they were coming out of an oyster house on Grand Street. I thought

-they were good-looking tid-bits, and took them to a picnic. We were

-so late that instead of going home Mamie and I spent the night at the

-house of Lena's sister, whose husband was a receiver of stolen goods,

-or "fence," as it is popularly called. In the morning Lena, Mamie and I

-made our first "touch" together. We got a few "books" uptown, and Mamie

-banged a satchel at Sterns. After that we often jumped out together,

-and took in the excursions. Sometimes Mamie or Lena would dip and I

-would stall, but more frequently I was the pick. We used to turn our

-swag over to Lena's sister's husband, Max, who would give us about

-one-sixth of its value.

-

-These three girls certainly were a crack-a-jack trio. You can't find

-their likes nowadays. Even in my time most of the girls I knew did not

-amount to anything. They generally married, or did worse. There were

-few legitimate grafters among them. Since I have been back this time

-I have seen a great many of the old picks and night-workers I used to

-know. They tell the same story. There are no Molls now who can compare

-with Big Lena, Blonde Mamie, and Sheenie Annie. Times are bad, anyway.

-

-After my experience in the Tombs I rose very rapidly in the world of

-graft, and distanced my old companions. Zack, the lad with whom I had

-touched my first Moll, soon seemed very tame to me. I fell away from

-him because he continued to eat bolivers (cookies), patronize the free

-baths, and stole horse-blankets and other trivial things when he could

-not get "leathers." He was not fast enough for me. Zack "got there,"

-nevertheless, and for little or nothing, for several years later I

-met him in State's prison. He told me he was going to Colorado on his

-release. I again met him in prison on my second bit. He was then going

-to Chicago. On my third hit I ran up against the same old jail-bird,

-but this time his destination was Boston. To-day he is still in prison.

-

-As I fell away from the softies I naturally joined hands with

-more ambitious grafters, and with those with brains and with good

-connections in the upper world. As a lad of from fifteen to eighteen

-I associated with several boys who are now famous politicians in

-this city, and "on the level," as that phrase is usually meant. Jack

-Lawrence was a well-educated boy, and high up as far as his family

-was concerned. His father and brothers held good political positions,

-and it was only a taste for booze and for less genteel grafting that

-held Jack back. As a boy of sixteen or seventeen he was the trusted

-messenger of a well-known Republican politician, named J. I. D. One

-of Jacks pals became a Federal Judge, and another, Mr. D----, who was

-never a grafter, is at present a city magistrate in New York.

-

-While Jack was working for J. I. D., the politician, he was arrested

-several times. Once he abstracted a large amount of money from the vest

-pocket of a broker as he was standing by the old _Herald_ building.

-He was nailed, and sent word to his employer, the politician, who went

-to police headquarters, highly indignant at the arrest of his trusted

-messenger. He easily convinced the broker and the magistrate that Jack

-was innocent; and as far as the Republican politician's business was

-concerned, Jack was honest, for J. I. D. trusted him, and Jack never

-deceived him. There are some thieves who will not "touch" those who

-place confidence in them, and Jack was one of them.

-

-After he was released, the following conversation, which Jack related

-to me, took place between him and the politician, in the latter's

-office.

-

-"How was it?" the Big One said, "that you happened to get your fingers

-into that man's pocket?"

-

-Jack gave the "innocent con."

-

-"None of that," said J. I. D., who was a wise guy, "I know you have a

-habit of taking small change from strangers' pockets."

-

-Jack then came off his perch and gave his patron a lesson in the art

-of throwing the mit (dipping). At this the politician grinned, and

-remarked: "You will either become a reputable politician, for you have

-the requisite character, or you will die young."

-

-Jack was feared, hated and envied by the other young fellows in

-J. I. D.'s office, for as he was such a thorough rascal, he was a

-great favorite with those high up. But he never got J. I. D.'s full

-confidence until after he was tested in the following way. One day the

-politician put his gold watch on a table in his office. Jack saw it,

-picked it up and put it in the Big One's drawer. The latter entered the

-room, saw that the watch was gone, and said: "I forgot my watch. I must

-have left it home."

-

-"No," said Jack, "you left it on the table, and I put it in your desk."

-A smile spread over the patron's face.

-

-"Jack, I can trust you. I put it there just to test your honesty."

-

-The boy hesitated a moment, then, looking into the man's face, replied;

-"I know right well you did, for you are a wise guy."

-

-After that J. I. D. trusted Jack even with his love affairs.

-

-As Jack advanced in life he became an expert "gun," and was often

-nailed, and frequently brought before Magistrate D----, his old friend.

-He always got the benefit of the doubt. One day he was arraigned before

-the magistrate, who asked the flyman the nature of the complaint. It

-was the same as usual--dipping. Jack, of course, was indignant at such

-an awful accusation, but the magistrate told him to keep still, and,

-turning to the policeman, asked the culprit's name. When the copper

-told him, the magistrate exclaimed: "Why, that is not his name. I knew

-him twenty years ago, and he was a d---- rascal then; but that was not

-his name."

-

-Jack was shocked at such language from the bench, and swore with

-such vehemence that he was innocent, that he again got the benefit of

-the doubt, and was discharged, and this time justly, for he had not

-made this particular "touch." He was hounded by a copper looking for

-a reputation. Jack, when he was set free, turned to the magistrate,

-and said: "Your honor, I thank you, but you only did your duty to an

-innocent man." The magistrate had a good laugh, and remarked: "Jack, I

-wouldn't believe you if you swore on a stack of Bibles."

-

-A curious trait in a professional grafter is that, if he is "pinched"

-for something he did not do, although he has done a hundred other

-things for which he has never been pinched, he will put up such a wail

-against the abominable injustice that an honest man accused of the

-same offense would seem guilty in comparison. The honest man, even if

-he had the ability of a Philadelphia lawyer, could not do the strong

-indignation act that is characteristic of the unjustly accused grafter.

-Old thieves guilty of a thousand crimes will nourish revenge for years

-against the copper or judge who sends them up to "stir" on a false

-accusation.

-

-When I was from fifteen to seventeen years old, I met the man who,

-some think, is now practically leader of Tammany Hall. I will call him

-Senator Wet Coin. At that time he was a boy eighteen or nineteen and

-strictly on the level. He knew all the grafters well, but kept off the

-Rocky Path himself. In those days he "hung out" in an oyster shanty

-and ran a paper stand. It is said he materially assisted Mr. Pulitzer

-in making a success of the _World_, when that paper was started. He

-never drank, in spite of the name I have given him. In fact, he derived

-his real nickname from his habit of abstinence. He was the friend of

-a Bowery girl who is now a well-known actress. She, too, was always

-on the level in every way; although her brother was a grafter; this

-case, and that of Senator Wet Coin prove that even in an environment of

-thieves it is possible to tread the path of virtue. Wet Coin would not

-even buy a stolen article; and his reward was great. He became captain

-of his election district, ran for assemblyman, was elected, and got as

-high a position, with the exception of that of Governor, as is possible

-in the State; while in the city, probably no man is more powerful.

-

-Senator Wet Coin made no pretensions to virtue; he never claimed to

-be better than others. But in spite of the accusations against him,

-he has done far more for the public good than all the professional

-reformers, religious and other. He took many noted and professional

-criminals in the prime of their success, gave them positions and by his

-influence kept them honest ever since. Some of them are high up, even

-run gin-mills to-day. I met one of them after my second bit, who used

-to make his thousands. Now he has a salary of eighteen dollars a week

-and is contented. I had known him in the old days, and he asked:

-

-"What are you doing?"

-

-"The same old thing," I admitted. "What are you up to?"

-

-"I have squared it, Jim," he replied earnestly. "There's nothing in the

-graft. Why don't you go to sea?"

-

-"I'd as lief go to stir," I replied.

-

-We had a couple of beers and a long talk, and this is the way he gave

-it to me:

-

-"I never thought I could live on eighteen dollars a week. I have to

-work hard but I save more money than I did when I was making hundreds

-a week; for when it comes hard, it does not go easy. I look twice at my

-earnings before I part with them. I live quietly with my sister and am

-happy. There's nothing in the other thing, Jim. Look at Hope. Look at

-Dan Noble. Look at all the other noted grafters who stole millions and

-now are willing to throw the brotherly hand for a small borrow. If I

-had the chance to make thousands to-morrow in the under world, I would

-not chance it. I am happy. Better still, I am contented. Only for Mr.

-Wet Coin I'd be splitting matches in the stir these many years. Show

-me the reformer who has done as much for friends and the public as Wet

-Coin."

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-A "touch" that pleased me mightily as a kid was made just before my

-second fall. Superintendent Walling had returned from a summer resort,

-and found that a mob of "knucks" (another name for pick-pockets) had

-been "tearing open" the Third Avenue cars outside of the Post Office.

-About fifty complaints had been coming in every day for several weeks;

-and the Superintendent thought he would make a personal investigation

-and get one of the thieves dead to rights. He made a front that

-he was easy and went down the line. He did not catch any dips, but

-when he reached police head-quarters he was minus his gold watch and

-two hundred and fifty dollars in money. The story leaked out, and

-Superintendent Walling was unhappy. There would never have been a

-come-back for this "touch" if an old gun, who had just been nailed,

-had not "squealed" as to who touched the boss. "Little Mick" had done

-it, and the result was that he got his first experience in the House of

-Refuge.

-

-It was only a short time after Little Mick's fall that it came my turn

-to go to the House of Refuge. I had grown tougher and much stuck on

-myself and was taking bigger risks. I certainly had a swelled head in

-those days. I was seventeen years old at the time, and was grafting

-with Jack T----, who is now in Byrnes's book, and one of the swellest

-"Peter" men (safe-blowers) in the profession. Jack and I, along with

-another pal, Joe Quigley, got a duffer, an Englishman, for his "front,"

-on Grand Street, near Broadway. It was a "blow," and I, who was the

-"wire," got nailed. If I had not given my age as fifteen I should have

-been sent to the penitentiary. As it was I went to the House of Refuge

-for a year. Joe Quigley slipped up on the same game. He was twenty, but

-gave his age as fifteen. He had had a good shave by the Tombs barber,

-there was a false date of birth written in his Aunt's Bible, which was

-produced in court by his lawyer, and he would probably have gone with

-me to the House of Refuge, had not a Central Office man who knew him,

-happened in; Joe was settled for four years in Sing Sing.

-

-When I arrived at the House of Refuge, my pedigree was taken and my

-hair clipped. Then I went into the yard, looked down the line of boys

-on parade and saw about forty young grafters whom I knew. One of them

-is now a policeman in New York City, and, moreover, on the level.

-Some others, too, but not many, who were then in the House of Refuge,

-are now honest. Several are running big saloons and are captains of

-their election districts, or even higher up. These men are exceptions,

-however, for certainly the House of Refuge was a school for crime.

-Unspeakably bad habits were contracted there. The older boys wrecked

-the younger ones, who, comparatively innocent, confined for the crime

-of being orphans, came in contact with others entirely hardened. The

-day time was spent in the school and the shop, but there was an hour

-or two for play, and the boys would arrange to meet for mischief in the

-basement.

-

-Severe punishments were given to lads of fifteen, and their tasks

-were harder than those inflicted in State's prison. We had to make

-twenty-four pairs of overalls every day; and if we did not do our work

-we were beaten on an unprotected and tender spot until we promised to

-do our task. One morning I was made to cross my hands, and was given

-fifteen blows on the palms with a heavy rattan stick. The crime I had

-committed was inattention. The principal had been preaching about the

-Prodigal Son. I, having heard it before, paid little heed; particularly

-as I was a Catholic, and his teachings did not count for me. They

-called me a "Papist," and beat me, as I described.

-

-I say without hesitation that lads sent to an institution like the

-House of Refuge, the Catholic Protectory, or the Juvenile Asylum, might

-better be taken out and shot. They learn things there they could not

-learn even in the streets. The newsboy's life is pure in comparison. As

-for me, I grew far more desperate there than I had been before: and I

-was far from being one of the most innocent of boys. Many of the others

-had more to learn than I had, and they learned it. But even I, hard as

-I already was, acquired much fresh information about vice and crime;

-and gathered in more pointers about the technique of graft.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IV.

-

-_When the Graft Was Good._

-

-

-I stayed in the House of Refuge until I was eighteen, and when

-released, went through a short period of reform. I "lasted," I think,

-nearly three weeks, and then started in to graft again harder than

-ever. The old itch for excitement, for theatres, balls and gambling,

-made reform impossible. I had already formed strong habits and desires

-which could not be satisfied in my environment without stealing. I was

-rapidly becoming a confirmed criminal. I began to do "house-work,"

-which was mainly sneak work up town. We would catch a basement open

-in the day time, and rummage for silverware, money or jewels. There

-is only a step from this to the business of the genuine burglar, who

-operates in the night time, and whose occupation is far more dangerous

-than that of the sneak thief. However, at this intermediate kind of

-graft, our swag, for eighteen months, was considerable. One of our

-methods was to take servant girls to balls and picnics and get them

-to tip us off to where the goods were and the best way to get them.

-Sometimes they were guilty, more often merely suckers.

-

-During the next three years, at the expiration of which I made my first

-trip to Sing Sing, I stole a great deal of money and lived very high.

-I contracted more bad habits, practically ceased to see my family at

-all, lived in a furnished room and "hung out" in the evening at some

-dance-hall, such as Billy McGlory's Old Armory, George Doe's or "The"

-Allen's. Sheenie Annie was my sweetheart at this period, and after we

-had made a good touch what times we would have at Coney Island or at

-Billy McGlory's! Saturday nights in the summer time a mob of three or

-four of us, grafters and girls, would go to the island and stop at a

-hotel run by an ex-gun. At two or three o'clock in the morning we'd

-all leave the hotel, with nothing on but a quilt, and go in swimming

-together. Sheenie Annie, Blonde Mamie and Big Lena often went with

-us. At other times we took respectable shop-girls, or even women who

-belonged to a still lower class. What boy with an ounce of thick blood

-in his body could refuse to go with a girl to the Island?

-

-And Billy McGlory's! What times we had there, on dear old Saturday

-nights! At this place, which contained a bar-room, dance-room,

-pool-room and a piano, congregated downtown guns, house-men and thieves

-of both sexes. No rag-time was danced in those days, but early in the

-morning we had plenty of the cancan. The riots that took place there

-would put to shame anything that goes on now.[A] I never knew the town

-so tight-shut as it is at present. It is far better, from a moral point

-of view than it has ever been before; at least, in my recollection.

-"The" Allen's was in those days a grade more decent than McGlory's; for

-at "The's" nobody who did not wear a collar and coat was admitted. I

-remember a pal of mine who met a society lady on a slumming expedition

-with a reporter. It was at McGlory's. The lady looked upon the grafter

-she had met as a novelty. The grafter looked upon the lady in the same

-way, but consented to write her an article on the Bowery. He sent her

-the following composition, which he showed to me first, and allowed me

-to copy it. I always did like freaks. I won't put in the bad grammar

-and spelling, but the rest is:

-

-"While strolling, after the midnight hour, along the Lane, that

-historic thoroughfare sometimes called the Bowery, I dropped into a

-concert hall. At a glance, I saw men who worked hard during the week

-and needed a little recreation. Near them were their sisters (that

-is, if we all belong to the same human family), who had fallen by the

-wayside. A man was trying to play a popular song on a squeaky piano,

-while another gent tried to sing the first part of the song, when the

-whole place joined in the chorus with a zest. I think the song was most

-appropriate. It was a ditty of the slums entitled, 'Dear Old Saturday

-Night.'"

-

-When I was about nineteen I took another and important step in the

-world of graft. One night I met a couple of swell grafters, one of

-whom is at the present time a Pinkerton detective. They took me to

-the Haymarket, where I met a crowd of guns who were making barrels of

-money. Two of them, Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, became my friends,

-and introduced me to Mr. R----, who has often kept me out of prison.

-He was a go-between, a lawyer, and well-known to all good crooks. If

-we "fell" we had to notify him and he would set the underground wires

-working, with the result that our fall money would need replenishing

-badly, but that we'd escape the stir.

-

-That I was not convicted again for three years was entirely due to my

-fall money and to the cleverness of Mr. R----. Besides these expenses,

-which I considered legitimate, I used to get "shaken down" regularly by

-the police and detectives. The following is a typical case:

-

-I was standing one day on the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery

-when a copper who knew me came up and said: "There's a lot of knocking

-(complaining) going on about the Grand Street cars being torn open. The

-old man (the chief) won't stand for it much longer."

-

-"It wasn't me," I said.

-

-"Well, it was one of the gang," he replied, "and I will have to make an

-arrest soon, or take some one to headquarters for his mug," (that is,

-to have his picture taken for the rogues' gallery).

-

-I knew what that meant, and so I gave him a twenty dollar bill. But

-I was young and often objected to these exorbitant demands. More than

-anybody else a thief hates to be "touched," for he despises the sucker

-on whom he lives. And we were certainly touched with great regularity

-by the coppers.

-

-Still, we really had nothing to complain of in those days, for we made

-plenty of money and had a good time. We even used to buy our collars,

-cuffs and gloves cheap from grafters who made it their business to

-steal those articles. They were cheap guns,--pipe fiends, petty larceny

-thieves and shop-lifters--but they helped to make our path smoother.

-

-After I met the Haymarket grafter I used to jump out to neighboring

-cities on very profitable business. A good graft was to work the fairs

-at Danbury, Waverly, Philadelphia and Pittsburg, and the foot-ball

-games at Princeton. I always travelled with three or four others, and

-went for gatherings where we knew we would find "roofers," or country

-gentlemen. On my very first jump-out I got a fall, but the copper was

-open to reason. Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, splendid pickpockets,

-(I always went with good thieves, for I had become a first-class dip

-and had a good personal appearance) were working with me in Newark,

-where Vice-President Hendricks was to speak. I picked a watch in the

-crowd, and was nailed. But Dutch Lonzo, who had the gift of gab better

-than any man I ever met, took the copper into a saloon. We all had a

-drink, and for twenty-five dollars I escaped even the station-house.

-Unfortunately, however, I was compelled to return the watch; for the

-copper had to "square" the sucker. Then the copper said to Dutch

-Lonzo, whom he knew: "Go back and graft, if you want, but be sure

-to look me up." In an hour or two we got enough touches to do us for

-two weeks. Senator Wet Coin was at this speech with about two hundred

-Tammany braves, and we picked so many pockets that a newspaper the next

-day said there must have been at least one hundred and ninety-nine

-pickpockets in the Tammany delegation. We fell quite often on these

-trips, but we were always willing to help the coppers pay for their

-lower flats. I sometimes objected because of their exorbitant demands,

-but I was still young. I knew that longshoremen did harder work for

-less pay than the coppers, and I thought, therefore, that the latter

-were too eager to make money on a sure-thing graft. And I always hated

-a sure-thing graft.

-

-But didn't we strike it rich in Connecticut! Whether the people of that

-State suffer from partial paralysis or not I don't know, but certainly

-if all States were as easy as Connecticut the guns would set up as

-Vanderbilts. I never even got a tumble in Connecticut. I ripped up the

-fairs in every direction, and took every chance. The inhabitants were

-so easy that we treated them with contempt.

-

-After a long trip in Connecticut I nearly fell on my return, I was that

-raw. We were breech-getting (picking men's pockets) in the Brooklyn

-cars. I was stalling in front, Lonzo was behind and Charlie was the

-pick. Lonzo telephoned to me by gestures that Charlie had hold of

-the leather, but it wouldn't come. I was hanging on a strap, and,

-pretending to slip, brought my hand down heavily on the sucker's hat,

-which went over his ears. The leather came, was slipped to me, Lonzo

-apologized for spoiling the hat and offered the sucker a five dollar

-bill, which he politely refused. Now that was rough work, and we would

-not have done it, had we not been travelling so long among the Reubs

-in Connecticut. We could have made our gets all right, but we were so

-confident and delayed so long that the sucker blew before we left the

-car, and Lonzo and Charlie were nailed, and the next morning arraigned.

-In the meantime, however, we had started the wires working, and

-notified Mr. R.---- and Lonzo's wife to "fix" things in Brooklyn. The

-reliable attorney got a bondsman, and two friends of his "fixed" the

-cops, who made no complaint. Lonzo's wife, an Irishwoman and a handsome

-grafter, had just finished a five year bit in London. It cost us six

-hundred dollars to "fix" that case, and there was only two hundred and

-fifty dollars in the leather.

-

-That made Lonzo's wife exceedingly angry.

-

-"Good Lord," she said. "There's panthers for you in New York! There's

-the blokes that shakes you down too heavy. I'd want an unlimited cheque

-on the Bank of England if you ever fell again."

-

-A little philosophy on the same subject was given me one day by an

-English Moll, who had fallen up-State and had to "give up" heavily.

-

-"I've been in a good many cities and 'amlets in this country," said

-she, "but gad! blind me if I ever want to fall in an 'amlet in this

-blooming State again. The New York police are at least a little

-sensible at times, but when these Rufus's up the State get a Yorker or

-a wise guy, they'll strip him down to his socks. One of these voracious

-country coppers who sing sweet hymns in jail is a more successful gun

-than them that hit the rocky path and take brash to get the long green.

-It is only the grafter that is supposed to protect the people who makes

-a success of it. The hypocritical mouthings of these people just suit

-the size of their Bibles."

-

-Lonzo and I, and Patsy, a grafter I had picked up about this time,

-made several fat trips to Philadelphia. At first we were leary of the

-department stores, there had been so many "hollers," and worked the

-"rattlers" (cars) only. We were told by some local guns that we could

-not "last" twenty-four hours in Philadelphia without protection, but

-that was not our experience. We went easy for a time, but the chances

-were too good, and we began voraciously to tear open the department

-stores, the churches and the theatres; and without a fall. Whenever

-anybody mentioned the fly-cops (detectives) of Philadelphia it reminded

-us of the inhabitants of Connecticut. They were not "dead": such a

-word is sacred. Their proper place was not on the police force, but

-on a shelf in a Dutchman's grocery store labelled the canned article.

-Philadelphia was always my town, but I never stayed very long, partly

-because I did not want to become known in such a fat place, and partly

-because I could not bear to be away from New York very long; for,

-although there is better graft in other cities, there is no such place

-to live in as Manhattan. I had no fear of being known in Philadelphia

-to the police; but to local guns who would become jealous of our

-grafting and tip us off.

-

-On one of my trips to the City of Brotherly Love I had a poetical

-experience. The graft had been good, and one Sunday morning I left Dan

-and Patsy asleep, and went for a walk in the country, intending, for a

-change, to observe the day of rest. I walked for several hours through

-a beautiful, quiet country, and about ten o'clock passed a country

-church. They were singing inside, and for some reason, probably because

-I had had a good walk in the country, the music affected me strangely.

-I entered, and saw a blind evangelist and his sister. I bowed my head,

-and my whole past life came over me. Although everything had been

-coming my way, I felt uneasy, and thought of home for the first time

-in many weeks. I went back to the hotel in Philadelphia, feeling very

-gloomy, and shut myself up in my room. I took up my pen and began

-a letter to a Tommy (girl) in New York. But I could not forget the

-country church, and instead of writing to the little Tommy, I wrote the

-following jingles:

-

-     "When a child by mother's knee

-     I would watch, watch, watch

-     By the deep blue sea,

-     And the moon-beams played merrily

-     On our home beside the sea.

-

-CHORUS.

-

-     "The Evening Star shines bright-i-ly

-     Above our home beside the sea,

-     And the moon-beams danced beamingly

-     On our home beside the sea.

-     But now I am old, infirm and grey

-     I shall never see those happy days;

-     I would give my life, all my wealth, and fame

-     To hear my mother gently call my name."

-

-Towards evening Patsy and Dan returned from a good day's work. Patsy

-noticed I was quiet and unusually gloomy, and asked:

-

-"What's the matter? Didn't you get anything?"

-

-"No," I replied, "I'm going back to New York."

-

-"Where have you been?" asked Dan.

-

-"To church," I replied.

-

-"In the city?" he asked.

-

-"No," I replied, "in the country."

-

-"I cautioned you," said Dan, "against taking such chances. There's

-no dough in these country churches. If you want to try lone ones on a

-Sunday take in some swell church in the city."

-

-The following Sunday I went to a fashionable church and got a few

-leathers, and afterwards went to all the swell churches in the city. I

-touched them, but they could not touch me. I heard all the ministers

-in Philadelphia, but they could not move me the way that country

-evangelist did. They were all artificial in comparison.

-

-Shortly after my poetical experience in Philadelphia I made a trip up

-New York State with Patsy, Dan and Joe, and grafted in a dozen towns.

-One day when we were on the cars going from Albany to Amsterdam, we saw

-a fat, sleepy-looking Dutchman, and I nicked him for a clock as he was

-passing along the aisle to the end of the car. It took the Dutchman

-about ten minutes after he had returned to his seat to blow that his

-super was gone, and his chain hanging down. A look of stupid surprise

-spread over his innocent countenance. He looked all around, picked up

-the end of his chain, saw it was twisted, put his hand in his vest

-pocket, then looked again at the end of the chain, tried his pocket

-again, then went through all of his pockets, and repeated each of these

-actions a dozen times. The passengers all got "next," and began to

-grin. "Get on to the Hiker," (countryman) said Patsy to Joe, and they

-both laughed. I told the Dutchman that the clock must have fallen down

-the leg of his underwear; whereupon the Reuben retired to investigate,

-searched himself thoroughly and returned, only to go through the same

-motions, and then retire to investigate once more. It was as good as a

-comedy. But it was well there were no country coppers on that train.

-They would not have cared a rap about the Dutchman's loss of his

-property, but we four probably should have been compelled to divide

-with them.

-

-Grafters are a superstitious lot. Before we reached Buffalo a feeling

-came over me that I had better not work in that town; so Joe, Dan and

-an English grafter we had picked up, named Scotty, stopped at Buffalo,

-and Patsy and I went on. Sure enough, in a couple of days Joe wired

-me that Scotty had fallen for a breech-kick and was held for trial.

-I wired to Mr. R----, who got into communication with Mr. J----, a

-Canadian Jew living in Buffalo, who set the wires going. The sucker

-proved a very hard man to square, but a politician who was a friend

-of Mr. J---- showed him the errors of his way, and before very long

-Scotty returned to New York. An English Moll-buzzer, a girl, got hold

-of him and took him back to London. It was just as well, for it was

-time for our bunch to break up. We were getting too well-known; and

-falls were coming too frequent. So we had a general split. Joe went to

-Washington, Patsy down East, Scotty to "stir" in London and I stayed in

-Manhattan, where I shortly afterwards met Big Jack and other burglars

-and started in on that dangerous graft. But before I tell about my

-work in that line, I will narrate the story of Mamie and Johnny, a

-famous cracksman, whom I met at this time. It is a true love story of

-the Under World. Johnny, and Mamie, who by the way is not the same as

-Blonde Mamie, are still living together in New York City, after many

-trials and tribulations, one of the greatest of which was Mamie's

-enforced relation with a New York detective. But I won't anticipate on

-the story, which follows in the next chapter.

-

-

-FOOTNOTE:

-

-     [A] Summer of 1902

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER V.

-

-_Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds._

-

-

-Johnny met Mamie when he was sixteen. At that time he was looked up

-to in the neighborhood as one of the most promising of the younger

-thieves.

-

-He was an intelligent, enterprising boy and had, moreover, received an

-excellent education in the school of crime. His parents had died before

-he was twelve years old, and after that the lad lived at the Newsboys'

-Lodging House, in Rivington Street, which at that time and until it

-ceased to exist was the home of boys some of whom afterwards became

-the swellest of crooks, and some very reputable citizens and prominent

-politicians. A meal and a bed there cost six cents apiece and even the

-youngest and stupidest waif could earn or steal enough for that.

-

-Johnny became an adept at "hooking" things from grocery stores and

-at tapping tills. When he was thirteen years old he was arrested for

-petty theft, passed a night in the police station, and was sent to the

-Catholic Protectory, where he was the associate of boys much older and

-"wiser" in crime than he. At that place were all kinds of incurables,

-from those arrested for serious felonies to those who had merely

-committed the crime of being homeless. From them Johnny learned the

-ways of the under world very rapidly.

-

-After a year of confinement he was clever enough to make a key and

-escape. He safely passed old "Cop O'Hagen," whose duty it was to watch

-the Harlem bridge, and returned to the familiar streets in lower New

-York, where the boys and rising pickpockets hid him from the police,

-until they forgot about his escape.

-

-From that time Johnny's rise in the world of graft was rapid. He

-was so successful in stealing rope and copper from the dry-docks

-that the older heads took him in hand and used to put him through

-the "fan-light" windows of some store, where his haul was sometimes

-considerable. He began to grow rich, purchased some shoes and

-stockings, and assumed a "tough" appearance, with great pride. He rose

-a step higher, boarded tug-boats and ships anchored at the docks, and

-constantly increased his income. The boys looked upon him as a winner

-in his line of graft, and as he gave "hot'l" (lodging-house) money to

-those boys who had none, he was popular. So Johnny became "chesty",

-began to "spread" himself, to play pool, to wear good linen collars and

-to associate with the best young thieves in the ward.

-

-It was at this time that he met Mamie, who was a year or two younger

-than he. She was a small, dark, pale-faced little girl, and as neat

-and quick-witted as Johnny. She lived with her parents, near the

-Newsboys' Lodging House, where Johnny still "hung out". Mamie's father

-and mother were poor, respectable people, who were born and bred in the

-old thirteenth ward, a section famous for the many shop girls who were

-fine "spielers" (dancers). Mamie's mother was one of the most skillful

-of these dancers, and therefore Mamie came by her passion for the waltz

-very naturally; and the light-footed little girl was an early favorite

-with the mixed crowd of dancers who used to gather at the old Concordia

-Assembly Rooms, on the Bowery.

-

-It was at this place that Johnny and Mamie met for the first time. It

-was a case of mutual admiration, and the boy and girl started in to

-"keep company." Johnny became more ambitious in his line of graft;

-he had a girl! He needed money to buy her presents, to take her to

-balls, theatres and picnics; and he began to "gun", which means to

-pickpockets, an occupation which he found far more lucrative than

-"swagging" copper from the docks or going through fan-light windows. He

-did not remain content, however, with "dipping" and, with several much

-older "grafters", he started in to do "drag" work.

-

-"Drag" work is a rather complicated kind of stealing and success at

-it requires considerable skill. Usually a "mob" of four grafters work

-together. They get "tipped off" to some store where there is a line

-of valuable goods, perhaps a large silk or clothing-house. One of the

-four, called the "watcher", times the last employee that leaves the

-place to be "touched". The "watcher" is at his post again early in

-the morning, to find out at what time the first employee arrives. He

-may even hire a furnished room opposite the store, in order to secure

-himself against identification by some Central Office detective who

-might stroll by. When he has learned the hours of the employees he

-reports to his "pals". At a late hour at night the four go to the

-store, put a spindle in the Yale lock, and break it with a blow from a

-hammer. They go inside, take another Yale lock, which they have brought

-with them, lock themselves in, go upstairs, carry the most valuable

-goods downstairs and pile them near the door. Then they go away, and,

-in the morning, before the employees are due, they drive up boldly

-to the store with a truck; representing a driver, two laborers, and a

-shipping clerk. They load the wagon with the goods, lock the door, and

-drive away. They have been known to do this work in full view of the

-unsuspecting policeman on the beat.

-

-While Johnny had advanced to this distinguished work, Mamie, too,

-had become a bread-earner, of a more modest and a more respectable

-kind. She went to work in a factory, and made paper boxes for two and

-one-half dollars a week. So the two dressed very well, and had plenty

-of spending money. Unless Johnny had some work to do they always met in

-the evening, and soon were seriously in love with one another. Mamie

-knew what Johnny's line of business was, and admired his cleverness.

-The most progressive people in her set believed in "getting on" in

-any way, and how could Mamie be expected to form a social morality for

-herself? She thought Johnny was the nicest boy in the world, and Johnny

-returned her love to the full. So Johnny finally asked her if she would

-"hitch up" with him for life, and she gladly consented.

-

-They were married and set up a nice home in Allen Street. It was before

-the time when the Jews acquired an exclusive right to that part of

-the town, and in this neighborhood Mamie and Johnny had many friends

-who used to visit them in the evening; for the loving couple were

-exceedingly domestic, and, when Johnny had no business on hand, seldom

-went out in the evening. Johnny was a model husband. He had no bad

-habits, never drank or gambled, spent as much time as he could with

-his wife, and made a great deal of money. Mamie gave up her work in the

-shop, and devoted all her attention to making Johnny happy and his home

-pleasant.

-

-For about four years Johnny and Mamie lived very happily together.

-Things came their way; and Johnny and his pals laid by a considerable

-amount of money against a rainy day. To be sure, they had their little

-troubles. Johnny "fell," that is to say, was arrested, a score of

-times, but succeeded in getting off. It was partly due to good luck,

-and partly to the large amount of fall-money he and his pals had

-gathered together.

-

-On one occasion it was only Mamie's cleverness and devotion that saved

-Johnny, for a time, from the penitentiary. One dark night Johnny

-and three pals, after a long conversation in the saloon of a ward

-politician, visited a large jewelry store on Fulton Street, Brooklyn,

-artistically opened the safe, and made away with fifteen thousand

-dollars. It was a bold and famous robbery, and the search for the

-thieves was long and earnest. Johnny and his friends were not suspected

-at first, but an old saying among thieves is, "wherever there are three

-or four there is always a leak," a truth similar to that announced by

-Benjamin Franklin: "Three can keep a secret when two are dead."

-

-One of Johnny's pals, Patsy, told his girl in confidence how the

-daring "touch" was made. That was the first link in the long chain of

-gossip which finally reached the ears of the watching detectives; and

-the result was that Patsy and Johnny were arrested. It was impossible

-to "settle" this case, no matter how much "fall-money" they had at

-their disposal; for the jeweler belonged to the Jewelers' Protective

-Association, which will prosecute those who rob anyone belonging to

-their organization.

-

-As bribery was out of the question, Johnny and Patsy, who were what is

-called in the underworld "slick articles," put their heads together,

-and worked out a scheme. The day of their trial in the Brooklyn Court

-came around. They were waiting their turn in the prisoner's "pen,"

-adjoining the Court, when Mamie came to see them. The meeting between

-her and Johnny was very affecting. After a few words Mamie noticed

-that her swell Johnny wore no neck-tie. Johnny, seemingly embarrassed,

-turned to a Court policeman, and asked him to lend him his tie for a

-short time. The policeman declined, but remarked that Mamie had a tie

-that would match Johnny's complexion very well. Mamie impulsively took

-off her tie, put it on Johnny, kissed him, and left the Court-house.

-

-Johnny was to be tried in ten minutes, but he induced his lawyer to

-have the trial put off for half an hour; and another case was tried

-instead. Then he took off Mamie's neck-tie, tore the back out of it,

-and removed two fine steel saws. He gave one to Patsy, and in a few

-minutes they had penetrated a small iron bar which closed a little

-window leading to an alley. Patsy was too large to squeeze himself

-through the opening, but "stalled" for Johnny while the latter "made

-his gets". When they came to put these two on trial there was a

-sensation in Court. No Johnny! Patsy knew nothing about it, he said;

-and he received six years for his crime.

-

-But Johnny's day for a time in the "stir" soon came around. He made a

-good "touch", and got away with the goods, but was betrayed by a pal, a

-professional thief who was in the pay of the police, technically called

-a "stool-pigeon". Mamie visited Johnny in the Tombs, and when she found

-the case was hopeless she wanted to go and steal something herself so

-that she might accompany her boy to prison. But when Johnny told her

-there were no women at Sing Sing she gave up the idea. Johnny went to

-prison for four years, and Mamie went to a tattooer, and, as a proof of

-her devotion, had Johnny's name indelibly stamped upon her arm.

-

-Mamie, in consequence of her fidelity to Johnny, whom she regularly

-visited at Sing Sing, was a heroine and a martyr in the eyes of the

-grafters of both sexes. The money she and Johnny had saved began to

-dwindle, and soon she was compelled to work again at box-making. She

-remained faithful to Johnny, although many a good grafter tried to make

-up to the pretty girl. When Johnny was released from Sing Sing, Mamie

-was even happier than he. They had no money now, but some politicians

-and saloon-keepers who knew that Johnny was a good money-getter, set

-them up in a little house. And they resumed their quiet domestic life

-together.

-

-Their happiness did not last long, however. Johnny needed money more

-than ever now and resumed his dangerous business. He got in with a

-quartette of the cleverest safe-crackers in the country, and made

-a tour of the Eastern cities. They made many important touches, but

-finally Johnny was again under suspicion for a daring robbery in Union

-Square, and was compelled to become a solitary fugitive. He sent word,

-through an old-time burglar, to Mamie, exhorted her to keep up the

-home, and promised to send money regularly. He was forced, however,

-to stay away from New York for several years, and did not dare to

-communicate with Mamie.

-

-At first, Mamie tried to resume her work at box-making. But she had

-had so much leisure and had lived so well that she found the work

-irksome and the pay inadequate. Mamie knew many women pickpockets and

-shop-lifters, friends of her husband. When some of these adventurous

-girls saw that Mamie was discontented with her lot, they induced her to

-go out and work with them. So Mamie became a very clever shop-lifter,

-and, for a time, made considerable money. Then many of the best "guns"

-in the city again tried to make up to Mamie, and marry her. Johnny

-was not on the spot, and that, in the eyes of a thief, constitutes

-a divorce. But Mamie still loved her wayward boy and held the others

-back.

-

-In the meantime Johnny had become a great traveller. He knew that the

-detectives were so hot on his track that he dared to stay nowhere very

-long; nor dared to trust anyone: so he worked alone. He made a number

-of daring robberies, all along the line from Montreal to Detroit, but

-they all paled in comparison with a touch he made at Philadelphia, a

-robbery which is famous in criminal annals.

-

-He had returned to Philadelphia, hoping to get a chance to send word

-to Mamie, whom he had not seen for years, and for whom he pined. While

-in the city of brotherly love he was "tipped off" to a good thing. He

-boldly entered a large mercantile house, and, in thirteen minutes, he

-opened a time-lock vault, and abstracted three hundred thousand dollars

-worth of negotiable bonds and escaped.

-

-The bold deed made a sensation all over the country. The mercantile

-house and the safe manufacturers were so hot for the thief that the

-detectives everywhere worked hard and "on the level". Johnny was not

-suspected then, and never "did time" for this touch. For a while he

-hid in Philadelphia; boarded there with a poor, respectable family,

-representing himself as a laborer out of work. He spent the daytime in

-a little German beer saloon, playing pinocle with the proprietor; and

-was perfectly safe.

-

-But his longing for Mamie had grown so strong that he could not bear

-it. He knew that the detectives were still looking for him because

-of the old crime, and that they were hot to discover the thief of the

-negotiable bonds. He sent word to Mamie, nevertheless, through an old

-pal he found at Philadelphia, and arranged to see her at Mount Vernon,

-near New York.

-

-The two met in the side room of a little saloon near the railway

-station; and the greeting was affectionate in the extreme. They had not

-seen one another for years! And hardly a message had been exchanged.

-After a little Johnny told Mamie, proudly, that it was he who had

-stolen the negotiable bonds.

-

-"Now," he added, "we are rich. After a little I can sell these bonds

-for thirty cents on the dollar and then you and I will go away and

-give up this life. I am getting older and my nerve is not what it was

-once. We'll settle down quietly in London or some town where we are not

-known, and be happy. Won't we, dear?"

-

-Mamie said "Yes," but she appeared confused. When Johnny asked her what

-was the matter, she burst into tears; and choked and sobbed for some

-time before she could say a word. She ordered a glass of whiskey, which

-she never used to drink in the old days, and when the bar-tender had

-left, she turned to the worried Johnny, embraced him tenderly and said,

-in a voice which still trembled:

-

-"Johnny, will you forgive me if I tell you something? It's pretty bad,

-but not so bad as it might be, for I love only you."

-

-Johnny encouraged her with a kiss and she continued, in a broken voice:

-

-"When you were gone again, Johnny, I tried to make my living at the

-old box-making work; but the pay wasn't big enough for me then. So I

-began to graft--dipping and shop-lifting--and made money. But a Central

-Office man you used to know--Jim Lennon--got on to me."

-

-"Jim Lennon?" said Johnny, "Sure, I knew him. He used to be sweet on

-you, Mamie. He treated you right, I hope."

-

-Mamie blushed and looked down.

-

-"Well?" said Johnny.

-

-"Jim came to me one day," she continued, "and told me he wouldn't

-stand for what I was doing. He said the drygoods people were hollering

-like mad; and that he'd have to arrest me if I didn't quit. I tried to

-square him with a little dough, but I soon saw that wasn't what he was

-after."

-

-"'Look here, Mamie,' he finally said. 'It's just this way. Johnny is a

-good fellow, but he's dead to you and dead to me. He's done time, and

-that breaks all marriage ties. Now, I want you to hitch up with me, and

-lead an honest life. I'll give you a good home, and you won't run any

-more risk of the pen!'"

-

-Johnny grew very pale as Mamie said the last words; and when she

-stopped speaking, he said quietly:

-

-"And you did it?"

-

-Mamie again burst into tears. "Oh, Johnny," she cried, "what else could

-I do. He wouldn't let me go on grafting, and I had to live."

-

-"And so you married him?" Johnny insisted.

-

-The reply was in a whisper.

-

-"Yes," she said.

-

-For the next thirty seconds Johnny thought very rapidly. This woman had

-his liberty in her hands. He had told her about the negotiable bonds.

-Besides, he loved Mamie and understood the difficulty of her position.

-His life as a thief had made him very tolerant in some respects. He

-therefore swallowed his emotion, and turned a kind face to Mamie.

-

-"You still love me?" he asked, "better than the copper?"

-

-"Sure," said Mamie, warmly.

-

-"Now listen," said Johnny, the old business-like expression coming back

-into his face. "I am hounded for the old trick; and the detectives are

-looking everywhere for these negotiable bonds, which I have here, in

-this satchel. Can I trust you with them? Will you mind them for me,

-until things quiet down?"

-

-"Of course, I will," said Mamie, gladly.

-

-So they parted once more. Johnny went into hiding again, and Mamie

-went to the detective's house, with the negotiable bonds. She had no

-intention of betraying Johnny; for she might be arrested for receiving

-stolen goods; and, besides, she still loved her first husband. So she

-planted the bonds in the bottom of the detective's trunk.

-

-Here was a pretty situation. Her husband, the detectives, and

-many other "fly-cops" all over the country, were looking for these

-negotiable bonds, at the very moment when they were safely stowed

-away in the detective's trunk. Mamie and Johnny, who continued to meet

-occasionally, often smiled at the humor of the situation.

-

-Soon, however, suspicion for the Philadelphia touch began to attach

-to Johnny. Mamie's detective asked her one evening if she had heard

-anything about Johnny, of late.

-

-"Not for years," said Mamie, calmly.

-

-But one night, several Central Office men followed Mamie as she went

-to Mt. Vernon to meet Johnny; and when the two old lovers parted,

-Johnny was arrested on account of the fifteen thousand dollar robbery

-in Brooklyn, from the penalty of which he had escaped by means of

-Mamie's neck-tie many years before. The detectives suspected Johnny

-of having stolen the bonds, but of this they could get no evidence. So

-he was sent to Sing Sing for six years on the old charge. When he was

-safely in prison the detectives induced him to return the bonds, on the

-promise that he would not be prosecuted at his release, and would be

-paid a certain sum of money. The mercantile house agreed, and Johnny

-sent word to Mamie to give up the bonds. Then, of course, the detective

-knew about the trick that Mamie had played him. But he, like Johnny,

-was a philosopher, and forgave the clever woman. When he first heard of

-it, however, he had said to her, indignantly:

-

-"You cow, if you had given the bonds to me, I would have been made a

-police captain, and you my queen."

-

-As soon as Johnny got out of stir, Mamie quit the detective, and the

-couple are now living again together in a quiet, domestic manner, in

-Manhattan.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VI.

-

-_What The Burglar Faces._

-

-

-For a long time I took Sheenie Annie's advice and did not do any night

-work. It is too dangerous, the come-back is too sure, you have to

-depend too much on the nerve of your pals, the "bits" are too long; and

-it is very difficult to square it. But as time went on I grew bolder.

-I wanted to do something new, and get more dough. My new departure was

-not, however, entirely due to ambition and the boldness acquired by

-habitual success. After a gun has grafted for a long time his nervous

-system becomes affected, for it is certainly an exciting life. He is

-then very apt to need a stimulant. He is usually addicted to either

-opium or chloral, morphine or whiskey. Even at this early period I

-began to take a little opium, which afterwards was one of the main

-causes of my constant residence in stir, and was really the wreck of my

-life, for when a grafter is doped he is inclined to be very reckless.

-Perhaps if I had never hit the hop I would not have engaged in the

-dangerous occupation of a burglar.

-

-I will say one thing for opium, however. That drug never makes a man

-careless of his personal appearance. He will go to prison frequently,

-but he will always have a good front, and will remain a self-respecting

-thief. The whiskey dip, on the other hand, is apt to dress carelessly,

-lose his ambition and, eventually to go down and out as a common "bum".

-

-I began night-work when I was about twenty years old, and at first

-I did not go in for it very heavily. Big Jack, Jerry, Ed and I made

-several good touches in Mt. Vernon and in hotels at summer resorts and

-got sums ranging from two hundred to twenty-seven hundred dollars.

-We worked together for nearly a year with much success and only an

-occasional fall, and these we succeeded in squaring. Once we had a

-shooting-match which made me a little leary. I was getting out the

-window with my swag, when a shot just grazed my eye. I nearly decided

-to quit then, but, I suppose because it was about that time I was

-beginning to take opium, I continued with more boldness than ever.

-

-One night Ed, a close pal of mine, was operating with me out in Jersey.

-We were working in the rear of a house and Ed was just shinning up the

-back porch to climb in the second story window, when a shutter above

-was thrown open and, without warning, a pistol shot rang out.

-

-Down came Ed, falling like a log at my feet.

-

-"Are you hurt?" said I.

-

-"Done!" said he, and I saw it was so.

-

-Now a man may be nervy enough, but self-preservation is the first rule

-of life. I turned and ran at the top of my speed across two back yards,

-then through a field, then over a fence into what seemed a ploughed

-field beyond. The ground was rough and covered with hummocks, and as I

-stumbled along I suddenly tripped and fell ten feet down into an open

-grave. The place was a cemetery, though I had not recognized it in the

-darkness. For hours I lay there trembling, but nobody came and I was

-safe. It was not long after that, however, that something did happen to

-shake my nerve, which was pretty good. It came about in the following

-way.

-

-A jeweler, who was a well-known "fence", put us on to a place where we

-could get thousands. He was one of the most successful "feelers-out" in

-the business. The man who was my pal on this occasion, Dal, looked the

-place over with me and though we thought it a bit risky, the size of

-the graft attracted us. We had to climb up on the front porch, with an

-electric light streaming right down on us.

-

-I had reached the porch when I got the well-known signal of danger. I

-hurriedly descended and asked Dal what was the matter.

-

-"Jim," he said, "there's somebody off there, a block away."

-

-We investigated, and you can imagine how I felt when we found nothing

-but an old goat. It was a case of Dal's nerves, but the best of us get

-nervous at times.

-

-I went to the porch again and opened the window with a putty knife

-(made of the rib of a woman's corset), when I got the "cluck" again,

-and hastily descended, but again found it was Dal's imagination.

-

-Then I grew hot, and said: "You have knocked all the nerve out of me,

-for sure."

-

-"Jim," he replied, "I ain't feeling good."

-

-Was it a premonition? He wanted to quit the job, but I wouldn't let

-him. I opened up on him. "What!" I said. "You are willing to steal one

-piece of jewelry and take your chance of going to stir, but when we get

-a good thing that would land us in Easy Street the rest of our lives,

-you weaken!"

-

-Dal was quiet, and his face unusually pale. He was a good fellow, but

-his nerve was gone. I braced him up, however, and told him we'd get the

-"eclat" the third time, sure. Then climbing the porch the third time, I

-removed my shoes, raised the window again, and had just struck a light

-when a revolver was pressed on my head. I knocked the man's hand up,

-quick, and jumped. As I did so I heard a cry and then the beating of a

-policeman's stick on the sidewalk.

-

-I ran, with two men after me, and came to the gateway of a yard, where

-I saw a big bloodhound chained to his kennel. He growled savagely, but

-it was neck or nothing, so I patted his head just as though I were not

-shaking with fear, slipped down on my hands and knees and crept into

-his dog-house. Why didn't he bite me? Was it sympathy? When my pursuers

-came up, the owner of the house, who had been aroused by the cries,

-said: "He is not here. This dog would eat him up." When the police saw

-the animal they were convinced of it too.

-

-A little while later I left my friend's kennel. It was four o'clock in

-the morning and I had no shoes on and only one dollar and sixty cents

-in my pocket. I sneaked through the back window of the first house I

-saw, stole a pair of shoes and eighty dollars from a room where a man

-and his wife were sleeping. Then I took a car. Knowing that I was still

-being looked for, I wanted to get rid of my hat, as a partial disguise.

-On the seat with me was a working man asleep. I took his old soft hat,

-leaving my new derby by his side, and also took his dinner pail. Then

-when I left the car I threw away my collar and necktie, and reached New

-York, disguised as a workingman. The next day the papers told how poor

-old Dal had been arrested. Everything that had happened for weeks was

-put on him.

-

-A week later Dal was found dead in his cell, and I believe he did the

-Dutch act (suicide), for I remember one day, months before that fatal

-night, Dal and I were sitting in a politicians saloon, when he said to

-me:

-

-"Jim, do you believe in heaven?"

-

-"No," said I.

-

-"Do you believe in hell?" he asked.

-

-"No," said I.

-

-"I've got a mind to find out," he said quickly, and pointed a big

-revolver at his teeth. One of the guns in the saloon said: "Let him try

-it," but I knocked the pistol away, for something in his manner made me

-think seriously he would shoot.

-

-"You poor brute," I said to him. "I'll put your ashes in an urn some

-day and write "Dear Old Saturday Night" for an epitaph for you; but it

-isn't time yet."

-

-It did not take many experiences like the above to make me very leary

-of night-work; and I went more slowly for some time. I continued

-to dip, however, more boldly than ever and to do a good deal of day

-work; in which comparatively humble graft the servant girls, as I have

-already said, used to help us out considerably. This class of women

-never interested me as much as the sporting characters, but we used to

-make good use of them; and sometimes they amused us.

-

-I remember an entertaining episode which took place while Harry, a

-pal of mine at the time, and I, were going with a couple of these

-hard-working Molls. Harry was rather inclined to be a sure-thing

-grafter, of which class of thieves I shall say more in another chapter;

-and after my recent dangerous adventures I tolerated that class more

-than was customary with me. Indeed, if Harry had been the real thing I

-would have cut him dead; as it was he came near enough to the genuine

-article to make me despise him in my ordinary mood. But, as I say, I

-was uncommonly leary just at that time.

-

-He and I were walking in Stuyvesant Square when we met a couple of

-these domestic slaves. With a "hello," we rang in on them, walked them

-down Second Avenue and had a few drinks all around. My girl told me

-whom she was working with. Thinking there might be something doing I

-felt her out further, with a view to finding where in the house the

-stuff lay. Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly, I easily got the

-desired information. We took the girls into Bonnell's Museum, at Eighth

-Street and Broadway, and saw a howling border melodrama, in which wild

-Indians were as thick as Moll-buzzers in 1884. Mary Anne, who was my

-girl, said she should tell her mistress about the beautiful play; and

-asked for a program. They were all out, and so I gave her an old one,

-of another play, which I had in my pocket. We had a good time, and made

-a date with them for another meeting, in two weeks from that night;

-but before the appointed hour we had beat Mary Anne's mistress out of

-two hundred dollars worth of silverware, easily obtained, thanks to

-the information I had received from Mary Anne. When we met the girls

-again, I found Mary Anne in a great state of indignation; I was afraid

-she was "next" to our being the burglars, and came near falling through

-the floor. But her rage, it seemed, was about the play. She had told

-her mistress about the wild Indian melodrama she had seen, and then had

-shown her the program of _The Banker's Daughter_.

-

-"But there is no such thing as an Indian in _The Banker's Daughter_,"

-her mistress had said. "I fear you are deceiving me, Mary Anne, and

-that you have been to some low place on the Bowery."

-

-The other servants in the house got next and kidded Mary Anne almost

-to death about Indians and _The Banker's Daughter_. After I had quieted

-her somewhat she told me about the burglary that had taken place at her

-house, and Harry and I were much interested. She was sure the touch had

-been made by two "naygers" who lived in the vicinity.

-

-It was shortly after this incident that I beat Blackwell's Island out

-of three months. A certain "heeler" put me on to a disorderly house

-where we could get some stones. I had everything "fixed." The "heeler"

-had arranged it with the copper on the beat, and it seemed like a sure

-thing; although the Madam, I understood, was a good shot and had plenty

-of nerve. My accomplice, the heeler, was a sure thing grafter, who had

-selected me because I had the requisite nerve and was no squealer. At

-two o'clock in the morning a trusted pal and I ascended from the back

-porch to the Madam's bed-room. I had just struck a match, when I heard

-a female voice say, "What are you doing there?" and a bottle, fired at

-my head, banged up against the wall with a crash. I did not like to

-alarm women, and so I made my "gets" out the window, over the fence,

-and into another street, where I was picked up by a copper, on general

-principles.

-

-The Madam told him that the thief was over six feet tall and had a

-fierce black mustache. As I am only five feet seven inches and was

-smoothly shaven, it did not seem like an identification; although when

-she saw me she changed her note, and swore I was the man. The copper,

-who knew I was a grafter, though he did not think I did that kind of

-work, nevertheless took me to the station-house, where I convinced

-two wardmen that I had been arrested unjustly. When I was led before

-the magistrate in the morning, the copper said the lady's description

-did not tally with the short, red-haired and freckled thief before

-his Honor. The policemen all agreed, however, that I was a notorious

-grafter, and the magistrate, who was not much of a lawyer, sent me to

-the Island for three months on general principles.

-

-I was terribly sore, for I knew I had been illegally treated. I felt

-as much a martyr as if I had not been guilty in the least; and I

-determined to escape at all hazards; although my friends told me I

-would be released any day; for certainly the evidence against me had

-been insufficient.

-

-After I had been on the Island ten days I went to a friend, who

-had been confined there several months and said: "Eddy, I have been

-unjustly convicted for a crime I committed--such was my way of putting

-it--and I am determined to make my elegant, (escape) come what will. Do

-you know the weak spots of this dump?"

-

-He put me "next", and I saw there was a chance, a slim one, if a man

-could swim and didn't mind drowning. I found another pal, Jack Donovan,

-who, like me, could swim like a fish; he was desperate too, and willing

-to take any chance to see New York. Five or six of us slept together

-in one large cell, and on the night selected for our attempt, Jack and

-I slipped into a compartment where about twenty short term prisoners

-were kept. Our departure from the other cell, from which it was very

-difficult to escape after once being locked in for the night, was not

-noticed by the night guard and his trusty because our pals in the cell

-answered to our names when they were called. It was comparatively easy

-to escape from the large room where the short term men were confined.

-Into this room, too, Jack and I had taken tools from the quarry during

-the daytime.

-

-It was twelve o'clock on a November night when we made our escape.

-We took ropes from the canvas cot, tied them together, and lowered

-ourselves to the ground on the outside, where we found bad weather,

-rain and hail. We were unable to obtain a boat, but secured a telegraph

-pole, rolled it into the water, and set off with it for New York.

-The terrific tide at Hellgate soon carried us well into the middle

-of Long Island Sound, and when we had been in the water half an hour,

-we were very cold and numb, and began to think that all was over. But

-neither of us feared death. All I wanted was to save enough money to

-be cremated; and I was confident my friends would see to that. I don't

-think fear of death is a common trait among grafters. Perhaps it is

-lack of imagination; more likely, however, it is because they think

-they won't be any the worse off after death.

-

-Still, I was not sorry when a wrecking boat suddenly popped our way.

-The tug did not see us, and hit Jack's end of the pole a hard blow that

-must have shaken him off. I heard him holler "Save me," and I yelled

-too. I didn't think anything about capture just then. All my desire to

-live came back to me.

-

-I was pulled into the boat. The captain was a good fellow. He was

-"next" and only smiled at my lies. What was more to the purpose he

-gave me some good whiskey, and set me ashore in Jersey City. Jack was

-drowned. All through life I have been used to losing a friend suddenly

-by the wayside; but I have always felt sad when it happened. And yet it

-would have been far better for me if I had been picked out for an early

-death. I guess poor Jack was lucky.

-

-Certainly there are worse things than death. Through these three years

-of continual and for the most part successful graft, I had known a

-man named Henry Fry whose story is one of the saddest. If he had been

-called off suddenly as Jack was, he would certainly have been deemed

-lucky by those who knew; for he was married to a bad woman. He was

-one of the most successful box-men (safe-blowers) in the city, and

-made thousands, but nothing was enough for his wife. She used to say,

-when he would put twelve hundred dollars in her lap, "This won't meet

-expenses. I need one thousand dollars more." She was unfaithful to

-him, too, and with his friends. When I go to a matinee and see a lot

-of sleek, fat, inane looking women, I wonder who the poor devils are

-who are having their life blood sucked out of them. Certainly it was so

-with Henry, or Henny, as we used to call him.

-

-One day, I remember, we went down the Sound with a well-known

-politician's chowder party, and Henny was with us. Two weeks

-earlier New York had been startled by a daring burglary. A large

-silk-importer's place of business was entered and his safe, supposed

-to be burglar-proof, was opened. He was about to be married, and his

-valuable wedding presents, which were in the safe, and six thousand

-dollars worth of silk, were stolen. It was Henny and his pals who

-had made the touch, but on this beautiful night on the Sound, Henny

-was sad. We were sitting on deck, as it was a hot summer night, when

-Henny jumped off his camp-stool and asked me to sing a song. I sang

-a sentimental ditty, in my tenor voice, and then Henny took me to the

-side of the boat, away from the others.

-

-"Kid," he said, "I feel trouble coming over me."

-

-"Cheer up," I replied. "You're a little down-hearted, that's all."

-

-"I wish to God," he said, "I was like you."

-

-I pulled out a five dollar bill and a two dollar bill and remarked:

-"I've got just seven dollars to my name."

-

-He turned to me and said:

-

-"But you are happy. You don't let anything bother you."

-

-Henny did not drink as a rule; that was one reason he was such a good

-box-man, but on this occasion we had a couple of drinks, and I sang

-"I love but one." Then Henny ordered champagne, grew confidential, and

-told me his troubles.

-

-"Kid" he said, "I've got thirty five hundred dollars on me. I have

-been giving my wife a good deal of money, but don't know what she does

-with it. In sixty days I have given her three thousand dollars, and she

-complains about poverty all the time."

-

-Henny had a nice flat of seven or eight rooms; he owed nothing and

-had no children. He said he was unable to find any bank books in his

-wife's trunk, and was confident she was not laying the money by. She

-did not give it to her people, but even borrowed money from her father,

-a well-to-do builder.

-

-Two days after the night of the excursion, one of Henny's pals in the

-silk robbery, went into a gin mill, treated everybody, and threw a

-one thousand dollar bill down on the bar. Grafters, probably more than

-others, like this kind of display. It is the only way to rise in their

-society. A Central Office detective saw this little exhibition, got

-into the grafters confidence and weeded him out a bit. A night or two

-afterwards Henny was in bed at home, when the servant girl, who was in

-love with Henny, and detested his wife because she treated her husband

-so badly (she used to say to me, "She ain't worthy to tie his shoe

-string") came to the door and told Henny and his wife that a couple of

-men and a policeman in uniform were inquiring for him. Henny replied

-sleepily that they were friends of his who had come to buy some stones;

-but the girl was alarmed. She knew that Henny was crooked and feared

-that those below meant him no good. She took the canvas turn-about

-containing burglar's tools which hung on the wall near the bed, and

-pinned it around her waist, under her skirt, and then admitted the

-three visitors.

-

-The sergeant said to Henny, who had dressed himself, "You are under

-suspicion for the silk robbery." Yet there was, as is not uncommon, a

-"but," which is as a rule a monetary consideration. Henny knew that

-the crime was old, and, as he thought his "fence" was safe, he did

-not see how there could be a come-back. So he did not take the hint to

-shell out, and worked the innocent con. But those whose business it is

-to watch the world of prey, put two and two together, and were "next"

-that Henny and his mob had pulled off the trick. So they searched the

-house, expecting to find, if not _eclat_, at least burglars tools;

-for they knew that Henny was at the top of the ladder, and that he

-must have something to work with. While the sergeant was going through

-Henny's trunk, one of the flymen fooled with the pretty servant girl.

-She jumped, and a pair of turners fell on the floor. It did not take

-the flyman long to find the whole kit of tools. Henny was arrested,

-convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for five years. While in prison

-he became insane, his delusion being that he was a funny man on the

-Detroit Free Press, which he thought was owned by his wife.

-

-I never discovered what Henny's wife did with the money she had from

-him. When I last heard of her she was married to another successful

-grafter, whom she was making unhappy also. In a grafter's life a woman

-often takes the part of the avenger of society. She turns against the

-grafters their own weapons, and uses them with more skill, for no man

-can graft like a woman.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-I had now been grafting for three years in the full tide of success.

-Since the age of eighteen I had had no serious fall. I had made

-much money and lived high. I had risen in the world of graft, and

-I had become, not only a skillful pickpocket, but a good swindler

-and drag-worker and had done some good things as a burglar. I was

-approaching my twenty-first year, when, as you will see, I was to go to

-the penitentiary for the first time. This is a good place, perhaps, to

-describe my general manner of life, my daily menu, so to speak, during

-these three fat years: for after my first term in state's prison things

-went from bad to worse.

-

-I lived in a furnished room; or at a hotel. If there was nothing doing

-in the line of graft, I'd lie abed late, and read the newspapers to see

-if any large gathering, where we might make some touches, was on hand.

-One of my girls, of whom there was a long succession, was usually with

-me. We would breakfast, if the day was an idle one, about one or two

-o'clock in the afternoon. Then we'd send to the restaurant and have

-a beefsteak or chops in our rooms, and perhaps a whiskey sour. If it

-was another grafter's girl I'd won I'd be greatly pleased, for that

-kind of thing is a game with us. In the afternoon I'd take in some

-variety show; or buy the "Tommy" a present; if it was summer we might

-go to a picnic, or to the Island. If I was alone, I would meet a pal,

-play billiards or pool, bet on the races, baseball and prize fights,

-jump out to the Polo grounds, or go to Patsy's house and have a game

-of poker. Patsy's wife was a handsome grafter; and Patsy was jealous.

-Every gun is sensitive about his wife, for he doesn't know how long he

-will have her with him. In the evening I would go to a dance-hall; or

-to Coney Island if the weather was good.

-

-If it was a busy day, that is, if there was a touch to be pulled off,

-we would get up in the morning or the afternoon, according to the best

-time for the particular job in hand. In the afternoon we would often

-graft at the Polo grounds, where we had a copper "right." We did not

-have the same privileges at the race track, because it was protected by

-the Pinkerton men. We'd console ourselves at the Polo grounds, which

-we used to tear wide open, and where I never got even a hint of a

-fall; the coppers got their percentage of the touches. In the morning

-we would meet at one of the grafters homes or rooms and talk over our

-scheme for the day or night. If we were going outside the city we would

-have to rise very early. Sometimes we were sorry we had lost our sleep;

-particularly the time we tried to tear open the town of Sing Sing,

-near which the famous prison is. We found nothing to steal there but

-pig iron, and there were only two pretty girls in the whole village.

-We used to jump out to neighboring towns, not always to graft, but

-sometimes to see our girls, for like sailors, the well-dressed, dapper

-pickpocket has a girl in every port. If we made a good touch in the

-afternoon we'd go on a spree in the evening with Sheenie Annie, Blonde

-Mamie, Big Lena or some other good-natured lasses, or we'd go over and

-inspect the Jersey maidens. After a good touch we would put some of the

-dough away for fall-money, or for our sick relatives or guns in stir

-or in the hospital. We'd all chip in to help out a woman grafter in

-trouble, and pool a piece of jewelry sometimes, for the purpose. Then,

-our duty done, we would put on our best front, and visit our friends

-and sporting places. Among others we used to jump over to a hotel kept

-by an ex-gun, one of the best of the spud men (green goods men), who is

-now on the level and a bit of a politician. He owns six fast horses, is

-married and has two beautiful children.

-

-A few months before I was sent to the penitentiary for the first time,

-I had my only true love affair. I have liked many girls, but sentiment

-of the kind I felt for Ethel has played little part in my life. For

-Ethel I felt the real thing, and she for me. She was a good, sensible

-girl, and came from a respectable family. She lived with her father,

-who was a drummer, and took care of the house for him. She was a

-good deal of a musician, and, like most other girls, she was fond of

-dancing. I first met her at Beethoven Hall, and was introduced to her

-by a man, an honest laborer, who was in love with her. I liked her at

-first sight, but did not love her until I had talked with her. In two

-weeks we were lovers, and went everywhere together. The workingman

-who loved her too was jealous and began to knock me. He told her I

-was a grafter, but she would not believe him; and said nothing to me

-about it, but it came to my ears through an intimate girl pal of hers.

-Shortly after that I fell for a breech-kick (was arrested for picking

-a man's trouser's pocket), but I had a good lawyer and the copper

-was one of those who are open to reason. I lay a month in the Tombs,

-however, before I got off, and Ethel learned all about it. She came to

-the Tombs to see me, but, instead of reproaches, I got sympathy from

-her. After I was released I gave her some of my confidence. She asked

-me if I wouldn't be honest, and go to work; and said she would ask

-her father to get me a job. Her father came to me and painted what my

-life would be, if I kept on. I thought the matter over sincerely. I

-had formed expensive habits which I could not keep up on any salary I

-could honestly make. Away down in my mind (I suppose you would call it

-soul) I knew I was not ready for reform. I talked with Ethel, and told

-her that I loved her, but that I could not quit my life. She said she

-would marry me anyway. But I thought the world of her, and told her

-that though I had blasted my own life I would not blast hers. I would

-not marry her, she was so good and affectionate. When we parted, I said

-to myself: Man proposes, habit disposes.

-

-It was certainly lucky that I did not marry that sweet girl, for a

-month after I had split with her, I fell for a long term in state's

-prison. It was for a breech-kick, which I could not square. I had gone

-out of my hotel one morning for a bottle of whiskey when I met two

-grafters, Johnny and Alec, who were towing a "sucker" along with them.

-They gave me the tip that it was worth trying. Indeed, I gathered that

-the man must have his bank with him, and I nicked him in a car for his

-breech-leather. A spectator saw the deed and tipped off a copper. I was

-nailed, but had nothing on me, for I had passed the leather to Alec.

-I was not in the mood for the police station, and with Alec's help I

-"licked" the copper, who pulled his gun and fired at us as we ran up a

-side street. Alec blazed back, and escaped, but I was arrested. I could

-not square it, as I have said, for I had been wanted at Headquarters

-for some time past, because I did not like to give up, and was no

-stool-pigeon. I notified Mr. R----, who was told to keep his hands off.

-I had been tearing the cars open for so long that the company wanted

-to "do" me. They got brassy-mouthed and yelled murder. I saw I had

-a corporation against me and hadn't a living chance to beat it. So I

-pleaded guilty and received five years and seven months at Sing Sing.

-

-A boy of twenty-one, I was hand-cuffed with two old jail-birds, and as

-we rode up on a Fourth Avenue car to the Grand Central Station, I felt

-deeply humiliated for the first time in my life. When the passengers

-stared at me I hung my head with shame.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VII.

-

-_In Stir._

-

-

-I hung my head with shame, but not because of contrition. I was ashamed

-of being caught and made a spectacle of. All the way to Sing Sing

-station people stared at us as if we were wild animals. We walked from

-the town to the prison, in close company with two deputy sheriffs. I

-observed considerably, knowing that I should not see the outside world

-again for a number of years. I looked with envy at the people we passed

-who seemed honest, and thought of home and the chances I had thrown

-away.

-

-When I reached the stir I was put through the usual ceremonies. My

-pedigree was taken, but I told the examiners nothing. I gave them a

-false name and a false pedigree. Then a bath was given to my clothes

-and I was taken to the tailor shop. When my hair had been cropped close

-and a suit of stripes given me I felt what it was to be the convicted

-criminal. It was not a pleasant feeling, I can tell you, and when I was

-taken to my cell my heart sank indeed. A narrow room, seven feet, four

-inches long; dark, damp, with moisture on the walls, and an old iron

-cot with plenty of company, as I afterwards discovered--this was to be

-my home for years. And I as full of life as a young goat! How could I

-bear it?

-

-After I had been examined by the doctor and questioned about my

-religion by the chaplain, I was left to reflect in my cell. I was

-interrupted in my melancholy train of thought by two convicts who

-were at work in the hall just outside my cell. I had known them on

-the outside, and they, taking good care not to be seen by the screws

-(keepers) tipped me off through my prison door to everything in stir

-which was necessary for a first timer to know. They told me to keep

-my mouth shut, to take everything from the screws in silence, and if

-assigned to a shop to do my work. They told me who the stool-pigeons

-were, that is to say, the convicts who, in order to curry favor and

-have an easy time, put the keepers next to what other convicts are

-doing, and so help to prevent escapes. They tipped me off to those

-keepers who were hard to get along with, and put me next to the

-Underground Tunnel, and who were running it. Sing Sing, they said, is

-the best of the three New York penitentiaries: for the grub is better

-than at the others, there are more privileges, and, above all, it is

-nearer New York, so that your friends can visit you more frequently.

-They gave me a good deal of prison gossip, and told me who among my

-friends were there, and what their condition of health was. So and so

-had died or gone home, they said, such and such had been drafted to

-Auburn or Clinton prisons. If I wanted to communicate with my friends

-in stir all that was necessary for me to do was to write a few stiffs

-(letters) and they would be sent by the Underground Tunnel. They asked

-me about their old pals, hang-outs and girls in New York, and I, in

-turn gave them a lot of New York gossip. Like all convicts they shed a

-part of the things they had received from home, gave me canned goods,

-tobacco and a pipe. It did not take me long to get on to the workings

-of the prison.

-

-I was particularly interested in the Underground Tunnel, for I saw

-at once its great usefulness. This is the secret system by which

-contraband articles, such as whiskey, opium and morphine are brought

-into the prison. When a rogue is persuasive with the coin of the realm

-he can always find a keeper or two to bring him what he considers

-the necessaries of life, among which are opium, whiskey and tobacco.

-If you have a screw "right," you can be well supplied with these

-little things. To get him "right" it is often necessary to give him a

-share--about twenty per cent--of the money sent you from home. This

-system is worked in all the State prisons in New York, and during

-my first term, or any of the other terms for that matter, I had no

-difficulty in supplying my growing need for opium.

-

-I do not want people to get the idea that it is always necessary to

-bribe a keeper, in order to obtain these little luxuries; for many a

-screw has brought me whiskey and hop, and contraband letters from other

-inmates, without demanding a penny. A keeper is a human being like the

-rest of us, and he is sometimes moved by considerations other than of

-pelf. No matter how good and conscientious he may be, a keeper is but

-a man after all, and, having very little to do, especially if he is in

-charge of an idle gang of "cons" he is apt to enter into conversation

-with them, particularly if they are better educated or more interesting

-than he, which often is the case. They tell him about their escapades

-on the outside and often get his sympathy and friendship. It is

-only natural that those keepers who are good fellows should do small

-favors for certain convicts. They may begin by bringing the convicts

-newspapers to read, but they will end by providing them with almost

-everything. Some of them, however, are so lacking in human sympathy,

-that their kindness is aroused only by a glimpse of the coin of the

-realm; or by the prospect of getting some convict to do their dirty

-work for them, that is, to spy upon their fellow prisoners.

-

-At Auburn penitentiary, whither I was drafted after nine months at

-Sing Sing, a few of the convicts peddled opium and whiskey, with, of

-course, the connivance of the keepers. There are always some persons in

-prison as well as out who want to make capital out of the misfortunes

-of others. These peddlars, were despised by the rest of the convicts,

-for they were invariably stool-pigeons; and young convicts who never

-before knew the power of the drug became opium fiends, all on account

-of the business propensities of these detestable rats (stool-pigeons)

-who, because they had money and kept the screws next to those cons who

-tried to escape, lived in Easy Street while in stir.

-

-While on this subject, I will tell about a certain famous "fence"

-(at one of these prisons) although he did not operate until my second

-term. At that time things were booming on the outside. The graft was so

-good that certain convicts in my clique were getting good dough sent

-them by their pals who were at liberty; and many luxuries came in,

-therefore, by the Underground Tunnel. Now those keepers who are next

-to the Underground develop, through their association with convicts, a

-propensity to graft, but usually have not the nerve to hustle for the

-goods. So they are willing to accept stolen property, not having the

-courage and skill to steal, from the inhabitants of the under world.

-A convict, whom I knew when at liberty, named Mike, thought he saw

-an opportunity to do a good "fencing" business in prison. He gave a

-"red-front" (gold watch and chain), which he had stolen in his good

-days, to a certain keeper who was running the Underground, and thus

-got him "right." Then Mike made arrangements with two grafters on the

-outside to supply the keeper and his friends with what they wanted. If

-the keeper said his girl wanted a stone, Mike would send word to one

-of the thieves on the outside to supply a good diamond as quickly as

-possible. The keeper would give Mike a fair price for these valuable

-articles and then sell the stones or watches, or make his girl a

-present.

-

-Other keepers followed suit, for they couldn't see how there was any

-"come-back" possible, and soon Mike was doing a thriving business. It

-lasted for five or six months, when Mike stopped it as a regular graft

-because of the growing cupidity of the keepers. One of them ordered

-a woman's watch and chain and a pair of diamond ear-rings through the

-Underground Tunnel. Mike obtained the required articles, but the keeper

-paid only half of what he promised, and Mike thereupon shut up shop.

-Occasionally, however, he continued to sell goods stolen by his pals

-who were at liberty, but only for cash on the spot, and refused all

-credit. The keepers gradually got a great feeling of respect for this

-convict "fence" who was so clever and who stood up for his rights; and

-the business went on smoothly again, for a while.

-

-But finally it was broken up for good. A grafter on the outside, Tommy,

-sent through the Underground a pawn ticket for some valuable goods,

-among them a sealskin sacque worth three hundred dollars, which he

-had stolen and hocked in Philadelphia. Mike sold the pawn-ticket to

-a screw. Soon after that Tommy, or one of his pals, got a fall and

-"squealed". The police got "next" to where the goods were, and when

-the keeper sent the ticket and the money to redeem the articles they

-allowed them to be forwarded to the prison, but arrested the keeper for

-receiving stolen goods. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years,

-but got off through influence. That, however, finished the "fence" at

-the institution.

-

-To resume the thread of my narrative, the day after I reached Sing Sing

-I was put through the routine that lasted all the time I was there. At

-six-thirty in the morning we were awakened by the bell and marched in

-lock-step (from which many of us were to acquire a peculiar gait that

-was to mark us through life and help prevent us from leading decent

-lives) to the bucket-shop, where we washed, marched to the mess for

-breakfast at seven-thirty, then to the various shops to work until

-eleven-thirty, when at the whistle we would form again into squads

-and march, again in the lock-step, fraternally but silently, to our

-solemn dinner, which we ate in dead silence. Silence, indeed, except

-on the sly, was the general rule of our day, until work was over, when

-we could whisper together until five o'clock, the hour to return to

-our cells, into which we would carry bread for supper, coffee being

-conveyed to us through a spout in the wall. The food at Sing Sing was

-pretty good. Breakfast consisted of hash or molasses, black coffee and

-bread; and at dinner we had pork and beans, potatoes, hot coffee and

-bread. Pork and beans gave place to four eggs on Friday, and sometimes

-stews were given us. It was true what I'd heard, that Sing Sing has the

-best food of any institution I have known. After five o'clock I would

-read in my cell by an oil lamp (since my time electricity has been put

-in the prison) until nine o'clock, when I had to put out my light and

-go to bed.

-

-I had a great deal more time for reading and meditation in my lonely

-cell than one would think by the above routine. I was put to work in

-the shop making chairs. It was the first time I had ever worked in my

-life, and I took my time about it. I felt no strong desire to work for

-the State. I was expected to cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually

-caned about two. I did not believe in work. I felt at that time that

-New York State owed me a living. I was getting a living all right, but

-I was ungrateful. I did not thank them a wee bit. I must have been a

-bad example to other "cons," for they began to get as tired as myself.

-At any rate, I lost my job, and was sent back to my cell, where I

-stayed most of the time while at Sing Sing.

-

-I worked, indeed, very little at any time during my three bits in the

-penitentiary. The prison at Sing Sing, during the nine months I was

-there on my first term, was very crowded, and there was not enough work

-to go round; and I was absolutely idle most of the time. When I had

-been drafted to Auburn I found more work to do, but still very little,

-for it was just then that the legislature had shut down on contract

-labor in the prisons. The outside merchants squealed because they could

-not compete with unpaid convict labor; and so the prison authorities

-had to shut down many of their shops, running only enough to supply

-the inside demand, which was slight. For eighteen months at Auburn I

-did not work a day. I think it was a very bad thing for the health of

-convicts when this law was passed; for certainly idleness is a very bad

-thing for most of them; and to be shut up nearly all the time in damp,

-unhealthy cells like those at Sing Sing, is a terrible strain on the

-human system.

-

-Personally, however, I liked to be in my cell, especially during my

-first year of solitary confinement, before my health began to give

-way; for I had my books from the good prison libraries, my pipe or

-cigarettes, and last, but not least, I had a certain portion of opium

-that I used every day.

-

-For me, prison life had one great advantage. It broke down my health

-and confirmed me for many years in the opium habit, as we shall see;

-but I educated myself while in stir. Previous to going to Sing Sing my

-education had been almost entirely in the line of graft; but in stir,

-I read the English classics and became familiar with philosophy and the

-science of medicine and learned something about chemistry.

-

-One of my favorite authors was Voltaire, whom I read, of course, in a

-translation. His "Dictionary" was contraband in prison but I read it

-with profit. Voltaire was certainly one of the shrewdest of men, and

-as up to snuff as any cynical grafter I know, and yet he had a great

-love for humanity. He was the philosopher of humanity. Goethe said

-that Luther threw the world back two hundred years, but I deny it; for

-Luther, like Voltaire, pointed out the ignorance and wickedness of the

-priests of their day. These churchmen did not understand the teachings

-of Christ. Was Voltaire delusional? The priests must have thought so,

-but they were no judges, for they were far worse and less humane than

-the French revolutionists. The latter killed outright, but the priests

-tortured in the name of the Most Humane. I never approved of the

-methods of the French revolutionists, but certainly they were gentle in

-comparison with the priests of the Spanish Inquisition.

-

-I think that, in variety of subjects, Voltaire has no equal among

-writers. Shrewd as he was, he had a soul, and his moral courage was

-grand. His defense of young Barry, who was arrested for using language

-against the church, showed his kindness and breadth of mind. On his

-arrival in Paris, when he was only a stripling, he denounced the

-cowardly, fawning sycophants who surrounded Louis XIV,[B] and wrote

-a sarcastic poem on His Nibs, and was confined in the Bastille for

-two years. His courage, his wit, his sarcasms, his hatred of his

-persecutors, and his love and kindness, stamp him as one of the great,

-healthy intellects of mankind. What a clever book is _Candide_! What

-satire! What wit! As I lay on my cot how often I laughed at his caustic

-comments on humanity! And how he could hate! I never yet met a man of

-any account who was not a good hater. I own that Voltaire was ungallant

-toward the fair sex. But that was his only fault.

-

-I enjoyed Victor Hugo because he could create a great character, and

-was capable of writing a story with a plot. I rank him as a master

-of fiction, although I preferred his experience as a traveller, to

-his novels, which are not real enough. Ernest Renan was a bracing

-and clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed in reading his _Life

-of Jesus_. I expected to get a true outline of Christ's time and

-a character sketch of the man himself, but I didn't. I went to the

-fountain for a glass of good wine, but got only red lemonade.

-

-I liked Dumas, and revelled in the series beginning with _The Three

-Musketeers_. I could not read Dumas now, however. I also enjoyed

-Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey, for they are very sensational; but that was

-during my first term in stir. I could not turn a page of their books

-now, for they would seem idiotic to me. Balzac is a bird of another

-feather. In my opinion he was one of the best dissectors of human

-nature that the world ever produced. Not even Shakespeare was his

-equal. His depth in searching for motives, his discernment in detecting

-a hypocrite, his skill in showing up women, with their follies, their

-loves, their little hypocrisies, their endearments, their malice and

-their envy is unrivalled. It is right that Balzac should show woman

-with all her faults and follies and virtues, for if she did not possess

-all these characteristics, how could man adore her?

-

-In his line I think Thackeray is as great as Balzac. When I had read

-_Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, _The Newcomes_ and _Barry Lyndon_, I was

-so much interested that I read anything of his I could lay my hands

-on, over and over again. With a novel of Thackeray's in my hand I would

-become oblivious to my surroundings, and long to know something of this

-writers personality. I think I formed his mental make-up correctly,

-for I imagined him to be gentle and humane. Any man with ability and

-brains equal to his could not be otherwise. What a character is Becky

-Sharp! In her way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie Annie. She did

-not love Rawdon as a good wife should. If she had she would not be the

-interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful to Rawdon for three

-reasons; first, he married her; second, he gave her a glimpse into a

-station in life her soul longed for; third, he came from a good family,

-and was a soldier and tall, and it is well-known that little women

-like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky. She often grinned at his lack

-of brains. She grinned at everything, and when we learn that Becky got

-religion at the end of the book, instead of saying, God bless her, we

-only grin, too.

-

-_Pendennis_ is a healthy book. I always sympathize with Pen and Laura

-in their struggles to get on, and when the baby was born I was willing

-to become Godpapa, just for its Mamma's sake. _The Newcomes_ I call

-Thackeray's masterpiece. It is truer to life than any other book I

-ever read. Take the scene where young Clive throws the glass of wine

-in his cousin's face. The honest horror of the father, his indignation

-when old Captain Costigan uses bad language, his exit when he hears a

-song in the Music Hall--all this is true realism. But the scene that

-makes this book Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old Colonel

-is dying. The touching devotion of Madam and Ethel, the love for old

-Tom, his last word "_adsum_" the quiet weeping of his nurse, and the

-last duties to the dead; the beautiful tenderness of the two women, of

-a kind that makes the fair sex respected by all men--I can never forget

-this scene till my dying day.

-

-When I was sick in stir a better tonic than the quack could prescribe

-was Thackeray's _Book of Snobs_. Many is the night I could not sleep

-until I had read this book with a relish. It acted on me like a bottle

-of good wine, leaving me peaceful after a time of pleasure. In this

-book are shown up the little egotisms of the goslings and the foibles

-of the sucklings in a masterly manner.

-

-I read every word Dickens ever wrote; and I often ruminated in my

-mind as to which of his works is the masterpiece. _Our Mutual Friend_

-is weak in the love scenes, but the book is made readable by two

-characters, Noddy Boffin and Silas Wegg. Where Wegg reads, as he

-thinks, _The Last of the Russians_, when the book was _The Decline and

-Fall Of the Roman Empire_, there is the quintessence of humor. Silas's

-wooden leg and his occupation of selling eggs would make anybody smile,

-even a dip who had fallen and had no money to square it.

-

-The greatest character in _David Copperfield_ is Uriah Heep. The prison

-scene where this humble hypocrite showed he knew his Bible thoroughly,

-and knew the advantage of having some holy quotations pat, reminded

-me often of men I have known in Auburn and Sing Sing prisons. Some

-hypocritical jail-bird would dream that he could succeed on the outside

-by becoming a Sunday School superintendent; and four of the meanest

-thieves I ever knew got their start in that way. Who has not enjoyed

-Micawber, with his frothy personality and straitened circumstances,

-and the unctuous Barkis.--Poor Emily! Who could blame her? What woman

-could help liking Steerforth? It is strange and true that good women

-are won by men they know to be rascals. Is it the contrast between Good

-and Evil, or is it because the ne'er-do-well has a stronger character

-and more magnetic force? Agnes was one of the best women in the world.

-Contrast her with David's first wife. Agnes was like a fine violin,

-while Dora was like a wailing hurdy-gurdy.

-

-_Oliver Twist_ is Dickens's strongest book. He goes deeper into human

-nature there than in any other of his writings. Fagin, the Jew, is a

-very strong character, but overdrawn. The picture of Fagin's dens and

-of the people in them, is true to life. I have seen similar gatherings

-many a time. The ramblings of the Artful Dodger are drawn from the real

-thing, but I never met in real life such a brutal character as Bill

-Sykes; and I have met some tough grafters, as the course of this book

-will show. Nancy Sykes, however, is true to life. In her degradation

-she was still a woman. I contend that a woman is never so low but a

-man was the cause. One passage in the book has often touched me, as it

-showed that Nancy had not lost her sex. When she and Bill were passing

-the prison, she turned towards it and said: "Bill, they were fine

-fellows that died to-day." "Shut your mouth," said Bill. Now I don't

-think there is a thief in the United States who would have answered

-Nancy's remark that way. Strong arm workers who would beat your brains

-out for a few dollars would be moved by that touch of pity in Nancy's

-voice.

-

-But Oliver himself is the great character, and his story reminds me

-of my own. The touching incident in the work-house where his poor

-stomach is not full, and he asks for a second platter of mush to the

-horror of the teachers, is not overdrawn. When I was in one of our

-penal institutions, at a later time of my life, I was ill, and asked

-for extra food; but my request was looked upon as the audacity of a

-hardened villain. I had many such opportunities to think of Oliver.

-

-I always liked those authors who wrote as near life as decency would

-permit. Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_ has often amused me, and _Tom

-Jones_, _Roderick Random_ and _Peregrine Pickle_ I have read over and

-over again. I don't see why good people object to such books. Some

-people are forever looking after the affairs of others and neglecting

-their own; especially a man whom I will call Common Socks who has put

-himself up as a mentor for over seventy millions of people. Let me tell

-the busy ladies who are afraid that such books will harm the morals of

-young persons that the more they are cried down the more they will be

-read. For that matter they ought to be read. Why object to the girl

-of sixteen reading such books and not to the woman of thirty-five?

-I think their mental strength is about equal. Both are romantic and

-the woman of thirty-five will fall in love as quickly as the girl of

-sixteen. I think a woman is always a girl; at least, it has been so in

-my experience. One day I was grafting in Philadelphia. It was raining,

-and a woman was walking along on Walnut Street. She slipped on the wet

-sidewalk and fell. I ran to her assistance, and saw that her figure was

-slim and girlish and that she had a round, rosy face, but that her hair

-was pure white. When I asked her if she was hurt, she said "yes," but

-when I said "Let me be your grandson and support you on my way," I put

-my foot into it, for, horrors! the look she gave me, as she said in an

-icy voice, "I was never married!" I wondered what manner of men there

-were in Philadelphia, and, to square myself, I said: "Never married!

-and with a pair of such pretty ankles!" Then she gave me a look,

-thanked me, and walked away as jauntily as she ever did in her life,

-though she must have been suffering agonies from her sprained ankle.

-Since that time I have been convinced that they of the gentle sex are

-girls from fifteen to eighty.

-

-I read much of Lever, too, while I was in stir. His pictures of Ireland

-and of the noisy strife in Parliament, the description of Dublin with

-its spendthrifts and excited populace, the gamblers and the ruined but

-gay young gentlemen, all mixed up with the grandeur of Ireland, are the

-work of a master. I could only compare this epoch of worn-out regalia

-with a St. Patrick's day parade twenty years ago in the fourth ward of

-Manhattan.

-

-Other books I read in stir were Gibbon's _Roman Empire_, Carlyle's

-_Frederick the Great_, and many of the English poets. I read

-Wordsworth, Gray and Goldsmith, but I liked Tom Moore and Robert Burns

-better. The greatest of all the poets, however, in my estimation, is

-Byron. His loves were many, his adventures daring, and his language was

-as broad and independent as his mind.

-

-

-FOOTNOTE:

-

-     [B] _Sic._ (Editor's Note.)

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VIII.

-

-In Stir (_continued_).

-

-

-Sing Sing was overflowing with convicts, and after I had been there

-nine months, I and a number of others were transferred to Auburn

-penitentiary. There I found the cells drier, and better than at

-Sing Sing, but the food not so good. The warden was not liked by the

-majority of the men, but I admired him for two things. He believed in

-giving us good bread; and he did not give a continental what came into

-the prison, whether it was a needle or a cannister, as long as it was

-kept in the cell and not used.

-

-It was in Auburn stir that opium grew to be a habit with me. I used to

-give the keepers who were running the Underground one dollar of every

-five that were sent me, and they appreciated my kindness and kept me

-supplied with the drug. What part the hop began to play in my life may

-be seen from the routine of my days at Auburn; particularly at those

-periods when there was no work to be done. After rising in the morning

-I would clean out my cell, and turn up my bed and blankets; then I went

-to breakfast, then if there was no work to do, back to my cell, where

-I ate a small portion of opium, and sometimes read the daily paper,

-which was also contraband. It is only the stool-pigeons, those convicts

-who have money, or the cleverest among the rascals, who get many of

-these privileges. After I had had my opium and the newspaper I would

-exercise with dumb-bells and think or read in my cell. Then I would

-have a plunge bath and a nap, which would take me up to dinner time.

-After dinner I would read in my cell again until three o'clock, when I

-would go to the bucket-shop or exercise for half an hour in the yard,

-in lock step, with the others; then back to the cell, taking with me

-bread and a cup of coffee made out of burnt bread crust, for my supper.

-In the evening I would read and smoke until my light went out, and

-would wind up the day with a large piece of opium, which grew larger,

-as time passed.

-

-For a long time I was fairly content with what was practically solitary

-confinement. I had my books, my pipe, cigarettes and my regular supply

-of hop. Whether I worked in the daytime or not I would usually spend my

-evenings in the same way. I would lie on my cot and sometimes a thought

-like the following would come to me: "Yes, I have stripes on. When I

-am released perhaps some one will pity me, particularly the women. They

-may despise and avoid me, most likely they will. But I don't care. All

-I want is to get their wad of money. In the meantime I have my opium

-and my thoughts and am just as happy as the millionaire, unless he has

-a narcotic."

-

-After the drug had begun to work I would frequently fall into a deep

-sleep and not wake until one or two o'clock the following morning; then

-I would turn on my light, peer through my cell door, and try to see

-through the little window out in the corridor. A peculiar nervousness

-often came over me at this hour, particularly if the weather had been

-rainy, and my imagination would run on a ship-wreck very often, or on

-some other painful subject; and I might tell the story to myself in

-jingles, or jot it down on a piece of paper. Then my whole being would

-be quiet. A gentle, soothing melancholy would steal upon me. Often

-my imagination was so powerfully affected that I could really see

-the events of my dream. I could see the ship tossing about on waves

-mountain high. Then and only then I was positive I had a soul. I was

-in such a state of peace that I could not bear that any human being

-should suffer. At first the scenes before my imagination would be most

-harrowing, with great loss of life, but when one of the gentle sex

-appeared vividly before me a shudder passed over me, and I would seek

-consolation in jingles such as the following:

-

-     A gallant bark set sail one day

-     For a port beyond the sea,

-     The Captain had taken his fair young bride

-     To bear him company.

-     This little brown lass

-     Was of Puritan stock.

-     Her eyes were the brightest e'er seen.

-     They never came back;

-     The ship it was wrecked

-     In a storm in the old Gulf Stream.

-

-     Two years had passed, then a letter came

-     To a maid in a New England town.

-     It began Darling Kate, it ended Your Jack,

-     I am alive in a foreign land.

-     The Captain, his gentle young wife and your own

-     Were saved by that hand unseen,

-     But the rest----they went down

-     In that terrible storm

-     That night in the old Gulf Stream.

-

-But these pleasures would soon leave me, and I would grow very

-restless. My only resource was another piece of opium. Sometimes I

-awoke much excited, paced my cell rapidly and felt like tearing down

-the door. Sometimes a book would quiet me. The best soother I had

-was the most beautiful poem in the English language--Walt Whitman's

-_Ode To Death_. When I read this poem, I often imagined I was at the

-North Pole, and that strange shapes in the clouds beckoned me to come

-to them. I used to forget myself, and read aloud and was entirely

-oblivious to my surroundings, until I was brought to myself by the

-night guard shouting, "What in ---- is the matter with you?"

-

-After getting excited in this way I usually needed another dose of

-hop. I have noticed that the difference between opium and alcohol is

-that the latter is a disintegrator and tears apart, while the opium

-is a subtle underminer. Opium, for a long time anyway, stimulates the

-intelligence; while the reverse is true of alcohol. It was under the

-influence of opium that I began to read philosophy. I read Hume and

-Locke, and partly understood them, I think, though I did not know

-that Locke is pronounced in only one syllable till many years after

-I had read and re-read parts of _The Human Understanding_. It was not

-only the opium, but my experience on the outside, that made me eager

-for philosophy and the deeper poetry; for a grafters wits, if they

-don't get away from him altogether, become keen through his business,

-since he lives by them. It was philosophy, and the spectacle of men

-going suddenly and violently insane all about me, that led me first

-to think of self-control, though I did not muster enough to throw

-off the opium habit till many years afterwards. I began to think of

-will-power about this time, and I knew it was an acquired virtue, like

-truth and honesty. I think, from a moral standpoint, that I lived as

-good a life in prison as anybody on the outside, for at least I tried

-to overcome myself. It was life or death, or, a thousand times worse,

-an insane asylum. Opium led me to books besides those on philosophy,

-which eventually helped to cure me. At this time I was reading Balzac,

-Shakespeare, Huxley, Tyndall and Lavater. One poem of Shakespeare's

-touched me more than any other poem I ever read--_The Rape of Lucrece_.

-It was reading such as this that gave me a broader view, and I began to

-think that this was a terrible life I was leading. But, as the reader

-will see, I did not know what hell was until several years later.

-

-I had been in stir about four years on my first bit when I began to

-appreciate how terrible a master I had come under. Of course, to a

-certain extent, the habit had been forced upon me. After a man has

-had for several years bad food, little air and exercise, no natural

-companionship, particularly with the other sex, from whom he is

-entirely cut off, he really needs a stimulant. Many men fall into the

-vilest of habits. I found, for my part, that only opium would calm

-me. It takes only a certain length of time for almost all convicts to

-become broken in health, addicted to one form or another of stimulant

-which in the long run pulls them down completely. Diseases of various

-kinds, insanity and death, are the result. But before the criminal

-is thus released, he grows desperate in the extreme; particularly if

-he resorts to opium, for that drug makes one reckless. The hop fiend

-never takes consequences into consideration. Under its influence I

-became very irritable and unruly, and would take no back talk from the

-keepers. They and the stool-pigeons began to be afraid of me. I would

-not let them pound me in any way, and I often got into a violent fight.

-

-As long as I had my regular allowance of opium, which in the fourth

-year of my term was about twenty grains a day, I was peaceable enough.

-It was when I began to lessen the amount, with the desire to give

-it up, that I became so irritable and violent. The strain of reform,

-even in this early and unsuccessful attempt, was terrible. At times I

-used to go without the full amount for several days; but then I would

-relapse and go on a debauch until I was almost unconscious. After

-recovery, I would make another resolution, only to fall again.

-

-But my life in stir was not all that of the solitary; there were means,

-even when I was in the shop, of communicating with my fellow convicts;

-generally by notes, as talking was forbidden. Notes, too, were

-contraband, but we found means of sending them through cons working

-in the hall. Sometimes good-natured or avaricious keepers would carry

-them; but as a rule a convict did not like to trust a note to a keeper.

-He was afraid that the screw would read it, whereas it was a point of

-honor with a convict to deliver the note unread. The contents of these

-notes were usually news about our girls or pals, which we had received

-through visitors--rare, indeed!--or letters. By the same means there

-was much betting done on the races, baseball games and prize fights. We

-could send money, too, or opium, in the same way, to a friend in need;

-and we never required an I. O. U.

-

-We were allowed to receive visitors from the outside once every two

-months; also a box could be delivered to us at the same intervals

-of time. My friends, especially my mother and Ethel, sent me things

-regularly, and came to see me. They used to send me soap, tooth brushes

-and many other delicacies, for even a tooth brush is a delicacy in

-prison. Ethel stuck to me for three years and visited me regularly

-during that period. Then her visits ceased, and I heard that she had

-married. I couldn't blame her, but I felt bad about it all the same.

-

-But my mother came as often as the two months rolled by; not only

-during this first term, but during all my bits in stir. Certainly

-she has stuck to me through thick and thin. She has been my only true

-friend. If she had fallen away from me, I couldn't have blamed her;

-she would only have gone with the rest of the world; but she didn't.

-She was good not only to me, but to my friends, and she had pity for

-everybody in stir. I remember how she used to talk about the rut worn

-in the stone pavement at Sing Sing, where the men paced up and down.

-"Talk about the Bridge of Sighs!" she used to say.

-

-When a man is in stir he begins to see what an ungrateful brute he

-has been; and he begins to separate true friends from false ones. He

-thinks of the mother he neglected for supposed friends of both sexes,

-who are perhaps friendly at the beginning of his sentence, but soon

-desert him if he have a number of years to serve. Long after all others

-have ceased coming to see him, his old mother, bowed and sad, will

-trudge up the walk from the station to visit her thoughtless and erring

-son! She carries on her arm a heavy basket of delicacies for the son

-who is detested by all good citizens, and in her heart there is still

-hope for her boy. She has waited many years and she will continue to

-wait. What memories come to the mother as she sees the mansion of woes

-on the Hudson looming up before her! Her son is again a baby in her

-imagination; or a young fellow, before he began to tread the rocky

-path!--They soon part, for half an hour is all that is given, but they

-will remember forever the mothers kiss, the son's good-bye, the last

-choking words of love and familiar advice, as she says: "Trust in God,

-my lad."

-

-After one of my mothers visits I used to have more sympathy for my

-fellow convicts. I was always a keen observer, and in the shops or

-at mess time, and when we were exercising together in lock step, or

-working about the yard or in the halls, I used to "feel out" my brother

-"cons," often with a kindly motive. I grew very expert in telling when

-a friend was becoming insane; for imprisonment leads to insanity, as

-everybody knows. Many a time a man I knew in stir would grow nervous

-or absent-minded, then suspicious, and finally would be sent to the

-madhouse at Dannemora or Matteawan.

-

-For instance, take a friend of mine named Billy. He was doing a bit

-of ten years. In the fifth year of his sentence I noticed that he was

-brooding, and I asked him what was the matter.

-

-"I am afraid," he said, "that my wife is going outside of me."

-

-"You are not positive, are you?" I asked.

-

-"Well," he answered, "she visited me the other day, and she was looking

-good (prosperous). My son was with her, and he looked good, too.

-She gave me five dollars and some delicacies. But she never had five

-dollars when I was on the outside."

-

-"She's working," said I, trying to calm him.

-

-"No; she has got a father and mother," he replied, "and she is living

-with them."

-

-"Billy," I continued, "how long have you been in stir?"

-

-"Growing on six years," he said.

-

-"Billy," I proceeded, "what would you do if you were on the outside and

-she was in prison for six years?"

-

-"Well," he replied, "I'd have to give myself some rope."

-

-"Philosophers claim that it is just as hard for a woman to live alone

-as for a man," I said. "You're unreasonable, Billy. Surely you can't

-blame her."

-

-Billy's case is an instance of how, when a convict has had bad food,

-bad air and an unnatural routine for some time, he begins to borrow

-trouble. He grows anaemic and then is on the road to insanity. If he

-has a wife he almost always grows suspicious of her, though he does not

-speak about it until he has been a certain number of years in prison.

-It was not long after the above conversation took place that Billy was

-sent to the insane asylum at Matteawan.

-

-Sometimes, after a man has begun to grow insane, he will show it by

-reticence, rather than by talkativeness, according to his disposition.

-One of my intimate friends, in stir much longer than I, was like a ray

-of sunshine, witty and a good story teller. His laugh was contagious

-and we all liked to see him. He was one of the best night prowlers

-(burglars) in the profession, and had many other gifts. After he

-had been in stir, however, for a few years, he grew reticent and

-suspicious, thought that everybody was a stool-pigeon, and died a

-raving maniac a few years later at Matteawan.

-

-Sometimes a convict will grow so nervous that he will attempt to

-escape, even when there is no chance, or will sham insanity. An

-acquaintance of mine, Louis, who had often grafted with me when we

-were on the outside, told me one day he did not expect to live his bit

-out. When confined a man generally thinks a lot about his condition,

-reads a book on medicine and imagines he has every disease the book

-describes. Louis was in this state, and he consulted me and two others

-as to whether he ought not to "shoot a bug" (sham insanity); and so

-get transferred to the hospital. One advised him to attack a keeper and

-demand his baby back. But as Billy had big, black eyes and a cadaverous

-face, I told him he'd better shoot the melancholy bug; for he could

-do that better. Accordingly in the morning when the men were to go to

-work in the stone yard, Billy appeared in the natural (naked). He had

-been stalled off by two friends until he had reached the yard. There

-the keepers saw him, and as they liked him, they gently took him to

-the hospital. He was pronounced incurably insane by two experts, and

-transferred to the madhouse. The change of air was so beneficial that

-Louis speedily recovered his senses. At least, the doctors thought so

-when he was discovered trying to make his elegant (escape); and he was

-sent back to stir.

-

-As a rule, however, those who attempted to sham insanity failed. They

-were usually lacking in originality. At any hour of the day or night

-the whole prison might be aroused by some convict breaking up house,

-as it was called when a man tried to shoot the bug. He might break

-everything in his cell, and yell so loud that the other convicts in the

-cells near by would join in and make a horrible din. Some would curse,

-and some laugh or howl. If it was at night and they had been awakened

-out of an opium sleep, they would damn him a thousand miles deep. His

-friends, however, who knew that he was acting, would plug his game

-along by talking about his insanity in the presence of stool-pigeons.

-These latter would tell the keepers that he was buggy (insane), and,

-if there was not a blow, he might be sent to the hospital. Before that

-happened, however, he had generally demolished all his furniture. The

-guards would go to his cell, and chain him up in the Catholic chapel

-until he could be examined by the doctor. Warden Sage was a humane man,

-and used to go to the chapel himself and try to quiet the fake lunatic,

-and give him dainties from his own table. During the night the fake had

-historic company, for painted on the walls were, on one side of him,

-Jesus, and on the other, Judas and Mary Magdalene.

-

-A favorite method of shooting the bug, and a rather difficult one for

-the doctors to detect, was that of hearing voices in one's cell. This

-is more dangerous for the convict than for anybody else, for when a

-fake tries to imagine he hears voices, he usually begins to really

-believe he does, and then from a fake he becomes a genuine freak.

-Another common fake is to tell the keeper that you have a snake in

-your arm, and then take a knife and try to cut it out; but it requires

-nerve to carry this fake through. Sometimes the man who wants to make

-the prison hospital merely fakes ordinary illness. If he has a screw or

-a doctor "right" he may stay for months in the comparatively healthy

-hospital at Sing Sing, where he can loaf all day, and get better food

-than at the public mess. It is as a rule only the experienced guns who

-are clever enough to work these little games.

-

-For faking, conversing, loafing in the shop, and for many other

-forbidden things, we were often punished, though the screws as often

-winked at small misdemeanors. At Sing Sing they used to hang us up by

-the wrists sometimes until we fainted. Auburn had a jail, now used as

-the condemned cells, where there was no bed and no light. In this place

-the man to be punished would remain from four to ten days and live on

-ten ounces of bread and half a jug of water a day. In addition, the

-jail was very damp, worse even than the cells at Sing Sing, where I

-knew many convicts who contracted consumption of the lungs and various

-kidney complaints.

-

-Indeed, a great deal of dying goes on in State's prison. During my

-first term it seemed as if three niggers died to every white man. A

-dozen of us working around the front would comment on the "stiffs"

-when they were carried out. One would ask, "Who's dead?" The reply

-might be, "Only a nigger." One day I was talking in the front with a

-hall-room man when a stiff was put in the wagon. "Who's dead?" I asked.

-The hall-man wanted to bet it was a nigger. I bet him a dollar it was

-a white man, and then asked the hospital nurse, who said it was not a

-nigger, but an old pal of mine, named Jerry Donovan. I felt sore and

-would not accept the money I had won. Poor Jerry and I did house-work

-together for three months, some of which I have told of, and he was a

-good fellow, and a sure and reliable grafter. And now he had "gone up

-the escape," and was being carried to the little graveyard on the side

-of the hill where only an iron tag would mark his place of repose.

-

-My intelligence was naturally good, and when I began to get some

-education I felt myself superior to many of my companions in stir. I

-was not alone in this feeling, for in prison there are many social

-cliques; though fewer than on the outside. Men who have been high

-up and have held responsible positions when at liberty make friends

-in stir with men they formerly would not have trusted as their

-boot-blacks. The professional thieves usually keep together as much as

-possible in prison, or communicate together by means of notes; though

-sometimes they associate with men who, not professional grafters, have

-been sent up for committing some big forgery, or other big swindle. The

-reason for this is business; for the gun generally has friends among

-the politicians, and he wants to associate while in stir only with

-others who have influence. It is the guns who are usually trusted by

-the screws in charge of the Underground Tunnel, for the professional

-thief is less likely to squeal than the novice. Therefore, the big

-forger who has stolen thousands, and may be a man of ability and

-education appreciates the friendship of the professional pickpocket

-who can do him little favors, such as railroading his mail through the

-Underground, and providing him with newspapers, or a bottle of booze.

-

-The pull of the professional thief with outside politicians often

-procures him the respect and consideration of the keepers. One day a

-convict, named Ed White, was chinning with an Irish screw, an old man

-who had a family to support. Jokes in stir lead to friendship, and when

-the keeper told Ed that he was looking for a job for his daughter, who

-was a stenographer, Ed said he thought he could place her in a good

-position. The old screw laughed and said; "You loafer, if you were made

-to carry a hod you wouldn't be a splitting matches in stir." But Ed

-meant what he had said, and wrote to the famous Tammany politician, Mr.

-Wet Coin, who gave the girl a position as stenographer at a salary of

-fourteen dollars a week. The old screw took his daughter to New York,

-and when he returned to Auburn he began to "Mister" Ed. "I 'clare to

-God," he said, "I don't know what to make out of you. Here you are

-eating rotten hash, cooped up like a wild animal, with stripes, when

-you might be making twelve to fifteen dollars a week." Ed replied,

-sarcastically, "That would about keep me in cigar money."

-

-One of the biggest men I knew in stir was Jim A. McBlank, at one time

-chief of police and Mayor of Coney Island. He was sent to Sing Sing

-for his repeating methods at election, at which game he was A No. 1.

-He got so many repeaters down to the island that they were compelled

-to register as living under fences, in dog kennels, tents, or any old

-place. There was much excitement in the prison when the Lord of Coney

-Island was shown around the stir by Principal Keeper Connoughton. He

-was a good mechanic, and soon had a gang of men working under him;

-though he was the hardest worker of them all. After he had been there

-awhile the riff-raff of of the prison, though they had never heard

-the saying that familiarity breeds contempt, dropped calling him

-Mr. McBlank, and saluted him as plain Jimmy. He was never in touch,

-however, with the majority of the convicts, for he was too close to the

-authorities; and the men believe that convicts can not be on friendly

-terms with the powers that be unless they are stool-pigeons. Another

-thing that made the "cons" dislike the Mayor was the fact, that, when

-he was chief of police, he had settled a popular dip named Feeley for

-ten years and a half. The very worst thing against him, however, was

-his private refrigerator in which he kept butter, condensed milk and

-other luxuries, which he did not share with the other convicts. One

-day a young convict named Sammy, tried to beat Sing Sing. He bricked

-himself up in the wall, leaving a movable opening at the bottom.

-While waiting a chance to escape Sammy used to sally forth from his

-hiding-place and steal something good from McBlank's box. One night,

-while helping himself to the Mayor's delicacies, he thought he heard

-a keeper, and hastily plunging his arm into the refrigerator he made

-away with a large piece of butter. What did the ex-Chief of police do

-but report the loss of his butter to the screws which put them next to

-the fact that the convict they had been looking for for nine nights was

-still in the stir. The next night they would have rung the "all-right"

-bell, and given up the search, and indeed, they rang the bell, but

-watched; and when Sammy, thinking he could now go to New York, came out

-of his hiding place, he was caught. When the story circulated in the

-prison all kinds of vengeance were vowed against McBlank, who was much

-frightened. I heard him say that he would rather have lost his right

-arm than see the boy caught. What a come-down for a man who could throw

-his whole city for any state or national candidate at election time,

-to be compelled to apologize as McBlank was, to the lowest element

-in prison. Here indeed was the truth of that old saying: pride goeth

-before a fall.

-

-One of the best liked of the convicts I met during my first bit was

-Ferdinand Ward, who got two years for wrecking the firm in which

-General Grant and his son were partners. He did many a kindness in stir

-to those who were tough and had few friends. Another great favorite

-was Johnny Hope, son of Jimmy Hope, who stole three millions from the

-Manhattan Bank. The father got away, and Johnny, who was innocent,

-was nailed by a copper looking for a reputation, and settled for

-twenty years in Sing Sing, because he was his father's son and had the

-misfortune to meet an ambitious copper. When Johnny had been in prison

-about ten years, the inspector, who was the former copper, went to the

-Governor, and said he was convinced that the boy was innocent. But

-how about young Hope's wrecked life? Johnny's father, indeed, was a

-well-known grafter whom I met in Auburn, where we worked together for a

-while in the broom-shop. He was much older than I, and used to give me

-advice.

-

-"Don't ever do a day's work in your life, my boy," he would say,

-"unless you can't help it. You are too intelligent to be a drudge."

-

-Another common remark of his was: "Trust no convict," and a third was:

-"It is as easy to steal five thousand dollars as it is to steal five

-dollars."

-

-Old man Hope had stolen millions and ought to know what he was talking

-about. In personal appearance he was below the medium height, had light

-gray hair and as mild a pair of eyes as I ever saw in man or woman. I

-ranked him as a manly old fellow, and he was an idol among the small

-crooks, though he did not have much to do with them. He seemed to like

-to talk to me, partly because I never talked graft, and he detested

-such talk particularly among prison acquaintances. He referred one day

-to a pick pocket in stir who was always airing what he knew about the

-graft. "He's tiresome," said old Hope. "He is always talking shop."

-

-One of the worst hated men at Auburn was Weeks, a well-known club man

-and banker, who once stole over a million dollars. He was despised

-by the other convicts, for he was a "squealer." One of the screws in

-charge of the Underground Tunnel was doing things for Weeks, who had

-a snap,--the position of book-keeper, in the clothing department. In

-his desk he kept whiskey, beer and cigars, and lived well. One day a

-big bug paid him a visit, and Weeks belched how he had to give up his

-watch and chain in order to secure luxuries. His friend, the big bug,

-reported to the prison authorities, and the principal keeper went to

-Weeks and made the coward squeal on the keeper who had his "front." The

-screw lost his job, and when the convicts heard of it, they made Weeks'

-life miserable for years.

-

-But the man who was hated worst of all those in prison was Biff

-Ellerson. I never understood why the other cons hated him, unless

-it was that he always wore a necktie; this is not etiquette in stir,

-which in the convicts' opinion ought to be a place of mourning. He had

-been a broker and a clubman, and was high up in the world. Ellerson

-was a conscientious man, and once, when a mere boy, who had stolen

-a ten dollar watch, was given fifteen years, had publicly criticized

-the judge and raised a storm in the newspapers. Ellerson compared this

-lad's punishment with that of a man like Weeks, who had robbed orphans

-out of their all and only received ten years for it. Many is the time

-that this man, Biff Ellerson, has been kind to men in stir who hated

-him. He had charge of the dungeon at Auburn where convicts who had

-broken the rules were confined. I have known him to open my door and

-give me water on the quiet, many a time, and he did it for others who

-were ungrateful, and at the risk, too, of never being trusted again by

-the screws and of getting a dose of the cuddy-hole himself.

-

-By far the greater number of these swell grafters who steal millions

-die poor, for it is not what a man steals, but what he saves, that

-counts. I have often noticed that the bank burglar who is high up in

-his profession is not the one who has the most money when he gets to be

-forty-five or fifty years of age. The second or third class gun is more

-likely to lay by something. His general expenses are not so large and

-he does not need so much fall-money; and in a few years he can usually

-show more money than the big gun who has a dozen living on him. I knew

-a Big One who told me that every time he met a certain police official,

-his watch, a piece of jewelry, a diamond stud or even his cuff buttons

-were much admired. The policeman always had some relative or friend who

-desired just the kind of ornament the Big One happened to be wearing at

-the time.

-

-I cannot help comparing those swell guys whom I knew at Sing Sing

-with a third class pickpocket I met on the same bit. The big ones are

-dead or worse, but the other day I met, in New York, my old pickpocket

-friend in stir, Mr. Aut. I am positive that the hand-shake he gave me

-was only a muscular action, for Mr. Aut has "squared it", and the gun

-who has reformed and has become prosperous does not like to meet an

-old acquaintance, who knows too much about his past life. When I ran

-across him in the city I started in to talk about old times in stir

-and of pals we knew in the long ago, but he answered me by saying,

-"Nix", which meant "Drop It". To get him to talk I was forced to throw

-a few "Larrys" into him, such as: "Well, old man, only for your few

-mistakes of the past, you might be leader of Tammany Hall." Gradually

-he expanded and told me how much he had gained in weight since he

-left stir and what he had done for certain ungrateful grafters. He

-boasted that he could get bail for anyone to the sum of fifty thousand

-dollars, and he told the truth, for this man, who had been a third

-class dip, owns at the present time, three gin-mills and is something

-of a politician. He has three beautiful children and is well up in

-the world. His daughter was educated at a convent, and his son is at a

-well-known college.

-

-Yet I remember the time when this ex gun, Mr. Aut, and I, locked near

-one another in Sing Sing and consoled one another with what little

-luxuries we could get together. Our letters, booze and troubles were

-shared between us, and many is the time I have felt for him; for he

-had married a little shop girl and had two children at that time.

-When he got out of stir he started in to square it, that is, not to

-go to prison any more. He was wise and no one can blame him. He is a

-good father and a successful man. If he had been a better grafter it

-would not have been so easy for him to reform. I wish him all kinds

-of prosperity, but I don't like him as well as I did when we wore the

-striped garb and whispered good luck to one another in that mansion of

-woes on the Hudson.

-

-One of Mr. Aut's possessions makes me smile whenever I think of it.

-In his swell parlor, over a brand new piano, hangs an oil painting

-of himself, in which he takes great pride. I could not help thinking

-that that picture showed a far more prosperous man and one in better

-surroundings than a certain photograph of his which is quite as highly

-treasured as the more costly painting; although it is only a tintype,

-numbered two thousand and odd, in the Rogues' Gallery.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IX.

-

-_In Stir and Out._

-

-

-Some of the most disagreeable days I ever spent in prison were

-the holidays, only three of which during the year, however, were

-kept--Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In Sing Sing there

-was no work on those days, and we could lie abed longer in the morning.

-The food was somewhat better than usual. Breakfast consisted of boiled

-ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a cup of coffee with milk. After

-mess we went, as usual, to chapel, and then gave a kind of vaudeville

-show, all with local talent. We sang rag-time and sentimental songs,

-some of us played on an instrument, such as the violin, mandolin, or

-cornet, and the band gave the latest pieces from comic opera. After the

-show was over we went to the mess-room again where we received a pan

-containing a piece of pie, some cheese, a few apples, as much bread as

-we desired and--a real luxury in stir--two cigars. With our booty we

-then returned to our cells, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, and

-after the guards had made the rounds to see that none of the birds had

-gone astray, we were locked up until the next morning, without anything

-more to eat. We were permitted to talk to one another from our cells

-until five o'clock, when the night guards went on duty. Such is--just

-imagine it--a great day in Sing Sing! The gun, no matter how big a guy

-he is, even if he has robbed a bank and stolen millions, is far worse

-off than the meanest laborer, be he ever so poor. He may have only a

-crust, but he has that priceless boon, his liberty.

-

-At Auburn the routine on holidays is much the same as that of Sing

-Sing; but one is not compelled to go to chapel, which is a real

-kindness. I don't think a man ought to be forced to go to church, even

-in stir, against his will. On holidays in Auburn a man may stay in his

-cell instead of attending divine service, if he so desires, and not be

-punished for it. Many a con prefers not to go even to the vaudeville

-show, which at Auburn is given by outside talent, but remains quietly

-all day in his cell. There is one other great holiday privilege at

-Auburn, which some of the convicts appreciate more than I did. When

-the clock strikes twelve o'clock the convicts, locked in their cells,

-start in to make the rest of the night hideous, by pounding on the

-doors, playing all sorts of instruments, blowing whistles, and doing

-everything else that would make a noise. There is no more sleep that

-night, for everything is given over to Bedlam, until five thirty in the

-morning, when discipline again reigns, and the nervous man who detests

-these holidays sighs with pleasure, and says to himself: "I am so glad

-that at last everything is quiet in this cursed stir."

-

-What with poor food, little air and exercise, no female society, bad

-habits and holidays, it is no wonder that there are many attempts, in

-spite of the danger, to escape from stir. Most of these attempts are

-unsuccessful, but a few succeed. One of the cleverest escapes I know of

-happened during my term at Auburn. B---- was the most feared convict in

-the prison. He was so intelligent, so reckless and so good a mechanic

-that the guards were afraid he would make his elegant any day. Indeed,

-if ever a man threw away gifts for not even the proverbial mess of

-pottage, it was this man B----. He was the cleverest man I ever met in

-stir or out. It was after one of the delightful holidays in Auburn that

-B----, who was a nervous man, decided to make his gets. He picked a

-quarrel with another convict and was so rough that the principal keeper

-almost decided to let him off; but when B---- spat in his face he

-changed his mind and put him in the dungeon. I have already mentioned

-this ram-shackle building at Auburn. It was the worst yet. All B----'s

-clothing was taken off and an old coat, shirt, and trousers without

-buttons were given him. An old piece of bay rope was handed him to tie

-around his waist, and he was left in darkness. This was what he wanted,

-for, although they had stripped him naked and searched him, he managed

-to conceal a saw, which he used to such good purpose that on the second

-night he had sawed himself into the yard. Instead of trying to go over

-the wall, as most cons would have done, B---- placed a ladder, which

-he found in the repair shop, against the wall, and when the guards

-discovered next morning that B---- was not in the dungeon, and saw the

-ladder on the wall, they thought he had escaped, and did not search

-the stir but notified the towns to look after him. He was not found,

-of course, for he was hiding in the cellar of the prison. A night or

-two afterwards he went to the tailor shop, selected the best suit of

-clothes in the place, opened the safe which contained the valuables

-of the convicts, with a piece of steel and a hammer, thus robbing his

-fellow sufferers, and escaped by the ladder. After several months of

-freedom he was caught, sent back to stir, and forfeited half of his

-commutation time.

-

-A more tragic attempt was made by the convicts, Big Benson and Little

-Kick. They got tools from friends in the machine shop and started in

-to saw around the locks of their doors. They worked quietly, and were

-not discovered. The reason is that there is sometimes honor among

-thieves. Two of their friends in their own gallery, two on the gallery

-above and two on that underneath, tipped them off, by a cough or

-some other noise, whenever the night guard was coming; and they would

-cease their work with the saws. Convicts grow very keen in detecting

-the screw by the creaking of his boots on the wooden gallery floor;

-if they are not quite sure it is he, they often put a small piece of

-looking-glass underneath the door, and can thus see down the gallery in

-either direction a certain distance. Whenever Benson and Kick were at

-work, they would accompany the noise of the saw with some other noise,

-so as to drown the former, for they knew that, although they had some

-friends among the convicts, there were others who, if they got next,

-would tip off the keepers that an escape was to be made. In the morning

-they would putty up the cuts made in the door during the night. One

-night when everything was ready, they slipped from their cells, put the

-mug on the guard, took away his cannister, and tied him to the bottom

-of one of their cells. They did the same to another guard, who was

-on the watch in the gallery below, went to the outside window on the

-Hudson side of Sing Sing, and putting a Jack, which they had concealed

-in the cell, between the bars of the window, spread them far apart,

-so that they could make their exit. At this point however they were

-discovered by a third guard, who fired at them, hitting Little Kick in

-the leg. The shot aroused the sergeant of the guards and he gave the

-alarm. Big Benson was just getting through the window when the whole

-pack of guards fired at him, killing him as dead as a door-nail. Little

-Kick lost his nerve and surrendered, and was taken to the dungeon. Big

-Benson, who had been serving a term for highway robbery, was one of the

-best liked men in stir, and when rumors reached the convicts that he

-had been shot, pandemonium broke loose in the cells. They yelled and

-beat their coffee cups against the iron doors, and the officials were

-powerless to quiet them. There was more noise even than on a holiday at

-Auburn.

-

-Soon after I was transferred from Sing Sing to Auburn, a friend came to

-me and said: "Jimmy, are you on either of the shoe-shop galleries? No?

-Well, if you can get on Keeper Riley's gallery I think you can spring

-(escape)."

-

-Then he let me in on one of the cleverest beats I ever knew; if I could

-have succeeded in being put on that gallery I should not have finished

-my first term in State's prison. At that time work was slack and the

-men were locked in their cells most of the time. Leahy started in to

-dig out the bricks from the ceiling of his cell. Each day, when taking

-his turn for an hour in the yard, he would give the cement, which he

-had done up in small packages, to friends, who would dump it in their

-buckets, the contents of which they would then throw into the large

-cesspool. While exercising in the yard, the cons would throw the bricks

-Leahy had removed on an old brick pile under the archway. After he had

-removed sufficient stuff to make a hole big enough to crawl through,

-all he had left to do was to saw a few boards, and remove a few tiles,

-and then he was on the roof. It is the habit of the guard, when he goes

-the rounds, to rap the ceiling of every cell with his stick, to see

-if there is an excavation. Leahy had guarded against this by filling

-a small box with sand and placing it in the opening. Then he pasted a

-piece of linen over the box and whitewashed it. Even when the screw

-came around to glance in his cell Leahy would continue to work, for

-he had rigged up a dummy of himself in bed. When he reached the roof,

-he dropped to a lower building, reached the wall which surrounds the

-prison, and with a rope lowered himself to the ground. With a brand

-new suit of clothes which a friend had stolen from the shop, Leahy went

-forth into the open, and was never caught.

-

-At Sing Sing an old chum of mine named Tom escaped, and would never

-have been caught if he had not been so sentimental. Indeed, he was

-improvident in every way. He had been a well-known house-worker, and

-made lots of money at this graft, but he lived well and blew what he

-stole, and consequently did many years in prison. He was nailed for

-a house that was touched of "eclat" worth thousands, and convicted,

-though of this particular crime he was, I am convinced, innocent; of

-course, he howled like a stuck pig about the injustice of it, all his

-life. While he was in Raymond Street jail he got wind of the men who

-really did the job. They were pals and he asked them to try to turn

-him out. His girl, Tessie, heard of it and wanted to go to Police

-Headquarters and squeal on the others, to save her sweetheart. But Tom

-was frantic, for there was no squeal in him. You find grafters like

-that sometimes, and Tom was always sentimental. He certainly preferred

-to go to stir rather than have the name of being a belcher. So he went

-to Sing Sing for seven and a half years. He was a good mechanic and

-was assigned to a brick-laying job on the wall. He had an easy time

-in stir, for he had a screw right, and got many luxuries through the

-Underground; and was not watched very closely. One day he put a suit

-of clothes under his stripes, vamoosed into a wood near by, and removed

-his stripes. He kept on walking till he reached Connecticut, which, as

-I have said, is the softest state in the Union.

-

-Tom would never have finished that bit in stir, if, as I have also

-said, he had not been so sentimental. When in prison a grafter

-continually thinks about his old pals and hang-outs, and the last

-scenes familiar to him before he went to stir. Tom was a well-known

-gun, with his picture in the Hall of Fame, and yet, after beating

-prison, and leaving years behind, and knowing that if caught he would

-have to do additional time, would have the authorities sore against him

-and be confined in the dark cell, he yet, in spite of all that, after a

-short time, made for his old haunts on the Bowery, where he was nailed

-by a fly-cop and sent back to Sing Sing. So much for the force of habit

-and of environment, especially when a grafter is a good fellow and

-loves his old pals.

-

-On one occasion Tom was well paid for being a good fellow. Jack was

-a well-known pugilist who had become a grafter. His wife's sister had

-married a millionaire, and Jack stole the millions, which amounted, in

-this case, to only one hundred thousand dollars. For this he was put

-in prison for four years. While in stir, Tom, who had a screw right,

-did him many favors, which Jack remembered. Years afterwards they were

-both on the outside again. Tom was still a grafter, but Jack had gone

-to work for a police official as general utility man, and gained the

-confidence of his employer, who was chief of the detective force. The

-latter got Jack a position as private detective in one of the swellest

-hotels in Florida. Now, Tom happened to be grafting in that State, and

-met his old friend Jack at the hotel. Instead of tipping off the chief

-that Tom was a grafter, Jack staked his old pal, for he remembered the

-favors he had received in stir. Tom was at liberty for four years, and

-then was brought to police headquarters where the chief said to him:

-"I know that you met Jack in Florida, and I am sore because he did

-not tip me off." Tom replied indignantly: "He is not a hyena like your

-ilk. He is not capable of the basest of all crimes, ingratitude. I can

-forgive a man who puts his hand in my pocket and steals my money. I can

-forgive him, for it may do him good. He may invest the money and become

-an honored member of the community. But the crime no man can forgive

-is ingratitude. It is the most inhuman of crimes and only your ilk is

-capable of it."

-

-The Chief smiled at Tom's sentiment--that was always his weak

-point--poor Tom!--and said: "Well, you are a clever thief, and I'm glad

-I was wise enough to catch you." Whereupon Tom sneered and remarked: "I

-could die of old age in this city for all of you and your detectives. I

-was tipped off to you by a Dicky Bird (stool pigeon) damn him!" I have

-known few grafters who had as much feeling as Tom.

-

-More than five years passed, and the time for my release from Auburn

-drew near. The last weeks dragged terribly; they seemed almost as

-long as the years that had gone before. Sometimes I thought the time

-would never come. The day before I was discharged I bade good-bye to

-my friends, who said to me, smiling: "She has come at last," or "It's

-near at hand," or "It was a long time a-coming." That night I built

-many castles in the air, with the help of a large piece of opium: and

-continued to make the good resolutions I had begun some time before.

-I had permission from the night guard to keep my light burning after

-the usual hour, and the last book I read on my first term in stir was

-_Tristram Shandy_. Just before I went to bed I sang for the last time

-a popular prison song which had been running in my head for months:

-

-     "Roll round, '89, '90, '91, sweet '92 roll around.

-     How happy I shall be the morning I go free, sweet '92 roll

-     around."

-

-Before I fell asleep I resolved to be good, to quit opium and not to

-graft any more. The resolution was easily made and I went to bed happy.

-I was up at day-break and penned a few last words to my friends and

-acquaintances remaining in stir. I promised some of them that I would

-see their friends on the outside and send them delicacies and a little

-money. They knew that I would keep my promise, for I have always been a

-man of my word; as many of the most successful grafters are. It is only

-the vogel-grafter, the petty larceny thief or the "sure-thing" article,

-who habitually breaks his word. Many people think that a thief can not

-be trusted; and it certainly is true that the profession does not help

-to make a man virtuous in his personal relations. But it is also true

-that a man may be, and sometimes is, honorable in his dealings with

-his own world, and at the same time a desperate criminal in the other.

-It is not of course common, to find a thief who is an honest man; but

-is there very often an honest man anywhere, in the world of graft or

-out of it? If it is often, so much the better, but that has not been

-my experience. Does not everyone know that the men who do society the

-greatest injury have never done time; in fact, may never have broken

-any laws? I am not trying to excuse myself or my companions in crime,

-but I think the world is a little twisted in its ideas as to right and

-wrong, and who are the greatest sinners.

-

-When six o'clock on the final day came round it was a great relief. I

-went through the regular routine, and at eight o'clock was called to

-the front office, received a new suit of clothes, as well as my fare

-home and ten dollars with which to begin life afresh.

-

-"Hold on," I said, to the Warden. "I worked eighteen months. Under the

-new piece-price plan I ought to be allowed a certain percentage of my

-earnings."

-

-The Warden, who was a good fellow and permitted almost anything to come

-in by the Underground Tunnel, asked the clerk if there was any more

-money for me. The clerk consulted with the keepers and then reported to

-the Warden that I was the most tired man that ever entered the prison;

-adding that it was very nervy of me to want more money, after they had

-treated me far better than the parent of the Prodigal treated his son.

-The Warden, thereupon, remarked to me that if I went pilfering again

-and were not more energetic than I had been in prison, I would never

-eat. "Goodbye," he concluded.

-

-"Well," I said, "I hope we'll never meet again."

-

-With my discharge papers in my hand, and in my mind a resolution never

-to go back to the stir where so many of my friends, strong fellows,

-too, had lost their lives or had become physical or mental wrecks, I

-left Auburn penitentiary and went forth into the free world. I had

-gone to stir a boy of twenty-one, and left it a man of twenty-six.

-I entered healthy, and left broken down in health, with the marks of

-the jail-bird upon me; marks, mental and physical, that would never

-leave me, and habits that I knew would stick closer than a brother.

-I knew that there was nothing in a life of crime. I had tested that

-well enough. But there were times during the last months I spent in my

-cell, when, in spite of my good resolutions, I hated the outside world

-which had forced me into a place that took away from my manhood and

-strength. I knew I had sinned against my fellow men, but I knew, too,

-that there had been something good in me. I was half Irish, and about

-that race there is naturally something roguish; and that was part of

-my wickedness. When I left stir I knew I was not capable, after five

-years and some months of unnatural routine, of what I should have been

-by nature.

-

-A man is like an electric plant. Use poor fuel and you will have poor

-electricity. The food is bad in prison. The cells at Sing Sing are

-a crime against the criminal; and in these damp and narrow cells he

-spends, on the average, eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. In the

-name of humanity and science what can society expect from a man who has

-spent a number of years in such surroundings? He will come out of stir,

-as a rule, a burden on the tax-payers, unable to work, and confirmed

-in a life of crime; desperate, and willing to take any chance. The

-low-down, petty, canting thief, who works all the charitable societies

-and will rob only those who are his benefactors, or a door-mat, is

-utterly useless in prison or out. The healthy, intelligent, ambitious

-grafter is capable of reform and usefulness, if shown the error of his

-ways or taken hold of before his physical and mental health is ruined

-by prison life. You can appeal to his manhood at that early time.

-After he has spent a certain number of years in stir his teeth become

-decayed; he can not chew his food, which is coarse and ill-cooked; his

-stomach gets bad: and once his stomach becomes deranged it is only a

-short time before his head is in a like condition. Eventually, he may

-be transferred to the mad-house. I left Auburn stir a happy man, for

-the time, for I thought everything would be smooth sailing. As a matter

-of fact I could not know the actual realities I had to face, inside and

-outside of me, and so all my good resolutions were nothing but a dream.

-

-It was a fine May morning that I left Auburn and I was greatly excited

-and bewildered by the brightness and joy of everything about me. I took

-my hat off, gazed up at the clear sky, looked up and down the street

-and at the passers-by, with a feeling of pleasure and confusion. I

-turned to the man who had been released with me, and said, "Let's go

-and get something to eat." On the way to the restaurant, however, the

-jangling of the trolleys upset my nerves. I could not eat, and drank a

-couple of whiskies. They did not taste right. Everything seemed tame,

-compared with the air, which I breathed like a drunken man.

-

-I bought a few pounds of tea, canned goods, cheese and fruit, which I

-sent by a keeper to my friends in stir. I also bought for my friends a

-few dollars' worth of morphine and some pulverized gum opium. How could

-I send it to them, for the keeper was not "next" to the Underground?

-Suddenly I had an idea. I bought ten cents worth of walnuts, split

-them, took the meat out, put the morphine and opium in, closed them

-with mucilage, put them in a bag and sent them to the convicts with the

-basket of other things I had left with the innocent keeper.

-

-I got aboard my train, and as I pulled out of the town of Auburn gave

-a great sigh of relief. I longed to go directly to New York, for I

-always did like big cities, particularly Manhattan, and I was dying to

-see some of my old girls. But I stopped off at Syracuse, according to

-promises, to deliver some messages to the relatives of convicts, and

-so reached New York a few hours later than my family and friends had

-expected. They had gone to meet an earlier train, and had not waited,

-so that when I reached my native city after this long absence I found

-nobody at the station to welcome me back. It made me sad for a moment,

-but when I passed out into the streets of the big town I felt excited

-and joyous, and so confused that I thought I knew almost everybody on

-the street. I nearly spoke to a stranger, a woman, thinking she was

-Blonde Mamie.

-

-I soon reached the Bowery and there met some of my old pals; but was

-much surprised to find them changed and older. For years and years

-a convict lives in a dream. He is isolated from the realities of the

-outside world. In stir he is a machine, and his mind is continually

-dwelling on the last time he was at liberty; he thinks of his family

-and friends as they were then. They may have become old, sickly and

-wrinkled, but he does not realize this. When, set free, he tries to

-find them, he expects that they will be unchanged, but if he finds

-them at all, what a shock! An old-timer I knew, a man named Packey,

-who had served fifteen years out of a life sentence, and had been twice

-declared insane, told me that he had reached a state of mind in which

-he imagined himself to be still a young fellow, of the age he was when

-he first went to stir.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER X.

-

-_At the Graft Again._

-

-

-I spent my first day in New York looking up my old pals and girls,

-especially the latter. How I longed to exchange friendly words with a

-woman! But the girls I knew were all gone, and I was forced to make new

-acquaintances on the spot. I spent all the afternoon and most of the

-evening with a girl I picked up on the Bowery; I thought she was the

-most beautiful creature in the world; but when I saw her again weeks

-afterwards, when women were not so novel to me, I found her almost

-hideous. I must have longed for a young woman's society, for I did not

-go to see my poor old mother until I had left my Bowery acquaintance.

-And yet my mother had often proved herself my only friend! But I had

-a long talk with her before I slept, and when I left her for a stroll

-in the wonderful city before going to bed my resolution to be good was

-keener than ever.

-

-As I sauntered along the Bowery that night the desire to talk to an

-old pal was strong. But where was I to find a friend? Only in places

-where thieves hung out. "Well," I said to myself, "there is no harm in

-talking to my old pals. I will tell them there is nothing in the graft,

-and that I have squared it." I dropped into a music hall, a resort for

-pickpockets, kept by an old gun, and there I met Teddy, whom I had not

-seen for years.

-

-"Hello, Jim," he said, giving me the glad hand, "I thought you were

-dead."

-

-"Not quite so bad as that, Teddy," I replied, "I am still in evidence."

-

-We had a couple of beers. I could not quite make up my mind to tell him

-I had squared it; and he put me next to things in town.

-

-"Take my advice," he said, "and keep away from ---- ---- (naming

-certain clubs and saloons where thieves congregated). The proprietors

-of these places and the guns that hang out there, many of them anyway,

-are not on the level. Some of the grafters who go there have the

-reputation of being clever dips, but they have protection from the

-Front Office men because they are rats and so can tear things open

-without danger. By giving up a certain amount of stuff and dropping

-a stall or two occasionally to keep up the flyman's reputation, they

-are able to have a bank account and never go to stir. The flymen hang

-out in these joints, waiting for a tip, and they are bad places for a

-grafter who is on the level."

-

-I listened with attention, and said, by force of habit:

-

-"Put me next to the stool-pigeons, Teddy. You know I am just back from

-stir."

-

-"Well," he answered, "outside of so and so (and he mentioned

-half-a-dozen men by name) none of them who hang out in those joints can

-be trusted. Come to my house, Jim, and we'll have a long talk about old

-times, and I will introduce you to some good people (meaning thieves)."

-

-I went with him to his home, which was in a tenement house in the lower

-part of the first ward. He introduced me to his wife and children and a

-number of dips, burglars and strong-armed men who made his place a kind

-of rendezvous. We talked old times and graft, and the wife and little

-boy of eight years old listened attentively. The boy had a much better

-chance to learn the graft than I had when a kid, for my father was an

-honest man.

-

-The three strong-arm men (highwaymen) were a study to me, for they were

-Westerners, with any amount of nerve. One of them, Denver Red, a big

-powerful fellow, mentioned a few bits he had done in Western prisons,

-explained a few of his grafts and seemed to despise New York guns, whom

-he considered cowardly. He said the Easterners feared the police too

-much, and always wanted to fix things before they dared to graft.

-

-I told them a little about New York State penitentiaries, and then

-Ted said to Denver Red: "What do you think of the big fellow?" Denver

-grinned, and the others followed suit, and I heard the latest story. A

-well-known politician, leader of his district, a cousin of Senator Wet

-Coin; a man of gigantic stature, with the pleasing name, I will say, of

-Flower, had had an adventure. He is even better developed physically

-than mentally, and virtually king of his district, and whenever he

-passes by, the girls bow to him, the petty thief calls him "Mister"

-and men and women alike call him "Big Flower." Well, one night not

-long before the gathering took place in Teddy's house, Big Flower was

-passing through the toughest portion of his bailiwick, humming ragtime,

-when my new acquaintances, the three strong-arm workers from the West,

-stuck him up with cannisters, and relieved him of a five carat diamond

-stud, a gold watch and chain and a considerable amount of cash. The

-next day there was consternation among the clan of the Wet Coins, for

-Big Flower, who had been thus nipped, was their idol. We all laughed

-heartily at the story, and I went home and to sleep.

-

-The next day I found it a very easy thing to drift back to my old

-haunts. In the evening I went to a sporting house on Twenty-seventh

-Street, where a number of guns hung out. I got the glad hand and an

-invitation to join in some good graft. I said I was done with the Rocky

-Path. They smiled and gently said: "We have been there, too, Jim."

-

-One of them added: "By the way, I hear you are up against the hop,

-Jim." It was Billy, and he invited me home with him. There I met Ida,

-as pretty a little shop girl as one wants to see. Billy said there

-was always an opening for me, that times were pretty good. He and Ida

-had an opium layout, and they asked me to take a smoke. I told them my

-nerves were not right, and that I had quit. "Poor fellow," said Billy.

-

-Perhaps it was the sight or smell of the hop, but anyway I got the

-yen-yen and shook as in an ague. My eyes watered and I grew as pale as

-a sheet. I thought my bones were unjointing and took a pint of whiskey;

-it had no effect. Then Billy acted as my physician and prepared a pill

-for me. So vanished one good resolution. My only excuse to myself was:

-Human nature is weak, ain't it? No sooner had I taken the first pill

-than a feeling of ecstasy came over me. I became talkative, and Billy,

-noticing the effect, said: "Jim, before you try to knock off the hop,

-you had better wait till you reach the next world." The opium brought

-peace to my nerves and dulled my conscience and I had a long talk with

-Billy and Ida about old pals. They told me who was dead, who were in

-stir and who were good (prosperous).

-

-Not many days after my opium fall I got a note from Ethel, who had

-heard that I had come home. In the letter she said that she was not

-happy with her husband, that she had married to please her father and

-to get a comfortable home. She wanted to make an appointment to meet

-me, whom, she said, she had always loved. I knew what her letter meant,

-and I did not answer it, and did not keep the appointment. My relation

-to her was the only decent thing in my life, and I thought I might

-as well keep it right. I have never seen her since the last time she

-visited me at Auburn.

-

-For some time after getting back from stir I tried for a job, but the

-effort was only half-hearted on my part, and people did not fall over

-themselves in their eagerness to find something for the ex-convict to

-do. Even if I had had the best intentions in the world, the path of the

-ex-convict is a difficult one, as I have since found. I was run down

-physically, and could not carry a hod or do any heavy labor, even if I

-had desired to. I knew no trade and should have been forever distrusted

-by the upper world. The only thing I could do well was to graft; and

-the only society that would welcome me was that of the under world. My

-old pals knew I had the requisite nerve and was capable of taking my

-place in any good mob. My resolutions began to ooze away, especially as

-at that time my father was alive and making enough money to support the

-rest of the family. So I had only myself to look out for--and that was

-a lot; for I had my old habits, and new ones I had formed in prison, to

-satisfy. When I stayed quietly at home I grew intensely nervous; and

-soon I felt that I was bound to slip back to the world of graft. I am

-convinced that I would never have returned to stir or to my old trade,

-however, if my environment had been different, on my release, from

-what it had been formerly; and if I could have found a job. I don't

-say this in the way of complaint. I now know that a man can reform

-even among his old associates. It is impossible, as the reader will

-see, I believe, before he finishes this book, for me ever to fall back

-again. Some men acquire wisdom at twenty-one, some not till they are

-thirty-five, and some never. Wisdom came to me when I was thirty-five.

-If I had had my present experience, I should not have fallen after my

-first bit; but I might not have fallen anyway, if I had been placed

-in a better environment after my first term in prison. A man can stand

-alone, if he is strong enough, and has sufficient reasons; but if he is

-tottering, he needs outside help.

-

-I was tottering, and did not get the help, and so I speedily began to

-graft again. I started in on easy game, on picking pockets and simple

-swindling. I made my first touch, after my return, on Broadway. One

-day I met the Kid there, looking for a dollar as hard as a financier.

-He asked me if I was not about ready to begin again, and pointed out

-a swell Moll, big, breezy and blonde, coming down the street, with

-a large wallet sticking out of her pocket. It seemed easy, with no

-come-back in sight, and I agreed to stall for the Kid. Just as she went

-into Denning's which is now Wanamaker's, I went in ahead of her, turned

-and met her. She stopped; and at that moment the Kid nicked her. We

-got away all right and found in the wallet over one hundred dollars and

-a small knife. In the knife were three rivets, which we discovered on

-inspection to be magnifying glasses. We applied our eyes to the same

-and saw some pictures which would have made Mr. Anthony Comstock howl;

-if he had found this knife on this aristocratic lady he would surely

-have sent her to the penitentiary. It was a beautiful pearl knife,

-gold tipped, and must have been a loss; and yet I felt I was justified

-in taking that wallet. I thought I had done the lady a good turn. She

-might have been fined, and why shouldn't I have the money, rather than

-the magistrate?

-

-The Kid was one of the cleverest dips I ever knew; he was delicate and

-cunning, and the best stone-getter in the city. But he had one weakness

-that made him almost a devil. He fell in love with every pretty face he

-saw, and cared no more for leading a girl astray than I minded kicking

-a cat. I felt sorry for many a little working girl he had shaken after

-a couple of weeks; and I used to jolly them to cheer them up.

-

-I once met Kate, one of them, and said, with a smile: "Did you hear

-about the Kid's latest? Why don't you have him arrested for bigamy?"

-

-She did not smile at first, but said: "He'll never have any luck. My

-mother is a widow, and she prays to God to afflict him with a widow's

-curse."

-

-"One of the Ten Commandments," I replied, "says, 'thou shalt not take

-the name of the Lord thy God in vain,' and between you and me, Kate,

-the commandment does not say that widows have the monopoly on cursing.

-It is a sin, anyway, whether it is a man, a girl or a widow."

-

-This was too deep for Kate.

-

-"Stop preaching, Jim," she said, "and give me a drink," and I did.

-After she had drunk half-a-dozen glasses of beer she felt better.

-

-Women are queer, anyway. No matter how bad they are, they are always

-good. All women are thieves, or rather petty pilferers, bless them!

-When I was just beginning to graft again, and was going it easy, I used

-to work a game which well showed the natural grafting propensities of

-women. I would buy a lot of Confederate bills for a few cents, and put

-them in a good leather. When I saw a swell-looking Moll, evidently out

-shopping, walking along the street, I would drop the purse in her path;

-and just as she saw it I would pick it up, as if I had just found it.

-Nine women out of ten would say, "It's mine, I dropped it." I would

-open the leather and let her get a peep of the bills, and that would

-set her pilfering propensities going. "It's mine," she would repeat.

-"What's in it?" I would hold the leather carefully away from her, look

-into it cautiously and say: "I can see a twenty dollar bill, a thirty

-dollar bill, and a one hundred dollar bill, but how do I know you

-dropped it?" Then she'd get excited and exclaim, "If you don't give it

-to me quick I'll call a policeman." "Madam," I would reply, "I am an

-honest workingman, and if you will give me ten dollars for a reward, I

-will give you this valuable purse." Perhaps she would then say: "Give

-me the pocket-book and I'll give you the money out of it." To that I

-would reply: "No, Madam, I wish you to receive the pocket-book just as

-it was." I would then hand her the book and she would give me a good

-ten dollar bill. "There is a woman down the street," I would continue,

-"looking for something." That would alarm her and away she would go

-without even opening the leather to see if her money was all right.

-She wouldn't shop any more that day, but would hasten home to examine

-her treasure--worth, as she would discover to her sorrow, about thirty

-cents. Then, no doubt, her conscience would trouble her. At least, she

-would weep; I am sure of that.

-

-When I got my hand in again, I began to go for stone-getting, which

-was a fat graft in those days, when the Lexow committee was beginning

-their reform. Everybody wore a diamond. Even mechanics and farmers

-were not satisfied unless they had pins to stick in their ties. They

-bought them on the installment plan, and I suppose they do yet. I could

-always find a laborer or a hod-carrier that had a stone. They usually

-called attention to it by keeping their hands carefully on it; and very

-often it found its way into my pocket, for carelessness is bound to

-come as soon as a man thinks he is safe. They probably thought of their

-treasure for months afterwards; at least, whenever the collector came

-around for the weekly installments of pay for stones they no longer

-possessed.

-

-It was about this time that I met General Brace and the Professor.

-One was a Harvard graduate, and the other came from good old Yale; and

-both were grafters. When I knew them they used to hang out in a joint

-on Seventh Street, waiting to be treated. They had been good grafters,

-but through hop and booze had come down from forging and queer-shoving

-to common shop-lifting and petty larceny business. General Brace

-was very reticent in regard to his family and his own past, but as I

-often invited him to smoke opium with me, he sometimes gave me little

-confidences. I learned that he came from a well-known Southern family,

-and had held a good position in his native city; but he was a blood,

-and to satisfy his habits he began to forge checks. His relatives

-saved him from prison, but he left home and started on the downward

-career of graftdom. We called him General Brace because he looked like

-a soldier and was continually on the borrow; but a good story always

-accompanied his asking for a loan and he was seldom refused. I have

-often listened to this man after he had smoked a quantity of opium,

-and his conversational powers were something remarkable. Many a gun and

-politician would listen to him with wonder. I used to call him General

-Brace Coleridge.

-

-The Professor was almost as good a talker. We used to treat them both,

-in order to get them to converse together. It was a liberal education

-to hear them hold forth in that low-down saloon, where some of the

-finest talks on literature and politics were listened to with interest

-by men born and bred on the East Side, with no more education than

-a turnip, but with keen wits. The graduates had good manners, and we

-liked them and staked them regularly. They used to write letters for

-politicians and guns who could not read or write. They stuck together

-like brothers. If one of them had five cents, he would go into a morgue

-(gin-mill where rot-gut whiskey could be obtained for that sum) and

-pour out almost a full tumbler of booze. Just as he sipped a little

-of the rot-gut, his pal would come in, as though by accident. If it

-was the General who had made the purchase, he would say: "Hello, old

-pal, just taste this fine whiskey. It tastes like ten-cent stuff." The

-Professor would take a sip and become enthusiastic. They would sip and

-exclaim in turn, until the booze was all gone, and no further expense

-incurred. This little trick grew into a habit, and the bar-tender got

-on to it, but he liked Colonel Brace and the Professor so much that he

-used to wink at it.

-

-I was in this rot-gut saloon one day when I met Jesse R----, with whom

-I had spent several years in prison. I have often wondered how this man

-happened to join the under world; for he not only came of a good family

-and was well educated, but was also of a good, quiet disposition, a

-prime favorite in stir and out. He was tactful enough never to roast

-convicts, who are very sensitive, and was so sympathetic that many

-a heartache was poured into his ear. He never betrayed a friend's

-confidence.

-

-I was glad to meet Jesse again, and we exchanged greetings in the

-little saloon. When he asked me what I was doing, I replied that I had

-a mortgage on the world and that I was trying to draw my interest from

-the same. I still had that old dream, that the world owed me a living.

-I confided in him that I regarded the world as my oyster more decidedly

-than I had done before I met him in stir. I found that Jesse, however,

-had squared it for good and was absolutely on the level. He had a good

-job as shipping clerk in a large mercantile house; when I asked him if

-he was not afraid of being tipped off by some Central Office man or by

-some stool-pigeon, he admitted that that was the terror of his life;

-but that he had been at work for eighteen months, and hoped that none

-of his enemies would turn up. I asked him who had recommended him for

-the job, and I smiled when he answered: "General Brace". That clever

-Harvard graduate often wrote letters which were of assistance to guns

-who had squared it; though the poor fellow could not take care of

-himself.

-

-Jesse had a story to tell which seemed to me one of the saddest I have

-heard: and as I grew older I found that most all stories about people

-in the under world, no matter how cheerfully they began, ended sadly.

-It was about his brother, Harry, the story that Jesse told. Harry was

-married, and there is where the trouble often begins. When Jesse was

-in prison Harry, who was on the level and occupied a good position as a

-book-keeper, used to send him money, always against his wife's wishes.

-She also complained because Harry supported his old father. Harry

-toiled like a slave for this woman who scolded him and who spent his

-money recklessly. He made a good salary, but he could not keep up with

-her extravagance. One time, while in the country, she met a sporting

-man, Mr. O. B. In a few weeks it was the old, old story of a foolish

-woman and a pretty good fellow. While she was in the country, her young

-son was drowned, and she sent Harry a telegram announcing it. But she

-kept on living high and her name and that of O. B. were often coupled.

-Harry tried to stifle his sorrow and kept on sending money to the

-bladder he called wife, who appeared in a fresh new dress whenever she

-went out with Mr. O. B. One day Harry received a letter, calling him to

-the office to explain his accounts. He replied that he had been sick,

-but would straighten everything out the next day. When his father went

-to awaken him in the morning, Harry was dead. A phial of morphine on

-the floor told the story. Jesse reached his brother's room in time to

-hear his old father's cry of anguish and to read a letter from Harry,

-explaining that he had robbed the firm of thousands, and asking his

-brother to be kind to Helene, his wife.

-

-Then Jesse went to see the woman, to tell her about her husband's

-death. He found her at a summer hotel with Mr. O. B., and heard the

-servants talk about them.

-

-"Jim," said Jesse to me, at this point in the story, "here is wise

-council. Wherever thou goest, keep the portals of thy lugs open; as

-you wander on through life you are apt to hear slander about your women

-folks. What is more entertaining than a little scandal, especially when

-it doesn't hit home? But don't look into it too deep, for it generally

-turns out true, or worse. I laid a trap for my poor brothers wife,

-and one of her letters, making clear her guilt, fell into my hands.

-A telegram in reply from Mr. O. B., likewise came to me, and in a

-murderous frame of mind, I read its contents, and then laughed like a

-hyena: 'I am sorry I cannot meet you, but I was married this morning,

-and am going on my wedding tour. _Au Revoir._' You ask me what became

-of my sister-in-law? Jim, she is young and pretty, and will get along

-in this world. But, truly, the wages of sin is to her Living Ashes."

-

-It was not very long after my return home that I was at work again,

-not only at safe dipping and swindling, but gradually at all my old

-grafts, including more or less house work. There was a difference,

-however. I grew far more reckless than I had been before I went to

-prison. I now smoked opium regularly, and had a lay-out in my furnished

-room and a girl to run it. The drug made me take chances I never used

-to take; and I became dead to almost everything that was good. I went

-home very seldom. I liked my family in a curious way, but I did not

-have enough vitality or much feeling about anything. I began to go out

-to graft always in a dazed condition, so much so that on one occasion

-a pal tried to take advantage of my state of mind. It was while I was

-doing a bit of house-work with Sandy and Hacks, two clever grafters.

-We inserted into the lock the front door key which we had made, threw

-off the tumblers, and opened the door. Hacks and I stalled while Sandy

-went in and got six hundred dollars and many valuable jewels. He did

-not show us much of the money, however. The next day the newspapers

-described the "touch," and told the amount of money which had been

-stolen. Then I knew I had been "done" by Sandy and Hacks, who stood

-in with him, but Sandy said the papers were wrong. The mean thief,

-however, could not keep his mouth shut, and I got him. I am glad

-I was not arrested for murder. It was a close shave, for I cut him

-unmercifully with a knife. In this I had the approval of my friends,

-for they all believed the worst thing a grafter could do was to sink a

-pal. Sandy did not squeal, but he swore he would get even with me. Even

-if I had not been so reckless as I was then, I would not have feared

-him, for I knew there was no come-back in him.

-

-Another thing the dope did was to make me laugh at everything. It was

-fun for me to graft, and I saw the humor of life. I remember I used to

-say that this world is the best possible; that the fine line of cranks

-and fools in it gives it variety. One day I had a good laugh in a

-Brooklyn car. Tim, George and I got next to a Dutchman who had a large

-prop in his tie. He stood for a newspaper under his chin, and his stone

-came as slick as grease. A minute afterwards he missed his property,

-and we did not dare to move. He told his wife, who was with him, that

-his stone was gone. She called him a fool, and said that he had left

-it at home, in the bureau drawer, that she remembered it well. Then

-he looked down and saw that his front was gone, too. He said to his

-wife: "I am sure I had my watch and chain with me," but his wife was

-so superior that she easily convinced him he had left it at home. The

-wisdom of women is beyond finding out. But I enjoyed that incident. I

-shall never forget the look that came over the Dutchman's face when he

-missed his front.

-

-I was too sleepy those days to go out of town much on the graft; and

-was losing my ambition generally. I even cared very little for the

-girls, and gave up many of my amusements. I used to stay most of the

-time in my furnished room, smoking hop. When I went out it was to get

-some dough quick, and to that end I embraced almost any means. At night

-I often drifted into some concert hall, but it was not like the old

-days when I was a kid. The Bowery is far more respectable now than it

-ever was before. Twenty years ago there was no worse place possible for

-ruining girls and making thieves than Billy McGlory's joint on Hester

-Street. About ten o'clock in the morning slumming parties would chuckle

-with glee when the doors at McGlory's would be closed and young girls

-in scanty clothing, would dance the can-can. These girls would often

-fight together, and frequently were beaten unmercifully by the men

-who lived on them and their trade. Often men were forcibly robbed in

-these joints. There was little danger of an arrest; for if the sucker

-squealed, the policeman on the beat would club him off to the beat of

-another copper, who would either continue the process, or arrest him

-for disorderly conduct.

-

-At this time, which was just before the Lexow Committee began its work,

-there were at least a few honest coppers. I knew one, however, that

-did not remain honest. It happened this way. The guns had been tearing

-open the cars so hard that the street car companies, as they had once

-before, got after the officials, who stirred up Headquarters. The riot

-act was read to the dips. This meant that, on the second offense, every

-thief would be settled for his full time and that there would be no

-squaring it. The guns lay low for a while, but two very venturesome

-grafters, Mack and Jerry, put their heads together and reasoned thus:

-"Now that the other guns are alarmed it is a good chance for us to get

-in our fine work."

-

-Complaints continued to come in. The police grew hot and sent Mr.

-F----, a flyman, to get the rascals. Mr. F---- had the reputation of

-being the most honest detective on the force. He often declared that

-he wanted promotion only on his merits. Whenever he was overheard in

-making this remark there was a quiet smile on the faces of the other

-coppers. F---- caught Mack dead to rights, and, not being a diplomat,

-did not understand when the gun tried to talk reason to him. Even a

-large piece of dough did not help his intellect, and Mack was taken to

-the station-house. When a high official heard about it he swore by all

-the gods that he would make an example of that notorious pickpocket,

-Mack; but human nature is weak, especially if it wears buttons. Mack

-sent for F----'s superior, the captain, and the following dialogue took

-place:

-

-_Captain_: What do you want?

-

-_Mack_: I'm copped.

-

-_Captain_: Yes, and you're dead to rights.

-

-_Mack_: I tried to do business with F----. What is the matter with him?

-

-_Captain_: He is a policeman. He wants his promotion by merit. (Even

-the Captain smiled.)

-

-_Mack_: I'd give five centuries (five hundred dollars) if I could get

-to my summer residence in Asbury Park.

-

-_Captain_: How long would it take you to get it?

-

-_Mack_: (He, too, was laconic.) I got it on me.

-

-_Captain_: Give it here.

-

-_Mack_: It's a sure turn-out?

-

-_Captain_: Was I ever known to go back on my word?

-

-Mack handed the money over, and went over to court in the afternoon

-with F----. The Captain was there, and whispered to F----: "Throw him

-out." That nearly knocked F---- down, but he and Mack took a car, and

-he said to the latter: "In the name of everything how did you hypnotize

-the old man?" Mack replied, with a laugh: "I tried to mesmerize you in

-the same way; but you are working on your merits."

-

-Mack was discharged, and F---- decided to be a diplomat henceforth.

-From an honest copper he became as clever a panther as ever shook coin

-from a gun. Isn't it likely that if a man had a large income he would

-never go to prison? Indeed, do you think that well-known guns could

-graft with impunity unless they had some one right? Nay! Nay! Hannah.

-They often hear the song of split half or no graft.

-

-But at that time I was so careless that I did not even have enough

-sense to save fall-money, and after about nine months of freedom I fell

-again. One day three of us boarded a car in Brooklyn and I saw a mark

-whom I immediately nicked for his red super, which I passed quickly

-to one of my stalls, Eddy. We got off the car and walked about three

-blocks, when Eddy flashed the super, to look at it. The sucker, who had

-been tailing, blew, and Eddy threw the watch to the ground, fearing

-that he would be nailed. A crowd gathered around the super, I among

-them, the other stall, Eddy having vamoosed, and the sucker. No man in

-his senses would have picked up that gold watch. But I did it and was

-nailed dead to rights. I felt that super belonged to me. I had nicked

-it cleverly, and I thought I had earned it! I was sentenced to four

-years in Sing Sing, but I did not hang my head with shame, this time,

-as I was taken to the station. It was the way of life and of those

-I associated with, and I was more a fatalist than ever. I hated all

-mankind and cared nothing for the consequences of my acts.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XI.

-

-_Back to Prison._

-

-

-I was not recognized by the authorities at Sing Sing as having been

-there before. I gave a different name and pedigree, of course, but

-the reason I was not known as a second-timer was that I had spent only

-nine months at Sing Sing on my first term, the remainder having been

-passed at Auburn. There was a new warden at Sing Sing, too, and some

-of the other officials had changed; and, besides, I must have been

-lucky. Anyway, none of the keepers knew me, and this meant a great

-deal to me; for if I had been recognized as a second-timer I should

-have had a great deal of extra time to serve. On my first term I had

-received commutation time for good behavior amounting to over a year,

-and there is a rule that if a released convict is sent back to prison,

-he must serve, not only the time given him on his second sentence, but

-the commutation time on his first bit. Somebody must have been very

-careless, for I beat the State out of more than a year.

-

-Some of the convicts, indeed, knew that I had served before; but they

-did not squeal. Even some of those who did not know me had an inkling

-of it, but would not tell. It was still another instance of honor among

-thieves. If they had reported me to the authorities, they might have

-had an easier time in stir and had many privileges, such as better

-jobs and better things to eat. There were many stool-pigeons there, of

-course, but somehow these rats did not get wind of me.

-

-It did not take me long to get the Underground Tunnel in working order

-again, and I received contraband letters, booze, opium and morphine

-as regularly as on my first bit. One of the screws running the Tunnel

-at the time, Jack R----, was a little heavier in his demands than I

-thought fair. He wanted a third instead of a fifth of the money sent

-the convicts from home. But he was a good fellow, and always brought

-in the hop as soon as it arrived. Like the New York police he was hot

-after the stuff, but who can blame him? He wanted to rise in the world,

-and was more ambitious than the other screws. I continued my pipe

-dreams, and my reading; indeed, they were often connected. I frequently

-used to imagine that I was a character in one of the books; and often

-choked the detestable Tarquin into insensibility.

-

-On one occasion I dreamed that I was arraigned before my Maker and

-charged with murder. I cried with fear and sorrow, for I felt that even

-before the just God there was no justice; but a voice silenced me and

-said that to be guilty of the crime of murder, it was not necessary

-to use weapons or poison. Suddenly I seemed to see the sad faces of

-my father and mother, and then I knew what the voice meant. Indeed, I

-was guilty. I heard the word, "Begone," and sank into the abyss. After

-many thousand years of misery I was led into the Chamber of Contentment

-where I saw some of the great men whose books I had read. Voltaire, Tom

-Paine and Galileo sat on a throne, but when I approached them with awe,

-the angel, who had the face of a keeper, told me to leave. I appealed

-to Voltaire, and begged him not to permit them to send me among the

-hymn-singers. He said he pitied me, but that I was not fit to be with

-the great elect. I asked him where Dr. Parkhurst was, and he answered

-that the doctor was hot stuff and had evaporated long ago. I was led

-away sorrowing, and awoke in misery and tears, in my dark and damp

-cell.

-

-On this bit I was assigned to the clothing department, where I stayed

-six months, but did very little work. Warden Sage replaced Warden

-Darson and organized the system of stool-pigeons in stir more carefully

-than ever before; so it was more difficult than it was before to

-neglect our work. I said to Sage one day: "You're a cheap guy. You

-ought to be President of a Woman's Sewing Society. You can do nothing

-but make an aristocracy of stool-pigeons." I gave up work after six

-months because of my health, which had been bad for a long time, but

-now grew worse. My rapid life on the outside, my bad habits, and my

-experience in prison were beginning to tell on me badly. There was a

-general breaking-down of my system. I was so weak and coughed so badly

-that they thought I was dying. The doctors said I had consumption and

-transferred me to the prison hospital, where I had better air and food

-and was far more comfortable in body but terribly low in my mind. I

-was so despondent that I did not even "fan my face" (turn my head away

-to avoid having the outside world become familiar with my features)

-when visitors went through the hospital. This was an unusual degree

-of carelessness for a professional gun. One reason I was so gloomy was

-that I was now unable to get hold of my darling hop.

-

-I was so despondent in the hospital that I really thought I should soon

-become an angel; and my environment was not very cheerful, for several

-convicts died on beds near me. Whenever anybody was going to die,

-every convict in the prison knew about it, for the attendants would

-put three screens around the dying man's bed. There were about twenty

-beds in the long room, and near me was an old boyhood pal, Tommy Ward,

-in the last stages of consumption. Tommy and I often talked together

-about death, and neither of us was afraid of it. I saw a dozen men die

-during my experience in state prisons and I never heard one of them

-clamor for a clergyman. Tommy was doing life for murder, and ought to

-have been afraid of death, if anyone was. But when he was about to die,

-he sent word to me to come to his bedside, and after a word or two of

-good-bye he went into his agony. The last words he ever said were: "Ah,

-give me a big Peter (narcotic)." He did not receive the last rites of

-the Catholic Church, and his ignorant family refused to bury him. So

-Tommy's cell number was put on the tombstone, if it could be called

-such, which marked his grave in the little burying ground outside the

-prison walls.

-

-Indeed, it is not easy to throw the religious con (confidence game)

-into a convict. Often, while we were in chapel, the dominie would tell

-us that life was short; but hardly one of the six or seven hundred

-criminals who were listening believed the assertion. They felt that

-the few years they were doing for the good of their country were as

-long as centuries. If there were a few "cons" who tried the cheerful

-dodge, they did not deceive anybody, for their brother guns knew that

-they were sore in their hearts because they had been caught without

-fall-money, and so had to serve a few million years in stir.

-

-After I got temporarily better in health and had left the hospital,

-I began to read Lavater on physiognomy more industriously than ever.

-With his help I became a close student of faces, and I learned to tell

-the thoughts and emotions of my fellow convicts. I watched them at

-work and when their faces flushed I knew they were thinking of Her.

-Sometimes I would ask a man how She was, and he would look confused,

-and perhaps angry because his day dream was disturbed. And how the

-men used to look at women visitors who went through the shops! It was

-against the rules to look at the inhabitants of the Upper World who

-visited stir, but I noticed that after women visitors had been there

-the convicts were generally more cheerful. Even a momentary glimpse of

-those who lived within the pale of civilization warmed their hearts.

-After the ladies had gone the convicts would talk about them for hours.

-Many of their remarks were vulgar and licentious, but some of the men

-were broken down with feeling and would say soft things. They would

-talk about their mothers and sweethearts and eventually drift back on

-their ill-spent lives. How often I thought of the life behind me! Then

-I would look at the men about me, some of whom had stolen millions and

-had international reputations--but all discouraged now, broken down in

-health, penniless and friendless. If a man died in stir he was just a

-cadaver for the dissecting table, nothing more. The end fitted in well

-with his misspent life. These reflections would bring us around again

-to good resolutions.

-

-People who have never broken the law--I beg pardon, who were never

-caught--can not understand how a man who has once served in stir will

-take another chance and go back and suffer the same tortures. A society

-lady I once met said she thought criminals who go on grafting, when

-they know what the result will be, must be lacking in imagination. I

-replied to her: "Madam, why do you lace tight and indulge in social

-dissipation even after you know it is bad for the health? You know it

-is a strain on your nerves, but you do it. Is it because you have no

-imagination? That which we all dread most--death--we all defy."

-

-The good book says that all men shall earn their bread by the sweat

-of their brow, but we grafters make of ourselves an exception, with

-that overweening egotism and brash desire to do others with no return,

-which is natural to everybody. Only when the round-up comes, either in

-the sick bed or in the toils, we often can not bear our burdens and

-look around to put the blame on someone else. If a man is religious,

-why should he not drop it on Jesus? Man! How despicable at times! How

-ungallant to his ancestor of the softer sex! From time immemorial he

-has exclaimed: "Only for her, the deceiving one, my better half, I

-should be perfect."

-

-Convicts, particularly if they are broken in health, often become

-like little children. It is not unusual for them to grow dependent on

-dumb pets, which they smuggle into prison by means of the Underground

-Tunnel. The man in stir who has a white mouse or robin is envied by

-the other convicts, for he has something to love. If an artist could

-only witness the affection that is centered on a mouse or dog, if he

-could only depict the emotions in the hard face of the criminal, what a

-story! I had a white rat, which I had obtained with difficulty through

-the Underground. I used to put him up my sleeve, and he would run all

-over my body, he was so tame. He would stand on his hind legs or lie

-down at my command. Sometimes, when I was lonely and melancholy, I

-loved this rat like a human being.

-

-In May, 1896, when I still had about a year to serve on my second

-term, a rumor circulated through the prison that some of the Salvation

-Army were going to visit the stir. The men were greatly excited at

-the prospect of a break in the dreary routine. I imagined that a big

-burly Salvationist, beating a drum, with a few very thin Salvation

-lasses, would march through the prison yard. I was dumbfounded by the

-reality, for I saw enter the Protestant chapel, which was crowded with

-eager convicts, two delicate, pretty women. No actor or actress ever

-got a warmer welcome than that given to Mrs. Booth and her secretary,

-Captain Jennie Hughes. After the clapping of hands and cheering had

-ceased, Mrs. Booth arose and made a speech, which was listened to in

-deep silence. Certainly she was eloquent, and what she said impressed

-many an old gun. She was the first visitor who ever promised practical

-Christianity and eventually carried out the promise. She promised to

-build homes for us after our release; and in many cases, she did, and

-we respect her. She spoke for an hour, and afterwards granted private

-interviews, and many of the convicts told her all their troubles, and

-she promised to take care of their old mothers, daughters and wives.

-

-Before leaving the chapel, she sang: "O Lord, let the waves of

-thy crimson sea roll over me." I did not see how such a pretty,

-intelligent, refined and educated woman could say such a bloody thing,

-but she probably had forgotten what the words really meant. At any

-rate, she is a good woman, for she tried hard to have the Parole Bill

-passed. That bill has recently become a law, and it is a good one, in

-my opinion; but it has one fault. It only effects first-timers. The

-second and third timers, who went to Sing Sing years ago when there was

-contract labor and who worked harder than any laborer in New York City,

-ought to have a chance, too. Show a little confidence in any man, even

-though he be a third-timer, as I have been, and he will be a better man

-for it.

-

-After the singing, on that first morning of Mrs. Booth's visit,

-she asked those convicts who wanted to lead a better life to stand

-up. About seventy men out of the five or six hundred arose, and

-the others remained seated. I was not among those who stood up. I

-never met anybody who could touch me in that way. I don't believe in

-instantaneous Christianity. I knew half a dozen of the men who stood

-up, and they were not very strong mentally. I often wondered what the

-motives were that moved the men in that manner. Man is a social animal,

-and Mrs. Booth was a magnetic woman. After I had heard her speak once,

-I knew that. She had a good personal appearance and one other requisite

-that appealed strongly to those who were in our predicament--her sex.

-Who could entirely resist the pleadings of a pretty woman with large

-black eyes?

-

-Certainly I was moved by this sincere and attractive woman, but my

-own early religious training had made me suspicious of the whole

-business. Whenever anybody tried to reform me through Christianity I

-always thought of that powerful Celt who used to rush at me in Sunday

-school with a hickory stick and shout "Who made you?" And I don't think

-that most of the men who profess religion in prison are sincere. They

-usually want to curry favor with the authorities, or get "staked" after

-they leave stir. One convict, whom I used to call "The Great American

-Identifier," because he used to graft by claiming to be a relative of

-everybody that died, from California to Maine and weeping over the dead

-body, was the worst hypocrite I ever saw--a regular Uriah Heep. He was

-one of Mrs. Booth's converts and stood up in chapel. After she went

-away he said to me: "What a blessing has been poured into my soul since

-I heard Mrs. Booth." Another hypocrite said to me on the same occasion:

-"I don't know what I would do only for Mrs. Booth. She has lightened

-my weary burdens." Now, I would not trust either of those men with a

-box of matches; and so I said to the Great American Identifier: "You

-are the meanest, most despicable thief in the whole stir. I'd respect

-you if you had the nerve to rob a live man, but you always stole from

-a cadaver." He was horrified at my language and began to talk of a

-favorite subject with him--his wealthy relatives.

-

-Some of these converts were not hypocrites, but I don't think even they

-received any good from their conversion. Some people go to religion

-because they have nothing else to distract their thoughts, and the

-subject sometimes is a mania with them. The doctors say that there is

-only one incurable mental disease--religious insanity. In the eyes

-of the reformers Mrs. Booth does a great thing by making some of us

-converts, but experts in mental diseases declare that it is very bad

-to excite convicts to such a pitch. Many of the weak-minded among them

-lose their balance and become insane through these violent religious

-emotions.

-

-I did not meet so many of the big guns on my second term as on my

-first; but, of course, I came across many of my old pals and formed

-some new acquaintances. It was on this term that four of us used to

-have what I called a tenement house oratory talk whenever we worked

-together in the halls. Some of us were lucky enough at times to serve

-as barbers, hall-men and runners to and from the shops, and we used to

-gather together in the halls and amuse ourselves with conversation.

-Dickey, Mull, Mickey and I became great pals in this way. Dickey was

-a desperate river pirate who would not stand a roast from anybody,

-but was well liked. Mull was one of the best principled convicts I

-ever knew in my life. He was quiet, delicate and manly, and opposed to

-abusing young boys, yet if you did him an injury he would cut the liver

-out of you. He was a good fellow. Mickey was what I called a tenement

-house philosopher. He'd stick his oar into every bit of talk that was

-started. One day the talk began on Tammany Hall and went something like

-this:

-

-"All crooked officials," said Mull, "including all of them, ought to be

-railroaded to Sing Sing."

-

-_Dickey_: "Through their methods the county offices are rotten from the

-judge to the policeman."

-

-_Mull_: "I agree with you."

-

-_Mickey_: "Ah, wat's the matter wid Tammany? My old man never voted any

-other ticket. Neither did yours. When you get into stir you act like

-college professors. Why don't you practice what you spout? I always

-voted the Tammany ticket--five or six times every election day. How is

-it I never got a long bit?"

-

-_Mull_: "How many times, Mickey, have you been in stir?"

-

-_Mickey_: "This is the fourth, but the highest I got was four years."

-

-_Dickey_: "You never done anything big enough to get four."

-

-_Mickey_: "I didn't, eh? You have been hollering that you are innocent,

-and get twenty years for piracy. I only get four, but I am guilty every

-time. There is a big difference between that and twenty, aint it?"

-

-Mull slapped Mickey on the back and said: "Never mind. You will get

-yours yet on the installment plan." Then, turning to me, Mull asked:

-"Jim, don't you think that if everything was square and on the level

-we'd stand a better chance?"

-

-"No," I replied. "In the first place we have not reached the

-millennium. In the second place they would devise some legal scheme to

-keep a third timer the rest of his natural days. I know a moccasin who

-would move heaven and earth to have such a bill passed, and he is one

-of the crookedest philanthropists in America to-day. I am a grafter,

-and I believe that the present administration is all right. I know that

-I can stay out of prison as long as I save my fall-money. When I blow

-that in I ought to go to prison. Every gun who is capable of stealing,

-knows that if he puts by enough money he can not only keep out of stir

-but can beat his way into heaven. I'm arguing as a professional thief."

-

-This was too much for Mickey, who said: "Why don't you talk United

-States and not be springing whole leaves out of a dictionary?"

-

-Just then Big Jim came up. He had heard what I said and he joined

-in: "You know why I got the tenth of a century? I had thousands in my

-pocket and went to buy some silk underwear at a haberdasher's in New

-York. But it seemed to me a waste of good coin to buy them, so I stole

-a dozen pair of silk stockings. They tried to arrest me, I shot, and

-got ten years. I always did despise a petty thief, but I never felt

-like kicking him till then. Ten years for a few stockings! Can you

-blame the judge? I didn't. Even a judge admires a good thief. If I had

-robbed a bank I'd never have got such a long bit. The old saying is

-true: Kill one man and you will be hanged. Kill sixteen, and the United

-States Government is likely to pension you."

-

-The tenement-house philosopher began to object again, when the guard,

-as usual, came along to stop our pleasant conversation. He thought we

-were abusing our privileges.

-

-It was during this bit that I met the man with the white teeth, as he

-is now known among his friends. I will call him Patsy, and tell his

-story, for it is an unusual one. He was a good deal older man than I

-and was one of the old-school burglars, and a good one. They were a

-systematic lot, and would shoot before they stood the collar; but they

-were gentlemanly grafters and never abused anybody. The first thing

-Patsy's mob did after entering a house was to round up all the inmates

-and put them into one room. There one burglar would stick them up

-with a revolver, while the others went through the house. On a fatal

-occasion Patsy took the daughter of the house, a young girl of eighteen

-or nineteen, in his arms and carried her down stairs into the room

-where the rest of the family had been put by the other grafters. As he

-carried the girl down stairs, she said: "Mr. Burglar, don't harm me."

-Patsy was masked, all but his mouth, and when he said: "You are as safe

-as if you were in your father's arms," she saw his teeth, which were

-remarkably fine and white. Patsy afterwards said that the girl was not

-a bit alarmed, and was such a perfect coquette that she noticed his

-good points. The next morning she told the police that one of the bad

-men had a beautiful set of teeth. The flymen rounded up half a dozen

-grafters on suspicion, among them Patsy; and no sooner did he open his

-mouth, than he was recognized, and settled for a long bit. Poor Patsy

-has served altogether about nineteen years, but now he has squared

-it, and is a waiter in a Bowery saloon, more content with his twelve

-dollars a week than he used to be with his thousands. I often go around

-and have a glass with him. He is now a quiet, sober fellow, and his

-teeth are as fine as ever.

-

-One day a man named "Muir," a mean, sure-thing grafter, came to the

-stir on a visit to some of his acquaintances. He had never done a bit

-himself, although he was a notorious thief. But he liked to look at the

-misfortunes of others, occasionally. On this visit he got more than he

-bargained for. He came to the clothing department where Mike, who had

-grafted with Muir in New York, and I, were at work. Muir went up to

-Mike and offered him a bill. Mike threw it in Muir's face and called

-him--well, the worst thing known in Graftdom. "If it wasn't for you,"

-he said, "I wouldn't be doing this bit."

-

-There are several kinds of sure-thing grafters. Some are crooked

-gamblers, some are plain stool-pigeons, some are discouraged thieves

-who continue to graft but take no risks. Muir was one of the meanest

-of the rats that I have known, yet in a way, he was handy to the

-professional gun. He had somebody "right" at headquarters and could

-generally get protection for his mob; but he would always throw the mob

-over if it was to his advantage. He and two other house-work men robbed

-a senator's home, and such a howl went up that the police offered all

-manner of protection to the grafter who would tip them off to who got

-the stuff. Grafters who work with the coppers don't want it known among

-those of their own kind, for they would be ostracized. If they do a

-dirty trick they try to throw it on someone else who would not stoop to

-such a thing. Muir was a diplomat, and tipped off the Central Office,

-and those who did the trick, all except Tom and Muir, were nailed. A

-few nights after that the whisper was passed among guns of both sexes,

-who had gathered at a resort up-town, that somebody had squealed. The

-muttered curses meant that some Central Office man had by wireless

-telegraphy put the under world next that somebody had tipped off the

-police. But it was not Muir that the hard names were said against: the

-Central Office man took care of that. With low cunning Muir had had the

-rumor circulated that it was Tom who had thrown them down, and Tommy

-was ostracized.

-

-I knew Muir and I knew Tommy, and I was sure that the latter was

-innocent. Some time after Tom had been cut by the rest of the gang I

-saw Muir drinking with two Central Office detectives, in a well-known

-resort, and I was convinced that he was the rat. His personal

-appearance bore out my suspicion. He had a weak face, with no fight in

-it. He was quiet of speech, always smiling, and as soft and noiseless

-as the animal called the snake. He had a narrow, hanging lip, small

-nose, large ears, and characterless, protruding eyes. The squint look

-from under the eye-brows, and the quick jerk of the hand to the chin,

-showed without doubt that he possessed the low cunning too of that

-animal called the rat. Partly through my influence, Muir gradually got

-the reputation of being a sure-thing grafter, but he was so sleek that

-he could always find some grafter to work with him. Pals with whom he

-fell out, always shortly afterwards came to harm. That was the case

-with Big Mike, who spat in Muir's face, when the latter visited him in

-Sing Sing. When Muir did pickpocket work, he never dipped himself, but

-acted as a stall. This was another sure-thing dodge. Muir never did a

-bit in stir because he was of more value to headquarters than a dozen

-detectives. The fact that he never did time was another thing that

-gradually made the gang suspicious of him. Therefore, at the present

-time he is of comparatively little value to the police force, and may

-be settled before long. I hope so.

-

-One of the meanest things Muir ever did was to a poor old "dago"

-grafter, a queer-maker (counterfeiter). The Italian was putting

-out unusually good stuff, both paper and metal, and the avaricious

-Muir thought he saw a good chance to get a big bit of money from

-the dago. He put up a plan with two Central Office men to bleed the

-counterfeiter. Then he went to the dago and said he had got hold of

-some big buyers from the West who would buy five thousand dollars worth

-of the "queer." They met the supposed buyers, who were in reality

-the two Central Office men, at a little saloon. After a talk the

-detectives came out in their true colors, showed their shields, and

-demanded one thousand dollars. The dago looked at Muir, who gave him

-the tip to pay the one thousand dollars. The Italian, however, thinking

-Muir was on the level, misunderstood the sign, and did not pay. The

-outraged detectives took the Italian to police headquarters, but did

-not show up the queer at first; they still wanted their one thousand

-dollars. So the dago was remanded and remanded, getting a hearing every

-twenty-four hours, but there was never enough evidence. Finally the

-poor fellow got a lawyer, and then the Central Office men gave up the

-game, and produced the queer as evidence. The United States authorities

-prosecuted the case, and the Italian was given three years and a half.

-After he was released he met Muir on the East Side, and tried to kill

-him with a knife. That is the only way Muir will ever get his deserts.

-A man like him very seldom dies in state's prison, or is buried in

-potter's field. He often becomes a gin-mill keeper and captain of his

-election district, for he understands how to control the repeaters who

-give Tammany Hall such large majorities on election day in Manhattan.

-

-It was on this second bit in prison, as I have said in another place,

-that the famous "fence" operated in stir. I knew him well. He was a

-clever fellow, and I often congratulated him on his success with the

-keepers; for he was no stool-pigeon and got his pull legitimately. He

-was an older grafter than I and remembered well Madame Mandelbaum, the

-Jewess, one of the best fences, before my time, in New York City. At

-the corner of Clinton and Rivington Streets there stood until a few

-years ago a small dry goods and notions store, which was the scene of

-transactions which many an old gun likes to talk about. What plannings

-of great robberies took place there, in Madame Mandelbaum's store!

-She would buy any kind of stolen property, from an ostrich feather

-to hundreds and thousands of dollars' worth of gems. The common

-shop-lifter and the great cracksman alike did business at this famous

-place. Some of the noted grafters who patronized her store were Jimmy

-Hope, Shang Draper, Billy Porter, Sheenie Mike, Red Leary, Johnnie

-Irving, Jack Walsh, alias John the Mick, and a brainy planner of big

-jobs, English George.

-

-Madame Mandelbaum had two country residences in Brooklyn where she

-invited her friends, the most famous thieves in two continents. English

-George, who used to send money to his son, who was being educated in

-England, was a frequent visitor, and used to deposit with her all

-his valuables. She had two beautiful daughters, one of whom became

-infatuated with George, who did not return her love. Later, she and

-her daughters, after they became wealthy, tried to rise in the world

-and shake their old companions. The daughters were finely dressed and

-well-educated, and the Madame hunted around for respectable husbands

-for them. Once a bright reporter wrote a play, in which the central

-character was Madame Mandelbaum. She read about it in the newspapers

-and went, with her two daughters, to see it. They occupied a private

-box, and were gorgeously dressed. The old lady was very indignant when

-she saw the woman who was supposed to be herself appear on the stage.

-The actress, badly dressed, and made up with a hooked nose, was jeered

-by the audience. After the play, Madame Mandelbaum insisted on seeing

-the manager of the theatre. She showed him her silks and her costly

-diamonds and then said: "Look at me. I am Madame Mandelbaum. Does that

-huzzy look anything like me?" Pointing to her daughters she continued:

-"What must my children think of such an impersonation? Both of them are

-better dressed and have more money and education than that strut, who

-is only a moment's plaything for bankers and brokers!"

-

-In most ways, of course, my life in prison during the second term was

-similar to what it was on my first term. Books and opium were my main

-pleasures. If it had not been for them and for the thoughts about life

-and about my fellow convicts which they led me to form, the monotony

-of the prison routine would have driven me mad. My health was by that

-time badly shattered. I was very nervous and could seldom sleep without

-a drug.

-

-My moral health was far worse, too, than it had been on my first term.

-Then I had made strong efforts to overcome the opium habit, and laid

-plans to give up grafting. Then I had some decent ambitions, and did

-not look upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas on the second

-term, I had grown to take a hopeless view of my case. I began to feel

-that I could not reform, no matter how hard I tried. It seemed to

-me, too, that it was hardly worth while now to make an effort, for I

-thought my health was worse than it really was and that I should die

-soon, with no opportunity to live the intelligent life I had learned to

-admire through my books. I still made good resolutions, and some effort

-to quit the hop, but they were weak in comparison with the efforts

-I had made during my first term. More and more it seemed to me that

-I belonged in the under world for good, and that I might as well go

-through it to the end. Stealing was my profession. It was all I knew

-how to do, and I didn't believe that anybody was interested enough in

-me to teach me anything else. On the other hand, what I had learned on

-the Rocky Path would never leave me. I was sure of my knowledge of the

-technique of graft, and I knew that a sucker was born every minute.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XII.

-

-_On the Outside Again._

-

-

-My time on the second bit was drawing to a close. I was eager to get

-out, of course, but I knew way down in my mind, that it would be only

-to graft again. I made a resolution that I would regain my health and

-gather a little fall-money before I started in hard again on the Rocky

-Path.

-

-On the day of my release, Warden Sage called me to his office and

-talked to me like a friend. He did not know that I was a second timer,

-or he might not have been so kind to me. He was a humane man, and in

-spite of his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced good

-things into Sing Sing. He improved the condition of the cells and we

-were not confined there so much as we had been before he came. On my

-first term many a man staid for days in his cell without ever going

-out; one man was confined twenty-eight days on bread and water. But

-under Mr. Sage punishments were not so severe. He even used to send

-delicacies to men chained up in the Catholic Chapel.

-

-I should like to say a good word for Head Keeper Connoughton, too.

-He was not generally liked, for he was a strict disciplinarian, but I

-think he was one of the best keepers in the country. He was stern, but

-not brutal, and when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton was very kind.

-He was not deceived by the fake lunatics, and used to say: "If you go

-to the mad-house, you are liable to become worse. If you are all right

-in the morning I will give you a job out in the air." Although Mr.

-Connoughton had had little schooling he was an intelligent man.

-

-I believe the best thing the community can do to reform criminals

-is to have a more intelligent class of keepers. As a rule they are

-ignorant, brutal and stupid, under-paid and inefficient; yet what is

-more important for the State's welfare than an intelligent treatment

-of convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long ones, for when

-the criminal is broken down in health and made fearful, suspicious and

-revengeful, what can you expect from him? However, in the mood I was in

-at the end of my second term, I did not believe that anything was any

-good as a preventive of crime. I knew that when I got on the outside I

-wouldn't think of what might happen to me. I knew that I couldn't or

-wouldn't carry a hod. What ambition I had left was to become a more

-successful crook than I had ever been before.

-

-Warden Sage gave me some good advice and then I left Sing Sing for New

-York. I did not get the pleasure from going out again that had been

-so keen after my first bit. My eye-sight was failing now, and I was

-sick and dull. My only thought was to get back to my old haunts, and

-I drank several large glasses of whiskey at Sing Sing town, to help

-me on my way. I intended to go straight home, as I felt very ill, to

-my father and mother, but I didn't see them for several days after my

-return to New York. The first thing I did in the city was to deliver

-some messages from my fellow convicts to their relatives. My third

-visit for that purpose was to the home of a fine young fellow I knew

-in stir. It was a large family and included a married sister and her

-children. They were glad to hear from Bobby, and I talked to them for

-some time about him, when the husband of the married sister came home,

-and began to quarrel with his wife. He accused her of having strange

-men in the house, meaning me. The younger brother and the rest of the

-family got back at the brother-in-law and gave him better than they

-got. The little brother fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder".

-The police surrounded the house and took us all to the station-house

-in the patrol wagon. And so I spent the first night after my return in

-confinement. It seemed natural, however. In the morning we were taken

-before the magistrate, and the mother and sister testified that I had

-taken them a message from their boy, and had committed no offense.

-The brother-in-law blurted out that he had married into a family of

-thieves, and that I had just returned from Sing Sing. I was discharged,

-but fined five dollars. Blessed are the peacemakers,--but not in my

-case!

-

-I passed the next day looking for old girls and pals, but I found few

-of them. Many were dead and others were in stir or had sunk so far

-down into the under world that even I could not find them. I was only

-about thirty-two years old, but I had already a long acquaintance with

-the past. Like all grafters I had lived rapidly, crowding, while at

-liberty, several days into one. When I got back from my second bit

-the greater part of my life seemed to be made up of memories of other

-days. Some of the old pals I did meet again had squared it, others were

-"dead" (out of the game) and some had degenerated into mere bums.

-

-There are several different classes of "dead ones":

-

-1. The man who has lost his nerve. He generally becomes a whiskey

-fiend. If he becomes hopelessly a soak the better class of guns shun

-him, for he is no good to work with. He will not keep an engagement, or

-will turn up at the place of meeting too late or too early. A grafter

-must be exactly on time. It is as bad to be too early as too late, for

-he must not be seen hanging around the place of meeting. Punctuality is

-more of a virtue in the under world than it is in respectable society.

-The slackest people I know to keep their appointments, are the honest

-ones; or grafters who have become whiskey fiends. These latter usually

-wind up with rot-gut booze and are sometimes seen selling songs on the

-Bowery.

-

-2. The man who becomes a copper. He is known as a stool-pigeon, and is

-detested and feared by all grafters. Nobody will go with him. Sometimes

-he becomes a Pinkerton man, and is a useful member of society. When

-he loses his grip with the upper world, he belongs to neither, for the

-grafters won't look at him.

-

-3. The man who knows a trade. This grafter often "squares" it, is apt

-to marry and remain honest. His former pals, who are still grafters,

-treat him kindly, for they know he is not a rat. They know, too, that

-he is a bright and intelligent man, and that it is well to keep on the

-right side of him. Such a man has often educated himself in stir, and,

-when he squares it, is apt to join a political club, and is called

-in by the leader to help out in an election, for he possesses some

-brains. The gun is apt to make him an occasional present, for he can

-help the grafter, in case of a fall, because of his connection with

-the politicians. This kind of "dead one" often keeps his friends the

-grafters, while in stir, next to the news in the city.

-

-4. The gun who is _supposed_ to square it. This grafter has got a

-bunch of money together and sees a good chance to open a gin-mill,

-or a Raines Law hotel, or a gambling joint. He knows how to take care

-of the repeaters, and is handy about election time. In return he gets

-protection for his illegal business. He is a go-between, and is on good

-terms with coppers and grafters. He supplies the grafter who has plenty

-of fall-money with bondsmen, makes his life in the Tombs easy, and gets

-him a good job while in stir. This man is supposed to be "dead," but he

-is really very much alive. Often a copper comes to him and asks for the

-whereabouts of some grafter or other. He will reply, perhaps: "I hear

-he is in Europe, or in the West." The copper looks wise and imagines he

-is clever. The "dead" one sneers, and, like a wise man, laughs in his

-sleeve; for he is generally in communication with the man looked for.

-

-5. The sure-thing grafter. He is a man who continues to steal, but

-wants above everything to keep out of stir, where he has spent many

-years. So he goes back to the petty pilfering he did as a boy. General

-Brace and the Professor belonged to this class of "dead ones." The

-second night I spent on the Bowery after my return from my second

-bit I met Laudanum Joe, who is another good example of this kind of

-"dead one." At one time he made thousands of dollars, but now he is

-discouraged and nervous. He looked bad (poorly dressed) but was glad to

-see me.

-

-"How is graft?" he asked.

-

-"I have left the Rocky Path," I replied, thinking I would throw a few

-"cons" into him. "I am walking straight. Not in the religious line,

-either."

-

-He smiled, which was tantamount to saying that I lied.

-

-"What are you working at?" he asked.

-

-"I am looking for a job," I replied.

-

-"Jimmy, is it true, that you are pipes (crazy)? I heard you got buggy

-(crazy) in your last bit."

-

-"Joe," I replied, "you know I was never bothered above the ears."

-

-"If you are going to carry the hod," he said, "you might as well go to

-the pipe-house, and let them cure you. Have you given up smoking, too?"

-he continued.

-

-He meant the hop. I conned him again and said: "Yes." He showed the old

-peculiar, familiar grin, and said:

-

-"Say, I have no coin. Take me with you and give me a smoke."

-

-I tried to convince him that there was nothing in it, but he was a

-doubter.

-

-"What are _you_ doing, Joe?" I asked.

-

-"O, just getting a few shillings," he replied, meaning that he was

-grafting.

-

-"Why don't you give up the booze?" I asked.

-

-I had made a break, for he said, quickly:

-

-"Why? Because I don't wear a Piccadilly collar?"

-

-All grafters of any original calibre are super-sensitive, to a point

-very near insanity. Laudanum Joe thought I had reference to his dress,

-which was very bum.

-

-"Joe," I said, "I never judge a man by his clothes, especially one that

-I know."

-

-"Jimmy," he said, "the truth is I can't stand another long bit in stir.

-I do a little petty pilfering that satisfies my wants--a cup of tea,

-plenty of booze, and a little hop. If I fall I only go to the workhouse

-for a couple of months. The screws know I have seen better days and I

-can get a graft and my booze while there. If I aint as prosperous as I

-was once, why not dream I'm a millionaire?"

-

-Some grafters who have been prosperous at one time fall even lower

-than Laudanum Joe. When they get fear knocked into them and can't

-do without whiskey they sink lower and lower. Hungry Bob is another

-example. I grafted with him as a boy, but when I met him on the Bowery

-after my second bit I hardly knew him, and at first he failed to

-recognize me entirely. I got him into a gin-mill, however, and he told

-how badly treated he had been just before we met. He had gone into a

-saloon kept by an old pal of his who had risen in the world, and asked

-him for fifteen cents to buy a bed in a lodging-house. "Go long, you

-pan-handler (beggar)," said his old friend. Poor Bob was badly cut up

-about it, and talked about ingratitude for a long time. But he had his

-lodging money, for a safe-cracker who knew Hungry Bob when he was one

-of the gayest grafters in town, happened to be in the saloon, and he

-gave the "bum" fifteen cents for old times sake.

-

-"How is it, Bob," I said to him, "that you are not so good as you were?"

-

-"You want to know what put me on the bum?" he answered. "Well, it's

-this way. I can't trust nobody, and I have to graft alone. That's one

-thing. Then, too, I like the booze too much, and when I'm sitting down

-I can't get up and go out and hustle the way I used to."

-

-Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort for sailors and hard-luck

-grafters in the lower Bowery, when a Sheenie I knew came in.

-

-"Hello, Jim," he said.

-

-"How's graft, Mike?" I replied.

-

-"Don't mention it."

-

-"What makes you look so glum?"

-

-"I'm only after being turned out of police court this morning."

-

-"What was the rap, Mike?"

-

-"I'm looking too respectable. They asked me where I got the clothes. I

-told them I was working, which was true. I have been a waiter for three

-months. The flymen took me to headquarters. I was gathered in to make

-a reputation for those two shoo-flies. Whenever I square it and go to

-work I am nailed regularly, because my mug is in the Hall of Fame. When

-I am arrested, I lose my job every time. Nobody knows you now, Jim. You

-could tear the town open."

-

-I made a mental resolution to follow Mike's advice very soon--as soon

-as my health was a little better. Just then Jack, a boyhood pal of

-mine, who knew the old girls, Sheenie Annie and the rest, came in. I

-was mighty glad to see him, and said so to him.

-

-"I guess you've got the advantage of me, bloke," was his reply.

-

-"Don't you remember Jimmy the Kid, ten years ago, in the sixth?" I

-jogged his memory with the names of a few pals of years ago, and when

-he got next, he said:

-

-"I wouldn't have known you, Jim. I thought you were dead many years ago

-in stir. I heard it time and time again. I thought you were past and

-gone."

-

-After a short talk, I said:

-

-"Where's Sheenie Annie?"

-

-"Dead," he replied.

-

-"Mamie?" I asked.

-

-"Dead," he replied.

-

-"Lucy?"

-

-"In stir."

-

-"Swedish Emmy?"

-

-"She's married."

-

-"Any good Molls now? I'm only after getting back from stir and am not

-next," I said.

-

-"T'aint like old times, Jim," he said. "The Molls won't steal now. They

-aint got brains enough. They are not innocent. They are ignorant. All

-they know how to do is the badger."

-

-I went with Jack to his house, where he had an opium layout. There

-we found several girls and grafters, some smoking hop, some with the

-subtle cigarette between their lips. I was introduced to an English

-grafter, named Harry. He said he was bloomin' glad to see me. He was

-just back from the West, he said, but I thought it was the pen. He

-began to abuse the States, and I said:

-

-"You duffer, did you ever see such pretty girls as here? Did you ever

-wear a collar and tie in the old country?"

-

-He grew indignant and shouted: "'Oly Cobblestones! In this ---- country

-I have two hundred bucks (dollars) saved up every time, but I never

-spend a cent of it. 'Ow to 'Ell am I better off here? I'm only stealin'

-for certain mugs (policemen) and fer those 'igher up, so they can buy

-real estate. They enjoy their life in this country and Europe off my

-'ard earned money and the likes of me. They die as respected citizens.

-I die in the work'us as an outcast. Don't be prating about your ----

-country!"

-

-As soon as I had picked out a good mob to join I began to graft again.

-Two of my new pals were safe-blowers, and we did that graft, and

-day-work, as well as the old reliable dipping. But I wasn't much at

-the graft during the seven months I remained on the outside. My health

-continued bad, and I did not feel like "jumping out" so much as I had

-done formerly. I did not graft except when my funds were very low, and

-so, of course, contrary to my plans, I saved no fall-money. I had a

-girl, an opium lay-out and a furnished room, where I used to stay most

-of the time, smoking with pals, who, like myself, had had the keen edge

-of their ambition taken off. I had a strange longing for music at that

-time; I suppose because my nerves were weaker than they used to be. I

-kept a number of musical instruments in my room, and used to sing and

-dance to amuse my visitors.

-

-During these seven months that I spent mainly in my room, I used to

-reflect and philosophize a lot, partly under the influence of opium.

-I would moralize to my girl or to a friend, or commune with my own

-thoughts. I often got in a state of mind where everything seemed a joke

-to me. I often thought of myself as a spectator watching the play of

-life. I observed my visitors and their characteristics and after they

-had left for the evening loved to size them up in words for Lizzie.

-

-My eyes were so bad that I did not read much, but I took it out in

-epigrams and wise sayings. I will give a few specimens of the kind of

-philosophy I indulged in.

-

-"You always ought to end a speech with a sneer or a laconic remark. It

-is food for thought. The listener will pause and reflect."

-

-"It is not what you make, but what you save, that counts. It isn't

-the big cracksman who gets along. It is the unknown dip who saves his

-earnings."

-

-"To go to Germany to learn the language is as bad as being in stir for

-ten years."

-

-"Jump out and be a man and don't join the Salvation Army."

-

-"Always say to the dip who says he wants to square it; Well, what's

-your other graft?"

-

-"When a con gets home he is apt to find his sweetheart married, and a

-'Madonna of the wash tubs.'"

-

-"He made good money and was a swell grafter, but he got stuck on a

-Tommy that absorbed his attention, and then he lost his punctuality and

-went down and out."

-

-"Do a criminal a bodily injury and he may forget. Wound his feelings

-and he will never forgive."

-

-"Most persons have seen a cow or a bull with a board put around its

-head in such a way that the animal can see nothing. It is a mode of

-punishment. Soon the poor beast will go mad, if the board is not

-removed. What chance has the convict, confined in a dark cell for

-years, to keep his senses? He suffers from astigmatism of the mind."

-

-"I am as much entitled to an opinion as any other quack on the face of

-the earth."

-

-"General Grant is one of my heroes. He was a boy at fifteen. He was

-a boy when he died. A boy is loyalty personified. General Grant had

-been given a task to do, and like a boy, he did it. He was one of our

-greatest men, and belongs with Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Robert

-Ingersoll."

-

-"Why don't we like the books we liked when we were boys? It is not

-because our judgment is better, but because we have a dream of our own

-now, and want authors to dream along the same lines."

-

-"The only gun with principles is the minor grafter."

-

-"The weakest man in the universe is he who falls from a good position

-and respectable society into the world of graft. Forgers and defaulters

-are generally of this class. A professional gun, who has been a thief

-all his life, is entitled to more respect."

-

-"In writing a book on crime, one ought to have in mind to give the

-public a truthful account of a thief's life, his crimes, habits,

-thoughts, emotions, vices and virtues, and how he lives in prison and

-out. I believe this ought to be done, and the man who does it well must

-season his writings with pathos, humor, sarcasm, tragedy, and thus give

-the real life of the grafter."

-

-"Sympathy with a grafter who is trying to square it is a tonic to his

-better self."

-

-"The other day I was with a reporter and a society lady who were

-seeing the town. The lady asked me how I would get her diamond pin.

-It was fastened in such a way that to get it, strong arm work would be

-necessary. I explained how I would "put the mug on her" while my husky

-pal went through her. 'But,' she said, 'that would hurt me.' As if the

-grafters cared! What a selfish lady to be always thinking of herself!"

-

-"Life is the basis of philosophy. Philosophy is an emanation from our

-daily routine. After a convict has paced his cell a few thousand times

-he sometimes has an idea. Philosophy results from life put through a

-mental process, just as opium, when subjected to a chemical experiment,

-produces laudanum. Why, therefore, is not life far stronger than a

-narcotic?"

-

-"I believe in platonic love, for it has been in my own life. A woman

-always wants love, whether she is eighteen or eighty--real love. Many

-is the time I have seen the wistful look in some woman's eye when she

-saw that it was only good fellowship or desire on my part."

-

-"In this age of commerce there is only one true friendship, the kind

-that comes through business."

-

-"An old adage has it that all things come to him who waits. Yes:

-poverty, old age and death. The successful man is he who goes and gets

-it."

-

-"If thy brother assaults you, do not weep, nor pray for him, nor turn

-the other cheek, but assail him with the full strength of your muscles,

-for man at his best is not lovable, nor at his worst, detestable."

-

-"There is more to be got in Germany, judging from what Dutch Lonzo

-used to say, than in England or America, only the Dutchmen are too

-thick-headed to find it out. A first class gun in Germany would be

-ranked as a ninth-rater here."

-

-"Grafters are like the rest of the world in this: they always attribute

-bad motives to a kind act."

-

-"From flim-flam (returning short change) to burglary is but a step,

-provided one has the nerve."

-

-"Why would a woman take to him (a sober, respectable man but lacking in

-temperament) unless she wanted a good home?"

-

-"If there is anything detestable, it is a grafter who will steal an

-overcoat in the winter time."

-

-"'Look for the woman.' A fly-cop gets many a tip from some tid-bit in

-whom a grafter has reposed confidence."

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-I did not do, as I have said, any more grafting than was necessary

-during these seven months of liberty; but I observed continually,

-living in an opium dream, and my pals were more and more amusing to me.

-When I thought about myself and my superior intelligence, I was sad,

-but I thought about myself as little as possible. I preferred to let

-my thoughts dwell on others, who I saw were a a fine line of cranks and

-rogues.

-

-Somewhere in the eighties, before I went to stir, there was a synagogue

-at what is now 101 Hester Street. The synagogue was on the first floor,

-and on the ground floor was a gin-mill, run by an ex-Central Office

-man. Many pickpockets used to hang out there, and they wanted to drive

-the Jews out of the first floor, so that they could lay out a faro game

-there. So they swore and carried on most horribly on Saturdays, when

-the rabbi was preaching, and finally got possession of the premises.

-Only a block away from this old building was a famous place for dips

-to get "books", in the old days. Near by was Ridley's dry-goods store,

-in which there were some cash-girls who used to tip us off to who had

-the books, and were up to the graft themselves. They would yell "cash"

-and bump up against the sucker, while we went through him. The Jews

-were few in those days, and the Irish were in the majority. On the

-corner of Allen and Hester Streets stood the saloon of a well-known

-politician. Now a Jew has a shop there. Who would think that an Isaacs

-would supersede a Finnigan?

-

-At the gin-mill on Hester Street, I used to know a boy dip named Buck.

-When I got back from my second bit I found he had developed into a

-box-man, and had a peculiar disposition, which exists outside, as well

-as inside, Graftdom. He had one thousand eight hundred dollars in the

-bank, and a fine red front (gold watch and chain), but he was not a

-good fellow. He used to invite three or four guns to have a drink, and

-would order Hennessy's brandy, which cost twenty cents a glass. After

-we had had our drinks he would search himself and only find perhaps

-twenty cents in his clothes. He got into me several times before I

-"blew". One time, after he had ordered drinks, he began the old game,

-said he thought he had eighteen dollars with him, and must have been

-touched. Then he took out his gold watch and chain and threw it on the

-bar. But who would take it? I went down, of course, and paid for the

-drinks. When we went out together, he grinned, and said to me: "I pity

-you. You will never have a bank account, my boy."

-

-The next time Buck threw down his watch and said he would pay in the

-morning, I thought it was dirt, for I knew he had fifty dollars on him.

-So I said to the bartender: "Take it and hock it, and get what he owes

-you. This chump has been working it all up and down the line. I won't

-be touched by the d---- grafter any more."

-

-Buck was ready witted and turning to the bartender, said: "My friend

-here is learning how to play poker and has just lost eighteen dollars.

-He is a dead sore loser and is rattled."

-

-We went out with the watch, without paying for our drinks, and he said

-to me: "Jim, I don't believe in paying a gin-mill keeper. If the powers

-that be were for the people instead of for themselves they would have

-such drinkables free on every corner in old New York." The next time

-Buck asked me to have a drink I told him to go to a warm place in

-the next world. Buck was good to his family. He was married and had a

-couple of brats.

-

-Many a man educates himself in stir, as was my case. Jimmy, whom I ran

-up against one day on the street, is a good example. He had squared

-it and is still on the level. When I saw him, after my second bit, he

-was making forty dollars a week as an electrical engineer; and every

-bit of the necessary education he got in prison. At one time he was

-an unusually desperate grafter; and entirely ignorant of everything,

-except the technique of theft. Many years ago he robbed a jewelry

-store and was sent to Blackwell's Island for two years. The night of

-the day he was released he burglarized the same store and assaulted

-the proprietor. He was arrested with the goods on him and brought to

-General Sessions before Recorder Smythe, who had sentenced him before.

-He got ten years at Sing Sing and Auburn, and for a while he was one of

-the most dangerous and desperate of convicts, and made several attempts

-to escape. But one day a book on electricity fell into his hands, and

-from that time on he was a hard student. When he was released from stir

-he got a job in a large electrical plant up the State, and worked for

-a while, when he was tipped off by a country grafter who had known him

-in stir. He lost his job, and went to New York, where he met me, who

-was home after my first term. I gave him the welcome hand, and, after

-he had told me his story, I said: "Well, there is plenty of money in

-town. Jump out with us." He grafted with me and my mob for a while,

-but got stuck on a Tommy, so that we could not depend on him to keep

-his appointments, and we dropped him. After that he did some strong arm

-work with a couple of gorillas and fell again for five years. When he

-returned from stir he got his present position as electrical engineer.

-He had it when I met him after my second bit and he has it to-day. I am

-sure he is on the level and will be so as long as he holds his job.

-

-About this time I was introduced to a peculiar character in the shape

-of a few yards of calico. It was at Carey's place on Bleecker Street

-that I first saw this good-looking youth of nineteen, dressed in the

-latest fashion. His graft was to masquerade as a young girl, and for

-a long time Short-Haired Liz, as we called him, was very successful.

-He sought employment as maid in well-to-do families and then made away

-with the valuables. One day he was nailed, with twenty charges against

-him. He was convicted on the testimony of a chamber-maid, with whom,

-in his character of lady's maid, he had had a lark. Mr. R----, who was

-still influential, did his best for him, for his fall-money was big,

-and he only got a light sentence.

-

-I heard one day that an old pal of mine, Dannie, had just been hanged.

-It gave me a shock, for I had often grafted with him when we were kids.

-As there were no orchards on the streets of the east side, Dannie and I

-used to go to the improvised gardens that lined the side-walks outside

-of the green grocers' shops, and make away with strawberries, apples,

-and other fruits. By nature I suppose boys are no more bothered with

-consciences than are police officials. Dannie rose rapidly in the world

-of graft and became very dangerous to society. As a grafter he had one

-great fault. He had a very quick temper. He was sensitive, and lacking

-in self-control, but he was one of the cleverest guns that ever came

-from the Sixth Ward, a place noted for good grafters of both sexes. He

-married a respectable girl and had a nice home, for he had enough money

-to keep the police from bothering him. If it had not been for his bad

-temper, he might be grafting yet. He would shoot at a moment's notice,

-and the toughest of the hard element were afraid of him. One time he

-had it in for an old pal of his named Paddy. For a while Paddy kept

-away from the saloon on Pell Street where Dannie hung out, but Paddy,

-too, had nerve, and one day he turned up at his old resort, the Drum,

-as it was called. He saw Dannie and fired a cannister at him. Dannie

-hovered between life and death for months, and had four operations

-performed on him without anaesthetics. After he got well Dannie grafted

-on the Albany boats. One night he and his pals tried to get a Moll's

-leather, but some Western guns who were on the boat were looking for

-provender themselves and nicked the Moll. Dannie accused them of taking

-his property, and, as they would not give up, pulled his pistol. One

-of the Western guns jumped overboard, and the others gave up the stuff.

-Dannie was right, for that boat belonged to him and his mob.

-

-A few months after that event Dannie shot a mug, who had called him

-a rat, and went to San Antonio, Texas, where he secured a position

-as bartender. One day a well-known gambler who had the reputation

-of being a ten time killer began to shoot around in the saloon for

-fun. Dannie joined in the game, shot the gambler twice, and beat the

-latter's two pals into insensibility. A few months afterwards he came

-to New York with twenty-seven hundred dollars in his pocket; and he

-enjoyed himself, for it is only the New York City born who love the

-town. But he had better have stayed away, for in New York he met his

-mortal enemy, Splitty, who had more brains than Dannie, and was running

-a "short while house" in the famous gas house block in Hester Street.

-One night Dannie was on a drunk, spending his twenty-seven hundred

-dollars, and riding around in a carriage with two girls. Beeze, one of

-the Molls, proposed to go around to Splitty's. They went, and Beeze and

-the other girl were admitted, but Dannie was shut out. He fired three

-shots through the door. One took effect in Beeze's breast fatally, and

-Dannie was arrested.

-

-While in Tombs waiting trial he was well treated by the warden, who

-was leader of the Sixth Ward, and who used to permit Dannie's wife

-to visit him every night. At the same time Dannie became the victim

-of one of the worst cases of treachery I ever heard of. An old pal of

-his, George, released from Sing Sing, went to visit him in the Tombs.

-Dannie advised George not to graft again until he got his health back,

-suggesting that meanwhile he eat his meals at his (Dannie's) mother's

-house. The old lady had saved up about two hundred and fifty dollars,

-which she intended to use to secure a new trial for her son. George

-heard of the money and put up a scheme to get it. He told the old woman

-that Dannie was going to escape from the Tombs that night and that he

-had sent word to his mother to give him (George) the money. The villain

-then took the money and skipped the city, thus completing the dirtiest

-piece of work I ever heard of. "Good Heavens!" said Dannie, when he

-heard of it. "A study in black!" Dannie, poor fellow, was convicted,

-and, after a few months, hanged.

-

-Another tragedy in Manhattan was the end of Johnny T----. I had been

-out only a short time after my second bit, when I met him on the

-Bowery. He was just back, too, and complained that all his old pals

-had lost their nerve. Whenever he made a proposition they seemed to

-see twenty years staring them in the face. So he had to work alone. His

-graft was burglary, outside of New York. He lived in the city, and the

-police gave him protection for outside work. He was married and had two

-fine boys. One day a copper, contrary to the agreement, tried to arrest

-him for a touch made in Mt. Vernon. Johnny was indignant, and wouldn't

-stand for a collar under the circumstances. He put four shots into the

-flyman's body. He was taken to the station-house, and afterwards tried

-for murder. The boys collected a lot of money and tried to save him,

-but he had the whole police force against him and in a few months he

-was hanged.

-

-A friend of mine, L----, had a similar fate. He was a prime favorite

-with the lasses of easy virtue, and was liked by the guns. One night

-when I met him in a joint where grafters hung out, he displayed a split

-lip, given him by the biggest bully in the ward. It was all about a

-girl named Mollie whom the bully was stuck on and on whose account he

-was jealous of L----, whom all the women ran after. A few nights later,

-L---- met the bully who had beaten him and said he had a present for

-him. "Is it something good?" asked the gorilla. "Yes," said L----, and

-shot him dead. L---- tried to escape, but was caught in Pittsburg, and

-extradited to New York, where he was convicted partly on the testimony

-of the girl, whom I used to call Unlimited Mollie. She was lucky, for

-instead of drifting to the Bowery, she married a policeman, who was

-promoted. L---- was sentenced to be hanged, but he died game.

-

-I think kleptomania is not a very common kind of insanity, at least

-in my experience. Most grafters steal for professional reasons, but

-Big Sammy was surely a kleptomaniac. He had no reason to graft, for

-he was well up in the world. When I first met he was standard bearer

-at a ball given in his honor, and had a club named after him. He had

-been gin-mill keeper, hotel proprietor, and theatrical manager, and had

-saved money. He had, too, a real romance in his life, for he loved one

-of the best choir singers in the city. She was beautiful and loved him,

-and they were married. She did not know that Sammy was a gun; indeed,

-he was not a gun, really, for he only used to graft for excitement, or

-at least, what business there was in it was only a side issue. After

-their honeymoon Sammy started a hotel at a sea-side resort, where

-the better class of guns, gamblers and vaudeville artists spent their

-vacation. That fall he went on a tour with his wife who sang in many of

-the churches in the State. Sammy was a good box-man. He never used puff

-(nitro-glycerine), but with a few tools opened the safes artistically.

-His pal Mike went ahead of the touring couple, and when Sammy arrived

-at a town he was tipped off to where the goods lay. When he heard that

-the police were putting it on to the hoboes, he thought it was a good

-joke and kept it up. He wanted the police to gather in all the black

-sheep they could, for he was sorry they were so incompetent.

-

-The loving couple returned to New York, and were happy for a long

-time. But finally the wife fell ill, and under-went an operation, from

-the effects of which she never recovered. She became despondent and

-jealous of Sammy, though he was one of the best husbands I have known.

-One morning he had an engagement to meet an old pal who was coming

-home from stir. He was late, and starting off in a hurry, neglected

-to kiss his wife good-bye. She called after him that he had forgotten

-something. Sammy, feeling for his money and cannister, shouted back

-that everything was all right, and rushed off. His wife must have been

-in an unusually gloomy state of mind, for she took poison, and when

-Sammy returned, she was dead. It drove Sammy almost insane, for he

-loved her always. A few days afterwards he jumped out for excitement

-and forgetfulness and was so reckless when he tried to make a touch

-that he was shot almost to pieces. He recovered, however, and was

-sent to prison for a long term of years. He is out again, and is

-now regularly on the turf. During his bit in stir all his legitimate

-enterprizes went wrong, and when he was released, there was nothing for

-it but to become a professional grafter.

-

-During the seven months which elapsed between the end of my second, and

-the beginning of my third term, I was not a very energetic grafter, as

-I have said. Graft was good at the time and a man with the least bit

-of nerve could make out fairly well. My nerve had not deserted me, but

-somehow I was less ambitious. Philosophy and opium and bad health do

-not incline a man to a hustling life. The excitement of stealing had

-left me, and now it was merely business. I therefore did a great deal

-of swindling, which does not stir the imagination, but can be done more

-easily than other forms of graft. I was known at headquarters as a dip,

-and so I was not likely to be suspected for occasional swindling, just

-as I had been able to do house-work now and then without a fall.

-

-I did some profitable swindling at this time, with an Italian named

-Velica for a pal. It was a kind of graft which brought quick returns

-without much of an outlay. For several weeks we fleeced Velica's

-country men brown. I impersonated a contractor and Velica was my

-foreman. We put advertisements in the newspapers for men to work on the

-railroads or for labor on new buildings. We hired desk room in a cheap

-office, where we awaited our suckers, who came in droves, though only

-one could see us at a time. Our tools for this graft were pen, paper,

-and ink; and one new shovel and pick-axe. Velica did the talking and I

-took down the man's name and address. Velica told his countryman that

-we could not afford to run the risk of disappointing the railroad,

-so that he would have to leave a deposit as a guarantee that he would

-turn up in the morning. If he left a deposit of a few dollars we put

-his name on the new pick and shovel, which we told him he could come

-for in the morning. If we induced many to give us deposits, using the

-same pick and shovel as a bribe, we made a lot of money during the

-day. The next morning we would change our office and vary our form of

-advertisement.

-

-Sometimes we met our victims at saloons. Velica would be talking to

-some Italian immigrant who had money, when I would turn up and be

-introduced. Treating all around and flashing a roll of bills I could

-soon win the sucker's respect and confidence, and make him ante up on

-any old con. One day in a saloon in Newark we got an Italian guy for

-one hundred and fifty dollars. Before he left the place, however, he

-suspected something. We had promised him the position of foreman of

-a gang of laborers, and after we got his dough we could not let well

-enough alone, and offered to give his wife the privilege of feeding

-the sixty Italians of whom he was to be the foreman. I suppose the dago

-thought that we were too good, for he blew and pulled his gun. I caught

-him around the waist, and the bartender, who was with us, struck him

-over the head with a bottle of beer. The dago dropped the smoke-wagon

-and the bartender threatened to put him in prison for pulling a rod on

-respectable people. The dago left the saloon and never saw his money

-again.

-

-About this time, too, I had an opportunity to go into still another

-lucrative kind of swindling, but didn't. It was not conscience either

-that prevented me from swindling the fair sex, for in those days all

-touches,--except those made by others off myself--seemed legitimate.

-I did not go in for it because, at the time it was proposed to me,

-I had enough money for my needs, and as I have said, I was lazy. It

-was a good graft, however, and I was a fool for not ringing in on it.

-The scheme was to hire a floor in a private house situated in any

-good neighborhood. One of the mob had to know German, and then an

-advertisement would be inserted in the _Herald_ to the effect that

-a young German doctor who had just come from the old country wanted

-to meet a German lady of some means with a view to matrimony. A pal

-of mine who put such an advertisement in a Chicago paper received no

-less than one hundred and forty five answers from women ranging in age

-from fifteen to fifty. The grafters would read the letters and decide

-as to which ladies they thought had some money. When these arrived at

-the office, in answer to the grafters' letters, they would meet two or

-three men, impersonating the doctor and his friends, who had the gift

-of "con" to a remarkable degree. The doctor would suggest that if the

-lady would advance sufficient money to start him in business in the

-West it would be well. If he found she had plenty of money he married

-her immediately, one of his pals acting the clergyman. She then drew

-all her money from the bank, and they went to a hotel. There the doctor

-leaving her in their room, would go to see about the tickets for the

-West, and never return. The ladies always jumped at these offers, for

-all German women want to marry doctors or clergymen; and all women are

-soft, even if they are so apt to be natural pilferers themselves.

-

-When I was hard up, and if there was no good confidence game in sight,

-I didn't mind taking heavy chances in straight grafting; for I lived

-in a dream, and through opium, was not only lazy, but reckless. On one

-occasion a Jew fence had put up a plan to get a big touch, and picked

-me out to do the desperate part of the job. The fence was an expert in

-jewels and worked for one of the biggest firms that dealt in precious

-stones. He kept an eye on all such stores, watching for an opening

-to put his friends the grafters "next." To the place in question he

-was tipped off by a couple of penny weighters, who claimed it was a

-snap. He agreed with them, but kept his opinion to himself, and came

-to see me about it. I and two other grafters watched the place for a

-week. One day the two clerks went out together for lunch, leaving the

-proprietor alone in the store. This was the opportunity. I stationed

-one of my pals at the window outside and the other up the street to

-watch. If I had much trouble with "the mark" the pal at the window was

-to come to my assistance. With red pepper (to throw, if necessary, in

-the sucker's eyes) and a good black jack I was to go into the store and

-buy a baby's ring for one dollar. While waiting for my change, I was

-to price a piece of costly jewelry, and while talking about the merits

-of the diamond, hit my man on the head with the black jack. Then all I

-had to do was to go behind the counter and take the entire contents of

-the window--only a minute's work, for all the costly jewels were lying

-on an embroidered piece of velvet, and I had only to pick up the four

-corners of the velvet, bundle it into a green bag, and jump into the

-cab which was waiting for us a block away. Well, I had just about got

-the proprietor in a position to deal him the blow when the man at the

-window weakened, and came in and said, "Vix." I thought there was a

-copper outside, or that one of the clerks was returning, and told the

-jeweler I would send my wife for the ring. I went out and asked my pal

-what was the matter. He said he was afraid I would kill the old fellow,

-and that the come-back would be too strong. My other pal I found a

-block away. We all went back together to the fence, and then I opened

-on them, I tell you. I called them petty larceny barnacles, and came

-near clubbing them, I was so indignant. I have often had occasion to

-notice that most thieves who will steal a diamond or a "front" weaken

-when it comes to a large touch, even though there may be no more danger

-in it than in the smaller enterprises. I gave those two men a wide

-berth after that, and whenever I met them I sneered; for I could not

-get over being sore. The "touch" was a beauty, with very little chance

-of a come-back, for the police don't look among the pickpockets for

-the men who make this kind of touches, and I and my two companions were

-known to the coppers as dips.

-

-Just before I fell for my third and most terrible term, I met Lottie,

-and thought of marrying. I did not love her, but liked her pretty

-well, and I was beginning to feel that I ought to settle down and

-have a decent woman to look after me, for my health was bad and I had

-little ambition. Lottie seemed the right girl for the place. She was

-of German extraction, and used to shave me sometimes at her father's

-barber shop, where I first met her. She seemed to me a good, honest

-girl, and I thought I could not do better, especially as she was very

-fond of me. Women like the spruce dips, as I have said before, and even

-when my graft had broadened, I always retained the dress, manners and

-reputation of a pickpocket. Lottie promised to marry me, and said that

-she could raise a few hundred dollars from her father, with which I

-might start another barber shop, quit grafting, and settle down to my

-books, my hop and domestic life. One day she gave me a pin that cost

-nine dollars, she said, and she wouldn't let me make her a present. All

-in all, she seemed like a sensible girl, and I was getting interested

-in the marriage idea. One day, however, I discovered something. I

-was playing poker in the office of a hotel kept by a friend of mine,

-when a man and woman came down stairs together and passed through the

-office. They were my little German girl and the owner of a pawn-shop,

-a Sheenie of advanced years. Suddenly I realized where she had got the

-pin she gave me; and I began to believe stories I had heard about her.

-I thought I would test her character myself. I did, and found it weak.

-I did not marry her! What an escape! Every man, even a self-respecting

-gun, wants an honest woman, if it comes to hitching up for good.

-

-Soon after I escaped Lottie, I got my third fall for the stir. The

-other times that I had been convicted, I was guilty, but on this

-occasion I was entirely innocent. Often a man who has done time and is

-well-known to the police is rounded up on suspicion and convicted when

-he is innocent, and I fell a victim to this easy way of the officials

-for covering up their failure to find the right person. I had gone one

-night to an opium joint near Lovers Row, a section of Henry Street

-between Catherine and Oliver Streets, where some guns of both sexes

-were to have a social meeting. We smoked hop and drank heavily and told

-stories of our latest touches. While we were thus engaged I began to

-have severe pains in my chest, which had been bothering me occasionally

-for some time, and suddenly I had a hemorrhage. When I was able I left

-the joint to see a doctor, who stopped the flow of blood, but told

-me I would not live a month if I did not take good care of myself.

-I got aboard a car, went soberly home to my furnished room, and--was

-arrested.

-

-I knew I had not committed any crime this time and thought I should

-of course be released in the morning. Instead however of being taken

-directly to the station house, I was conducted to a saloon, and

-confronted with the "sucker". I had never seen him before, but he

-identified me, just the same, as the man who had picked his pocket.

-I asked him how long ago he had missed his valuables, and when he

-answered, "Three hours," I drew a long sigh of relief, for I was at

-the joint at that time, and thought I could prove an alibi. But though

-the rapper seemed to weaken, the copper was less trustful and read

-the riot act to him. I was so indignant I began to call the policeman

-down vigorously. I told him he had better try to make a reputation on

-me some other time, when I was really guilty, whereupon he lost his

-temper, and jabbed me in the chest with his club, which brought on

-another flow of blood from my lungs.

-

-In this plight I was taken to the station house, still confident I

-should soon be set at liberty, although I had only about eighty dollars

-for fall-money. I hardly thought I needed it, but I used it just the

-same, to make sure, and employed a lawyer. For a while things looked

-favorable to me, for I was remanded back from court every morning for

-eight days, on account of lack of evidence, which is almost equivalent

-to a turn-out in a larceny case. Even the copper began to pig it

-(weaken), probably thinking he might as well get a share of my "dough,"

-since it began to look as if I should beat the case. But on the ninth

-day luck turned against me. The Chief of detectives "identified" me as

-another man, whispering a few words to the justice, and I was committed

-under two thousand dollars bail to stand trial in General Sessions. I

-was sent to the Tombs to await trial, and I knew at last that I was

-lost. My character alone would convict me; and my lawyer had told

-me that I could not prove an alibi on the oaths of the thieves and

-disorderly persons who had been with me in the opium joint.

-

-No matter how confirmed a thief a man may be, I repeat, he hates to be

-convicted for something he has not done. He objects indeed more than

-an honest man would do, for he believes in having the other side play

-fair; whereas the honest man simply thinks a mistake has been made.

-While in the Tombs a murderous idea formed in my mind. I felt that I

-had been horribly wronged, and was hot for revenge. I was desperate,

-too, for I did not think I should live my bit out. Determined to make

-half a dozen angels, including myself, I induced a friend, who came

-to see me in the Tombs, to get me a revolver. I told him I wanted to

-create a panic with a couple of shots, and escape, but in reality I had

-no thought of escape. I was offered a light sentence, if I would plead

-guilty, but I refused. I believed I was going to die anyway, and that

-things did not matter; only I would have as much company as possible on

-the road to the other world. I meant to shoot the copper who had beaten

-me with his club, District Attorney Olcott, the judge, the complainant

-and myself as well, as soon as I should be taken into the court room

-for trial. The pistol however was taken away from me before I entered

-the court: I was convicted and sentenced to five years at Sing Sing.

-

-Much of the time I spent in stir on my third bit I still harbored

-this thought of murder. That was one reason I did not kill myself. The

-determination to do the copper on my release was always in my mind. I

-planned even a more cunning revenge. I imagined many a scheme to get

-him, and gloat over his dire misfortunes. One of my plans was to hunt

-him out on his beat, invite him to drink, and put thirty grains of

-hydrate of chloral in his glass. When he had become unconscious I would

-put a bottle of morphine in his trousers pocket, and then telephone to

-a few newspapers telling them that if they would send reporters to the

-saloon they would have a good story against a dope copper who smoked

-too much. The result would be, I thought, a rap against the copper

-and his disgrace and dismissal from the force would follow. Sometimes

-this seemed to me better than murder; for every copper who is "broke"

-immediately becomes a bum. When my copper should have become a bum I

-imagined myself catching him dead drunk and cutting his hamstrings.

-Certainly I was a fiend when I reflected on my wrongs, real and

-imaginary. At other times I thought I merely killed him outright.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIII.

-

-_In the Mad-House._

-

-

-On the road to Sing Sing again! The public may say I was surely an

-incorrigible and ought to have been shut up anyway for safe keeping,

-but are they right if they say so? During my confinement I often heard

-the prison chaplain preach from the text "Though thou sinnest ninety

-and nine times thy sin shall be forgiven thee."

-

-Probably Christ knew what He meant: His words do not apply to the

-police courts of Manhattan. These do not forgive, but send you up for

-the third term, which, if it is a long one, no man can pass through

-without impairment in body or in brain. It is better to make the

-convict's life as hard as hell for a short term, than to wear out his

-mind and body. People need not wonder why a man, knowing what is before

-him, steals and steals again. The painful experiences of his prison

-life, too often renewed, leave him as water leaves a rubber coat. Few

-men are really impressionable after going through the deadening life in

-stir.

-

-Five months of my third term I spent at Sing Sing, and then, as on my

-first bit, I was drafted to Auburn. At Sing Sing I was classified as

-a second term man. I have already explained that during my first term

-I earned over a year's commutation time; and that that time would have

-been legally forfeited when I was sent up again within nine months for

-my second bit if any one, except a few convicts, had remembered I had

-served before.

-

-When, on my third sentence, I now returned to Sing Sing, I found that

-the authorities were "next," and knew that I had "done" them on the

-second bit. They were sore, because it had been their own carelessness,

-and they were afraid of getting into trouble. To protect themselves

-they classified me as a second term man, but waited for a chance to do

-me. I suppose it was some d---- Dickey Bird (stool-pigeon) who got them

-next that I had done them; but I never heard who it was, though I tried

-to find out long and earnestly.

-

-When I got back to my cell in Sing Sing this third time I was gloomy

-and desperate to an unusual degree, still eaten up with my desire

-for vengeance on those who had sent me to stir for a crime I had not

-committed. My health was so bad that my friends told me I would never

-live my bit out, and advised me to get to Clinton prison, if possible,

-away from the damp cells at Sing Sing. But I took no interest in what

-they said, for I did not care whether I lived or died. I expected to

-die very soon, and in the meantime thought I was well enough where I

-was. I did not fear death, and I had my hop every day. All I wanted

-from the keepers was to be let alone in my cell and not annoyed with

-work. The authorities had an inkling that I was in a desperate state of

-mind, and probably believed it was healthier for them to let me alone

-a good deal of the time.

-

-Before long schemes began to form in my head to make my gets (escape).

-I knew I wouldn't stop at murder, if necessary in order to spring; for,

-as I have said, I cared not whether I lived or died. On the whole,

-however, I rather preferred to become an angel at the beginning of

-my bit than at the end. I kept my schemes for escape to myself, for I

-was afraid of a leak, but the authorities must somehow have suspected

-something, for they kept me in my cell twenty-three hours out of the

-twenty-four. Perhaps it was just because they had it in for me for

-beating them on my second bit. As before, I consoled myself, while

-waiting a chance to escape, with some of my favorite authors; but my

-eye-sight was getting bad and I could not read as much as I used to.

-

-It was during these five months at Sing Sing that I first met Dr.

-Myers, of whom I saw much a year or two later in the mad-house. At Sing

-Sing he had some privileges, and used to work in the hall, where it was

-easy for me to talk to him through my cell door. This remarkable man,

-had been a splendid physician in Chicago. He had beaten some insurance

-companies out of one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, but was

-in Sing Sing because he had been wrongfully convicted on a charge of

-murder. He liked me, especially when later we were in the insane asylum

-together, because I would not stand for the abuse given to the poor

-lunatics, and would do no stool-pigeon or other dirty work for the

-keepers. He used to tell me that I was too bright a man to do any work

-with my hands. "Jim," he said once, "I would rather see you marry my

-daughter than give her to an ignorant business man. I know you would

-treat her kindly and that she would learn something of the world. As

-my wife often said, I would rather die at thirty-eight after seeing the

-world and enjoying life than live in a humdrum way till ninety."

-

-He explained the insurance graft to me, and I still think it the surest

-and most lucrative of all grafts. For a man with intelligence it is

-the very best kind of crooked work. About the only way the insurance

-companies can get back at the thieves is through a squeal. Here are a

-few of the schemes he told me for this graft:

-

-A man and his female pal take a small house in town or on the outskirts

-of a large city. The man insures his life for five thousand dollars.

-After they have lived there a while, and passed perhaps as music

-teachers, they take the next step, which is to get a dead body. Nothing

-is easier. The man goes to any large hospital, represents himself as a

-doctor and for twenty-five dollars can generally get a stiff, which he

-takes away in a barrel or trunk. He goes to a furnished room, already

-secured, and there dresses the cadaver in his own clothes, putting his

-watch, letters and money in the cadavers pockets. In the evening he

-takes the body to some river or stream and throws it in. He knows from

-the newspapers when the body has been found, and notifies his woman

-pal, who identifies it as her husband's body. There are only two snags

-that one must guard against in this plot. The cadaver must not differ

-much in height from the person that has been insured; and its lungs

-must not show that they were those of anybody dead before thrown into

-the water. The way to prepare against this danger is to inject some

-water with a small medical pump into the lungs of the stiff before it

-is thrown overboard. Then it is easy for the "widow" to get the money,

-and meet the alleged dead man in another country.

-

-A more complicated method, in which more money is involved, is as

-follows. The grafter hires an office and represents himself as an

-artist, a bric-a-brac dealer, a promoter or an architect. Then he jumps

-to another city and takes out a policy under the tontien or endowment

-plan. When the game is for a very large amount three or four pals are

-necessary. If no one of the grafters is a doctor, a physician must

-be impersonated, but this is easy. If there are, say, ten thousand

-physicians in Manhattan, not many of whom have an income of ten

-thousand a year, it is perhaps not difficult to get a diploma. After

-a sheepskin is secured, the grafter goes to another State, avoiding,

-unless he is a genuine physician, New York and Illinois, for they have

-boards of regents. The acting quack registers so that he can practice

-medicine and hangs out his shingle. The acting business man takes out a

-policy, and pays the first premium. Before the first premium is paid he

-is dead, for all the insurance company knows. Often a live substitute,

-instead of a dead one, is secured. The grafter goes to the charity

-hospital and looks over the wrecks waiting to die. Some of these poor

-dying devils jump at the chance to go West. It is necessary, of course,

-to make sure that the patient will soon become an angel, or everything

-will fall through. Then the grafter takes the sick man to his house and

-keeps him out of sight. When he is about to die he calls in the grafter

-who is posing as a physician. After the death of the substitute the

-doctor signs the death certificate, the undertaker prepares the body,

-which is buried. The woman grafter is at the funeral, and afterwards

-she sends in her claim to the companies. On one occasion in Dr. Myers's

-experience, he told me, the alleged insured man was found later with

-his head blown off, but when the wife identified the body, the claim

-had been paid.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-One afternoon, after I had been at Sing Sing five months, I was

-taken from my cell, shackled hand and foot, and sent, with fifty

-other convicts, to Auburn. When I had been at Auburn prison about six

-months I grew again exceedingly desperate, and made several wild and

-ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I would take no back talk from the

-keepers, and began to be feared by them. One day I had a fight with

-another convict. He struck me with an iron weapon, and I sent him to

-the hospital with knife thrusts through several parts of his body.

-Although I had been a thief all my life, and had done some strong arm

-work, by nature I was not quarrelsome, and I have never been so quick

-to fight as on my third term. I was locked up in the dungeon for a week

-and fed on bread and water in small quantities. After my release I was

-confined to my cell for several days, and used to quarrel with whoever

-came near me. The keepers began to regard me as a desperate character,

-who would cause them a great deal of trouble; and feared that I might

-escape or commit murder at any time. One day, I remember, a keeper

-threatened to club me with a heavy stick he had. I laughed at him and

-told him to make a good job of it, for I had some years still to serve,

-and if he did not kill me outright, I would have plenty of time to get

-back at him. The cur pigged it (weakened). They really wanted to get

-rid of me, however, and one morning the opportunity came.

-

-I was feeling especially bad that morning and went to see the doctor,

-who told me I had consumption, and transferred me to the consumptive

-ward in the prison. There the doctor and four screws came to my

-bedside, and the doctor inserted a hyperdermic needle into my arm. When

-I awoke I found myself in the isolated dungeon, nicknamed the Keeley

-Cure by the convicts, where I was confined again for several weeks, and

-had a hyperdermic injection every day. At the end of that time I was

-taken before the doctors, who pronounced me insane. With three other

-convicts who were said to be "pipes" (insane) I was shackled hand and

-foot, put on a train and taken to the asylum for the criminal insane

-at Matteawan. I had been in bad places before, but at Matteawan I first

-learned what it is to be in Hell.

-

-Why was I put in the Pipe House? Was I insane?

-

-In one way I have been insane all my life, until recently. There is a

-disease called astigmatism of the conscience, and I have been sorely

-afflicted with that. I have always had the delusion, until the last

-few months, that it is well to "do" others. In that way I certainly was

-"pipes." And in another way, too, I was insane. After a man has served

-many years in stir and has contracted all the vices, he is not normal,

-even if he is not violently insane. His brain loses its equilibrium,

-no matter how strong-minded he may be, and he acquires astigmatism of

-the mind, as well as of the conscience. The more astigmatic he becomes,

-the more frequently he returns to stir, where his disease grows worse,

-until he is prison-mad.

-

-To the best of my knowledge and belief I was not insane in any definite

-way--no more so than are nine out of ten of the men who had served

-as much time in prison as I. I suppose I was not sent to the criminal

-insane asylum because of a perverted conscience. The stir, I believe,

-is supposed to cure that. Why did they send me to the mad-house? I

-don't know, any more than my reader, unless it was because I caused

-the keepers and doctors too much trouble, or because for some reason or

-other they wanted to do me.

-

-But whether I had a delusion or not--and I am convinced myself that

-I have always been right above the ears--there certainly are many

-perfectly sane men confined in our state asylums for the criminal

-insane. Indeed, if all the fake lunatics were sent back to prison, it

-would save the state the expense of building so many hospitals. But I

-suppose the politicians who want patronage to distribute would object.

-

-Many men in prison fake insanity, as I have already explained. Many

-of them desire to be sent to Matteawan or Dannemora insane asylums,

-thinking they will not need to work there, will have better food and

-can more easily escape. They imagine that there are no stool-pigeons in

-the pipe-house, and that they can therefore easily make their elegant

-(escape). When they get to the mad-house they find themselves sadly

-mistaken. They find many sane stool-pigeons there, and their plans for

-escape are piped off as well there as in stir. And in other ways, as

-I shall explain, they are disappointed. The reason the "cons" don't

-get on to the situation in the mad-house through friends who have been

-there is that they think those who have been in the insane asylum are

-really pipes. When I got out of the mad-house and told my friends about

-it, they were apt to remark, laconically, "He's in a terrible state."

-When they get there themselves, God help them. I will narrate what

-happened to me, and some of the horrible things I saw there.

-

-After my pedigree was taken I was given the regulation clothes, which,

-in the mad-house, consist of a blue coat, a pair of grey trousers, a

-calico shirt, socks and a pair of slippers. I was then taken to the

-worst violent ward in the institution, where I had a good chance to

-observe the real and the fake lunatics. No man or woman, not even an

-habitual criminal, can conceive, unless he has been there himself,

-what our state asylums are. My very first experience was a jar. A big

-lunatic, six feet high and a giant in physique, came up to me in the

-ward, and said: "I'll kick your head off, you ijit (idiot). What the

----- did you come here for? Why didn't you stop off at Buffalo?" I

-thought that if all the loons were the size of this one I wasn't going

-to have much show in that violent ward; for I weighed only one hundred

-and fifteen pounds at the time. But the big lunatic changed his note,

-smiled and said: "Say, Charley, have you got any marbles?" I said,

-"No," and then, quick as a flash, he exclaimed: "Be Japes, you don't

-look as if you had enough brains to play them."

-

-I had been in this ward, which was under the Head Attendant, nick-named

-"King" Kelly, for two days, when I was taken away to a dark room in

-which a demented, scrofulous negro had been kept. For me not even

-a change of bed-clothing was made. In rooms on each side of me were

-epileptics and I could hear, especially when I was in the ward, raving

-maniacs shouting all about me. I was taken back to the first ward,

-where I stayed for some time. I began to think that prison was heaven

-in comparison with the pipe house. The food was poor, we were not

-supposed to do any work, and we were allowed only an hour in the yard.

-We stayed in our ward from half past five in the morning until six

-o'clock at night, when we went to bed. It was then I suffered most,

-for there was no light and I could not read. In stir I could lie on

-my cot and read, and soothe my nerves. But in the mad-house I was not

-allowed to read, and lay awake continually at night listening to the

-idiots bleating and the maniacs raving about me. The din was horrible,

-and I am convinced that in the course of time even a sane man kept in

-an insane asylum will be mad; those who are a little delusional will go

-violently insane. My three years in an insane asylum convinced me that,

-beyond doubt, a man contracts a mental ailment just as he contracts

-a physical disease on the outside. I believe in mental as well as

-physical contagion, for I have seen man after man, a short time after

-arriving at the hospital, become a raving maniac.

-

-For weeks and months I had a terrible fight with myself to keep my

-sanity. As I had no books to take up my thoughts I got into the habit

-of solving an arithmetical problem every day. If it had not been for

-my persistence in this mental occupation I have no doubt I should have

-gone violently insane.

-

-It is only the sensitive and intelligent man who, when placed in such

-a predicament, really knows what torture is. The cries of the poor

-demented wretches about me were a terrible lesson. They showed me more

-than any other experience I ever passed through the error of a crooked

-life.

-

-I met many a man in the violent ward who had been a friend of mine

-and good fellow on the outside. Now the brains of all of them were

-gone, they had the most horrible and the most grotesque delusions. But

-horrible or grotesque they were always piteous. If I were to point out

-the greatest achievement that man has accomplished to distinguish him

-from the brute, it would be the taking care of the insane. A child is

-so helpless that when alms is asked for his maintenance it is given

-willingly, for every man and woman pities and loves a child. A lunatic

-is as helpless as a child, and often not any more dangerous. The maniac

-is misrepresented, for in Matteawan and Dannemora taken together there

-are very few who are really violent.

-

-And now I come to the most terrible part of my narrative, which many

-people will not believe--and that is the cruelty of the doctors and

-attendants, cruelty practiced upon these poor, deluded wretches.

-

-With my own eyes I saw scores of instances of abuse while I was at

-Matteawan and later at Dannemora. It is, I believe, against the law to

-strike an insane man, but any man who has ever been in these asylums

-knows how habitual the practice is. I have often seen idiots in the

-same ward with myself violently attacked and beaten by several keepers

-at once. Indeed, some of us used to regard a beating as our daily

-medicine. Patients are not supposed to do any work; but those who

-refused to clean up the wards and do other work for the attendants were

-the ones most likely to receive little mercy.

-

-I know how difficult it is for the public to believe that some of their

-institutions are as rotten as those of the Middle Ages; and when a

-man who has been both in prison and in the pipe house is the one who

-makes the accusation, who will believe him? Of course, his testimony

-on the witness stand is worthless. I will merely call attention,

-however, to the fact that the great majority of the insane are so

-only in one way. They have some delusion, but are otherwise capable of

-observation and of telling the truth. I will also add that the editor

-of this book collected an immense number of instances of brutality from

-several men, besides myself, who had spent years there, and that those

-instances also pointed to the situation that I describe. Moreover, I

-can quote the opinion of the writer on criminology--Josiah Flynt--as

-corroborative of my statements. He has said in my presence and in that

-of the editor of this book, Mr. Hapgood, that his researches have led

-him to believe that the situation in our state asylums for the criminal

-insane is horrible in the extreme.

-

-Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be brutal? In the first place,

-there is very little chance of a come-back, for who will believe men

-who have ever been shut up in an insane asylum? And very often these

-attendants themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin with, they are

-men of low intelligence, as is shown by the fact that they will work

-for eighteen dollars a month, and after they have associated with

-insane men for years they are apt to become delusional themselves.

-Taking care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on the intelligence

-of the best men. Is it any wonder that the ordinary attendant often

-becomes nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor idiot who won't

-do dirty work or whose silly noises get on his nerves? I have noticed

-attendants who, after they had been in the asylum a few months,

-acquired certain insane characteristics, such as a jerking of the

-head from one side to the other, looking up at the sky, cursing some

-imaginary person, and walking with the body bent almost double.

-

-Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something that made me realize I

-was up against a hard joint. An attendant in the isolation ward had an

-incurable patient under him, whom he was in the habit of compelling to

-do his work for him, such as caning chairs and cleaning cuspidors. The

-attendants had two birds in his room, and he used to make Mickey, the

-incurable idiot, clean out the cage for him. One day Mickey put the

-cages under the boiling water, to clean them as usual. The attendant

-had forgot to remove the birds, and they were killed by the hot water.

-Another crank, who was in the bath room with Mickey, spied the dead

-pets, and he and Mickey began to eat them. They were picking the bones

-when the attendant and two others discovered them--and treated them as

-a golfer treats his golf-balls.

-

-Another time I saw an insane epileptic patient try to prevent four

-attendants from playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He was delusional

-on religious subjects and thought the attendants were doing wrong. The

-reward he received for caring for the religious welfare of his keepers

-was a kick in the stomach by one of the attendants, while another hit

-him in the solar plexus, knocking him down, and a third jammed his head

-on the floor until the blood flowed. After he was unconscious a doctor

-gave him a hyperdermic injection and he was put to bed. How often,

-indeed, have I seen men knocked out by strong arm work, or strung up

-to the ceiling with a pair of suspenders! How often have I seen them

-knocked unconscious for a time or for eternity--yes--for eternity, for

-insane men sometimes do die, if they are treated too brutally. In that

-case, the doctor reports the patient as having died of consumption, or

-some other disease. I have seen insane men turned into incurable idiots

-by the beatings they have received from the attendants. I saw an idiot

-boy knocked down with an iron pot because he insisted on chirping out

-his delusion. I heard a patient about to be beaten by four attendants

-cry out: "My God, you won't murder me?" and the answer was, "Why not?

-The Coroner would say you died of dysentery." The attendants tried

-often to force fear into me by making me look at the work they had done

-on some harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances of this kind. I

-could give scores of them, with names of attendants and patients, and

-sometimes even the dates on which these horrors occurred. But I must

-cut short this part of my narrative. Every word of it, as sure as I

-have a poor old mother, is true, but it is too terrible to dwell upon,

-and will probably not be believed. It will be put down as one of my

-delusions, or as a lie inspired by the desire of vengeance.

-

-Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the authorities in the insane

-asylum, for I objected vigorously to the treatment of men really

-insane. It is as dangerous to object to the curriculum of a mad-house

-in the State of New York as it is to find fault with the running of

-the government in Russia. In stir I never saw such brutality as takes

-place almost every day in the pipe house. I reported what I saw, and

-though I was plainly told to mind my own business, I continued to

-object every time I saw a chance, until soon the petty spite of the

-attendants was turned against me. I was reported continually for things

-I had not done, I had no privileges, not even opium or books, and was

-so miserable that I repeatedly tried to be transferred back to prison.

-A doctor once wrote a book called _Ten Years in a Mad-House_, in which

-he says "God help the man who has the attendants against him; for these

-demented brutes will make his life a living hell." Try as I might,

-however, I was not transferred back to stir, partly because of the

-sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry favor with the attendants,

-invented lies about attempts on my part to escape. If I had not had

-such a poor opinion of the powers that be and had stopped finding fault

-I should no doubt have been transferred back to what was beginning to

-seem to me, by contrast, a delightful place--state's prison.

-

-The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe house was paresis. I thought

-a great deal about it, and observed the cranks about me continually. I

-noticed that almost all insane persons are musical, that they can hum a

-tune after hearing it only once. I suppose the meanest faculty in the

-human brain is that of memory, and that idiots, lunatics and madmen

-learn music so easily because that part of the brain which is the

-seat of memory is the only one that is active; the other intellectual

-qualities being dead, so that the memory is untroubled by thought.

-

-I was often saddened at the sight of poor George, who had been a good

-dip and an old pal of mine. When he first saw me in the pipe house he

-asked me about his girl. I told him she was still waiting, and he said:

-"Why doesn't she visit me then?" When I replied: "Wait awhile," he

-smiled sadly, and said: "I know." He then put his finger to his head,

-and, hanging his head, his face suddenly became a blank. I was helpless

-to do anything for him. I was so sorry for him sometimes that I wanted

-to kill him and myself and end our misery.

-

-Another friend of mine thought he had a number of white blackbirds and

-used to talk to them excitedly about gold. This man had a finely shaped

-head. I have read in a book of phrenology that a man's intelligence

-can be estimated by the shape of his head. I don't think this theory

-amounts to anything, for most of the insane men I knew had good heads.

-I have formed a little theory of my own (I am as good a quack as

-anybody else) about insanity. I used to compare a well shaped lunatic's

-head to a lady's beautiful jewel box from which my lady's maid had

-stolen the precious stones. The crank's head contained both quantity

-and quality of brains, but the grey matter was lacking. The jewel box

-and the lunatic's head were both beautiful receptacles, but the value

-had flown.

-

-Another lunatic, a man named Hogan, thought that girls were continually

-bothering him. "Now go away, Liz, and leave me alone," he would

-say. One day a lady about fifty years old visited the hospital with

-Superintendent Allison, and came to the violent ward where Hogan

-and I were. She was not a bit afraid, and went right up to Hogan

-and questioned him. He exclaimed, excitedly, "Go away, Meg. You're

-disfigured enough without my giving you another sockdolager." She

-stayed in the ward a long while and asked many questions. She had as

-much nerve as any lady I ever saw. As she and Allison were leaving

-the ward, Hogan said: "Allison, chain her up. She is a bad egg." The

-next day I learned that this refined, delicate and courageous woman

-had once gone to war with her husband, a German prince, who had been

-with General Sherman on his memorable march to the sea. She was born

-an American, and belonged to the Jay family, but was now the Princess

-Salm-Salm.

-

-The most amusing crank (if the word amusing can be used of an insane

-man) in the ward was an Englishman named Alec. He was incurably insane,

-but a good musician and mathematician. One of his delusions was that

-he was the sacred camel in the London Zoo. His mortal enemy was a

-lunatic named Jimmy White, who thought he was a mule. Jimmy often came

-to me and said: "You didn't give your mule any oats this morning." He

-would not be satisfied until I pretended to shoe him. Alec had great

-resentment for Jimmy because when Alec was a camel in the London

-Zoo Jimmy used to prevent the ladies and the kids from giving him

-sweets. When Jimmy said: "I never saw the man before," Alec replied

-indignantly, "I'm no man. I'm a sacred camel, and I won't be interfered

-with by an ordinary, common mule, like you."

-

-There are divers sorts of insanity. I had an interview with a doctor,

-a high officer in the institution, which convinced me, perhaps without

-reason, that insanity was not limited to the patients and attendants.

-One day an insane man was struck by an attendant in the solar plexus.

-He threw his hands up in the air, and cried: "My God, I'm killed." I

-said to another man in the ward: "There's murder." He said: "How do

-you know?" I replied: "I have seen death a few times." In an hour, sure

-enough, the report came that the insane man was dead. A few days later

-I was talking with the doctor referred to and I said:

-

-"I was an eye-witness of the assault on D----." And I described the

-affair.

-

-"You have been reported to me repeatedly," he replied.

-

-"By whom?" I asked, "attendants or patients?"

-

-"By patients," he replied.

-

-"Surely," I remarked, "you don't believe half what insane men tell you,

-do you? Doctor, these same patients (in reality sane stool-pigeons)

-that have been reporting me, have accused you of every crime in the

-calendar."

-

-"Oh, but," he said, "I am an old man and the father of a family."

-

-"Doctor," I continued, "do you believe that a man can be a respectable

-physician and still be insane?"

-

-"What do you mean?" he said.

-

-"In California lately," I replied, "A superintendent of an insane

-asylum has been accused of murder, arson, rape and peculation. This

-man, too, was more than fifty, had a mother, a wife and children, and

-belonged to a profession which ought to be more sympathetic with a

-patient than the church with its communicants. When a man will stoop to

-such crimes, is it not possible that there is a form of mental disease

-called partial, periodical paralysis of the faculty humane, and was not

-Robert Louis Stevenson right when he wrote _Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde_?"

-

-The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and shouted: "Don't you dare to tell

-anybody about this interview." I looked into his eyes and smiled, for

-I am positive that at that moment I looked into the eyes of a madman.

-

-King Kelly, an attendant who had been on duty in insane asylums for

-many years, was very energetic in trying to get information from the

-stool-pigeons. The patients used to pass notes around among themselves,

-and the attendants were always eager to get hold of those notes,

-expecting to find news of beats (escapes) about to be attempted. I knew

-that King Kelly was eager to discover "beats" and as I, not being a

-stool-pigeon, was in bad odor with him, I determined to give him a jar.

-So one day I wrote him the following note:

-

-"Mr. Kelly; You have been in this hospital for years. The socks and

-suspenders which should go to the patients are divided impartially

-between you and the other attendants. Of the four razors, which lately

-arrived for patients, two are in your trunk, one you sent to your

-brother in Ireland, and the fourth you keep in the ward for show, in

-case the doctor should be coming around."

-

-That night when I was going to bed I slipped the note into the Kings

-hand and whispered: "There's going to be a beat tonight." The King

-turned pale, and hurriedly ordered the men in the ward to bed, so that

-he could read the note. Before reading it he handed it to a doctor, to

-be sure to get the credit of stopping the beat as soon as possible.

-The doctor read it and gave the King the laugh. In the morning, when

-the doctor made his rounds, Mr. Kelly said to him: "We have one or two

-funny men in the ward who, instead of robbing decent people, could

-have made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's." The result was that the

-doctor put me down for three or four new delusions. Knowing the Celtic

-character thoroughly I used to crack many a joke on the King. I would

-say to another patient, as the King passed: "If it hadn't been for

-Kelly we should have escaped that time sure." That would make him wild.

-My gift of ridicule was more than once valuable to me in the mad-house.

-

-But I must say that the King was pretty kind when a patient was ill.

-When I was so ill and weak that I didn't care whether I died or not,

-the old King used to give me extras,--milk, eggs and puddings. And

-in his heart the old man hated stool-pigeons, for by nature he was a

-dynamiter and believed in physical force and not mental treachery.

-

-The last few months I served in the insane asylum was at Dannemora,

-where I was transferred from Matteawan. The conditions at the two

-asylums are much the same. While at Dannemora I continued my efforts

-to be sent back to stir to finish my sentence, and used to talk to the

-doctors about it as often as I had an opportunity. A few months before

-I was released I had an interview with a Commissioner--the first one in

-three years, although I had repeatedly demanded to talk to one.

-

-"How is it," I said, "that I am not sent back to stir?"

-

-He turned to the ward doctor and asked: "What is this mans condition?"

-

-"Imaginary wrongs," replied the doctor.

-

-That made me angry, and I remarked, sarcastically: "It is curious

-that when a man tries to make a success at little things he is a dead

-failure."

-

-"What do you mean?" asked the Superintendent, trying to feel me out for

-a new delusion.

-

-I pointed to the doctor and said: "Only a few years ago this man was

-interlocutor in an amateur minstrel troupe. As a barn-stormer he was a

-failure. Since he has risen to the height of being a mad-house doctor

-he is a success."

-

-Then I turned to the Commissioner and said: "Do you know what

-constitutes a cure in this place and in Matteawan?"

-

-"I'd like to know," he replied.

-

-"Well," I said, "when a man stoops to carrying tales on other patients

-and starts in to work cleaning cuspidors, then, and not till then, he

-is cured. Everybody knows that, in the eyes of attendants and doctors,

-the worst delusions in the asylum are wanting to go home, demanding

-more food, and disliking to do dirty work and bear tales."

-

-I don't know whether my talk with the Commissioner had any effect

-or not, but a little while after that, when my term expired, I was

-released. I had been afraid I should not be, for very often a man is

-kept in the asylum long after his term expires, even though he is no

-more insane than I was. When the stool-pigeons heard that I was to be

-released they thought I must have been a rat under cover, and applied

-every vile name to me.

-

-I had been in hell for several years; but even hell has its uses. When

-I was sent up for my third term, I thought I should not live my bit

-out, and that, as long as I did live, I should remain a grafter at

-heart. But the pipe house cured me, or helped to cure me, of a vice

-which, if it had continued, would have made me incapable of reform,

-even if I had lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I went to the

-mad-house there had been periods when I had little opium, either

-because I could not obtain it, or because I was trying to knock it

-off. My sufferings in consequence had been violent, but the worst moral

-and physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot came to me after I

-had entered the pipe house; for I could practically get no opium. That

-deprivation, added to the horrors I saw every day, was enough to make

-any man crazy. At least, I thought so at the time. I must have had a

-good nervous system to have passed through it all.

-

-Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at all. During my first

-months in the madhouse, the doctor occasionally took pity on me and

-gave me a little of the drug, but taken in such small quantities it

-was worse than useless. He used to give me sedatives, however, which

-calmed me for a time. Occasionally, too, I would get a little hop from

-a trusty, who was a friend of mine, and I had smuggled in some tablets

-of morphine from stir; but the supply was soon exhausted, and I saw

-that the only thing to do was to knock it off entirely. This I did,

-and made no more attempts to obtain the drug. For the last two years in

-the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can not describe the agonies

-I went through. Every nerve and muscle in my body was in pain most of

-the time, my stomach was constantly deranged, my eyes and mouth exuded

-water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of suicide were constant with

-me. Of course, I could never have given up this baleful habit through

-my own efforts alone. The pipe house forced me to make the attempt, and

-after I had held off for two years, I had enough strength to continue

-in the right path, although even now the longing for it returns to

-me. It does not seem possible that I can ever go back to it, for that

-terrible experience in the mad-house made an indelible impression. I

-shall never be able to wipe out those horrors entirely from my mind.

-When under the influence of opium I used frequently to imagine I

-smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I never smell certain sweet

-perfumes now without the whole horrible experience rushing before my

-mind. Life in a mad-house taught me a lesson I shall never forget.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIV.

-

-_Out of Hell._

-

-

-I left Dannemora asylum for the criminal insane on a cold winter

-morning. I had my tickets to New York, but not a cent of money.

-Relatives or friends are supposed to provide that. I was happy,

-however, and I made a resolution, which this time I shall keep, never

-to go to stir or the pipe house again. I knew very well that I could

-never repeat such an experience without going mad in reality; or dying.

-The first term I spent in stir I had my books and a new life of beauty

-and thought to think about. Once for all I had had that experience. The

-thought of going through prison routine again--the damp cells, the poor

-food, the habits contracted, with the mad-house at the end--no, that

-could never be for me again. I felt this, as I heard the loons yelling

-good-bye to me from the windows. I looked at the gloomy building

-and said to myself: "I have left Hell, and I'll shovel coal before I

-go back. All the ideas that brought me here I will leave behind. In

-the future I will try to get all the good things out of life that I

-can--the really good things, a glimpse of which I got through my books.

-I think there is still sufficient grey matter in my brain for that."

-

-I took the train for New York, but stopped off at Plattsburg and Albany

-to deliver some messages from the poor unfortunates to their relatives.

-I arrived in New York at twelve o'clock at night, having had nothing to

-eat all day. My relatives and friends had left the station, but were

-waiting up for me in my brother's house. This time I went straight

-to them. My father had died while I was in the pipe house, and now I

-determined that I would be at last a kind son to the mother who had

-never deserted me. I think she felt that I had changed and the tears

-that flowed from her eyes were not all from unhappiness. She told me

-about my father's last illness, and how cheerful he had been. "I bought

-him a pair of new shoes a month before he died," she said. "He laughed

-when he saw them and said: 'What extravagance! To buy shoes for a dying

-man!'"

-

-Living right among them, I met again, of course, many of my old

-companions in crime, and found that many of them had thought I was

-dead. It was only the other day that I met "Al", driving a peddlers

-wagon. He, like me, had squared it. "I thought you died in the pipe

-house, Jim," he said. This has happened to me a dozen times since my

-return. I had spent so much time in stir that the general impression

-among the guns at home seemed to be that I had "gone up the escape."

-

-As a general thing I found that guns who had squared it and become

-prosperous had never been very successful grafters. Some of the best

-box-men and burglars in the business are now bar-tenders in saloons

-owned by former small fry among the dips. There are waiters now in

-saloons and concert halls on the bowery who were far cleverer thieves

-than the men who employ them, and who are worth thousands. Hungry Joe

-is an instance. Once he was King of confidence men, and on account of

-his great plausibility got in on a noted person, on one occasion, for

-several thousand dollars. And now he will beg many a favor of men he

-would not look at in the old days.

-

-A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive. I had always known

-that, but never realized it so keenly as I have since my return from

-the mad-house. Above everything else a grafter is suspicious, whether

-he has squared it or not--suspicious of his pals and of everybody

-else. When my old pals saw that I was not working with them, they

-wondered what my private graft was. When I told them I was on the level

-and was looking for a job, they either laughed or looked at me with

-suspicion in their eyes. They saw I was looking good (well-dressed)

-and they could not understand it. They put me down, some of them, as

-a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively that I am no longer with

-them, and most of them have given me the frosty mit. Only the bums

-who used to be grafters sail up to me in the Bowery. They have not

-got enough sense left even for suspicion. The dips who hang out in the

-thieves' resorts are beginning to hate me; not because I want to injure

-them, for I don't, but because they think I do. I told one of them, an

-old friend, that I was engaged in some literary work. He was angry in

-an instant and said: "You door mat thief. You couldn't get away with a

-coal-scuttle."

-

-One day I was taking the editor of this book through the Bowery,

-pointing out to him some of my old resorts, when I met an old pal

-of mine, who gave me the glad hand. We had a drink, and I, who was

-feeling good, started in to jolly him a little. He had told me about

-an old pal of ours who had just fallen for a book and was confined in a

-Brooklyn jail. I took out a piece of "copy" paper and took the address,

-intending to pay a visit to him, for everybody wants sympathy. What

-a look went over that grafter's face! I saw him glance quickly at the

-editor and then at me, and I knew then he had taken alarm, and probably

-thought we were Pinkerton men, or something as bad. I tried to carry

-it off with a laugh, for the place was full of thieves, and told him

-I would get him a job on a newspaper. He answered hastily that he had

-a good job in the pool-room and was on the level. He started in to try

-to square it with my companion by saying that he "adored a man who had

-a job." A little while afterwards he added that he hated anybody who

-would graft after he had got an honest job. Then, to wind up his little

-game of squaring himself, he ended by declaring that he had recently

-obtained a very good position.

-

-That was one of the incidents that queered me with the more intelligent

-thieves. He spread the news, and whenever I meet one of that gang on

-the Bowery I get the cold shoulder, a gun is so mighty quick to grow

-suspicious. A grafter who follows the business for years is a study

-in psychology, and his two most prominent characteristics are fear and

-suspicion. If some stool-pigeon tips him off to the police, and he is

-sent to stir, he invariably suspects the wrong person. He tells his

-friends in stir that "Al done him," and pretty soon poor Al, who may

-be an honest thief, is put down as a rat. If Al goes to stir very often

-the result is a cutting match between the two.

-

-There are many convicts in prison who lie awake at night concocting

-stories about other persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions. If

-the prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper he invariably reads the

-society news very carefully. He can tell more about the Four Hundred

-than the swells will ever know about themselves; and he tells very

-little good of them. Such stories are fabricated in prison and repeated

-out of it.

-

-When I was in Auburn stir I knew a young fellow named Sterling, as

-straight a thief as ever did time. He had the courage of a grenadier

-and objected to everything that was mean and petty. He therefore

-had many enemies in prison, and they tried to make him unpopular by

-accusing him of a horrible crime. The story reached my ears and I

-tried to put a stop to it, but I only did him the more harm. When

-Sterling heard the tale he knocked one of his traducers senseless

-with an iron bar. Tongues wagged louder than ever and one day he

-came to me and talked about it and I saw a wild look in his eyes.

-His melancholia started in about that time, and he began to suspect

-everybody, including me. His enemies put the keepers against him and

-they made his life almost unbearable. Generally the men that tip off

-keepers to the alleged violent character of some convict are the worst

-stool-pigeons in the prison. Even the Messiah could not pass through

-this world without arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the name of

-common sense, then, could Sterling, or I, or any other grafter expect

-otherwise than to be traduced? It was the politicians who were the

-cause of Christ's trials; and the politicians are the same to-day as

-they were then. They have very little brains, but they have the low

-cunning which is the first attribute of the human brute. They pretend

-to be the people's advisers, but pile up big bank accounts. Even the

-convict scum that come from the lower wards of the city have all the

-requisites of the successful politician. Nor can one say that these

-criminals are of low birth, for they trace their ancestors back for

-centuries. The fact that convicts slander one another with glee and

-hear with joy of the misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that

-they come from a very old family; from the wretched human stock that

-demanded the crucifixion of Christ.

-

-This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something I should like to

-eliminate from my own character. Even now I am afflicted with it.

-Since my release I often have the old feeling come over me that I am

-being watched; and sometimes without any reason at all. Only recently

-I was riding on a Brooklyn car, when a man sitting opposite happened

-to glance at me two or three times. I gave him an irritated look. Then

-he stared at me, to see what was the matter, I suppose. That was too

-much, and I asked him, with my nerves on edge, if he had ever seen me

-before. He said "No", with a surprised look, and I felt cheap, as I

-always do after such an incident. A neighbor of mine has a peculiar

-habit of watching me quietly whenever I visit his family. I know that

-he is ignorant of my past but when he stares at me, I am rattled.

-I begin to suspect that he is studying me, wondering who I am. The

-other day I said to him, irritably: "Mr. K----, you have a bad habit

-of watching people." He laughed carelessly and I, getting hot, said:

-"Mr. K---- when I visit people it is not with the intention of stealing

-anything." I left the house in a huff and his sister, as I afterwards

-found, rebuked him for his bad manners.

-

-Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being over suspicious. I am

-suspicious even of my family. Sometimes when I sit quietly at home

-with my mother in the evening, as has grown to be a habit with me, I

-see her look at me. I begin immediately to think that she is wondering

-whether I am grafting again. It makes me very nervous, and I sometimes

-put on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be alone. One day, when

-I was in stir, my mother visited me, as she always did when they gave

-her a chance. In the course of our conversation she told me that on my

-release I had better leave the city and go to some place where I was

-not known. "For," she said, "your character, my boy, is bad." I grabbed

-her by the arm and exclaimed: "Who is it that is circulating these

-d---- stories about me?" My poor mother merely meant, of course, that

-I was known as a thief, but I thought some of the other convicts had

-slandered me to her. It was absurd, of course, but the outside world

-cannot understand how suspicious a grafter is. I have often seen a man,

-who afterwards became insane, begin being queer through suspiciousness.

-

-Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious of me, when I

-told them I had squared it, or when I refused to say anything about

-my doings. Of course I don't care, for I hate the Bowery now and

-everything in it. Whenever I went, as I did several times with my

-editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust passed over me. I pity my

-old pals, but they no longer interest me. I look upon them as failures.

-I have seen a new light and I shall follow it. Whatever the public may

-think of this book, it has already been a blessing to me. For it has

-been honest work that I and my friend the editor have done together,

-and leads me to think that there may yet be a new life for me. I

-feel now that I should prefer to talk and associate with the meanest

-workingman in this city than with the swellest thief. For a long time

-I have really despised myself. When old friends and relatives look at

-me askance I say to myself: "How can I prove to them that I am not the

-same as I was in the past?" No wonder the authorities thought I was

-mad. I have spent the best years of my life behind the prison bars. I

-could have made out of myself almost anything I wanted, for I had the

-three requisites of success: personal appearance, health and, I think,

-some brains. But what have I done? After ruining my life, I have not

-even received the proverbial mess of pottage. As I look back upon my

-life both introspectively and retrospectively I do not wonder that

-society at large despises the criminal.

-

-I am not trying to point a moral or pose as a reformer. I cannot say

-that I quit the old life because of any religious feeling. I am not

-one of those who have reformed by finding Jesus at the end of a gas

-pipe which they were about to use as a black jack on a citizen, just

-in order to finger his long green. I only saw by painful experience

-that there is nothing in a life of crime. I ran up against society,

-and found that I had struck something stronger and harder than a stone

-wall. But it was not that alone that made me reform. What was it?

-Was it the terrible years I spent in prison? Was it the confinement

-in a mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine become drivelling

-idiots? Was it my reading of the great authors, and my becoming

-acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the great men of the world?

-Was it a combination of these things? Perhaps so, but even that does

-not entirely explain it, does not go deep enough. I have said that I

-am not religious, and I am not. And yet I have experienced something

-indefinable, which I suppose some people might call an awakening of

-the soul. What is that, after all, but the realization that your way of

-life is ruining you even to the very foundation of your nature?

-

-Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking in religion; for

-certainly the character of Christ strongly appeals to me. I don't care

-for creeds, but the personality of the Nazarene, when stripped of the

-aroma of divinity, appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether they

-are atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any man that has understanding

-reveres the life of Christ, for He practiced what He preached and died

-for humanity. He was a perfect specimen of manhood, and had developed

-to the highest degree that trait which is lacking in most all men--the

-faculty humane.

-

-I believe that a time comes in the lives of many grafters when they

-desire to reform. Some do reform for good and all, and I shall show the

-world that I am one of them; but the difficulties in the way are great,

-and many fall again by the wayside.

-

-They come out of prison marked men. Many observers can tell an

-ex-convict on sight. The lock-step is one of the causes. It gives a

-man a peculiar gait which he will retain all his life. The convicts

-march close together and cannot raise their chests. They have to keep

-their faces turned towards the screw. Breathing is difficult, and most

-convicts suffer in consequence from catarrh, and a good many from lung

-trouble. Walking in lock-step is not good exercise, and makes the men

-nervous. When the convict is confined in his cell he paces up and down.

-The short turn is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his mind.

-That short walk will always have control of me. I cannot sit down now

-to eat or write, without jumping up every five minutes in order to

-take that short walk. I have become so used to it that I do not want

-to leave the house, for I can pace up and down in my room. I can take

-that small stretch all day long and not be tired, but if I walk a long

-straight distance I get very much fatigued. When I wait for a train

-I always begin that short walk on the platform. I have often caught

-myself walking just seven feet one way, and then turning around and

-walking seven feet in the opposite direction. Another physical mark,

-caused by a criminal life rather than by a long sojourn in stir, is

-an expressionless cast of countenance. The old grafter never expresses

-any emotions. He has schooled himself until his face is a mask, which

-betrays nothing.

-

-A much more serious difficulty in the way of reform is the ex-convict's

-health which is always bad if a long term of years has been served.

-Moreover, his brain has often lost its equilibrium and powers of

-discernment. When he gets out of prison his chance of being able to

-do any useful work is slight. He knows no trade, and he is not strong

-enough to do hard day labor. He is given only ten dollars, when he

-leaves stir, with which to begin life afresh. A man who has served a

-long term is not steady above the ears until he has been at liberty

-several months; and what can such a man do with ten dollars? It would

-be cheaper for the state in the end to give an ex-convict money enough

-to keep him for several months; for then a smaller percentage would

-return to stir. It would give the man a chance to make friends, to look

-for a job, and to show the world that he is in earnest.

-

-A criminal who is trying to reform is generally a very helpless

-being. He was not, to begin with, the strongest man mentally, and

-after confinement is still less so. He is preoccupied, suspicious

-and a dreamer, and when he gets a glimpse of himself in all his

-naked realities, is apt to become depressed and discouraged. He is

-easily led, and certainly no man needs a good friend as much as the

-ex-convict. He is distrusted by everybody, is apt to be "piped off"

-wherever he goes, and finds it hard to get work which he can do. There

-are hundreds of men in our prisons to-day who, if they could find

-somebody who would trust them and take a genuine interest in them,

-would reform and become respectable citizens. That is where the Tammany

-politician, whom I have called Senator Wet Coin is a better man than

-the majority of reformers. When a man goes to him and says he wants to

-square it he takes him by the hand, trusts and helps him. Wet Coin does

-not hand him a soup ticket and a tract nor does he hold on tight to his

-own watch chain fearing for his red super, hastily bidding the ex-gun

-to be with Jesus.

-

-

-

-

-EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT.

-

-

-The life of the thief is at an end; and the life of the man and good

-citizen has begun. For I am convinced that Jim is strictly on the

-level, and will remain so. The only thing yet lacking to make his

-reform sure is a job. I, and those of my friends who are interested,

-have as yet failed to find anything for him to do that is, under the

-circumstances, desirable. The story of my disappointments in this

-respect is a long one, and I shall not tell it. I have learned to think

-that patience is the greatest of the virtues; and of this virtue an

-ex-gun needs an enormous amount. If Jim and his friends prove good in

-this way, the job will come. But waiting is hard, for Jim is nervous,

-in bad health, with an old mother to look after, and with new ambitions

-which make keen his sense of time lost.

-

-One word about his character: I sometimes think of my friend the

-ex-thief as "Light-fingered Jim"; and in that name there lingers a note

-of vague apology. As he told his story to me, I saw everywhere the mark

-of the natural rogue, of the man grown with a roguish boy's brain.

-The humor of much of his tale seemed to me strong. I was never able

-to look upon him as a deliberate malefactor. He constantly impressed

-me as gentle and imaginative, impressionable and easily influenced,

-but not naturally vicious or vindictive. If I am right, his reform is

-nothing more or less than the coming to years of sober maturity. He is

-now thirty-five years old, and as he himself puts it: "Some men acquire

-wisdom at twenty-one, others at thirty-five, and some never."

-

-

-

-

-EVERYMAN

-

-The XVth Century morality play, with reproductions of old wood cuts.

-$1.00, postage paid or at your bookseller's. The first book to bear the

-imprint of Fox, Duffield & Company.

-

-

-"In typography, in paper and in make-up the edition is admirable. It is

-a good beginning and sets a very high standard."

-

-     _The Sun, New York._

-

-"The best of the old moralities, easy to read and fair to look upon."

-

-     _Evening Post, New York._

-

-"The book is well done, and should find a place on the shelves and in

-the spirits of all who care for the best in life and art."

-

-     JOHN CORBIN, in

-     _The New York Times_.

-

-"Everyman" in book form will be welcomed by the large number of people

-whose attention has been called to this ancient morality play by its

-admirable presentation in different cities."

-

-     _The Outlook, New York._

-

-"The first publication of (the new house) "Everyman," the fifteenth

-century morality play given in Boston this winter, is of artistic

-design and of handsome, agreeable type. The old woodcuts are reproduced

-from the first ancient edition of the play."

-

-     _Boston Journal._

-

-

-     NEW YORK

-     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY,

-     36 East 21st Street.

-

-

-

-

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45169 ***
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+The Autobiography of a Thief.
+
+
+
+
+     The Autobiography of
+     a Thief
+
+     Recorded by
+     HUTCHINS HAPGOOD
+     Author of "The Spirit of the Ghetto," etc.
+
+
+     NEW YORK
+     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY
+     1903
+
+
+
+
+     Copyright, 1903, BY
+     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY
+
+     Entered at the Library of Congress, Washington, U. S. A.
+
+     Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.
+
+     Published May, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+"_Oh, happy he who can still hope to emerge from this sea of error!_"
+
+                                                               FAUST.
+
+"_There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to
+purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like; therefore
+why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And
+if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but
+like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch because they can do no
+other._"
+
+                                                                 BACON.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                       PAGE
+              Editor's Note                                        9
+  I.          Boyhood and Early Crime                             15
+  II.         My First Fall                                       34
+  III.        Mixed Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards      50
+  IV.         When the Graft Was Good                             73
+  V.          Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds                      89
+  VI.         What the Burglar Faces                             107
+  VII.        In Stir                                            132
+  VIII.       In Stir (Continued)                                154
+  IX.         In Stir and Out                                    182
+  X.          At the Graft Again                                 202
+  XI.         Back to Prison                                     228
+  XII.        On the Outside Again                               255
+  XIII.       In the Mad-House                                   300
+  XIV.        Out of Hell                                        332
+              Editor's Postscript                                348
+
+
+
+
+Editor's Note.
+
+
+I met the ex-pickpocket and burglar whose autobiography follows soon
+after his release from a third term in the penitentiary. For several
+weeks I was not particularly interested in him. He was full of a desire
+to publish in the newspapers an exposé of conditions obtaining in two
+of our state institutions, his motive seeming partly revenge and partly
+a very genuine feeling that he had come in contact with a systematic
+crime against humanity. But as I continued to see more of him, and
+learned much about his life, my interest grew; for I soon perceived
+that he not only had led a typical thief's life, but was also a man
+of more than common natural intelligence, with a gift of vigorous
+expression. With little schooling he had yet educated himself, mainly
+by means of the prison libraries, until he had a good and individually
+expressed acquaintance with many of the English classics, and with some
+of the masterpieces of philosophy.
+
+That this ex-convict, when a boy on the East Side of New York City,
+should have taken to the "graft" seemed to me, as he talked about
+it, the most natural thing in the world. His parents were honest, but
+ignorant and poor. One of his brothers, a normal and honorable man,
+is a truck driver with a large family; and his relatives and honest
+friends in general belong to the most modest class of working people.
+The swell among them is another brother, who is a policeman; but Jim,
+the ex-convict, is by far the cleverest and most intelligent of the
+lot. I have often seen him and his family together, on Saturday nights,
+when the clan gathers in the truckman's house for a good time, and
+he is the life of the occasion, and admired by the others. Jim was an
+unusually energetic and ambitious boy, but the respectable people he
+knew did not appeal to his imagination. As he played on the street,
+other boys pointed out to him the swell thief at the corner saloon, and
+told him tales of big robberies and exciting adventures, and the prizes
+of life seemed to him to lie along the path of crime. There was no one
+to teach him what constitutes real success, and he went in for crime
+with energy and enthusiasm.
+
+It was only after he had become a professional thief and had done time
+in the prisons that he began to see that crime does not pay. He saw
+that all his friends came to ruin, that his own health was shattered,
+and that he stood on the verge of the mad-house. His self-education in
+prison helped him, too, to the perception that he had made a terrible
+mistake. He came to have intellectual ambitions and no longer took
+an interest in his old companions. After several weeks of constant
+association with him I became morally certain that his reform was
+as genuine as possible under the circumstances; and that, with fair
+success in the way of getting something to do, he would remain honest.
+
+I therefore proposed to him to write an autobiography. He took up
+the idea with eagerness, and through the entire period of our work
+together, has shown an unwavering interest in the book and very decided
+acumen and common sense. The method employed in composing the volume
+was that, practically, of the interview. From the middle of March to
+the first of July we met nearly every afternoon, and many evenings,
+at a little German café on the East Side. There, I took voluminous
+notes, often asking questions, but taking down as literally as
+possible his story in his own words; to such a degree is this true,
+that the following narrative is an authentic account of his life, with
+occasional descriptions and character-sketches of his friends of the
+Under World. Even without my explicit assurance, the autobiography
+bears sufficient internal evidence of the fact that, essentially, it is
+a thief's own story. Many hours of the day time, when I was busy with
+other things, my friend--for I have come to look upon him as such--was
+occupied with putting down on paper character-sketches of his pals
+and their careers, or recording his impressions of the life they had
+followed. After I had left town for the summer, in order to prepare
+this volume, I wrote to Jim repeatedly, asking for more material on
+certain points. This he always furnished in a manner which showed his
+continued interest, and a literary sense, though fragmentary, of no
+common kind.
+
+     H. H.
+
+
+
+
+The Autobiography of a Thief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_Boyhood and Early Crime._
+
+
+I have been a professional thief for more than twenty years. Half
+of that time I have spent in state's prison, and the other half in
+"grafting" in one form or another. I was a good pickpocket and a fairly
+successful burglar; and I have known many of the best crooks in the
+country. I have left the business for good, and my reasons will appear
+in the course of this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire
+frankness. I shall not try to defend myself. I shall try merely to tell
+the truth. Perhaps in so doing I shall explain myself.
+
+I was born on the east side of New York City in 1868, of poor but
+honest parents. My father was an Englishman who had married an Irish
+girl and emigrated to America, where he had a large family, no one of
+whom, with the exception of myself, went wrong. For many years he was
+an employee of Brown Brothers and Company and was a sober, industrious
+man, and a good husband and kind father. To me, who was his favorite,
+he was perhaps too kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember
+that when I was five years old he bought me a twenty-five dollar suit
+of clothes. I was a vigorous, handsome boy, with red, rosy cheeks and
+was not only the pet of my family, but the life of the neighborhood as
+well.
+
+At that time, which is as far back as I can remember, we were living
+on Munro Street, in the Seventh Ward. This was then a good residential
+neighborhood, and we were comfortable in our small, wooden house. The
+people about us were Irish and German, the large Jewish emigration
+not having begun yet. Consequently, lower New York did not have such
+a strong business look as it has now, but was cleanly and respectable.
+The gin-mills were fewer in number, and were comparatively decent. When
+the Jews came they started many basement saloons, or cafés, and for the
+first time, I believe, the social evil began to be connected with the
+drinking places.
+
+I committed my first theft at the age of six. Older heads put me up to
+steal money from the till of my brother's grocery store. It happened
+this way. There were several much older boys in the neighborhood who
+wanted money for row-boating and theatres. One was eighteen years old,
+a ship-caulker; and another was a roustabout of seventeen. I used to
+watch these boys practice singing and dancing in the big marble lots
+in the vicinity. How they fired my youthful imagination! They told me
+about the theatres then in vogue--Tony Pastor's, the old Globe, Wood's
+Museum and Josh Hart's Theatre Comique, afterwards owned by Harrigan
+and Hart.
+
+One day, George, the roustabout, said to me: "Kid, do you want to go
+row-boating with us?" When I eagerly consented he said it was too bad,
+but the boat cost fifty cents and he only had a ten-cent stamp (a small
+paper bill: in those days there was very little silver in circulation).
+I did not bite at once, I was so young, and they treated me to one of
+those wooden balls fastened to a rubber string that you throw out and
+catch on the rebound. I was tickled to death. I shall never forget that
+day as long as I live. It was a Saturday, and all day long those boys
+couldn't do too much for me.
+
+Towards evening they explained to me how to rob my brother's till. They
+arranged to be outside the store at a certain hour, and wait until I
+found an opportunity to pass the money to them. My mother watched in
+the store that evening, but when she turned her back I opened the till
+and gave the eight or ten dollars it contained to the waiting boys. We
+all went row-boating and had a jolly time. But they were not satisfied
+with that. What I had done once, I could do again, and they held out
+the theatre to me, and pretended to teach me how to dance the clog.
+Week in and week out I furnished them with money, and in recompense
+they would sometimes take me to a matinée. What a joy! How I grew to
+love the vaudeville artists with their songs and dances, and the wild
+Bowery melodramas! It was a great day for Indian plays, and the number
+of Indians I have scalped in imagination, after one of these shows, is
+legion.
+
+Some of the small boys, however, who did not share in the booty grew
+jealous and told my father what was doing. The result was that a
+certain part of my body was sore for weeks afterwards. My feelings were
+hurt, too, for I did not know at that time that I was doing anything
+very bad. My father, indeed, accompanied the beating with a sermon,
+telling me that I had not only broken God's law but had robbed those
+that loved me. One of my brothers, who is now a policeman in the
+city service, told me that I had taken my ticket for the gallows. The
+brother I had robbed, who afterwards became a truckman, patted me on
+the head and told me not to do it again. He was always a good fellow.
+And yet they all seemed to like to have me play about the streets with
+the other little boys, perhaps because the family was large, and there
+was not much room in the house.
+
+So I had to give up the till; but I hated to, for even at that age I
+had begun to think that the world owed me a living! To get revenge I
+used to hide in a charcoal shed and throw pebbles at my father as he
+passed. I was indeed the typical bad boy, and the apple of my mother's
+eye.
+
+When I couldn't steal from the till any more, I used to take clothes
+from my relatives and sell them for theatre money; or any other object
+I thought I could make away with. I did not steal merely for theatre
+money but partly for excitement too. I liked to run the risk of being
+discovered. So I was up to any scheme the older boys proposed. Perhaps
+if I had been raised in the wild West I should have made a good trapper
+or cow-boy, instead of a thief. Or perhaps even birds' nests and fish
+would have satisfied me, if they had been accessible.
+
+One of my biggest exploits as a small boy was made when I was eight
+years old. Tom's mother had a friend visiting her, whom Tom and I
+thought we would rob. Tom, who was a big boy, and some of his friends,
+put me through a hall bed-room window, and I made away with a box of
+valuable jewelry. But it did me no good for the big boys sold it to a
+woman who kept a second-hand store on Division Street, and I received
+no part of the proceeds.
+
+My greatest youthful disappointment came about four weeks later. A boy
+put me up to steal a box out of a wagon. I boldly made away with it and
+ran into a hall-way, where he was waiting. The two of us then went into
+his back-yard, opened the box and found a beautiful sword, the handle
+studded with little stones. But the other boy had promised me money,
+and here was only a sword! I cried for theatre money, and then the
+other boy boxed my ears. He went to his father, who was a free mason,
+and got a fifty cent "stamp." He gave me two three-cent pieces and
+kept the rest. I shall never forget that injustice as long as I live.
+I remember it as plainly as if it happened yesterday. We put the sword
+under a mill in Cherry Street and it disappeared a few hours later. I
+thought the boy and his father had stolen it, and told them so. I got
+another beating, but I believe my suspicion was correct, for the free
+mason used to give me a ten cent stamp whenever he saw me--to square
+me, I suppose.
+
+When it came to contests with boys of my own size I was not so meek,
+however. One day I was playing in Jersey, in the back-yard of a boy
+friend's house. He displayed his pen-knife, and it took my fancy. I
+wanted to play with it, and asked him to lend it to me. He refused,
+and I grabbed his hand. He plunged the knife into my leg. I didn't like
+that, and told him so, not in words, but in action. I remember that I
+took his ear nearly off with a hatchet. I was then eight years old.
+
+About this time I began to go to Sunday School, with what effect on my
+character remains to be seen. One day I heard a noted priest preach.
+I had one dollar and eighty cents in my pocket which I had stolen from
+my brother. I thought that each coin in my pocket was turning red-hot
+because of my anxiety to spend it. While the good man was talking of
+the Blessed One I was inwardly praying for him to shut up. He had two
+beautiful pictures which he intended to give to the best listener among
+the boys. When he had finished his talk he called me to him, gave me
+the pictures and said: "It's such boys as you who, when they grow up,
+are a pride to our Holy Church."
+
+A year later I went to the parochial school, but did not stay long,
+for they would not have me. I was a sceptic at seven and an agnostic
+at eight, and I objected to the prayers every five minutes. I had
+no respect for ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination in
+the slightest, partly because I learned at an early age to see the
+hypocrisy of many good people. One day half a dozen persons were
+killed in an explosion. One of them I had known. Neighbors said of him:
+"What a good man has gone," and the priest and my mother said he was
+in heaven. But he was the same man who had often told me not to take
+money from the money-drawer, for that was dangerous, but to search my
+father's pockets when he was asleep. For this advice I had given the
+rascal many a dollar. Ever after that I was suspicious of those who
+were over-virtuous. I told my mother I did not believe her and the
+priest, and she slapped my face and told me to mind my catechism.
+
+Everything mischievous that happened at the parochial school was laid
+to my account, perhaps not entirely unjustly. If a large firecracker
+exploded, it was James--that was my name. If some one sat on a bent
+pin, the blame was due to James. If the class tittered teacher Nolan
+would rush at me with a hickory stick and yell: "It's you, you devil's
+imp!" and then he'd put the question he had asked a hundred times
+before: "Who med (made) you?"
+
+I was finally sent away from the parochial school because I insulted
+one of the teachers, a Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing
+him whenever he studied his catechism, which I believed he already
+knew by heart. This brother's favorite, by the way, was a boy who used
+to say his prayers louder than anybody else. I met him fifteen years
+afterwards in state's prison. He had been settled for "vogel-grafting,"
+that is, taking little girls into hall-ways and robbing them of their
+gold ear-rings. He turned out pretty well, however, in one sense, for
+he became one of the best shoe-makers in Sing Sing.
+
+Although, as one can see from the above incidents, I was not given to
+veneration, yet in some ways I was easily impressed. I always loved old
+buildings, for instance. I was baptized in the building which was until
+lately the Germania Theatre, and which was then a church; and that
+old structure always had a strange fascination for me. I used to hang
+about old churches and theatres, and preferred on such occasions to
+be alone. Sometimes I sang and danced, all by myself, in an old music
+hall, and used to pore over the names marked in lead pencil on the
+walls. Many is the time I have stood at night before some old building
+which has since been razed to the ground, and even now I like to go
+round to their sites. I like almost anything that is old, even old men
+and women. I never loved my mother much until she was an old woman. All
+stories of the past interested me; and later, when I was in prison, I
+was specially fond of history.
+
+After I was dismissed from the parochial school, I entered the public
+school, where I stayed somewhat longer. There I studied reading,
+writing, arithmetic and later, grammar, and became acquainted with
+a few specimens of literature. I remember Longfellow's _Excelsior_
+was a favorite of mine. I was a bright, intelligent boy, and, if it
+had not been for conduct, in which my mark was low, I should always
+have had the gold medal, in a class of seventy. I used to play truant
+constantly, and often went home and told my mother that I knew more
+than the teacher. She believed me, for certainly I was the most
+intelligent member of my family.
+
+Yes, I was more intelligent than my parents or any of my brothers and
+sisters. Much good it has done me! Now that I have "squared it" I see a
+good deal of my family, and they are all happy in comparison with me.
+On Saturday nights I often go around to see my brother the truckman.
+He has come home tired from his week's work, but happy with his twelve
+dollar salary and the prospect of a holiday with his wife and children.
+They sit about in their humble home on Saturday night, with their pint
+of beer, their songs and their jovial stories. Whenever I am there,
+I am, in a way, the life of the party. My repartee is quicker than
+that of the others. I sing gayer songs and am jollier with the working
+girls who visit my brother's free home. But when I look at my stupid
+brother's quiet face and calm and strong bearing, and then realize my
+own shattered health and nerves and profound discontent, I know that
+my slow brother has been wiser than I. It has taken me many years on
+the rocky path to realize this truth. For by nature I am an Ishmælite,
+that is, a man of impulse, and it is only lately that wisdom has been
+knocked into me.
+
+Certainly I did not realize my fate when I was a kid of ten, filled
+with contempt for my virtuous and obscure family! I was overflowing
+with spirits and arrogance, and began to play "hooky" so often that I
+practically quit school about this time.
+
+It was then, too, that we moved again, this time to Cherry Street, to
+the wreck of my life. At the end of the block on which we lived was a
+corner saloon, the headquarters of a band of professional thieves. They
+were known as the Old Border Gang, and among them were several very
+well-known and successful crooks. They used to pass our way regularly,
+and boys older than I (my boy companions always had the advantage of me
+in years) used to point the famous "guns" out to me. When I saw one of
+these great men pass, my young imagination was fired with the ambition
+to be as he was! With what eagerness we used to talk about "Juggy,"
+and the daring robbery he committed in Brooklyn! How we went over again
+and again in conversation, the trick by which Johnny the "grafter" had
+fooled the detective in the matter of the bonds!
+
+We would tell stories like these by the hour, and then go round to
+the corner, to try to get a look at some of the celebrities in the
+saloon. A splendid sight one of these swell grafters was, as he stood
+before the bar or smoked his cigar on the corner! Well dressed, with
+clean linen collar and shirt, a diamond in his tie, an air of ease and
+leisure all about him, what a contrast he formed to the respectable
+hod-carrier or truckman or mechanic, with soiled clothes and no collar!
+And what a contrast was his dangerous life to that of the virtuous
+laborer!
+
+The result was that I grew to think the career of the grafter was the
+only one worth trying for. The real prizes of the world I knew nothing
+about. All that I saw of any interest to me was crooked, and so I began
+to pilfer right and left: there was nothing else for me to do. Besides
+I loved to treat those older than myself. The theatre was a growing
+passion with me and I began to be very much interested in the baseball
+games. I used to go to the Union grounds in Brooklyn, where after the
+third inning, I could usually get admitted for fifteen cents, to see
+the old Athletics or Mutuals play. I needed money for these amusements,
+for myself and other boys, and I knew of practically only one way to
+get it.
+
+If we could not get the money at home, either by begging or stealing,
+we would tap tills, if possible, in the store of some relative; or tear
+brass off the steps in the halls of flats and sell it at junk shops. A
+little later, we used to go to Grand Street and steal shoes and women's
+dresses from the racks in the open stores, and pawn them. In the old
+Seventh Ward there used to be a good many silver plates on the doors of
+private houses. These we would take off with chisels and sell to metal
+dealers. We had great fun with a Dutchman who kept a grocery store
+on Cherry Street. We used to steal his strawberries, and did not care
+whether he saw us or not. If he grabbed one of us, the rest of the gang
+would pelt him with stones until he let go, and then all run around the
+corner before the "copper" came into sight.
+
+All this time I grew steadily bolder and more desperate, and the day
+soon came when I took consequences very little into consideration.
+My father and mother sometimes learned of some exploit of mine, and a
+beating would be the result. I still got the blame for everything, as
+in school, and was sometimes punished unjustly. I was very sensitive
+and this would rankle in my soul for weeks, so that I stole harder
+than ever. And yet I think that there was some good in me. I was
+never cruel to any animals, except cats; for cats, I used to tie their
+tails together and throw them over a clothesline to dry. I liked dogs,
+horses, children and women, and have always been gentle to them. What
+I really was was a healthy young animal, with a vivid imagination and
+a strong body. I learned early to swim and fight and play base-ball.
+Dime and nickel novels always seemed very tame to me; I found it much
+more exciting to hear true stories about the grafters at the corner
+saloon!--big men, with whom as yet I did not dare to speak; I could
+only stare at them with awe.
+
+I shall never forget the first time I ever saw a pickpocket at work.
+It was when I was about thirteen years old. A boy of my own age, Zack,
+a great pal of mine, was with me. Zack and I understood one another
+thoroughly and well knew how to get theatre money by petty pilfering,
+but of real graft we were as yet ignorant, although we had heard many
+stories about the operations of actual, professional thieves. We used
+to steal rides in the cars which ran to and from the Grand Street
+ferries; and run off with overcoats and satchels when we had a chance.
+One day we were standing on the rear platform when a woman boarded the
+car, and immediately behind her a gentlemanly looking man with a high
+hat. He was well-dressed and looked about thirty-five years old. As
+the lady entered the car, the man, who stayed outside on the platform,
+pulled his hand away from her side and with it came something from her
+pocket--a silk handkerchief. I was on the point of asking the woman
+if she had dropped something, when Zack said to me, "Mind your own
+business." The man, who had taken the pocket-book along with the silk
+handkerchief, seeing that we were "next," gave us the handkerchief and
+four dollars in ten and fifteen cent paper money ("stamps").
+
+Zack and I put our heads together. We were "wiser" than we had been
+half an hour before. We had learned our first practical lesson in the
+world of graft. We had seen a pickpocket at work, and there seemed to
+us no reason why we should not try the game ourselves. Accordingly a
+day or two afterwards we arranged to pick our first pocket. We had,
+indeed, often taken money from the pockets of our relatives, but that
+was when the trousers hung in the closet or over a chair, and the owner
+was absent. This was the first time we had hunted in the open, so to
+speak; the first time our prey was really alive.
+
+It was an exciting occasion. Zack and I, who were "wise," (that is,
+up to snuff) got several other boys to help us, though we did not tell
+them what was doing, for they "were not buried" yet, that is, "dead,"
+or ignorant. We induced five or six of them to jump on and off the rear
+platform of a car, making as much noise and confusion as possible, so
+as to distract the attention of any "sucker" that might board. Soon I
+saw a woman about to get on the car. My heart beat with excitement, and
+I signalled to Zack that I would make the "touch." In those days women
+wore big sacques with pockets in the back, open, so that one could
+look in and see what was there. I took the silk handkerchief on the
+run, and with Zack following, went up a side street and gloried under
+a lamp-post. In the corner of the handkerchief, tied up, were five
+two-dollar bills, and for weeks I was J. P. Morgan.
+
+For a long time Zack and I felt we were the biggest boys on the block.
+We boasted about our great "touch" to the older boys of eighteen or
+nineteen years of age who had pointed out to us the grafters at the
+corner saloon. They were not "in it" now. They even condescended to be
+treated to a drink by us. We spent the money recklessly, for we knew
+where we could get more. In this state of mind, soon after that, I met
+the "pick" whom we had seen at work. He had heard of our achievement
+and kindly "staked" us, and gave us a few private lessons in picking
+pockets. He saw that we were promising youngsters, and for the sake
+of the profession gave us a little of his valuable time. We were proud
+enough, to be taken notice of by this great man. We felt that we were
+rising in the world of graft, and began to wear collars and neckties.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_My First Fall._
+
+
+For the next two years, until I was fifteen, I made a great deal
+of money at picking pockets, without getting into difficulties with
+the police. We operated, at that time, entirely upon women, and were
+consequently known technically as Moll-buzzers--or "flies" that "buzz"
+about women.
+
+In those days, and for several years later, Moll-buzzing, as well as
+picking pockets in general, was an easy and lucrative graft. Women's
+dresses seemed to be arranged for our especial benefit; the back
+pocket, with its purse and silk handkerchief could be picked even by
+the rawest thief. It was in the days when every woman had to possess
+a fine silk handkerchief; even the Bowery "cruisers" (street-walkers)
+carried them; and to those women we boys used to sell the handkerchiefs
+we had stolen, receiving as much as a dollar, or even two dollars, in
+exchange.
+
+It was a time, too, before the great department stores and delivery
+wagon systems, and shoppers were compelled to carry more money with
+them than they do now, and to take their purchases home themselves
+through the streets. Very often before they reached their destination
+they had unconsciously delivered some of the goods to us. At that time,
+too, the wearing of valuable pins and stones, both by men and women,
+was more general than it is now. Furthermore, the "graft" was younger.
+There were not so many in the business, and the system of police
+protection was not so good. Altogether those were halcyon days for us.
+
+The fact that we were very young helped us particularly in this
+business, for a boy can get next to a woman in a car or on the street
+more easily than a man can. He is not so apt to arouse her suspicions;
+and if he is a handsome, innocent-looking boy, and clever, he can go
+far in this line of graft. He usually begins this business when he
+is about thirteen, and by the age of seventeen generally graduates
+into something higher. Living off women, in any form, does not appeal
+very long to the imagination of the genuine grafter. Yet I know
+thieves who continue to be Moll-buzzers all their lives; and who are
+low enough to make their living entirely off poor working girls. The
+self-respecting grafter detests this kind; and, indeed, these buzzers
+never see prosperous days after their boyhood. The business grows
+more difficult as the thief grows older. He cannot approach his prey
+so readily, and grows shabbier with declining returns; and shabbiness
+makes it difficult for him to mix up in crowds where this kind of work
+is generally done.
+
+For several years we youngsters made a great deal of money at this
+line. We made a "touch" almost every day, and I suppose our "mob,"
+composed of four or five lads who worked together, averaged three or
+four hundred dollars a week. We worked mainly on street cars at the
+Ferry, and the amount of "technique" required for robbing women was
+very slight. Two or three of us generally went together. One acted as
+the "dip," or "pick," and the other two as "stalls." The duty of the
+"stalls" was to distract the attention of the "sucker" or victim, or
+otherwise to hide the operations of the "dip". One stall would get
+directly in front of the woman to be robbed, the other directly behind
+her. If she were in such a position in the crowd as to render it hard
+for the "dip," or "wire" to make a "touch," one of the stalls might
+bump against her, and beg her pardon, while the dip made away with her
+"leather," or pocket-book.
+
+Shortly before I was fifteen years old I was "let in" to another kind
+of graft. One day Tim, Zack and I were boasting of our earnings to an
+older boy, twenty years of age, whose name was Pete. He grinned, and
+said he knew something better than Moll-buzzing. Then he told us about
+"shoving the queer" and got us next to a public truckman who supplied
+counterfeit bills. Our method was to carry only one bad bill among
+several good ones, so that if we were collared we could maintain our
+innocence. We worked this as a "side-graft," for some time. Pete and I
+used to go to mass on Sunday morning, and put a bad five dollar bill
+in the collector's box, taking out four dollars and ninety cents in
+change, in good money. We irreverently called this proceeding "robbing
+the dago in Rome." We use to pick "leathers," at the same time, from
+the women in the congregation. In those days I was very liberal in my
+religious views. I was not narrow, or bigoted. I attended Grace Church,
+in Tenth Street, regularly and was always well repaid. But after a
+while this lucrative graft came to an end, for the collector began
+to get "next". One day he said to me, "Why don't you get your change
+outside? This is the fourth time you have given me a big bill." So we
+got "leary" (suspicious) and quit.
+
+With my big rosy cheeks and bright eyes and complexion I suppose I
+looked, in those days, very holy and innocent, and used to work this
+graft for all it was worth. I remember how, in church, I used tracts or
+the Christian Advocate as "stalls"; I would hand them to a lady as she
+entered the church, and, while doing so, pick her pocket.
+
+Even at the early age of fifteen I began to understand that it was
+necessary to save money. If a thief wants to keep out of the "pen"
+or "stir," (penitentiary) capital is a necessity. The capital of a
+grafter is called "spring-money," for he may have to use it at any
+time in paying the lawyer who gets him off in case of an arrest, or in
+bribing the policeman or some other official. To "spring," is to escape
+from the clutches of the law. If a thief has not enough money to hire
+a "mouth-piece" (criminal lawyer) he is in a bad way. He is greatly
+handicapped, and can not "jump out" (steal) with any boldness.
+
+But I always had great difficulty in saving "fall-money," (the same as
+spring-money; that is money to be used in case of a "fall," or arrest).
+My temperament was at fault. When I had a few hundred dollars saved
+up I began to be troubled, not from a guilty conscience, but because
+I could not stand prosperity. The money burned a hole in my pocket. I
+was fond of all sorts of amusements, of "treating," and of clothes.
+Indeed, I was very much of a dude; and this for two reasons. In the
+first place I was naturally vain, and liked to make a good appearance.
+A still more substantial reason was that a good personal appearance is
+part of the capital of a grafter, particularly of a pickpocket. The
+world thinks that a thief is a dirty, disreputable looking object,
+next door to a tramp in appearance. But this idea is far from being
+true. Every grafter of any standing in the profession is very careful
+about his clothes. He is always neat, clean, and as fashionable as
+his income will permit. Otherwise he would not be permitted to attend
+large political gatherings, to sit on the platform, for instance, and
+would be handicapped generally in his crooked dealings with mankind.
+No advice to young men is more common in respectable society than
+to dress well. If you look prosperous the world will treat you with
+consideration. This applies with even greater force to the thief. Keep
+up a "front" is the universal law of success, applicable to all grades
+of society. The first thing a grafter is apt to say to a pal whom he
+has not seen for a long time is, "You are looking good," meaning that
+his friend is well-dressed. It is sure flattery, and if a grafter wants
+to make a borrow he is practically certain of opening the negotiations
+with the stereotyped phrase: "You are looking good;" for the only time
+you can get anything off a grafter is when you can make him think you
+are prosperous.
+
+But the great reason why I never saved much "fall-money" was not
+"booze," or theatres, or clothes. "Look for the woman" is a phrase, I
+believe, in good society; and it certainly explains a great deal of a
+thief's misfortunes. Long before I did anything in Graftdom but petty
+pilfering, I had begun to go with the little girls in the neighborhood.
+At that time they had no attraction for me, but I heard older boys say
+that it was a manly thing to lead girls astray, and I was ambitious to
+be not only a good thief, but a hard case generally. When I was nine or
+ten years old I liked to boast of the conquests I had made among little
+working girls of fourteen or fifteen. We used to meet in the hall-ways
+of tenement houses, or at their homes, but there was no sentiment in
+the relations between us, at least on my part. My only pleasure in it
+was the delight of telling about it to my young companions.
+
+When I was twelve years old I met a little girl for whom I had a
+somewhat different feeling. Nellie was a pretty, blue-eyed little
+creature, or "tid-bit," as we used to say, who lived near my home on
+Cherry Street. I used to take her over on the ferry for a ride, or
+treat her to ice-cream; and we were really chums; but when I began
+to make money I lost my interest in her; partly, too, because at that
+time I made the acquaintance of a married woman of about twenty-five
+years old. She discovered me one day in the hallway with Nellie, and
+threatened to tell the holy brother on us if I didn't fetch her a pint
+of beer. I took the beer to her room, and that began a relationship
+of perhaps a year. She used to stake me to a part of the money her
+husband, a workingman, brought her every Saturday night.
+
+Although the girls meant very little to me until several years later,
+I nevertheless began when I was about fifteen to spend a great deal of
+money on them. It was the thing to do, and I did it with a good grace.
+I used to take all kinds of working girls to the balls in Walhalla Hall
+in Orchard Street; or in Pythagoras, or Beethoven Halls, where many
+pretty little German girls of respectable families used to dance on
+Saturday nights. It was my pride to buy them things--clothes, pins, and
+to take them on excursions; for was I not a rising "gun," with money in
+my pocket? Money, however, that went as easily as it had come.
+
+Perhaps if I had been able to save money at that time I might not
+have fallen (that is, been arrested) so early. My first fall came,
+however, when I was fifteen years old; and if I was not a confirmed
+thief already, I certainly was one by the time I left the Tombs, where
+I stayed ten days. It happened this way. Zack and I were grafting,
+buzzing Molls, with a pal named Jack, who afterwards became a famous
+burglar. He had just escaped from the Catholic Protectory, and told us
+his troubles. Instead of being alarmed, however, I grew bolder, for if
+Jack could "beat" the "Proteck" in three months, I argued I could do
+it in twenty-four hours. We three ripped things open for some time;
+but one day we were grafting on Sixth Avenue, just below Twentieth
+Street, when I fell for a "leather." The "sucker," a good-looking Moll
+was coming up the Avenue. Her "book," which looked fat, was sticking
+out of her skirt. I, who was the "wire," gave Jack and Zack the tip
+(thief's cough), and they stalled, one in front, one behind. The girl
+did not "blow" (take alarm) and I got hold of the leather easily.
+It looked like a get-away, for no one on the sidewalk saw us. But as
+bad luck would have it, a negro coachman, standing in the street by
+the pavement, got next, and said to me, "What are you doing there?" I
+replied, "Shut up, and I'll give you two dollars." But he caught hold
+of me and shouted for the police. I passed the leather to Jack, who
+"vamoosed." Zack hit the negro in the face and I ran up Seventh Avenue,
+but was caught by a flyman (policeman), and taken to the station house.
+
+On the way to the police station I cried bitterly, for, after all,
+I was only a boy. I realized for the first time that the way of the
+transgressor is hard. It was in the afternoon, and I spent the time
+until next morning at ten, when I was to appear before the magistrate,
+in a cell in the station-house, in the company of an old grafter. In
+the adjoining cells were drunkards, street-walkers and thieves who had
+been "lined up" for the night, and I spent the long hours in crying and
+in listening to their indecent songs and jokes. The old grafter called
+to one of the Tenderloin girls that he had a kid with him who was
+arrested for Moll-buzzing. At this they all expressed their sympathy
+with me by saying that I would either be imprisoned for life or be
+hanged. They got me to sing a song, and I convinced them that I was
+tough.
+
+In the morning I was arraigned in the police court. As there was
+no stolen property on me, and as the sucker was not there to make a
+complaint, I was "settled" for assault only, and sent to the Tombs for
+ten days.
+
+My experience in the Tombs may fairly be called, I think, the turning
+point of my life. It was there that I met "de mob". I learned new
+tricks in the Tombs; and more than that, I began definitely to look
+upon myself as a criminal. The Tombs of twenty years ago was even less
+cheerful than it is at present. The Boys' Prison faced the Women's
+Prison, and between these two was the place where those sentenced to
+death were hanged. The boys knew when an execution was to take place,
+and we used to talk it over among ourselves. One man was hanged while
+I was there; and if anybody thinks that knowledge of such things helps
+to make boys seek the path of virtue, let him go forth into the world
+and learn something about human nature.
+
+On my arrival in the Tombs, Mrs. Hill, the matron, had me searched for
+tobacco, knives or matches, all of which were contraband; then I was
+given a bath and sent into the corridor of the cells where there were
+about twenty-five other boys, confined for various crimes, ranging
+from petty larceny to offenses of the gravest kind. On the second day
+I met two young "dips" and we exchanged our experiences in the world
+of graft. I received my first lesson in the art of "banging a super,"
+that is, stealing a watch by breaking the ring with the thumb and
+forefinger, and thus detaching it from the chain. They were two of the
+best of the Sixth Ward pickpockets, and we made a date to meet "on the
+outside." Indeed, it was not many weeks after my release before I could
+"bang a super," or get a man's "front" (watch and chain) as easily as
+I could relieve a Moll of her "leather".
+
+As I look back upon the food these young boys received in the tombs,
+it seems to me of the worst. Breakfast consisted of a chunk of poor
+bread and a cup of coffee made of burnt bread crust. At dinner we had
+soup (they said, at least, there was meat in it), bread and water;
+and supper was the same as breakfast. But we had one consolation. When
+we went to divine service we generally returned happy; not because of
+what the good priest said, but because we were almost sure of getting
+tobacco from the women inmates.
+
+Certainly the Gerry Society has its faults; but since its organization
+young boys who have gone wrong but are not yet entirely hardened, have
+a much better show to become good citizens than they used to have. That
+Society did not exist in my day; but I know a good deal about it, and I
+am convinced that it does a world of good; for, at least, when it takes
+children into its charge it does not surround them with an atmosphere
+of social crime.
+
+While in the Tombs I experienced my first disillusionment as to the
+honor of thieves. I was an impulsive, imaginative boy, and that a
+pal could go back on me never seemed possible. Many of my subsequent
+misfortunes were due to the treachery of my companions. I have learned
+to distrust everybody, but as a boy of fifteen I was green, and so the
+treachery I shall relate left a sore spot in my soul.
+
+It happened this way. On a May day, about two months before I was
+arrested, two other boys and I had entered the basement of a house
+where the people were moving, had made away with some silverware, and
+sold it to a Christian woman in the neighborhood for one twentieth of
+its value. When I had nearly served my ten days' sentence for assault,
+my two pals were arrested and "squealed" on me. I was confronted with
+them in the Tombs. At first I was mighty glad to see them, but when
+I found they had "squealed," I set my teeth and denied all knowledge
+of the "touch." I protested my innocence so violently that the police
+thought the other boys were merely seeking a scape-goat. They got
+twenty days and my term expired forty-eight hours afterwards. The
+silverware I stole that May morning is now an heirloom in the family of
+the Christian woman to whom I sold it so cheap.
+
+If I had always been as earnest a liar as I was on that occasion in the
+Tombs I might never have gone to "stir" (penitentiary); but I grew more
+indifferent and desperate as time went on; and, in a way, more honest,
+more sincerely a criminal: I hardly felt like denying it. I know some
+thieves who, although they have grafted for twenty-five years, have not
+yet "done time"; some of them escaped because they knew how to throw
+the innocent "con" so well. Take Tim, for instance. Tim and I grafted
+together as boys. He was not a very skilful pickpocket, and he often
+was on the point of arrest; but he had a talent for innocence, and the
+indignation act he would put up would melt a heart of stone. He has,
+consequently, never been in stir, while I, a much better thief, have
+spent half of my adult life there. That was partly because I felt,
+when I had once made a touch, that the property belonged to me. On
+one occasion I had robbed a "bloke" of his "red super" (gold watch),
+and made away with it all right, when I carelessly dropped it on the
+sidewalk. A crowd had gathered about, and no man really in his right
+mind, would have picked up that super. But I did it, and was nailed
+dead to rights by a "cop." Some time afterwards a pal asked me why
+the deuce I had been so foolish. "Didn't the super belong to me," I
+replied, indignantly. "Hadn't I earned it?" I was too honest a thief.
+That was one of my weaknesses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+_Mixed-Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards._
+
+
+For a time--a short time--after I left the Tombs I was quiet. My
+relatives threw the gallows "con" into me hard, but at that time I
+was proof against any arguments they could muster. They were not able
+to show me anything that was worth while; they could not deliver the
+goods, so what was the use of talking?
+
+Although I was a disgrace at home, I was high cock-a-lorum among the
+boys in the neighborhood. They began to look up to me, as I had looked
+up to the grafters at the corner saloon. They admired me because I was
+a fighter and had "done time." I went up in their estimation because
+I had suffered in the good cause. And I began to get introductions to
+the older grafters in the seventh ward--grafters with diamond pins and
+silk hats. It was not long before I was at it harder than ever, uptown
+and downtown. I not only continued my trade as Moll-buzzer, but began
+to spread myself, got to be quite an adept in touching men for vests
+and supers and fronts; and every now and then "shoved the queer" or
+worked a little game of swindling. Our stamping-ground for supers and
+vests at that time was Fulton, Nassau, Lower Broadway and Wall Streets,
+and we covered our territory well. I used to work alone considerably.
+I would board a car with a couple of newspapers, would say, "News,
+boss?" to some man sitting down, would shove the paper in front of his
+face as a stall, and then pick his super or even his entire "front"
+(watch and chain). If you will stand for a newspaper under your chin
+I can get even your socks. Many is the "gent" I have left in the car
+with his vest entirely unbuttoned and his "front" gone. When I couldn't
+get the chain, I would snap the ring of the watch with my thumb and
+fore-finger, giving the thief's cough to drown the slight noise made
+by the breaking ring, and get away with the watch, leaving the chain
+dangling. Instead of a newspaper, I would often use an overcoat as a
+stall.
+
+It was only when I was on the "hurry-up," however, that I worked alone.
+It is more dangerous than working with a mob, but if I needed a dollar
+quick I'd take any risk. I'd jump on a car, and tackle the first sucker
+I saw. If I thought it was not diplomatic to try for the "front," and
+if there was no stone in sight, I'd content myself with the "clock"
+(watch). But it was safer and more sociable to work with other guys.
+We usually went in mobs of three or four, and our methods were much
+more complicated than when we were simply moll-buzzing. Each thief had
+his special part to play, and his duty varied with the position of the
+sucker and the pocket the "leather" was in. If the sucker was standing
+in the car, my stall would frequently stand right in front, facing him,
+while I would put my hand under the stall's arm and pick the sucker's
+leather or super. The other stalls would be distracting the attention
+of the sucker, or looking out for possible interruptions. When I had
+got possession of the leather I would pass it quickly to the stall
+behind me, and he would "vamoose." Sometimes I would back up to the
+victim, put my hand behind me, break his ring and pick the super, or I
+would face his back, reach round, unbutton his vest while a pal stalled
+in front with a newspaper, a bunch of flowers, a fan, or an overcoat,
+and get away with his entire front.
+
+A dip, as I have said, pays special attention to his personal
+appearance; it is his stock in trade; but when I began to meet boys
+who had risen above the grade of Moll-buzzers, I found that the dip, as
+opposed to other grafters, had many other advantages, too. He combines
+pleasure and instruction with business, for he goes to the foot-ball
+games, the New London races, to swell theatres where the graft is good,
+and to lectures. I have often listened to Bob Ingersoll, the greatest
+orator, in my opinion, that ever lived. I enjoyed his talk so much
+that I sometimes forgot to graft. But as a general rule, I was able to
+combine instruction with business. I very seldom dropped a red super
+because of an oratorical flourish; but the supers did not come my way
+all the time, I had some waiting to do, and in the meantime I improved
+my mind. Then a dip travels, too, more than most grafters; he jumps
+out to fairs and large gatherings of all descriptions, and grows to be
+a man of the world. When in the city he visits the best dance halls,
+and is popular because of his good clothes, his dough, and his general
+information, with men as well as women. He generally lives with a Moll
+who has seen the world, and who can add to his fund of information. I
+know a dip who could not read or write until he met a Moll, who gave
+him a general education and taught him to avoid things that interfered
+with his line of graft; she also took care of his personal appearance,
+and equipped him generally for an A No. 1 pickpocket. Women are much
+the same, I believe, in every rank of life.
+
+It was at this time, when I was a kid of fifteen, that I first met
+Sheenie Annie, who was a famous shop-lifter. She was twenty-one years
+old, and used to give me good advice. "Keep away from heavy workers,"
+(burglars) she would say; "there is a big bit in that." She had lived
+in Graftdom ever since she was a tid-bit, and she knew what she was
+talking about. I did not work with her until several years later,
+but I might as well tell her sad story now. I may say, as a kind of
+preface, that I have always liked the girl grafter who could take care
+of herself instead of sucking the blood out of some man. When I find
+a little working girl who has no other ambition than to get a little
+home together, with a little knick-knack on the wall, a little husband
+and a little child, I don't care for her. She is a nonentity. But such
+was not Sheenie Annie, who was a bright, intelligent, ambitious, girl;
+when she liked a fellow she would do anything for him, but otherwise
+she wouldn't let a man come near her.
+
+The little Jewish lassie, named Annie, was born in the toughest part
+of New York. Later on, as she advanced in years and became an expert
+pilferer, she was given the nickname of "Sheenie." She was brought
+up on the street, surrounded by thieves and prostitutes. Her only
+education was what she received during a year or two in the public
+school. She lived near Grand Street, then a popular shopping district.
+As a very little girl she and a friend used to visit the drygoods
+stores and steal any little notion they could. There was a crowd of
+young pickpockets in her street, and she soon got on to this graft,
+and became so skilful at it that older guns of both sexes were eager
+to take her under their tuition and finish her education. The first
+time I met her was in a well-known dance-hall--Billy McGlory's--and we
+became friends at once, for she was a good girl and full of mischief.
+She was not pretty, exactly, but she was passable. She was small, with
+thick lips, plump, had good teeth and eyes as fine and piercing as any
+I ever saw in man or woman. She dressed well and was a good talker, as
+nimble-witted and as good a judge of human nature as I ever met in her
+sex.
+
+Sheenie Annie's graft broadened, and from dipping and small
+shop-lifting she rose to a position where she doubled up with a mob
+of clever hotel workers, and made large amounts of money. Here was a
+girl from the lowest stratum of life, not pretty or well shaped, but
+whom men admired because of her wit and cleverness. A big contractor
+in Philadelphia was her friend for years. I have seen letters from him
+offering to marry her. But she had something better.
+
+For she was an artist at "penny-weighting" and "hoisting." The police
+admitted that she was unusually clever at these two grafts, and they
+treated her with every consideration. Penny-weighting is a very "slick"
+graft. It is generally worked in pairs, by either sex or both sexes.
+A man, for instance, enters a jewelry store and looks at some diamond
+rings on a tray. He prices them and notes the costly ones. Then he
+goes to a fauny shop (imitation jewelry) and buys a few diamonds which
+match the real ones he has noted. Then he and his pal, usually a woman,
+enter the jewelry store and ask to see the rings. Through some little
+"con" they distract the jeweler's attention, and then one of them (and
+at this Sheenie Annie was particularly good) substitutes the bogus
+diamonds for the good ones; and leaves the store without making a
+purchase.
+
+I can give an example of how Sheenie Annie "hoisted," from my own
+experience with her. On one occasion, when I was about eighteen years
+old, Sheenie and I were on a racket together. We had been "going it"
+for several days and needed some dough. We went into a large tailoring
+establishment, where I tried on some clothes, as a stall. Nothing
+suited me.--I took good care of that--but in the meantime Annie had
+taken two costly overcoats, folded them into flat bundles, and, raising
+her skirt quickly, had hidden the overcoats between her legs. We left
+the store together. She walked so straight that I thought she had got
+nothing, but when we entered a saloon a block away, and the swag was
+produced, I was forced to laugh. We "fenced" the overcoats and with the
+proceeds continued our spree.
+
+Once Sheenie "fell" at this line of graft. She had stolen some costly
+sealskins from a well-known furrier, and had got away with them. But
+on her third visit to the place she came to grief. She was going out
+with a sealskin coat under her skirt when the office-boy, who was
+skylarking about, ran into her, and upset her. When the salesman,
+who had gone to her rescue, lifted her up, she lost her grip on
+the sealskin sacque, and it fell to the floor. It was a "blow," of
+course, and she got nailed, but as she had plenty of fall-money, and a
+well-known politician dead to rights, she only got nine months in the
+penitentiary.
+
+Sheenie Annie was such a good shop-lifter that, with only an
+umbrella as a stall, she could make more money in a week than a poor
+needle-woman could earn in months. But she did not care for the money.
+She was a good fellow, and was in for fun. She was "wise," too, and
+I liked to talk to her, for she understood what I said, and was up to
+snuff, which was very piquant to me. She had done most of the grafts
+that I had done myself, and her tips were always valuable.
+
+To show what a good fellow she was, her sweetheart, Jack, and another
+burglar named Jerry were doing night work once, when they were unlucky
+enough to be nailed. Sheenie Annie went on the stand and swore perjury
+in order to save Jack. He got a year, but Jerry, who had committed the
+same crime, got six. While he was in prison Annie visited him and put
+up a plan by which he escaped, but he would not leave New York with
+her, and was caught and returned to "stir." Annie herself fell in half
+a dozen cities, but never received more than a few months. After I
+was released from serving my second bit in the "pen," I heard Annie
+had died insane. An old girl pal of hers told me that she had died a
+horrible death, and that her last words were about her old friends and
+companions. Her disease was that which attacks only people with brains.
+She died of paresis.
+
+Two other girls whom I knew when I was fifteen turned out to be
+famous shop-lifters--Big Lena and Blonde Mamie, who afterwards married
+Tommy, the famous cracksman. They began to graft when they were about
+fourteen, and Mamie and I used to work together. I was Mamie's first
+"fellow," and we had royal good times together. Lena, poor girl, is
+now doing five years in London, but she was one of the most cheerful
+Molls I ever knew. I met her and Mamie for the first time one day as
+they were coming out of an oyster house on Grand Street. I thought
+they were good-looking tid-bits, and took them to a picnic. We were
+so late that instead of going home Mamie and I spent the night at the
+house of Lena's sister, whose husband was a receiver of stolen goods,
+or "fence," as it is popularly called. In the morning Lena, Mamie and I
+made our first "touch" together. We got a few "books" uptown, and Mamie
+banged a satchel at Sterns. After that we often jumped out together,
+and took in the excursions. Sometimes Mamie or Lena would dip and I
+would stall, but more frequently I was the pick. We used to turn our
+swag over to Lena's sister's husband, Max, who would give us about
+one-sixth of its value.
+
+These three girls certainly were a crack-a-jack trio. You can't find
+their likes nowadays. Even in my time most of the girls I knew did not
+amount to anything. They generally married, or did worse. There were
+few legitimate grafters among them. Since I have been back this time
+I have seen a great many of the old picks and night-workers I used to
+know. They tell the same story. There are no Molls now who can compare
+with Big Lena, Blonde Mamie, and Sheenie Annie. Times are bad, anyway.
+
+After my experience in the Tombs I rose very rapidly in the world of
+graft, and distanced my old companions. Zack, the lad with whom I had
+touched my first Moll, soon seemed very tame to me. I fell away from
+him because he continued to eat bolivers (cookies), patronize the free
+baths, and stole horse-blankets and other trivial things when he could
+not get "leathers." He was not fast enough for me. Zack "got there,"
+nevertheless, and for little or nothing, for several years later I
+met him in State's prison. He told me he was going to Colorado on his
+release. I again met him in prison on my second bit. He was then going
+to Chicago. On my third hit I ran up against the same old jail-bird,
+but this time his destination was Boston. To-day he is still in prison.
+
+As I fell away from the softies I naturally joined hands with
+more ambitious grafters, and with those with brains and with good
+connections in the upper world. As a lad of from fifteen to eighteen
+I associated with several boys who are now famous politicians in
+this city, and "on the level," as that phrase is usually meant. Jack
+Lawrence was a well-educated boy, and high up as far as his family
+was concerned. His father and brothers held good political positions,
+and it was only a taste for booze and for less genteel grafting that
+held Jack back. As a boy of sixteen or seventeen he was the trusted
+messenger of a well-known Republican politician, named J. I. D. One
+of Jacks pals became a Federal Judge, and another, Mr. D----, who was
+never a grafter, is at present a city magistrate in New York.
+
+While Jack was working for J. I. D., the politician, he was arrested
+several times. Once he abstracted a large amount of money from the vest
+pocket of a broker as he was standing by the old _Herald_ building.
+He was nailed, and sent word to his employer, the politician, who went
+to police headquarters, highly indignant at the arrest of his trusted
+messenger. He easily convinced the broker and the magistrate that Jack
+was innocent; and as far as the Republican politician's business was
+concerned, Jack was honest, for J. I. D. trusted him, and Jack never
+deceived him. There are some thieves who will not "touch" those who
+place confidence in them, and Jack was one of them.
+
+After he was released, the following conversation, which Jack related
+to me, took place between him and the politician, in the latter's
+office.
+
+"How was it?" the Big One said, "that you happened to get your fingers
+into that man's pocket?"
+
+Jack gave the "innocent con."
+
+"None of that," said J. I. D., who was a wise guy, "I know you have a
+habit of taking small change from strangers' pockets."
+
+Jack then came off his perch and gave his patron a lesson in the art
+of throwing the mit (dipping). At this the politician grinned, and
+remarked: "You will either become a reputable politician, for you have
+the requisite character, or you will die young."
+
+Jack was feared, hated and envied by the other young fellows in
+J. I. D.'s office, for as he was such a thorough rascal, he was a
+great favorite with those high up. But he never got J. I. D.'s full
+confidence until after he was tested in the following way. One day the
+politician put his gold watch on a table in his office. Jack saw it,
+picked it up and put it in the Big One's drawer. The latter entered the
+room, saw that the watch was gone, and said: "I forgot my watch. I must
+have left it home."
+
+"No," said Jack, "you left it on the table, and I put it in your desk."
+A smile spread over the patron's face.
+
+"Jack, I can trust you. I put it there just to test your honesty."
+
+The boy hesitated a moment, then, looking into the man's face, replied;
+"I know right well you did, for you are a wise guy."
+
+After that J. I. D. trusted Jack even with his love affairs.
+
+As Jack advanced in life he became an expert "gun," and was often
+nailed, and frequently brought before Magistrate D----, his old friend.
+He always got the benefit of the doubt. One day he was arraigned before
+the magistrate, who asked the flyman the nature of the complaint. It
+was the same as usual--dipping. Jack, of course, was indignant at such
+an awful accusation, but the magistrate told him to keep still, and,
+turning to the policeman, asked the culprit's name. When the copper
+told him, the magistrate exclaimed: "Why, that is not his name. I knew
+him twenty years ago, and he was a d---- rascal then; but that was not
+his name."
+
+Jack was shocked at such language from the bench, and swore with
+such vehemence that he was innocent, that he again got the benefit of
+the doubt, and was discharged, and this time justly, for he had not
+made this particular "touch." He was hounded by a copper looking for
+a reputation. Jack, when he was set free, turned to the magistrate,
+and said: "Your honor, I thank you, but you only did your duty to an
+innocent man." The magistrate had a good laugh, and remarked: "Jack, I
+wouldn't believe you if you swore on a stack of Bibles."
+
+A curious trait in a professional grafter is that, if he is "pinched"
+for something he did not do, although he has done a hundred other
+things for which he has never been pinched, he will put up such a wail
+against the abominable injustice that an honest man accused of the
+same offense would seem guilty in comparison. The honest man, even if
+he had the ability of a Philadelphia lawyer, could not do the strong
+indignation act that is characteristic of the unjustly accused grafter.
+Old thieves guilty of a thousand crimes will nourish revenge for years
+against the copper or judge who sends them up to "stir" on a false
+accusation.
+
+When I was from fifteen to seventeen years old, I met the man who,
+some think, is now practically leader of Tammany Hall. I will call him
+Senator Wet Coin. At that time he was a boy eighteen or nineteen and
+strictly on the level. He knew all the grafters well, but kept off the
+Rocky Path himself. In those days he "hung out" in an oyster shanty
+and ran a paper stand. It is said he materially assisted Mr. Pulitzer
+in making a success of the _World_, when that paper was started. He
+never drank, in spite of the name I have given him. In fact, he derived
+his real nickname from his habit of abstinence. He was the friend of
+a Bowery girl who is now a well-known actress. She, too, was always
+on the level in every way; although her brother was a grafter; this
+case, and that of Senator Wet Coin prove that even in an environment of
+thieves it is possible to tread the path of virtue. Wet Coin would not
+even buy a stolen article; and his reward was great. He became captain
+of his election district, ran for assemblyman, was elected, and got as
+high a position, with the exception of that of Governor, as is possible
+in the State; while in the city, probably no man is more powerful.
+
+Senator Wet Coin made no pretensions to virtue; he never claimed to
+be better than others. But in spite of the accusations against him,
+he has done far more for the public good than all the professional
+reformers, religious and other. He took many noted and professional
+criminals in the prime of their success, gave them positions and by his
+influence kept them honest ever since. Some of them are high up, even
+run gin-mills to-day. I met one of them after my second bit, who used
+to make his thousands. Now he has a salary of eighteen dollars a week
+and is contented. I had known him in the old days, and he asked:
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+"The same old thing," I admitted. "What are you up to?"
+
+"I have squared it, Jim," he replied earnestly. "There's nothing in the
+graft. Why don't you go to sea?"
+
+"I'd as lief go to stir," I replied.
+
+We had a couple of beers and a long talk, and this is the way he gave
+it to me:
+
+"I never thought I could live on eighteen dollars a week. I have to
+work hard but I save more money than I did when I was making hundreds
+a week; for when it comes hard, it does not go easy. I look twice at my
+earnings before I part with them. I live quietly with my sister and am
+happy. There's nothing in the other thing, Jim. Look at Hope. Look at
+Dan Noble. Look at all the other noted grafters who stole millions and
+now are willing to throw the brotherly hand for a small borrow. If I
+had the chance to make thousands to-morrow in the under world, I would
+not chance it. I am happy. Better still, I am contented. Only for Mr.
+Wet Coin I'd be splitting matches in the stir these many years. Show
+me the reformer who has done as much for friends and the public as Wet
+Coin."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A "touch" that pleased me mightily as a kid was made just before my
+second fall. Superintendent Walling had returned from a summer resort,
+and found that a mob of "knucks" (another name for pick-pockets) had
+been "tearing open" the Third Avenue cars outside of the Post Office.
+About fifty complaints had been coming in every day for several weeks;
+and the Superintendent thought he would make a personal investigation
+and get one of the thieves dead to rights. He made a front that
+he was easy and went down the line. He did not catch any dips, but
+when he reached police head-quarters he was minus his gold watch and
+two hundred and fifty dollars in money. The story leaked out, and
+Superintendent Walling was unhappy. There would never have been a
+come-back for this "touch" if an old gun, who had just been nailed,
+had not "squealed" as to who touched the boss. "Little Mick" had done
+it, and the result was that he got his first experience in the House of
+Refuge.
+
+It was only a short time after Little Mick's fall that it came my turn
+to go to the House of Refuge. I had grown tougher and much stuck on
+myself and was taking bigger risks. I certainly had a swelled head in
+those days. I was seventeen years old at the time, and was grafting
+with Jack T----, who is now in Byrnes's book, and one of the swellest
+"Peter" men (safe-blowers) in the profession. Jack and I, along with
+another pal, Joe Quigley, got a duffer, an Englishman, for his "front,"
+on Grand Street, near Broadway. It was a "blow," and I, who was the
+"wire," got nailed. If I had not given my age as fifteen I should have
+been sent to the penitentiary. As it was I went to the House of Refuge
+for a year. Joe Quigley slipped up on the same game. He was twenty, but
+gave his age as fifteen. He had had a good shave by the Tombs barber,
+there was a false date of birth written in his Aunt's Bible, which was
+produced in court by his lawyer, and he would probably have gone with
+me to the House of Refuge, had not a Central Office man who knew him,
+happened in; Joe was settled for four years in Sing Sing.
+
+When I arrived at the House of Refuge, my pedigree was taken and my
+hair clipped. Then I went into the yard, looked down the line of boys
+on parade and saw about forty young grafters whom I knew. One of them
+is now a policeman in New York City, and, moreover, on the level.
+Some others, too, but not many, who were then in the House of Refuge,
+are now honest. Several are running big saloons and are captains of
+their election districts, or even higher up. These men are exceptions,
+however, for certainly the House of Refuge was a school for crime.
+Unspeakably bad habits were contracted there. The older boys wrecked
+the younger ones, who, comparatively innocent, confined for the crime
+of being orphans, came in contact with others entirely hardened. The
+day time was spent in the school and the shop, but there was an hour
+or two for play, and the boys would arrange to meet for mischief in the
+basement.
+
+Severe punishments were given to lads of fifteen, and their tasks
+were harder than those inflicted in State's prison. We had to make
+twenty-four pairs of overalls every day; and if we did not do our work
+we were beaten on an unprotected and tender spot until we promised to
+do our task. One morning I was made to cross my hands, and was given
+fifteen blows on the palms with a heavy rattan stick. The crime I had
+committed was inattention. The principal had been preaching about the
+Prodigal Son. I, having heard it before, paid little heed; particularly
+as I was a Catholic, and his teachings did not count for me. They
+called me a "Papist," and beat me, as I described.
+
+I say without hesitation that lads sent to an institution like the
+House of Refuge, the Catholic Protectory, or the Juvenile Asylum, might
+better be taken out and shot. They learn things there they could not
+learn even in the streets. The newsboy's life is pure in comparison. As
+for me, I grew far more desperate there than I had been before: and I
+was far from being one of the most innocent of boys. Many of the others
+had more to learn than I had, and they learned it. But even I, hard as
+I already was, acquired much fresh information about vice and crime;
+and gathered in more pointers about the technique of graft.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_When the Graft Was Good._
+
+
+I stayed in the House of Refuge until I was eighteen, and when
+released, went through a short period of reform. I "lasted," I think,
+nearly three weeks, and then started in to graft again harder than
+ever. The old itch for excitement, for theatres, balls and gambling,
+made reform impossible. I had already formed strong habits and desires
+which could not be satisfied in my environment without stealing. I was
+rapidly becoming a confirmed criminal. I began to do "house-work,"
+which was mainly sneak work up town. We would catch a basement open
+in the day time, and rummage for silverware, money or jewels. There
+is only a step from this to the business of the genuine burglar, who
+operates in the night time, and whose occupation is far more dangerous
+than that of the sneak thief. However, at this intermediate kind of
+graft, our swag, for eighteen months, was considerable. One of our
+methods was to take servant girls to balls and picnics and get them
+to tip us off to where the goods were and the best way to get them.
+Sometimes they were guilty, more often merely suckers.
+
+During the next three years, at the expiration of which I made my first
+trip to Sing Sing, I stole a great deal of money and lived very high.
+I contracted more bad habits, practically ceased to see my family at
+all, lived in a furnished room and "hung out" in the evening at some
+dance-hall, such as Billy McGlory's Old Armory, George Doe's or "The"
+Allen's. Sheenie Annie was my sweetheart at this period, and after we
+had made a good touch what times we would have at Coney Island or at
+Billy McGlory's! Saturday nights in the summer time a mob of three or
+four of us, grafters and girls, would go to the island and stop at a
+hotel run by an ex-gun. At two or three o'clock in the morning we'd
+all leave the hotel, with nothing on but a quilt, and go in swimming
+together. Sheenie Annie, Blonde Mamie and Big Lena often went with
+us. At other times we took respectable shop-girls, or even women who
+belonged to a still lower class. What boy with an ounce of thick blood
+in his body could refuse to go with a girl to the Island?
+
+And Billy McGlory's! What times we had there, on dear old Saturday
+nights! At this place, which contained a bar-room, dance-room,
+pool-room and a piano, congregated downtown guns, house-men and thieves
+of both sexes. No rag-time was danced in those days, but early in the
+morning we had plenty of the cancan. The riots that took place there
+would put to shame anything that goes on now.[A] I never knew the town
+so tight-shut as it is at present. It is far better, from a moral point
+of view than it has ever been before; at least, in my recollection.
+"The" Allen's was in those days a grade more decent than McGlory's; for
+at "The's" nobody who did not wear a collar and coat was admitted. I
+remember a pal of mine who met a society lady on a slumming expedition
+with a reporter. It was at McGlory's. The lady looked upon the grafter
+she had met as a novelty. The grafter looked upon the lady in the same
+way, but consented to write her an article on the Bowery. He sent her
+the following composition, which he showed to me first, and allowed me
+to copy it. I always did like freaks. I won't put in the bad grammar
+and spelling, but the rest is:
+
+"While strolling, after the midnight hour, along the Lane, that
+historic thoroughfare sometimes called the Bowery, I dropped into a
+concert hall. At a glance, I saw men who worked hard during the week
+and needed a little recreation. Near them were their sisters (that
+is, if we all belong to the same human family), who had fallen by the
+wayside. A man was trying to play a popular song on a squeaky piano,
+while another gent tried to sing the first part of the song, when the
+whole place joined in the chorus with a zest. I think the song was most
+appropriate. It was a ditty of the slums entitled, 'Dear Old Saturday
+Night.'"
+
+When I was about nineteen I took another and important step in the
+world of graft. One night I met a couple of swell grafters, one of
+whom is at the present time a Pinkerton detective. They took me to
+the Haymarket, where I met a crowd of guns who were making barrels of
+money. Two of them, Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, became my friends,
+and introduced me to Mr. R----, who has often kept me out of prison.
+He was a go-between, a lawyer, and well-known to all good crooks. If
+we "fell" we had to notify him and he would set the underground wires
+working, with the result that our fall money would need replenishing
+badly, but that we'd escape the stir.
+
+That I was not convicted again for three years was entirely due to my
+fall money and to the cleverness of Mr. R----. Besides these expenses,
+which I considered legitimate, I used to get "shaken down" regularly by
+the police and detectives. The following is a typical case:
+
+I was standing one day on the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery
+when a copper who knew me came up and said: "There's a lot of knocking
+(complaining) going on about the Grand Street cars being torn open. The
+old man (the chief) won't stand for it much longer."
+
+"It wasn't me," I said.
+
+"Well, it was one of the gang," he replied, "and I will have to make an
+arrest soon, or take some one to headquarters for his mug," (that is,
+to have his picture taken for the rogues' gallery).
+
+I knew what that meant, and so I gave him a twenty dollar bill. But
+I was young and often objected to these exorbitant demands. More than
+anybody else a thief hates to be "touched," for he despises the sucker
+on whom he lives. And we were certainly touched with great regularity
+by the coppers.
+
+Still, we really had nothing to complain of in those days, for we made
+plenty of money and had a good time. We even used to buy our collars,
+cuffs and gloves cheap from grafters who made it their business to
+steal those articles. They were cheap guns,--pipe fiends, petty larceny
+thieves and shop-lifters--but they helped to make our path smoother.
+
+After I met the Haymarket grafter I used to jump out to neighboring
+cities on very profitable business. A good graft was to work the fairs
+at Danbury, Waverly, Philadelphia and Pittsburg, and the foot-ball
+games at Princeton. I always travelled with three or four others, and
+went for gatherings where we knew we would find "roofers," or country
+gentlemen. On my very first jump-out I got a fall, but the copper was
+open to reason. Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, splendid pickpockets,
+(I always went with good thieves, for I had become a first-class dip
+and had a good personal appearance) were working with me in Newark,
+where Vice-President Hendricks was to speak. I picked a watch in the
+crowd, and was nailed. But Dutch Lonzo, who had the gift of gab better
+than any man I ever met, took the copper into a saloon. We all had a
+drink, and for twenty-five dollars I escaped even the station-house.
+Unfortunately, however, I was compelled to return the watch; for the
+copper had to "square" the sucker. Then the copper said to Dutch
+Lonzo, whom he knew: "Go back and graft, if you want, but be sure
+to look me up." In an hour or two we got enough touches to do us for
+two weeks. Senator Wet Coin was at this speech with about two hundred
+Tammany braves, and we picked so many pockets that a newspaper the next
+day said there must have been at least one hundred and ninety-nine
+pickpockets in the Tammany delegation. We fell quite often on these
+trips, but we were always willing to help the coppers pay for their
+lower flats. I sometimes objected because of their exorbitant demands,
+but I was still young. I knew that longshoremen did harder work for
+less pay than the coppers, and I thought, therefore, that the latter
+were too eager to make money on a sure-thing graft. And I always hated
+a sure-thing graft.
+
+But didn't we strike it rich in Connecticut! Whether the people of that
+State suffer from partial paralysis or not I don't know, but certainly
+if all States were as easy as Connecticut the guns would set up as
+Vanderbilts. I never even got a tumble in Connecticut. I ripped up the
+fairs in every direction, and took every chance. The inhabitants were
+so easy that we treated them with contempt.
+
+After a long trip in Connecticut I nearly fell on my return, I was that
+raw. We were breech-getting (picking men's pockets) in the Brooklyn
+cars. I was stalling in front, Lonzo was behind and Charlie was the
+pick. Lonzo telephoned to me by gestures that Charlie had hold of
+the leather, but it wouldn't come. I was hanging on a strap, and,
+pretending to slip, brought my hand down heavily on the sucker's hat,
+which went over his ears. The leather came, was slipped to me, Lonzo
+apologized for spoiling the hat and offered the sucker a five dollar
+bill, which he politely refused. Now that was rough work, and we would
+not have done it, had we not been travelling so long among the Reubs
+in Connecticut. We could have made our gets all right, but we were so
+confident and delayed so long that the sucker blew before we left the
+car, and Lonzo and Charlie were nailed, and the next morning arraigned.
+In the meantime, however, we had started the wires working, and
+notified Mr. R.---- and Lonzo's wife to "fix" things in Brooklyn. The
+reliable attorney got a bondsman, and two friends of his "fixed" the
+cops, who made no complaint. Lonzo's wife, an Irishwoman and a handsome
+grafter, had just finished a five year bit in London. It cost us six
+hundred dollars to "fix" that case, and there was only two hundred and
+fifty dollars in the leather.
+
+That made Lonzo's wife exceedingly angry.
+
+"Good Lord," she said. "There's panthers for you in New York! There's
+the blokes that shakes you down too heavy. I'd want an unlimited cheque
+on the Bank of England if you ever fell again."
+
+A little philosophy on the same subject was given me one day by an
+English Moll, who had fallen up-State and had to "give up" heavily.
+
+"I've been in a good many cities and 'amlets in this country," said
+she, "but gad! blind me if I ever want to fall in an 'amlet in this
+blooming State again. The New York police are at least a little
+sensible at times, but when these Rufus's up the State get a Yorker or
+a wise guy, they'll strip him down to his socks. One of these voracious
+country coppers who sing sweet hymns in jail is a more successful gun
+than them that hit the rocky path and take brash to get the long green.
+It is only the grafter that is supposed to protect the people who makes
+a success of it. The hypocritical mouthings of these people just suit
+the size of their Bibles."
+
+Lonzo and I, and Patsy, a grafter I had picked up about this time,
+made several fat trips to Philadelphia. At first we were leary of the
+department stores, there had been so many "hollers," and worked the
+"rattlers" (cars) only. We were told by some local guns that we could
+not "last" twenty-four hours in Philadelphia without protection, but
+that was not our experience. We went easy for a time, but the chances
+were too good, and we began voraciously to tear open the department
+stores, the churches and the theatres; and without a fall. Whenever
+anybody mentioned the fly-cops (detectives) of Philadelphia it reminded
+us of the inhabitants of Connecticut. They were not "dead": such a
+word is sacred. Their proper place was not on the police force, but
+on a shelf in a Dutchman's grocery store labelled the canned article.
+Philadelphia was always my town, but I never stayed very long, partly
+because I did not want to become known in such a fat place, and partly
+because I could not bear to be away from New York very long; for,
+although there is better graft in other cities, there is no such place
+to live in as Manhattan. I had no fear of being known in Philadelphia
+to the police; but to local guns who would become jealous of our
+grafting and tip us off.
+
+On one of my trips to the City of Brotherly Love I had a poetical
+experience. The graft had been good, and one Sunday morning I left Dan
+and Patsy asleep, and went for a walk in the country, intending, for a
+change, to observe the day of rest. I walked for several hours through
+a beautiful, quiet country, and about ten o'clock passed a country
+church. They were singing inside, and for some reason, probably because
+I had had a good walk in the country, the music affected me strangely.
+I entered, and saw a blind evangelist and his sister. I bowed my head,
+and my whole past life came over me. Although everything had been
+coming my way, I felt uneasy, and thought of home for the first time
+in many weeks. I went back to the hotel in Philadelphia, feeling very
+gloomy, and shut myself up in my room. I took up my pen and began
+a letter to a Tommy (girl) in New York. But I could not forget the
+country church, and instead of writing to the little Tommy, I wrote the
+following jingles:
+
+     "When a child by mother's knee
+     I would watch, watch, watch
+     By the deep blue sea,
+     And the moon-beams played merrily
+     On our home beside the sea.
+
+CHORUS.
+
+     "The Evening Star shines bright-i-ly
+     Above our home beside the sea,
+     And the moon-beams danced beamingly
+     On our home beside the sea.
+     But now I am old, infirm and grey
+     I shall never see those happy days;
+     I would give my life, all my wealth, and fame
+     To hear my mother gently call my name."
+
+Towards evening Patsy and Dan returned from a good day's work. Patsy
+noticed I was quiet and unusually gloomy, and asked:
+
+"What's the matter? Didn't you get anything?"
+
+"No," I replied, "I'm going back to New York."
+
+"Where have you been?" asked Dan.
+
+"To church," I replied.
+
+"In the city?" he asked.
+
+"No," I replied, "in the country."
+
+"I cautioned you," said Dan, "against taking such chances. There's
+no dough in these country churches. If you want to try lone ones on a
+Sunday take in some swell church in the city."
+
+The following Sunday I went to a fashionable church and got a few
+leathers, and afterwards went to all the swell churches in the city. I
+touched them, but they could not touch me. I heard all the ministers
+in Philadelphia, but they could not move me the way that country
+evangelist did. They were all artificial in comparison.
+
+Shortly after my poetical experience in Philadelphia I made a trip up
+New York State with Patsy, Dan and Joe, and grafted in a dozen towns.
+One day when we were on the cars going from Albany to Amsterdam, we saw
+a fat, sleepy-looking Dutchman, and I nicked him for a clock as he was
+passing along the aisle to the end of the car. It took the Dutchman
+about ten minutes after he had returned to his seat to blow that his
+super was gone, and his chain hanging down. A look of stupid surprise
+spread over his innocent countenance. He looked all around, picked up
+the end of his chain, saw it was twisted, put his hand in his vest
+pocket, then looked again at the end of the chain, tried his pocket
+again, then went through all of his pockets, and repeated each of these
+actions a dozen times. The passengers all got "next," and began to
+grin. "Get on to the Hiker," (countryman) said Patsy to Joe, and they
+both laughed. I told the Dutchman that the clock must have fallen down
+the leg of his underwear; whereupon the Reuben retired to investigate,
+searched himself thoroughly and returned, only to go through the same
+motions, and then retire to investigate once more. It was as good as a
+comedy. But it was well there were no country coppers on that train.
+They would not have cared a rap about the Dutchman's loss of his
+property, but we four probably should have been compelled to divide
+with them.
+
+Grafters are a superstitious lot. Before we reached Buffalo a feeling
+came over me that I had better not work in that town; so Joe, Dan and
+an English grafter we had picked up, named Scotty, stopped at Buffalo,
+and Patsy and I went on. Sure enough, in a couple of days Joe wired
+me that Scotty had fallen for a breech-kick and was held for trial.
+I wired to Mr. R----, who got into communication with Mr. J----, a
+Canadian Jew living in Buffalo, who set the wires going. The sucker
+proved a very hard man to square, but a politician who was a friend
+of Mr. J---- showed him the errors of his way, and before very long
+Scotty returned to New York. An English Moll-buzzer, a girl, got hold
+of him and took him back to London. It was just as well, for it was
+time for our bunch to break up. We were getting too well-known; and
+falls were coming too frequent. So we had a general split. Joe went to
+Washington, Patsy down East, Scotty to "stir" in London and I stayed in
+Manhattan, where I shortly afterwards met Big Jack and other burglars
+and started in on that dangerous graft. But before I tell about my
+work in that line, I will narrate the story of Mamie and Johnny, a
+famous cracksman, whom I met at this time. It is a true love story of
+the Under World. Johnny, and Mamie, who by the way is not the same as
+Blonde Mamie, are still living together in New York City, after many
+trials and tribulations, one of the greatest of which was Mamie's
+enforced relation with a New York detective. But I won't anticipate on
+the story, which follows in the next chapter.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+     [A] Summer of 1902
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds._
+
+
+Johnny met Mamie when he was sixteen. At that time he was looked up
+to in the neighborhood as one of the most promising of the younger
+thieves.
+
+He was an intelligent, enterprising boy and had, moreover, received an
+excellent education in the school of crime. His parents had died before
+he was twelve years old, and after that the lad lived at the Newsboys'
+Lodging House, in Rivington Street, which at that time and until it
+ceased to exist was the home of boys some of whom afterwards became
+the swellest of crooks, and some very reputable citizens and prominent
+politicians. A meal and a bed there cost six cents apiece and even the
+youngest and stupidest waif could earn or steal enough for that.
+
+Johnny became an adept at "hooking" things from grocery stores and
+at tapping tills. When he was thirteen years old he was arrested for
+petty theft, passed a night in the police station, and was sent to the
+Catholic Protectory, where he was the associate of boys much older and
+"wiser" in crime than he. At that place were all kinds of incurables,
+from those arrested for serious felonies to those who had merely
+committed the crime of being homeless. From them Johnny learned the
+ways of the under world very rapidly.
+
+After a year of confinement he was clever enough to make a key and
+escape. He safely passed old "Cop O'Hagen," whose duty it was to watch
+the Harlem bridge, and returned to the familiar streets in lower New
+York, where the boys and rising pickpockets hid him from the police,
+until they forgot about his escape.
+
+From that time Johnny's rise in the world of graft was rapid. He
+was so successful in stealing rope and copper from the dry-docks
+that the older heads took him in hand and used to put him through
+the "fan-light" windows of some store, where his haul was sometimes
+considerable. He began to grow rich, purchased some shoes and
+stockings, and assumed a "tough" appearance, with great pride. He rose
+a step higher, boarded tug-boats and ships anchored at the docks, and
+constantly increased his income. The boys looked upon him as a winner
+in his line of graft, and as he gave "hot'l" (lodging-house) money to
+those boys who had none, he was popular. So Johnny became "chesty",
+began to "spread" himself, to play pool, to wear good linen collars and
+to associate with the best young thieves in the ward.
+
+It was at this time that he met Mamie, who was a year or two younger
+than he. She was a small, dark, pale-faced little girl, and as neat
+and quick-witted as Johnny. She lived with her parents, near the
+Newsboys' Lodging House, where Johnny still "hung out". Mamie's father
+and mother were poor, respectable people, who were born and bred in the
+old thirteenth ward, a section famous for the many shop girls who were
+fine "spielers" (dancers). Mamie's mother was one of the most skillful
+of these dancers, and therefore Mamie came by her passion for the waltz
+very naturally; and the light-footed little girl was an early favorite
+with the mixed crowd of dancers who used to gather at the old Concordia
+Assembly Rooms, on the Bowery.
+
+It was at this place that Johnny and Mamie met for the first time. It
+was a case of mutual admiration, and the boy and girl started in to
+"keep company." Johnny became more ambitious in his line of graft;
+he had a girl! He needed money to buy her presents, to take her to
+balls, theatres and picnics; and he began to "gun", which means to
+pickpockets, an occupation which he found far more lucrative than
+"swagging" copper from the docks or going through fan-light windows. He
+did not remain content, however, with "dipping" and, with several much
+older "grafters", he started in to do "drag" work.
+
+"Drag" work is a rather complicated kind of stealing and success at
+it requires considerable skill. Usually a "mob" of four grafters work
+together. They get "tipped off" to some store where there is a line
+of valuable goods, perhaps a large silk or clothing-house. One of the
+four, called the "watcher", times the last employee that leaves the
+place to be "touched". The "watcher" is at his post again early in
+the morning, to find out at what time the first employee arrives. He
+may even hire a furnished room opposite the store, in order to secure
+himself against identification by some Central Office detective who
+might stroll by. When he has learned the hours of the employees he
+reports to his "pals". At a late hour at night the four go to the
+store, put a spindle in the Yale lock, and break it with a blow from a
+hammer. They go inside, take another Yale lock, which they have brought
+with them, lock themselves in, go upstairs, carry the most valuable
+goods downstairs and pile them near the door. Then they go away, and,
+in the morning, before the employees are due, they drive up boldly
+to the store with a truck; representing a driver, two laborers, and a
+shipping clerk. They load the wagon with the goods, lock the door, and
+drive away. They have been known to do this work in full view of the
+unsuspecting policeman on the beat.
+
+While Johnny had advanced to this distinguished work, Mamie, too,
+had become a bread-earner, of a more modest and a more respectable
+kind. She went to work in a factory, and made paper boxes for two and
+one-half dollars a week. So the two dressed very well, and had plenty
+of spending money. Unless Johnny had some work to do they always met in
+the evening, and soon were seriously in love with one another. Mamie
+knew what Johnny's line of business was, and admired his cleverness.
+The most progressive people in her set believed in "getting on" in
+any way, and how could Mamie be expected to form a social morality for
+herself? She thought Johnny was the nicest boy in the world, and Johnny
+returned her love to the full. So Johnny finally asked her if she would
+"hitch up" with him for life, and she gladly consented.
+
+They were married and set up a nice home in Allen Street. It was before
+the time when the Jews acquired an exclusive right to that part of
+the town, and in this neighborhood Mamie and Johnny had many friends
+who used to visit them in the evening; for the loving couple were
+exceedingly domestic, and, when Johnny had no business on hand, seldom
+went out in the evening. Johnny was a model husband. He had no bad
+habits, never drank or gambled, spent as much time as he could with
+his wife, and made a great deal of money. Mamie gave up her work in the
+shop, and devoted all her attention to making Johnny happy and his home
+pleasant.
+
+For about four years Johnny and Mamie lived very happily together.
+Things came their way; and Johnny and his pals laid by a considerable
+amount of money against a rainy day. To be sure, they had their little
+troubles. Johnny "fell," that is to say, was arrested, a score of
+times, but succeeded in getting off. It was partly due to good luck,
+and partly to the large amount of fall-money he and his pals had
+gathered together.
+
+On one occasion it was only Mamie's cleverness and devotion that saved
+Johnny, for a time, from the penitentiary. One dark night Johnny
+and three pals, after a long conversation in the saloon of a ward
+politician, visited a large jewelry store on Fulton Street, Brooklyn,
+artistically opened the safe, and made away with fifteen thousand
+dollars. It was a bold and famous robbery, and the search for the
+thieves was long and earnest. Johnny and his friends were not suspected
+at first, but an old saying among thieves is, "wherever there are three
+or four there is always a leak," a truth similar to that announced by
+Benjamin Franklin: "Three can keep a secret when two are dead."
+
+One of Johnny's pals, Patsy, told his girl in confidence how the
+daring "touch" was made. That was the first link in the long chain of
+gossip which finally reached the ears of the watching detectives; and
+the result was that Patsy and Johnny were arrested. It was impossible
+to "settle" this case, no matter how much "fall-money" they had at
+their disposal; for the jeweler belonged to the Jewelers' Protective
+Association, which will prosecute those who rob anyone belonging to
+their organization.
+
+As bribery was out of the question, Johnny and Patsy, who were what is
+called in the underworld "slick articles," put their heads together,
+and worked out a scheme. The day of their trial in the Brooklyn Court
+came around. They were waiting their turn in the prisoner's "pen,"
+adjoining the Court, when Mamie came to see them. The meeting between
+her and Johnny was very affecting. After a few words Mamie noticed
+that her swell Johnny wore no neck-tie. Johnny, seemingly embarrassed,
+turned to a Court policeman, and asked him to lend him his tie for a
+short time. The policeman declined, but remarked that Mamie had a tie
+that would match Johnny's complexion very well. Mamie impulsively took
+off her tie, put it on Johnny, kissed him, and left the Court-house.
+
+Johnny was to be tried in ten minutes, but he induced his lawyer to
+have the trial put off for half an hour; and another case was tried
+instead. Then he took off Mamie's neck-tie, tore the back out of it,
+and removed two fine steel saws. He gave one to Patsy, and in a few
+minutes they had penetrated a small iron bar which closed a little
+window leading to an alley. Patsy was too large to squeeze himself
+through the opening, but "stalled" for Johnny while the latter "made
+his gets". When they came to put these two on trial there was a
+sensation in Court. No Johnny! Patsy knew nothing about it, he said;
+and he received six years for his crime.
+
+But Johnny's day for a time in the "stir" soon came around. He made a
+good "touch", and got away with the goods, but was betrayed by a pal, a
+professional thief who was in the pay of the police, technically called
+a "stool-pigeon". Mamie visited Johnny in the Tombs, and when she found
+the case was hopeless she wanted to go and steal something herself so
+that she might accompany her boy to prison. But when Johnny told her
+there were no women at Sing Sing she gave up the idea. Johnny went to
+prison for four years, and Mamie went to a tattooer, and, as a proof of
+her devotion, had Johnny's name indelibly stamped upon her arm.
+
+Mamie, in consequence of her fidelity to Johnny, whom she regularly
+visited at Sing Sing, was a heroine and a martyr in the eyes of the
+grafters of both sexes. The money she and Johnny had saved began to
+dwindle, and soon she was compelled to work again at box-making. She
+remained faithful to Johnny, although many a good grafter tried to make
+up to the pretty girl. When Johnny was released from Sing Sing, Mamie
+was even happier than he. They had no money now, but some politicians
+and saloon-keepers who knew that Johnny was a good money-getter, set
+them up in a little house. And they resumed their quiet domestic life
+together.
+
+Their happiness did not last long, however. Johnny needed money more
+than ever now and resumed his dangerous business. He got in with a
+quartette of the cleverest safe-crackers in the country, and made
+a tour of the Eastern cities. They made many important touches, but
+finally Johnny was again under suspicion for a daring robbery in Union
+Square, and was compelled to become a solitary fugitive. He sent word,
+through an old-time burglar, to Mamie, exhorted her to keep up the
+home, and promised to send money regularly. He was forced, however,
+to stay away from New York for several years, and did not dare to
+communicate with Mamie.
+
+At first, Mamie tried to resume her work at box-making. But she had
+had so much leisure and had lived so well that she found the work
+irksome and the pay inadequate. Mamie knew many women pickpockets and
+shop-lifters, friends of her husband. When some of these adventurous
+girls saw that Mamie was discontented with her lot, they induced her to
+go out and work with them. So Mamie became a very clever shop-lifter,
+and, for a time, made considerable money. Then many of the best "guns"
+in the city again tried to make up to Mamie, and marry her. Johnny
+was not on the spot, and that, in the eyes of a thief, constitutes
+a divorce. But Mamie still loved her wayward boy and held the others
+back.
+
+In the meantime Johnny had become a great traveller. He knew that the
+detectives were so hot on his track that he dared to stay nowhere very
+long; nor dared to trust anyone: so he worked alone. He made a number
+of daring robberies, all along the line from Montreal to Detroit, but
+they all paled in comparison with a touch he made at Philadelphia, a
+robbery which is famous in criminal annals.
+
+He had returned to Philadelphia, hoping to get a chance to send word
+to Mamie, whom he had not seen for years, and for whom he pined. While
+in the city of brotherly love he was "tipped off" to a good thing. He
+boldly entered a large mercantile house, and, in thirteen minutes, he
+opened a time-lock vault, and abstracted three hundred thousand dollars
+worth of negotiable bonds and escaped.
+
+The bold deed made a sensation all over the country. The mercantile
+house and the safe manufacturers were so hot for the thief that the
+detectives everywhere worked hard and "on the level". Johnny was not
+suspected then, and never "did time" for this touch. For a while he
+hid in Philadelphia; boarded there with a poor, respectable family,
+representing himself as a laborer out of work. He spent the daytime in
+a little German beer saloon, playing pinocle with the proprietor; and
+was perfectly safe.
+
+But his longing for Mamie had grown so strong that he could not bear
+it. He knew that the detectives were still looking for him because
+of the old crime, and that they were hot to discover the thief of the
+negotiable bonds. He sent word to Mamie, nevertheless, through an old
+pal he found at Philadelphia, and arranged to see her at Mount Vernon,
+near New York.
+
+The two met in the side room of a little saloon near the railway
+station; and the greeting was affectionate in the extreme. They had not
+seen one another for years! And hardly a message had been exchanged.
+After a little Johnny told Mamie, proudly, that it was he who had
+stolen the negotiable bonds.
+
+"Now," he added, "we are rich. After a little I can sell these bonds
+for thirty cents on the dollar and then you and I will go away and
+give up this life. I am getting older and my nerve is not what it was
+once. We'll settle down quietly in London or some town where we are not
+known, and be happy. Won't we, dear?"
+
+Mamie said "Yes," but she appeared confused. When Johnny asked her what
+was the matter, she burst into tears; and choked and sobbed for some
+time before she could say a word. She ordered a glass of whiskey, which
+she never used to drink in the old days, and when the bar-tender had
+left, she turned to the worried Johnny, embraced him tenderly and said,
+in a voice which still trembled:
+
+"Johnny, will you forgive me if I tell you something? It's pretty bad,
+but not so bad as it might be, for I love only you."
+
+Johnny encouraged her with a kiss and she continued, in a broken voice:
+
+"When you were gone again, Johnny, I tried to make my living at the
+old box-making work; but the pay wasn't big enough for me then. So I
+began to graft--dipping and shop-lifting--and made money. But a Central
+Office man you used to know--Jim Lennon--got on to me."
+
+"Jim Lennon?" said Johnny, "Sure, I knew him. He used to be sweet on
+you, Mamie. He treated you right, I hope."
+
+Mamie blushed and looked down.
+
+"Well?" said Johnny.
+
+"Jim came to me one day," she continued, "and told me he wouldn't
+stand for what I was doing. He said the drygoods people were hollering
+like mad; and that he'd have to arrest me if I didn't quit. I tried to
+square him with a little dough, but I soon saw that wasn't what he was
+after."
+
+"'Look here, Mamie,' he finally said. 'It's just this way. Johnny is a
+good fellow, but he's dead to you and dead to me. He's done time, and
+that breaks all marriage ties. Now, I want you to hitch up with me, and
+lead an honest life. I'll give you a good home, and you won't run any
+more risk of the pen!'"
+
+Johnny grew very pale as Mamie said the last words; and when she
+stopped speaking, he said quietly:
+
+"And you did it?"
+
+Mamie again burst into tears. "Oh, Johnny," she cried, "what else could
+I do. He wouldn't let me go on grafting, and I had to live."
+
+"And so you married him?" Johnny insisted.
+
+The reply was in a whisper.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+For the next thirty seconds Johnny thought very rapidly. This woman had
+his liberty in her hands. He had told her about the negotiable bonds.
+Besides, he loved Mamie and understood the difficulty of her position.
+His life as a thief had made him very tolerant in some respects. He
+therefore swallowed his emotion, and turned a kind face to Mamie.
+
+"You still love me?" he asked, "better than the copper?"
+
+"Sure," said Mamie, warmly.
+
+"Now listen," said Johnny, the old business-like expression coming back
+into his face. "I am hounded for the old trick; and the detectives are
+looking everywhere for these negotiable bonds, which I have here, in
+this satchel. Can I trust you with them? Will you mind them for me,
+until things quiet down?"
+
+"Of course, I will," said Mamie, gladly.
+
+So they parted once more. Johnny went into hiding again, and Mamie
+went to the detective's house, with the negotiable bonds. She had no
+intention of betraying Johnny; for she might be arrested for receiving
+stolen goods; and, besides, she still loved her first husband. So she
+planted the bonds in the bottom of the detective's trunk.
+
+Here was a pretty situation. Her husband, the detectives, and
+many other "fly-cops" all over the country, were looking for these
+negotiable bonds, at the very moment when they were safely stowed
+away in the detective's trunk. Mamie and Johnny, who continued to meet
+occasionally, often smiled at the humor of the situation.
+
+Soon, however, suspicion for the Philadelphia touch began to attach
+to Johnny. Mamie's detective asked her one evening if she had heard
+anything about Johnny, of late.
+
+"Not for years," said Mamie, calmly.
+
+But one night, several Central Office men followed Mamie as she went
+to Mt. Vernon to meet Johnny; and when the two old lovers parted,
+Johnny was arrested on account of the fifteen thousand dollar robbery
+in Brooklyn, from the penalty of which he had escaped by means of
+Mamie's neck-tie many years before. The detectives suspected Johnny
+of having stolen the bonds, but of this they could get no evidence. So
+he was sent to Sing Sing for six years on the old charge. When he was
+safely in prison the detectives induced him to return the bonds, on the
+promise that he would not be prosecuted at his release, and would be
+paid a certain sum of money. The mercantile house agreed, and Johnny
+sent word to Mamie to give up the bonds. Then, of course, the detective
+knew about the trick that Mamie had played him. But he, like Johnny,
+was a philosopher, and forgave the clever woman. When he first heard of
+it, however, he had said to her, indignantly:
+
+"You cow, if you had given the bonds to me, I would have been made a
+police captain, and you my queen."
+
+As soon as Johnny got out of stir, Mamie quit the detective, and the
+couple are now living again together in a quiet, domestic manner, in
+Manhattan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_What The Burglar Faces._
+
+
+For a long time I took Sheenie Annie's advice and did not do any night
+work. It is too dangerous, the come-back is too sure, you have to
+depend too much on the nerve of your pals, the "bits" are too long; and
+it is very difficult to square it. But as time went on I grew bolder.
+I wanted to do something new, and get more dough. My new departure was
+not, however, entirely due to ambition and the boldness acquired by
+habitual success. After a gun has grafted for a long time his nervous
+system becomes affected, for it is certainly an exciting life. He is
+then very apt to need a stimulant. He is usually addicted to either
+opium or chloral, morphine or whiskey. Even at this early period I
+began to take a little opium, which afterwards was one of the main
+causes of my constant residence in stir, and was really the wreck of my
+life, for when a grafter is doped he is inclined to be very reckless.
+Perhaps if I had never hit the hop I would not have engaged in the
+dangerous occupation of a burglar.
+
+I will say one thing for opium, however. That drug never makes a man
+careless of his personal appearance. He will go to prison frequently,
+but he will always have a good front, and will remain a self-respecting
+thief. The whiskey dip, on the other hand, is apt to dress carelessly,
+lose his ambition and, eventually to go down and out as a common "bum".
+
+I began night-work when I was about twenty years old, and at first
+I did not go in for it very heavily. Big Jack, Jerry, Ed and I made
+several good touches in Mt. Vernon and in hotels at summer resorts and
+got sums ranging from two hundred to twenty-seven hundred dollars.
+We worked together for nearly a year with much success and only an
+occasional fall, and these we succeeded in squaring. Once we had a
+shooting-match which made me a little leary. I was getting out the
+window with my swag, when a shot just grazed my eye. I nearly decided
+to quit then, but, I suppose because it was about that time I was
+beginning to take opium, I continued with more boldness than ever.
+
+One night Ed, a close pal of mine, was operating with me out in Jersey.
+We were working in the rear of a house and Ed was just shinning up the
+back porch to climb in the second story window, when a shutter above
+was thrown open and, without warning, a pistol shot rang out.
+
+Down came Ed, falling like a log at my feet.
+
+"Are you hurt?" said I.
+
+"Done!" said he, and I saw it was so.
+
+Now a man may be nervy enough, but self-preservation is the first rule
+of life. I turned and ran at the top of my speed across two back yards,
+then through a field, then over a fence into what seemed a ploughed
+field beyond. The ground was rough and covered with hummocks, and as I
+stumbled along I suddenly tripped and fell ten feet down into an open
+grave. The place was a cemetery, though I had not recognized it in the
+darkness. For hours I lay there trembling, but nobody came and I was
+safe. It was not long after that, however, that something did happen to
+shake my nerve, which was pretty good. It came about in the following
+way.
+
+A jeweler, who was a well-known "fence", put us on to a place where we
+could get thousands. He was one of the most successful "feelers-out" in
+the business. The man who was my pal on this occasion, Dal, looked the
+place over with me and though we thought it a bit risky, the size of
+the graft attracted us. We had to climb up on the front porch, with an
+electric light streaming right down on us.
+
+I had reached the porch when I got the well-known signal of danger. I
+hurriedly descended and asked Dal what was the matter.
+
+"Jim," he said, "there's somebody off there, a block away."
+
+We investigated, and you can imagine how I felt when we found nothing
+but an old goat. It was a case of Dal's nerves, but the best of us get
+nervous at times.
+
+I went to the porch again and opened the window with a putty knife
+(made of the rib of a woman's corset), when I got the "cluck" again,
+and hastily descended, but again found it was Dal's imagination.
+
+Then I grew hot, and said: "You have knocked all the nerve out of me,
+for sure."
+
+"Jim," he replied, "I ain't feeling good."
+
+Was it a premonition? He wanted to quit the job, but I wouldn't let
+him. I opened up on him. "What!" I said. "You are willing to steal one
+piece of jewelry and take your chance of going to stir, but when we get
+a good thing that would land us in Easy Street the rest of our lives,
+you weaken!"
+
+Dal was quiet, and his face unusually pale. He was a good fellow, but
+his nerve was gone. I braced him up, however, and told him we'd get the
+"éclat" the third time, sure. Then climbing the porch the third time, I
+removed my shoes, raised the window again, and had just struck a light
+when a revolver was pressed on my head. I knocked the man's hand up,
+quick, and jumped. As I did so I heard a cry and then the beating of a
+policeman's stick on the sidewalk.
+
+I ran, with two men after me, and came to the gateway of a yard, where
+I saw a big bloodhound chained to his kennel. He growled savagely, but
+it was neck or nothing, so I patted his head just as though I were not
+shaking with fear, slipped down on my hands and knees and crept into
+his dog-house. Why didn't he bite me? Was it sympathy? When my pursuers
+came up, the owner of the house, who had been aroused by the cries,
+said: "He is not here. This dog would eat him up." When the police saw
+the animal they were convinced of it too.
+
+A little while later I left my friend's kennel. It was four o'clock in
+the morning and I had no shoes on and only one dollar and sixty cents
+in my pocket. I sneaked through the back window of the first house I
+saw, stole a pair of shoes and eighty dollars from a room where a man
+and his wife were sleeping. Then I took a car. Knowing that I was still
+being looked for, I wanted to get rid of my hat, as a partial disguise.
+On the seat with me was a working man asleep. I took his old soft hat,
+leaving my new derby by his side, and also took his dinner pail. Then
+when I left the car I threw away my collar and necktie, and reached New
+York, disguised as a workingman. The next day the papers told how poor
+old Dal had been arrested. Everything that had happened for weeks was
+put on him.
+
+A week later Dal was found dead in his cell, and I believe he did the
+Dutch act (suicide), for I remember one day, months before that fatal
+night, Dal and I were sitting in a politicians saloon, when he said to
+me:
+
+"Jim, do you believe in heaven?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"Do you believe in hell?" he asked.
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"I've got a mind to find out," he said quickly, and pointed a big
+revolver at his teeth. One of the guns in the saloon said: "Let him try
+it," but I knocked the pistol away, for something in his manner made me
+think seriously he would shoot.
+
+"You poor brute," I said to him. "I'll put your ashes in an urn some
+day and write "Dear Old Saturday Night" for an epitaph for you; but it
+isn't time yet."
+
+It did not take many experiences like the above to make me very leary
+of night-work; and I went more slowly for some time. I continued
+to dip, however, more boldly than ever and to do a good deal of day
+work; in which comparatively humble graft the servant girls, as I have
+already said, used to help us out considerably. This class of women
+never interested me as much as the sporting characters, but we used to
+make good use of them; and sometimes they amused us.
+
+I remember an entertaining episode which took place while Harry, a
+pal of mine at the time, and I, were going with a couple of these
+hard-working Molls. Harry was rather inclined to be a sure-thing
+grafter, of which class of thieves I shall say more in another chapter;
+and after my recent dangerous adventures I tolerated that class more
+than was customary with me. Indeed, if Harry had been the real thing I
+would have cut him dead; as it was he came near enough to the genuine
+article to make me despise him in my ordinary mood. But, as I say, I
+was uncommonly leary just at that time.
+
+He and I were walking in Stuyvesant Square when we met a couple of
+these domestic slaves. With a "hello," we rang in on them, walked them
+down Second Avenue and had a few drinks all around. My girl told me
+whom she was working with. Thinking there might be something doing I
+felt her out further, with a view to finding where in the house the
+stuff lay. Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly, I easily got the
+desired information. We took the girls into Bonnell's Museum, at Eighth
+Street and Broadway, and saw a howling border melodrama, in which wild
+Indians were as thick as Moll-buzzers in 1884. Mary Anne, who was my
+girl, said she should tell her mistress about the beautiful play; and
+asked for a program. They were all out, and so I gave her an old one,
+of another play, which I had in my pocket. We had a good time, and made
+a date with them for another meeting, in two weeks from that night;
+but before the appointed hour we had beat Mary Anne's mistress out of
+two hundred dollars worth of silverware, easily obtained, thanks to
+the information I had received from Mary Anne. When we met the girls
+again, I found Mary Anne in a great state of indignation; I was afraid
+she was "next" to our being the burglars, and came near falling through
+the floor. But her rage, it seemed, was about the play. She had told
+her mistress about the wild Indian melodrama she had seen, and then had
+shown her the program of _The Banker's Daughter_.
+
+"But there is no such thing as an Indian in _The Banker's Daughter_,"
+her mistress had said. "I fear you are deceiving me, Mary Anne, and
+that you have been to some low place on the Bowery."
+
+The other servants in the house got next and kidded Mary Anne almost
+to death about Indians and _The Banker's Daughter_. After I had quieted
+her somewhat she told me about the burglary that had taken place at her
+house, and Harry and I were much interested. She was sure the touch had
+been made by two "naygers" who lived in the vicinity.
+
+It was shortly after this incident that I beat Blackwell's Island out
+of three months. A certain "heeler" put me on to a disorderly house
+where we could get some stones. I had everything "fixed." The "heeler"
+had arranged it with the copper on the beat, and it seemed like a sure
+thing; although the Madam, I understood, was a good shot and had plenty
+of nerve. My accomplice, the heeler, was a sure thing grafter, who had
+selected me because I had the requisite nerve and was no squealer. At
+two o'clock in the morning a trusted pal and I ascended from the back
+porch to the Madam's bed-room. I had just struck a match, when I heard
+a female voice say, "What are you doing there?" and a bottle, fired at
+my head, banged up against the wall with a crash. I did not like to
+alarm women, and so I made my "gets" out the window, over the fence,
+and into another street, where I was picked up by a copper, on general
+principles.
+
+The Madam told him that the thief was over six feet tall and had a
+fierce black mustache. As I am only five feet seven inches and was
+smoothly shaven, it did not seem like an identification; although when
+she saw me she changed her note, and swore I was the man. The copper,
+who knew I was a grafter, though he did not think I did that kind of
+work, nevertheless took me to the station-house, where I convinced
+two wardmen that I had been arrested unjustly. When I was led before
+the magistrate in the morning, the copper said the lady's description
+did not tally with the short, red-haired and freckled thief before
+his Honor. The policemen all agreed, however, that I was a notorious
+grafter, and the magistrate, who was not much of a lawyer, sent me to
+the Island for three months on general principles.
+
+I was terribly sore, for I knew I had been illegally treated. I felt
+as much a martyr as if I had not been guilty in the least; and I
+determined to escape at all hazards; although my friends told me I
+would be released any day; for certainly the evidence against me had
+been insufficient.
+
+After I had been on the Island ten days I went to a friend, who
+had been confined there several months and said: "Eddy, I have been
+unjustly convicted for a crime I committed--such was my way of putting
+it--and I am determined to make my elegant, (escape) come what will. Do
+you know the weak spots of this dump?"
+
+He put me "next", and I saw there was a chance, a slim one, if a man
+could swim and didn't mind drowning. I found another pal, Jack Donovan,
+who, like me, could swim like a fish; he was desperate too, and willing
+to take any chance to see New York. Five or six of us slept together
+in one large cell, and on the night selected for our attempt, Jack and
+I slipped into a compartment where about twenty short term prisoners
+were kept. Our departure from the other cell, from which it was very
+difficult to escape after once being locked in for the night, was not
+noticed by the night guard and his trusty because our pals in the cell
+answered to our names when they were called. It was comparatively easy
+to escape from the large room where the short term men were confined.
+Into this room, too, Jack and I had taken tools from the quarry during
+the daytime.
+
+It was twelve o'clock on a November night when we made our escape.
+We took ropes from the canvas cot, tied them together, and lowered
+ourselves to the ground on the outside, where we found bad weather,
+rain and hail. We were unable to obtain a boat, but secured a telegraph
+pole, rolled it into the water, and set off with it for New York.
+The terrific tide at Hellgate soon carried us well into the middle
+of Long Island Sound, and when we had been in the water half an hour,
+we were very cold and numb, and began to think that all was over. But
+neither of us feared death. All I wanted was to save enough money to
+be cremated; and I was confident my friends would see to that. I don't
+think fear of death is a common trait among grafters. Perhaps it is
+lack of imagination; more likely, however, it is because they think
+they won't be any the worse off after death.
+
+Still, I was not sorry when a wrecking boat suddenly popped our way.
+The tug did not see us, and hit Jack's end of the pole a hard blow that
+must have shaken him off. I heard him holler "Save me," and I yelled
+too. I didn't think anything about capture just then. All my desire to
+live came back to me.
+
+I was pulled into the boat. The captain was a good fellow. He was
+"next" and only smiled at my lies. What was more to the purpose he
+gave me some good whiskey, and set me ashore in Jersey City. Jack was
+drowned. All through life I have been used to losing a friend suddenly
+by the wayside; but I have always felt sad when it happened. And yet it
+would have been far better for me if I had been picked out for an early
+death. I guess poor Jack was lucky.
+
+Certainly there are worse things than death. Through these three years
+of continual and for the most part successful graft, I had known a
+man named Henry Fry whose story is one of the saddest. If he had been
+called off suddenly as Jack was, he would certainly have been deemed
+lucky by those who knew; for he was married to a bad woman. He was
+one of the most successful box-men (safe-blowers) in the city, and
+made thousands, but nothing was enough for his wife. She used to say,
+when he would put twelve hundred dollars in her lap, "This won't meet
+expenses. I need one thousand dollars more." She was unfaithful to
+him, too, and with his friends. When I go to a matinée and see a lot
+of sleek, fat, inane looking women, I wonder who the poor devils are
+who are having their life blood sucked out of them. Certainly it was so
+with Henry, or Henny, as we used to call him.
+
+One day, I remember, we went down the Sound with a well-known
+politician's chowder party, and Henny was with us. Two weeks
+earlier New York had been startled by a daring burglary. A large
+silk-importer's place of business was entered and his safe, supposed
+to be burglar-proof, was opened. He was about to be married, and his
+valuable wedding presents, which were in the safe, and six thousand
+dollars worth of silk, were stolen. It was Henny and his pals who
+had made the touch, but on this beautiful night on the Sound, Henny
+was sad. We were sitting on deck, as it was a hot summer night, when
+Henny jumped off his camp-stool and asked me to sing a song. I sang
+a sentimental ditty, in my tenor voice, and then Henny took me to the
+side of the boat, away from the others.
+
+"Kid," he said, "I feel trouble coming over me."
+
+"Cheer up," I replied. "You're a little down-hearted, that's all."
+
+"I wish to God," he said, "I was like you."
+
+I pulled out a five dollar bill and a two dollar bill and remarked:
+"I've got just seven dollars to my name."
+
+He turned to me and said:
+
+"But you are happy. You don't let anything bother you."
+
+Henny did not drink as a rule; that was one reason he was such a good
+box-man, but on this occasion we had a couple of drinks, and I sang
+"I love but one." Then Henny ordered champagne, grew confidential, and
+told me his troubles.
+
+"Kid" he said, "I've got thirty five hundred dollars on me. I have
+been giving my wife a good deal of money, but don't know what she does
+with it. In sixty days I have given her three thousand dollars, and she
+complains about poverty all the time."
+
+Henny had a nice flat of seven or eight rooms; he owed nothing and
+had no children. He said he was unable to find any bank books in his
+wife's trunk, and was confident she was not laying the money by. She
+did not give it to her people, but even borrowed money from her father,
+a well-to-do builder.
+
+Two days after the night of the excursion, one of Henny's pals in the
+silk robbery, went into a gin mill, treated everybody, and threw a
+one thousand dollar bill down on the bar. Grafters, probably more than
+others, like this kind of display. It is the only way to rise in their
+society. A Central Office detective saw this little exhibition, got
+into the grafters confidence and weeded him out a bit. A night or two
+afterwards Henny was in bed at home, when the servant girl, who was in
+love with Henny, and detested his wife because she treated her husband
+so badly (she used to say to me, "She ain't worthy to tie his shoe
+string") came to the door and told Henny and his wife that a couple of
+men and a policeman in uniform were inquiring for him. Henny replied
+sleepily that they were friends of his who had come to buy some stones;
+but the girl was alarmed. She knew that Henny was crooked and feared
+that those below meant him no good. She took the canvas turn-about
+containing burglar's tools which hung on the wall near the bed, and
+pinned it around her waist, under her skirt, and then admitted the
+three visitors.
+
+The sergeant said to Henny, who had dressed himself, "You are under
+suspicion for the silk robbery." Yet there was, as is not uncommon, a
+"but," which is as a rule a monetary consideration. Henny knew that
+the crime was old, and, as he thought his "fence" was safe, he did
+not see how there could be a come-back. So he did not take the hint to
+shell out, and worked the innocent con. But those whose business it is
+to watch the world of prey, put two and two together, and were "next"
+that Henny and his mob had pulled off the trick. So they searched the
+house, expecting to find, if not _éclat_, at least burglars tools;
+for they knew that Henny was at the top of the ladder, and that he
+must have something to work with. While the sergeant was going through
+Henny's trunk, one of the flymen fooled with the pretty servant girl.
+She jumped, and a pair of turners fell on the floor. It did not take
+the flyman long to find the whole kit of tools. Henny was arrested,
+convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for five years. While in prison
+he became insane, his delusion being that he was a funny man on the
+Detroit Free Press, which he thought was owned by his wife.
+
+I never discovered what Henny's wife did with the money she had from
+him. When I last heard of her she was married to another successful
+grafter, whom she was making unhappy also. In a grafter's life a woman
+often takes the part of the avenger of society. She turns against the
+grafters their own weapons, and uses them with more skill, for no man
+can graft like a woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had now been grafting for three years in the full tide of success.
+Since the age of eighteen I had had no serious fall. I had made
+much money and lived high. I had risen in the world of graft, and
+I had become, not only a skillful pickpocket, but a good swindler
+and drag-worker and had done some good things as a burglar. I was
+approaching my twenty-first year, when, as you will see, I was to go to
+the penitentiary for the first time. This is a good place, perhaps, to
+describe my general manner of life, my daily menu, so to speak, during
+these three fat years: for after my first term in state's prison things
+went from bad to worse.
+
+I lived in a furnished room; or at a hotel. If there was nothing doing
+in the line of graft, I'd lie abed late, and read the newspapers to see
+if any large gathering, where we might make some touches, was on hand.
+One of my girls, of whom there was a long succession, was usually with
+me. We would breakfast, if the day was an idle one, about one or two
+o'clock in the afternoon. Then we'd send to the restaurant and have
+a beefsteak or chops in our rooms, and perhaps a whiskey sour. If it
+was another grafter's girl I'd won I'd be greatly pleased, for that
+kind of thing is a game with us. In the afternoon I'd take in some
+variety show; or buy the "Tommy" a present; if it was summer we might
+go to a picnic, or to the Island. If I was alone, I would meet a pal,
+play billiards or pool, bet on the races, baseball and prize fights,
+jump out to the Polo grounds, or go to Patsy's house and have a game
+of poker. Patsy's wife was a handsome grafter; and Patsy was jealous.
+Every gun is sensitive about his wife, for he doesn't know how long he
+will have her with him. In the evening I would go to a dance-hall; or
+to Coney Island if the weather was good.
+
+If it was a busy day, that is, if there was a touch to be pulled off,
+we would get up in the morning or the afternoon, according to the best
+time for the particular job in hand. In the afternoon we would often
+graft at the Polo grounds, where we had a copper "right." We did not
+have the same privileges at the race track, because it was protected by
+the Pinkerton men. We'd console ourselves at the Polo grounds, which
+we used to tear wide open, and where I never got even a hint of a
+fall; the coppers got their percentage of the touches. In the morning
+we would meet at one of the grafters homes or rooms and talk over our
+scheme for the day or night. If we were going outside the city we would
+have to rise very early. Sometimes we were sorry we had lost our sleep;
+particularly the time we tried to tear open the town of Sing Sing,
+near which the famous prison is. We found nothing to steal there but
+pig iron, and there were only two pretty girls in the whole village.
+We used to jump out to neighboring towns, not always to graft, but
+sometimes to see our girls, for like sailors, the well-dressed, dapper
+pickpocket has a girl in every port. If we made a good touch in the
+afternoon we'd go on a spree in the evening with Sheenie Annie, Blonde
+Mamie, Big Lena or some other good-natured lasses, or we'd go over and
+inspect the Jersey maidens. After a good touch we would put some of the
+dough away for fall-money, or for our sick relatives or guns in stir
+or in the hospital. We'd all chip in to help out a woman grafter in
+trouble, and pool a piece of jewelry sometimes, for the purpose. Then,
+our duty done, we would put on our best front, and visit our friends
+and sporting places. Among others we used to jump over to a hotel kept
+by an ex-gun, one of the best of the spud men (green goods men), who is
+now on the level and a bit of a politician. He owns six fast horses, is
+married and has two beautiful children.
+
+A few months before I was sent to the penitentiary for the first time,
+I had my only true love affair. I have liked many girls, but sentiment
+of the kind I felt for Ethel has played little part in my life. For
+Ethel I felt the real thing, and she for me. She was a good, sensible
+girl, and came from a respectable family. She lived with her father,
+who was a drummer, and took care of the house for him. She was a
+good deal of a musician, and, like most other girls, she was fond of
+dancing. I first met her at Beethoven Hall, and was introduced to her
+by a man, an honest laborer, who was in love with her. I liked her at
+first sight, but did not love her until I had talked with her. In two
+weeks we were lovers, and went everywhere together. The workingman
+who loved her too was jealous and began to knock me. He told her I
+was a grafter, but she would not believe him; and said nothing to me
+about it, but it came to my ears through an intimate girl pal of hers.
+Shortly after that I fell for a breech-kick (was arrested for picking
+a man's trouser's pocket), but I had a good lawyer and the copper
+was one of those who are open to reason. I lay a month in the Tombs,
+however, before I got off, and Ethel learned all about it. She came to
+the Tombs to see me, but, instead of reproaches, I got sympathy from
+her. After I was released I gave her some of my confidence. She asked
+me if I wouldn't be honest, and go to work; and said she would ask
+her father to get me a job. Her father came to me and painted what my
+life would be, if I kept on. I thought the matter over sincerely. I
+had formed expensive habits which I could not keep up on any salary I
+could honestly make. Away down in my mind (I suppose you would call it
+soul) I knew I was not ready for reform. I talked with Ethel, and told
+her that I loved her, but that I could not quit my life. She said she
+would marry me anyway. But I thought the world of her, and told her
+that though I had blasted my own life I would not blast hers. I would
+not marry her, she was so good and affectionate. When we parted, I said
+to myself: Man proposes, habit disposes.
+
+It was certainly lucky that I did not marry that sweet girl, for a
+month after I had split with her, I fell for a long term in state's
+prison. It was for a breech-kick, which I could not square. I had gone
+out of my hotel one morning for a bottle of whiskey when I met two
+grafters, Johnny and Alec, who were towing a "sucker" along with them.
+They gave me the tip that it was worth trying. Indeed, I gathered that
+the man must have his bank with him, and I nicked him in a car for his
+breech-leather. A spectator saw the deed and tipped off a copper. I was
+nailed, but had nothing on me, for I had passed the leather to Alec.
+I was not in the mood for the police station, and with Alec's help I
+"licked" the copper, who pulled his gun and fired at us as we ran up a
+side street. Alec blazed back, and escaped, but I was arrested. I could
+not square it, as I have said, for I had been wanted at Headquarters
+for some time past, because I did not like to give up, and was no
+stool-pigeon. I notified Mr. R----, who was told to keep his hands off.
+I had been tearing the cars open for so long that the company wanted
+to "do" me. They got brassy-mouthed and yelled murder. I saw I had
+a corporation against me and hadn't a living chance to beat it. So I
+pleaded guilty and received five years and seven months at Sing Sing.
+
+A boy of twenty-one, I was hand-cuffed with two old jail-birds, and as
+we rode up on a Fourth Avenue car to the Grand Central Station, I felt
+deeply humiliated for the first time in my life. When the passengers
+stared at me I hung my head with shame.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_In Stir._
+
+
+I hung my head with shame, but not because of contrition. I was ashamed
+of being caught and made a spectacle of. All the way to Sing Sing
+station people stared at us as if we were wild animals. We walked from
+the town to the prison, in close company with two deputy sheriffs. I
+observed considerably, knowing that I should not see the outside world
+again for a number of years. I looked with envy at the people we passed
+who seemed honest, and thought of home and the chances I had thrown
+away.
+
+When I reached the stir I was put through the usual ceremonies. My
+pedigree was taken, but I told the examiners nothing. I gave them a
+false name and a false pedigree. Then a bath was given to my clothes
+and I was taken to the tailor shop. When my hair had been cropped close
+and a suit of stripes given me I felt what it was to be the convicted
+criminal. It was not a pleasant feeling, I can tell you, and when I was
+taken to my cell my heart sank indeed. A narrow room, seven feet, four
+inches long; dark, damp, with moisture on the walls, and an old iron
+cot with plenty of company, as I afterwards discovered--this was to be
+my home for years. And I as full of life as a young goat! How could I
+bear it?
+
+After I had been examined by the doctor and questioned about my
+religion by the chaplain, I was left to reflect in my cell. I was
+interrupted in my melancholy train of thought by two convicts who
+were at work in the hall just outside my cell. I had known them on
+the outside, and they, taking good care not to be seen by the screws
+(keepers) tipped me off through my prison door to everything in stir
+which was necessary for a first timer to know. They told me to keep
+my mouth shut, to take everything from the screws in silence, and if
+assigned to a shop to do my work. They told me who the stool-pigeons
+were, that is to say, the convicts who, in order to curry favor and
+have an easy time, put the keepers next to what other convicts are
+doing, and so help to prevent escapes. They tipped me off to those
+keepers who were hard to get along with, and put me next to the
+Underground Tunnel, and who were running it. Sing Sing, they said, is
+the best of the three New York penitentiaries: for the grub is better
+than at the others, there are more privileges, and, above all, it is
+nearer New York, so that your friends can visit you more frequently.
+They gave me a good deal of prison gossip, and told me who among my
+friends were there, and what their condition of health was. So and so
+had died or gone home, they said, such and such had been drafted to
+Auburn or Clinton prisons. If I wanted to communicate with my friends
+in stir all that was necessary for me to do was to write a few stiffs
+(letters) and they would be sent by the Underground Tunnel. They asked
+me about their old pals, hang-outs and girls in New York, and I, in
+turn gave them a lot of New York gossip. Like all convicts they shed a
+part of the things they had received from home, gave me canned goods,
+tobacco and a pipe. It did not take me long to get on to the workings
+of the prison.
+
+I was particularly interested in the Underground Tunnel, for I saw
+at once its great usefulness. This is the secret system by which
+contraband articles, such as whiskey, opium and morphine are brought
+into the prison. When a rogue is persuasive with the coin of the realm
+he can always find a keeper or two to bring him what he considers
+the necessaries of life, among which are opium, whiskey and tobacco.
+If you have a screw "right," you can be well supplied with these
+little things. To get him "right" it is often necessary to give him a
+share--about twenty per cent--of the money sent you from home. This
+system is worked in all the State prisons in New York, and during
+my first term, or any of the other terms for that matter, I had no
+difficulty in supplying my growing need for opium.
+
+I do not want people to get the idea that it is always necessary to
+bribe a keeper, in order to obtain these little luxuries; for many a
+screw has brought me whiskey and hop, and contraband letters from other
+inmates, without demanding a penny. A keeper is a human being like the
+rest of us, and he is sometimes moved by considerations other than of
+pelf. No matter how good and conscientious he may be, a keeper is but
+a man after all, and, having very little to do, especially if he is in
+charge of an idle gang of "cons" he is apt to enter into conversation
+with them, particularly if they are better educated or more interesting
+than he, which often is the case. They tell him about their escapades
+on the outside and often get his sympathy and friendship. It is
+only natural that those keepers who are good fellows should do small
+favors for certain convicts. They may begin by bringing the convicts
+newspapers to read, but they will end by providing them with almost
+everything. Some of them, however, are so lacking in human sympathy,
+that their kindness is aroused only by a glimpse of the coin of the
+realm; or by the prospect of getting some convict to do their dirty
+work for them, that is, to spy upon their fellow prisoners.
+
+At Auburn penitentiary, whither I was drafted after nine months at
+Sing Sing, a few of the convicts peddled opium and whiskey, with, of
+course, the connivance of the keepers. There are always some persons in
+prison as well as out who want to make capital out of the misfortunes
+of others. These peddlars, were despised by the rest of the convicts,
+for they were invariably stool-pigeons; and young convicts who never
+before knew the power of the drug became opium fiends, all on account
+of the business propensities of these detestable rats (stool-pigeons)
+who, because they had money and kept the screws next to those cons who
+tried to escape, lived in Easy Street while in stir.
+
+While on this subject, I will tell about a certain famous "fence"
+(at one of these prisons) although he did not operate until my second
+term. At that time things were booming on the outside. The graft was so
+good that certain convicts in my clique were getting good dough sent
+them by their pals who were at liberty; and many luxuries came in,
+therefore, by the Underground Tunnel. Now those keepers who are next
+to the Underground develop, through their association with convicts, a
+propensity to graft, but usually have not the nerve to hustle for the
+goods. So they are willing to accept stolen property, not having the
+courage and skill to steal, from the inhabitants of the under world.
+A convict, whom I knew when at liberty, named Mike, thought he saw
+an opportunity to do a good "fencing" business in prison. He gave a
+"red-front" (gold watch and chain), which he had stolen in his good
+days, to a certain keeper who was running the Underground, and thus
+got him "right." Then Mike made arrangements with two grafters on the
+outside to supply the keeper and his friends with what they wanted. If
+the keeper said his girl wanted a stone, Mike would send word to one
+of the thieves on the outside to supply a good diamond as quickly as
+possible. The keeper would give Mike a fair price for these valuable
+articles and then sell the stones or watches, or make his girl a
+present.
+
+Other keepers followed suit, for they couldn't see how there was any
+"come-back" possible, and soon Mike was doing a thriving business. It
+lasted for five or six months, when Mike stopped it as a regular graft
+because of the growing cupidity of the keepers. One of them ordered
+a woman's watch and chain and a pair of diamond ear-rings through the
+Underground Tunnel. Mike obtained the required articles, but the keeper
+paid only half of what he promised, and Mike thereupon shut up shop.
+Occasionally, however, he continued to sell goods stolen by his pals
+who were at liberty, but only for cash on the spot, and refused all
+credit. The keepers gradually got a great feeling of respect for this
+convict "fence" who was so clever and who stood up for his rights; and
+the business went on smoothly again, for a while.
+
+But finally it was broken up for good. A grafter on the outside, Tommy,
+sent through the Underground a pawn ticket for some valuable goods,
+among them a sealskin sacque worth three hundred dollars, which he
+had stolen and hocked in Philadelphia. Mike sold the pawn-ticket to
+a screw. Soon after that Tommy, or one of his pals, got a fall and
+"squealed". The police got "next" to where the goods were, and when
+the keeper sent the ticket and the money to redeem the articles they
+allowed them to be forwarded to the prison, but arrested the keeper for
+receiving stolen goods. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years,
+but got off through influence. That, however, finished the "fence" at
+the institution.
+
+To resume the thread of my narrative, the day after I reached Sing Sing
+I was put through the routine that lasted all the time I was there. At
+six-thirty in the morning we were awakened by the bell and marched in
+lock-step (from which many of us were to acquire a peculiar gait that
+was to mark us through life and help prevent us from leading decent
+lives) to the bucket-shop, where we washed, marched to the mess for
+breakfast at seven-thirty, then to the various shops to work until
+eleven-thirty, when at the whistle we would form again into squads
+and march, again in the lock-step, fraternally but silently, to our
+solemn dinner, which we ate in dead silence. Silence, indeed, except
+on the sly, was the general rule of our day, until work was over, when
+we could whisper together until five o'clock, the hour to return to
+our cells, into which we would carry bread for supper, coffee being
+conveyed to us through a spout in the wall. The food at Sing Sing was
+pretty good. Breakfast consisted of hash or molasses, black coffee and
+bread; and at dinner we had pork and beans, potatoes, hot coffee and
+bread. Pork and beans gave place to four eggs on Friday, and sometimes
+stews were given us. It was true what I'd heard, that Sing Sing has the
+best food of any institution I have known. After five o'clock I would
+read in my cell by an oil lamp (since my time electricity has been put
+in the prison) until nine o'clock, when I had to put out my light and
+go to bed.
+
+I had a great deal more time for reading and meditation in my lonely
+cell than one would think by the above routine. I was put to work in
+the shop making chairs. It was the first time I had ever worked in my
+life, and I took my time about it. I felt no strong desire to work for
+the State. I was expected to cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually
+caned about two. I did not believe in work. I felt at that time that
+New York State owed me a living. I was getting a living all right, but
+I was ungrateful. I did not thank them a wee bit. I must have been a
+bad example to other "cons," for they began to get as tired as myself.
+At any rate, I lost my job, and was sent back to my cell, where I
+stayed most of the time while at Sing Sing.
+
+I worked, indeed, very little at any time during my three bits in the
+penitentiary. The prison at Sing Sing, during the nine months I was
+there on my first term, was very crowded, and there was not enough work
+to go round; and I was absolutely idle most of the time. When I had
+been drafted to Auburn I found more work to do, but still very little,
+for it was just then that the legislature had shut down on contract
+labor in the prisons. The outside merchants squealed because they could
+not compete with unpaid convict labor; and so the prison authorities
+had to shut down many of their shops, running only enough to supply
+the inside demand, which was slight. For eighteen months at Auburn I
+did not work a day. I think it was a very bad thing for the health of
+convicts when this law was passed; for certainly idleness is a very bad
+thing for most of them; and to be shut up nearly all the time in damp,
+unhealthy cells like those at Sing Sing, is a terrible strain on the
+human system.
+
+Personally, however, I liked to be in my cell, especially during my
+first year of solitary confinement, before my health began to give
+way; for I had my books from the good prison libraries, my pipe or
+cigarettes, and last, but not least, I had a certain portion of opium
+that I used every day.
+
+For me, prison life had one great advantage. It broke down my health
+and confirmed me for many years in the opium habit, as we shall see;
+but I educated myself while in stir. Previous to going to Sing Sing my
+education had been almost entirely in the line of graft; but in stir,
+I read the English classics and became familiar with philosophy and the
+science of medicine and learned something about chemistry.
+
+One of my favorite authors was Voltaire, whom I read, of course, in a
+translation. His "Dictionary" was contraband in prison but I read it
+with profit. Voltaire was certainly one of the shrewdest of men, and
+as up to snuff as any cynical grafter I know, and yet he had a great
+love for humanity. He was the philosopher of humanity. Goethe said
+that Luther threw the world back two hundred years, but I deny it; for
+Luther, like Voltaire, pointed out the ignorance and wickedness of the
+priests of their day. These churchmen did not understand the teachings
+of Christ. Was Voltaire delusional? The priests must have thought so,
+but they were no judges, for they were far worse and less humane than
+the French revolutionists. The latter killed outright, but the priests
+tortured in the name of the Most Humane. I never approved of the
+methods of the French revolutionists, but certainly they were gentle in
+comparison with the priests of the Spanish Inquisition.
+
+I think that, in variety of subjects, Voltaire has no equal among
+writers. Shrewd as he was, he had a soul, and his moral courage was
+grand. His defense of young Barry, who was arrested for using language
+against the church, showed his kindness and breadth of mind. On his
+arrival in Paris, when he was only a stripling, he denounced the
+cowardly, fawning sycophants who surrounded Louis XIV,[B] and wrote
+a sarcastic poem on His Nibs, and was confined in the Bastille for
+two years. His courage, his wit, his sarcasms, his hatred of his
+persecutors, and his love and kindness, stamp him as one of the great,
+healthy intellects of mankind. What a clever book is _Candide_! What
+satire! What wit! As I lay on my cot how often I laughed at his caustic
+comments on humanity! And how he could hate! I never yet met a man of
+any account who was not a good hater. I own that Voltaire was ungallant
+toward the fair sex. But that was his only fault.
+
+I enjoyed Victor Hugo because he could create a great character, and
+was capable of writing a story with a plot. I rank him as a master
+of fiction, although I preferred his experience as a traveller, to
+his novels, which are not real enough. Ernest Renan was a bracing
+and clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed in reading his _Life
+of Jesus_. I expected to get a true outline of Christ's time and
+a character sketch of the man himself, but I didn't. I went to the
+fountain for a glass of good wine, but got only red lemonade.
+
+I liked Dumas, and revelled in the series beginning with _The Three
+Musketeers_. I could not read Dumas now, however. I also enjoyed
+Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey, for they are very sensational; but that was
+during my first term in stir. I could not turn a page of their books
+now, for they would seem idiotic to me. Balzac is a bird of another
+feather. In my opinion he was one of the best dissectors of human
+nature that the world ever produced. Not even Shakespeare was his
+equal. His depth in searching for motives, his discernment in detecting
+a hypocrite, his skill in showing up women, with their follies, their
+loves, their little hypocrisies, their endearments, their malice and
+their envy is unrivalled. It is right that Balzac should show woman
+with all her faults and follies and virtues, for if she did not possess
+all these characteristics, how could man adore her?
+
+In his line I think Thackeray is as great as Balzac. When I had read
+_Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, _The Newcomes_ and _Barry Lyndon_, I was
+so much interested that I read anything of his I could lay my hands
+on, over and over again. With a novel of Thackeray's in my hand I would
+become oblivious to my surroundings, and long to know something of this
+writers personality. I think I formed his mental make-up correctly,
+for I imagined him to be gentle and humane. Any man with ability and
+brains equal to his could not be otherwise. What a character is Becky
+Sharp! In her way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie Annie. She did
+not love Rawdon as a good wife should. If she had she would not be the
+interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful to Rawdon for three
+reasons; first, he married her; second, he gave her a glimpse into a
+station in life her soul longed for; third, he came from a good family,
+and was a soldier and tall, and it is well-known that little women
+like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky. She often grinned at his lack
+of brains. She grinned at everything, and when we learn that Becky got
+religion at the end of the book, instead of saying, God bless her, we
+only grin, too.
+
+_Pendennis_ is a healthy book. I always sympathize with Pen and Laura
+in their struggles to get on, and when the baby was born I was willing
+to become Godpapa, just for its Mamma's sake. _The Newcomes_ I call
+Thackeray's masterpiece. It is truer to life than any other book I
+ever read. Take the scene where young Clive throws the glass of wine
+in his cousin's face. The honest horror of the father, his indignation
+when old Captain Costigan uses bad language, his exit when he hears a
+song in the Music Hall--all this is true realism. But the scene that
+makes this book Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old Colonel
+is dying. The touching devotion of Madam and Ethel, the love for old
+Tom, his last word "_adsum_" the quiet weeping of his nurse, and the
+last duties to the dead; the beautiful tenderness of the two women, of
+a kind that makes the fair sex respected by all men--I can never forget
+this scene till my dying day.
+
+When I was sick in stir a better tonic than the quack could prescribe
+was Thackeray's _Book of Snobs_. Many is the night I could not sleep
+until I had read this book with a relish. It acted on me like a bottle
+of good wine, leaving me peaceful after a time of pleasure. In this
+book are shown up the little egotisms of the goslings and the foibles
+of the sucklings in a masterly manner.
+
+I read every word Dickens ever wrote; and I often ruminated in my
+mind as to which of his works is the masterpiece. _Our Mutual Friend_
+is weak in the love scenes, but the book is made readable by two
+characters, Noddy Boffin and Silas Wegg. Where Wegg reads, as he
+thinks, _The Last of the Russians_, when the book was _The Decline and
+Fall Of the Roman Empire_, there is the quintessence of humor. Silas's
+wooden leg and his occupation of selling eggs would make anybody smile,
+even a dip who had fallen and had no money to square it.
+
+The greatest character in _David Copperfield_ is Uriah Heep. The prison
+scene where this humble hypocrite showed he knew his Bible thoroughly,
+and knew the advantage of having some holy quotations pat, reminded
+me often of men I have known in Auburn and Sing Sing prisons. Some
+hypocritical jail-bird would dream that he could succeed on the outside
+by becoming a Sunday School superintendent; and four of the meanest
+thieves I ever knew got their start in that way. Who has not enjoyed
+Micawber, with his frothy personality and straitened circumstances,
+and the unctuous Barkis.--Poor Emily! Who could blame her? What woman
+could help liking Steerforth? It is strange and true that good women
+are won by men they know to be rascals. Is it the contrast between Good
+and Evil, or is it because the ne'er-do-well has a stronger character
+and more magnetic force? Agnes was one of the best women in the world.
+Contrast her with David's first wife. Agnes was like a fine violin,
+while Dora was like a wailing hurdy-gurdy.
+
+_Oliver Twist_ is Dickens's strongest book. He goes deeper into human
+nature there than in any other of his writings. Fagin, the Jew, is a
+very strong character, but overdrawn. The picture of Fagin's dens and
+of the people in them, is true to life. I have seen similar gatherings
+many a time. The ramblings of the Artful Dodger are drawn from the real
+thing, but I never met in real life such a brutal character as Bill
+Sykes; and I have met some tough grafters, as the course of this book
+will show. Nancy Sykes, however, is true to life. In her degradation
+she was still a woman. I contend that a woman is never so low but a
+man was the cause. One passage in the book has often touched me, as it
+showed that Nancy had not lost her sex. When she and Bill were passing
+the prison, she turned towards it and said: "Bill, they were fine
+fellows that died to-day." "Shut your mouth," said Bill. Now I don't
+think there is a thief in the United States who would have answered
+Nancy's remark that way. Strong arm workers who would beat your brains
+out for a few dollars would be moved by that touch of pity in Nancy's
+voice.
+
+But Oliver himself is the great character, and his story reminds me
+of my own. The touching incident in the work-house where his poor
+stomach is not full, and he asks for a second platter of mush to the
+horror of the teachers, is not overdrawn. When I was in one of our
+penal institutions, at a later time of my life, I was ill, and asked
+for extra food; but my request was looked upon as the audacity of a
+hardened villain. I had many such opportunities to think of Oliver.
+
+I always liked those authors who wrote as near life as decency would
+permit. Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_ has often amused me, and _Tom
+Jones_, _Roderick Random_ and _Peregrine Pickle_ I have read over and
+over again. I don't see why good people object to such books. Some
+people are forever looking after the affairs of others and neglecting
+their own; especially a man whom I will call Common Socks who has put
+himself up as a mentor for over seventy millions of people. Let me tell
+the busy ladies who are afraid that such books will harm the morals of
+young persons that the more they are cried down the more they will be
+read. For that matter they ought to be read. Why object to the girl
+of sixteen reading such books and not to the woman of thirty-five?
+I think their mental strength is about equal. Both are romantic and
+the woman of thirty-five will fall in love as quickly as the girl of
+sixteen. I think a woman is always a girl; at least, it has been so in
+my experience. One day I was grafting in Philadelphia. It was raining,
+and a woman was walking along on Walnut Street. She slipped on the wet
+sidewalk and fell. I ran to her assistance, and saw that her figure was
+slim and girlish and that she had a round, rosy face, but that her hair
+was pure white. When I asked her if she was hurt, she said "yes," but
+when I said "Let me be your grandson and support you on my way," I put
+my foot into it, for, horrors! the look she gave me, as she said in an
+icy voice, "I was never married!" I wondered what manner of men there
+were in Philadelphia, and, to square myself, I said: "Never married!
+and with a pair of such pretty ankles!" Then she gave me a look,
+thanked me, and walked away as jauntily as she ever did in her life,
+though she must have been suffering agonies from her sprained ankle.
+Since that time I have been convinced that they of the gentle sex are
+girls from fifteen to eighty.
+
+I read much of Lever, too, while I was in stir. His pictures of Ireland
+and of the noisy strife in Parliament, the description of Dublin with
+its spendthrifts and excited populace, the gamblers and the ruined but
+gay young gentlemen, all mixed up with the grandeur of Ireland, are the
+work of a master. I could only compare this epoch of worn-out regalia
+with a St. Patrick's day parade twenty years ago in the fourth ward of
+Manhattan.
+
+Other books I read in stir were Gibbon's _Roman Empire_, Carlyle's
+_Frederick the Great_, and many of the English poets. I read
+Wordsworth, Gray and Goldsmith, but I liked Tom Moore and Robert Burns
+better. The greatest of all the poets, however, in my estimation, is
+Byron. His loves were many, his adventures daring, and his language was
+as broad and independent as his mind.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+     [B] _Sic._ (Editor's Note.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+In Stir (_continued_).
+
+
+Sing Sing was overflowing with convicts, and after I had been there
+nine months, I and a number of others were transferred to Auburn
+penitentiary. There I found the cells drier, and better than at
+Sing Sing, but the food not so good. The warden was not liked by the
+majority of the men, but I admired him for two things. He believed in
+giving us good bread; and he did not give a continental what came into
+the prison, whether it was a needle or a cannister, as long as it was
+kept in the cell and not used.
+
+It was in Auburn stir that opium grew to be a habit with me. I used to
+give the keepers who were running the Underground one dollar of every
+five that were sent me, and they appreciated my kindness and kept me
+supplied with the drug. What part the hop began to play in my life may
+be seen from the routine of my days at Auburn; particularly at those
+periods when there was no work to be done. After rising in the morning
+I would clean out my cell, and turn up my bed and blankets; then I went
+to breakfast, then if there was no work to do, back to my cell, where
+I ate a small portion of opium, and sometimes read the daily paper,
+which was also contraband. It is only the stool-pigeons, those convicts
+who have money, or the cleverest among the rascals, who get many of
+these privileges. After I had had my opium and the newspaper I would
+exercise with dumb-bells and think or read in my cell. Then I would
+have a plunge bath and a nap, which would take me up to dinner time.
+After dinner I would read in my cell again until three o'clock, when I
+would go to the bucket-shop or exercise for half an hour in the yard,
+in lock step, with the others; then back to the cell, taking with me
+bread and a cup of coffee made out of burnt bread crust, for my supper.
+In the evening I would read and smoke until my light went out, and
+would wind up the day with a large piece of opium, which grew larger,
+as time passed.
+
+For a long time I was fairly content with what was practically solitary
+confinement. I had my books, my pipe, cigarettes and my regular supply
+of hop. Whether I worked in the daytime or not I would usually spend my
+evenings in the same way. I would lie on my cot and sometimes a thought
+like the following would come to me: "Yes, I have stripes on. When I
+am released perhaps some one will pity me, particularly the women. They
+may despise and avoid me, most likely they will. But I don't care. All
+I want is to get their wad of money. In the meantime I have my opium
+and my thoughts and am just as happy as the millionaire, unless he has
+a narcotic."
+
+After the drug had begun to work I would frequently fall into a deep
+sleep and not wake until one or two o'clock the following morning; then
+I would turn on my light, peer through my cell door, and try to see
+through the little window out in the corridor. A peculiar nervousness
+often came over me at this hour, particularly if the weather had been
+rainy, and my imagination would run on a ship-wreck very often, or on
+some other painful subject; and I might tell the story to myself in
+jingles, or jot it down on a piece of paper. Then my whole being would
+be quiet. A gentle, soothing melancholy would steal upon me. Often
+my imagination was so powerfully affected that I could really see
+the events of my dream. I could see the ship tossing about on waves
+mountain high. Then and only then I was positive I had a soul. I was
+in such a state of peace that I could not bear that any human being
+should suffer. At first the scenes before my imagination would be most
+harrowing, with great loss of life, but when one of the gentle sex
+appeared vividly before me a shudder passed over me, and I would seek
+consolation in jingles such as the following:
+
+     A gallant bark set sail one day
+     For a port beyond the sea,
+     The Captain had taken his fair young bride
+     To bear him company.
+     This little brown lass
+     Was of Puritan stock.
+     Her eyes were the brightest e'er seen.
+     They never came back;
+     The ship it was wrecked
+     In a storm in the old Gulf Stream.
+
+     Two years had passed, then a letter came
+     To a maid in a New England town.
+     It began Darling Kate, it ended Your Jack,
+     I am alive in a foreign land.
+     The Captain, his gentle young wife and your own
+     Were saved by that hand unseen,
+     But the rest----they went down
+     In that terrible storm
+     That night in the old Gulf Stream.
+
+But these pleasures would soon leave me, and I would grow very
+restless. My only resource was another piece of opium. Sometimes I
+awoke much excited, paced my cell rapidly and felt like tearing down
+the door. Sometimes a book would quiet me. The best soother I had
+was the most beautiful poem in the English language--Walt Whitman's
+_Ode To Death_. When I read this poem, I often imagined I was at the
+North Pole, and that strange shapes in the clouds beckoned me to come
+to them. I used to forget myself, and read aloud and was entirely
+oblivious to my surroundings, until I was brought to myself by the
+night guard shouting, "What in ---- is the matter with you?"
+
+After getting excited in this way I usually needed another dose of
+hop. I have noticed that the difference between opium and alcohol is
+that the latter is a disintegrator and tears apart, while the opium
+is a subtle underminer. Opium, for a long time anyway, stimulates the
+intelligence; while the reverse is true of alcohol. It was under the
+influence of opium that I began to read philosophy. I read Hume and
+Locke, and partly understood them, I think, though I did not know
+that Locke is pronounced in only one syllable till many years after
+I had read and re-read parts of _The Human Understanding_. It was not
+only the opium, but my experience on the outside, that made me eager
+for philosophy and the deeper poetry; for a grafters wits, if they
+don't get away from him altogether, become keen through his business,
+since he lives by them. It was philosophy, and the spectacle of men
+going suddenly and violently insane all about me, that led me first
+to think of self-control, though I did not muster enough to throw
+off the opium habit till many years afterwards. I began to think of
+will-power about this time, and I knew it was an acquired virtue, like
+truth and honesty. I think, from a moral standpoint, that I lived as
+good a life in prison as anybody on the outside, for at least I tried
+to overcome myself. It was life or death, or, a thousand times worse,
+an insane asylum. Opium led me to books besides those on philosophy,
+which eventually helped to cure me. At this time I was reading Balzac,
+Shakespeare, Huxley, Tyndall and Lavater. One poem of Shakespeare's
+touched me more than any other poem I ever read--_The Rape of Lucrece_.
+It was reading such as this that gave me a broader view, and I began to
+think that this was a terrible life I was leading. But, as the reader
+will see, I did not know what hell was until several years later.
+
+I had been in stir about four years on my first bit when I began to
+appreciate how terrible a master I had come under. Of course, to a
+certain extent, the habit had been forced upon me. After a man has
+had for several years bad food, little air and exercise, no natural
+companionship, particularly with the other sex, from whom he is
+entirely cut off, he really needs a stimulant. Many men fall into the
+vilest of habits. I found, for my part, that only opium would calm
+me. It takes only a certain length of time for almost all convicts to
+become broken in health, addicted to one form or another of stimulant
+which in the long run pulls them down completely. Diseases of various
+kinds, insanity and death, are the result. But before the criminal
+is thus released, he grows desperate in the extreme; particularly if
+he resorts to opium, for that drug makes one reckless. The hop fiend
+never takes consequences into consideration. Under its influence I
+became very irritable and unruly, and would take no back talk from the
+keepers. They and the stool-pigeons began to be afraid of me. I would
+not let them pound me in any way, and I often got into a violent fight.
+
+As long as I had my regular allowance of opium, which in the fourth
+year of my term was about twenty grains a day, I was peaceable enough.
+It was when I began to lessen the amount, with the desire to give
+it up, that I became so irritable and violent. The strain of reform,
+even in this early and unsuccessful attempt, was terrible. At times I
+used to go without the full amount for several days; but then I would
+relapse and go on a debauch until I was almost unconscious. After
+recovery, I would make another resolution, only to fall again.
+
+But my life in stir was not all that of the solitary; there were means,
+even when I was in the shop, of communicating with my fellow convicts;
+generally by notes, as talking was forbidden. Notes, too, were
+contraband, but we found means of sending them through cons working
+in the hall. Sometimes good-natured or avaricious keepers would carry
+them; but as a rule a convict did not like to trust a note to a keeper.
+He was afraid that the screw would read it, whereas it was a point of
+honor with a convict to deliver the note unread. The contents of these
+notes were usually news about our girls or pals, which we had received
+through visitors--rare, indeed!--or letters. By the same means there
+was much betting done on the races, baseball games and prize fights. We
+could send money, too, or opium, in the same way, to a friend in need;
+and we never required an I. O. U.
+
+We were allowed to receive visitors from the outside once every two
+months; also a box could be delivered to us at the same intervals
+of time. My friends, especially my mother and Ethel, sent me things
+regularly, and came to see me. They used to send me soap, tooth brushes
+and many other delicacies, for even a tooth brush is a delicacy in
+prison. Ethel stuck to me for three years and visited me regularly
+during that period. Then her visits ceased, and I heard that she had
+married. I couldn't blame her, but I felt bad about it all the same.
+
+But my mother came as often as the two months rolled by; not only
+during this first term, but during all my bits in stir. Certainly
+she has stuck to me through thick and thin. She has been my only true
+friend. If she had fallen away from me, I couldn't have blamed her;
+she would only have gone with the rest of the world; but she didn't.
+She was good not only to me, but to my friends, and she had pity for
+everybody in stir. I remember how she used to talk about the rut worn
+in the stone pavement at Sing Sing, where the men paced up and down.
+"Talk about the Bridge of Sighs!" she used to say.
+
+When a man is in stir he begins to see what an ungrateful brute he
+has been; and he begins to separate true friends from false ones. He
+thinks of the mother he neglected for supposed friends of both sexes,
+who are perhaps friendly at the beginning of his sentence, but soon
+desert him if he have a number of years to serve. Long after all others
+have ceased coming to see him, his old mother, bowed and sad, will
+trudge up the walk from the station to visit her thoughtless and erring
+son! She carries on her arm a heavy basket of delicacies for the son
+who is detested by all good citizens, and in her heart there is still
+hope for her boy. She has waited many years and she will continue to
+wait. What memories come to the mother as she sees the mansion of woes
+on the Hudson looming up before her! Her son is again a baby in her
+imagination; or a young fellow, before he began to tread the rocky
+path!--They soon part, for half an hour is all that is given, but they
+will remember forever the mothers kiss, the son's good-bye, the last
+choking words of love and familiar advice, as she says: "Trust in God,
+my lad."
+
+After one of my mothers visits I used to have more sympathy for my
+fellow convicts. I was always a keen observer, and in the shops or
+at mess time, and when we were exercising together in lock step, or
+working about the yard or in the halls, I used to "feel out" my brother
+"cons," often with a kindly motive. I grew very expert in telling when
+a friend was becoming insane; for imprisonment leads to insanity, as
+everybody knows. Many a time a man I knew in stir would grow nervous
+or absent-minded, then suspicious, and finally would be sent to the
+madhouse at Dannemora or Matteawan.
+
+For instance, take a friend of mine named Billy. He was doing a bit
+of ten years. In the fifth year of his sentence I noticed that he was
+brooding, and I asked him what was the matter.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, "that my wife is going outside of me."
+
+"You are not positive, are you?" I asked.
+
+"Well," he answered, "she visited me the other day, and she was looking
+good (prosperous). My son was with her, and he looked good, too.
+She gave me five dollars and some delicacies. But she never had five
+dollars when I was on the outside."
+
+"She's working," said I, trying to calm him.
+
+"No; she has got a father and mother," he replied, "and she is living
+with them."
+
+"Billy," I continued, "how long have you been in stir?"
+
+"Growing on six years," he said.
+
+"Billy," I proceeded, "what would you do if you were on the outside and
+she was in prison for six years?"
+
+"Well," he replied, "I'd have to give myself some rope."
+
+"Philosophers claim that it is just as hard for a woman to live alone
+as for a man," I said. "You're unreasonable, Billy. Surely you can't
+blame her."
+
+Billy's case is an instance of how, when a convict has had bad food,
+bad air and an unnatural routine for some time, he begins to borrow
+trouble. He grows anæmic and then is on the road to insanity. If he
+has a wife he almost always grows suspicious of her, though he does not
+speak about it until he has been a certain number of years in prison.
+It was not long after the above conversation took place that Billy was
+sent to the insane asylum at Matteawan.
+
+Sometimes, after a man has begun to grow insane, he will show it by
+reticence, rather than by talkativeness, according to his disposition.
+One of my intimate friends, in stir much longer than I, was like a ray
+of sunshine, witty and a good story teller. His laugh was contagious
+and we all liked to see him. He was one of the best night prowlers
+(burglars) in the profession, and had many other gifts. After he
+had been in stir, however, for a few years, he grew reticent and
+suspicious, thought that everybody was a stool-pigeon, and died a
+raving maniac a few years later at Matteawan.
+
+Sometimes a convict will grow so nervous that he will attempt to
+escape, even when there is no chance, or will sham insanity. An
+acquaintance of mine, Louis, who had often grafted with me when we
+were on the outside, told me one day he did not expect to live his bit
+out. When confined a man generally thinks a lot about his condition,
+reads a book on medicine and imagines he has every disease the book
+describes. Louis was in this state, and he consulted me and two others
+as to whether he ought not to "shoot a bug" (sham insanity); and so
+get transferred to the hospital. One advised him to attack a keeper and
+demand his baby back. But as Billy had big, black eyes and a cadaverous
+face, I told him he'd better shoot the melancholy bug; for he could
+do that better. Accordingly in the morning when the men were to go to
+work in the stone yard, Billy appeared in the natural (naked). He had
+been stalled off by two friends until he had reached the yard. There
+the keepers saw him, and as they liked him, they gently took him to
+the hospital. He was pronounced incurably insane by two experts, and
+transferred to the madhouse. The change of air was so beneficial that
+Louis speedily recovered his senses. At least, the doctors thought so
+when he was discovered trying to make his elegant (escape); and he was
+sent back to stir.
+
+As a rule, however, those who attempted to sham insanity failed. They
+were usually lacking in originality. At any hour of the day or night
+the whole prison might be aroused by some convict breaking up house,
+as it was called when a man tried to shoot the bug. He might break
+everything in his cell, and yell so loud that the other convicts in the
+cells near by would join in and make a horrible din. Some would curse,
+and some laugh or howl. If it was at night and they had been awakened
+out of an opium sleep, they would damn him a thousand miles deep. His
+friends, however, who knew that he was acting, would plug his game
+along by talking about his insanity in the presence of stool-pigeons.
+These latter would tell the keepers that he was buggy (insane), and,
+if there was not a blow, he might be sent to the hospital. Before that
+happened, however, he had generally demolished all his furniture. The
+guards would go to his cell, and chain him up in the Catholic chapel
+until he could be examined by the doctor. Warden Sage was a humane man,
+and used to go to the chapel himself and try to quiet the fake lunatic,
+and give him dainties from his own table. During the night the fake had
+historic company, for painted on the walls were, on one side of him,
+Jesus, and on the other, Judas and Mary Magdalene.
+
+A favorite method of shooting the bug, and a rather difficult one for
+the doctors to detect, was that of hearing voices in one's cell. This
+is more dangerous for the convict than for anybody else, for when a
+fake tries to imagine he hears voices, he usually begins to really
+believe he does, and then from a fake he becomes a genuine freak.
+Another common fake is to tell the keeper that you have a snake in
+your arm, and then take a knife and try to cut it out; but it requires
+nerve to carry this fake through. Sometimes the man who wants to make
+the prison hospital merely fakes ordinary illness. If he has a screw or
+a doctor "right" he may stay for months in the comparatively healthy
+hospital at Sing Sing, where he can loaf all day, and get better food
+than at the public mess. It is as a rule only the experienced guns who
+are clever enough to work these little games.
+
+For faking, conversing, loafing in the shop, and for many other
+forbidden things, we were often punished, though the screws as often
+winked at small misdemeanors. At Sing Sing they used to hang us up by
+the wrists sometimes until we fainted. Auburn had a jail, now used as
+the condemned cells, where there was no bed and no light. In this place
+the man to be punished would remain from four to ten days and live on
+ten ounces of bread and half a jug of water a day. In addition, the
+jail was very damp, worse even than the cells at Sing Sing, where I
+knew many convicts who contracted consumption of the lungs and various
+kidney complaints.
+
+Indeed, a great deal of dying goes on in State's prison. During my
+first term it seemed as if three niggers died to every white man. A
+dozen of us working around the front would comment on the "stiffs"
+when they were carried out. One would ask, "Who's dead?" The reply
+might be, "Only a nigger." One day I was talking in the front with a
+hall-room man when a stiff was put in the wagon. "Who's dead?" I asked.
+The hall-man wanted to bet it was a nigger. I bet him a dollar it was
+a white man, and then asked the hospital nurse, who said it was not a
+nigger, but an old pal of mine, named Jerry Donovan. I felt sore and
+would not accept the money I had won. Poor Jerry and I did house-work
+together for three months, some of which I have told of, and he was a
+good fellow, and a sure and reliable grafter. And now he had "gone up
+the escape," and was being carried to the little graveyard on the side
+of the hill where only an iron tag would mark his place of repose.
+
+My intelligence was naturally good, and when I began to get some
+education I felt myself superior to many of my companions in stir. I
+was not alone in this feeling, for in prison there are many social
+cliques; though fewer than on the outside. Men who have been high
+up and have held responsible positions when at liberty make friends
+in stir with men they formerly would not have trusted as their
+boot-blacks. The professional thieves usually keep together as much as
+possible in prison, or communicate together by means of notes; though
+sometimes they associate with men who, not professional grafters, have
+been sent up for committing some big forgery, or other big swindle. The
+reason for this is business; for the gun generally has friends among
+the politicians, and he wants to associate while in stir only with
+others who have influence. It is the guns who are usually trusted by
+the screws in charge of the Underground Tunnel, for the professional
+thief is less likely to squeal than the novice. Therefore, the big
+forger who has stolen thousands, and may be a man of ability and
+education appreciates the friendship of the professional pickpocket
+who can do him little favors, such as railroading his mail through the
+Underground, and providing him with newspapers, or a bottle of booze.
+
+The pull of the professional thief with outside politicians often
+procures him the respect and consideration of the keepers. One day a
+convict, named Ed White, was chinning with an Irish screw, an old man
+who had a family to support. Jokes in stir lead to friendship, and when
+the keeper told Ed that he was looking for a job for his daughter, who
+was a stenographer, Ed said he thought he could place her in a good
+position. The old screw laughed and said; "You loafer, if you were made
+to carry a hod you wouldn't be a splitting matches in stir." But Ed
+meant what he had said, and wrote to the famous Tammany politician, Mr.
+Wet Coin, who gave the girl a position as stenographer at a salary of
+fourteen dollars a week. The old screw took his daughter to New York,
+and when he returned to Auburn he began to "Mister" Ed. "I 'clare to
+God," he said, "I don't know what to make out of you. Here you are
+eating rotten hash, cooped up like a wild animal, with stripes, when
+you might be making twelve to fifteen dollars a week." Ed replied,
+sarcastically, "That would about keep me in cigar money."
+
+One of the biggest men I knew in stir was Jim A. McBlank, at one time
+chief of police and Mayor of Coney Island. He was sent to Sing Sing
+for his repeating methods at election, at which game he was A No. 1.
+He got so many repeaters down to the island that they were compelled
+to register as living under fences, in dog kennels, tents, or any old
+place. There was much excitement in the prison when the Lord of Coney
+Island was shown around the stir by Principal Keeper Connoughton. He
+was a good mechanic, and soon had a gang of men working under him;
+though he was the hardest worker of them all. After he had been there
+awhile the riff-raff of of the prison, though they had never heard
+the saying that familiarity breeds contempt, dropped calling him
+Mr. McBlank, and saluted him as plain Jimmy. He was never in touch,
+however, with the majority of the convicts, for he was too close to the
+authorities; and the men believe that convicts can not be on friendly
+terms with the powers that be unless they are stool-pigeons. Another
+thing that made the "cons" dislike the Mayor was the fact, that, when
+he was chief of police, he had settled a popular dip named Feeley for
+ten years and a half. The very worst thing against him, however, was
+his private refrigerator in which he kept butter, condensed milk and
+other luxuries, which he did not share with the other convicts. One
+day a young convict named Sammy, tried to beat Sing Sing. He bricked
+himself up in the wall, leaving a movable opening at the bottom.
+While waiting a chance to escape Sammy used to sally forth from his
+hiding-place and steal something good from McBlank's box. One night,
+while helping himself to the Mayor's delicacies, he thought he heard
+a keeper, and hastily plunging his arm into the refrigerator he made
+away with a large piece of butter. What did the ex-Chief of police do
+but report the loss of his butter to the screws which put them next to
+the fact that the convict they had been looking for for nine nights was
+still in the stir. The next night they would have rung the "all-right"
+bell, and given up the search, and indeed, they rang the bell, but
+watched; and when Sammy, thinking he could now go to New York, came out
+of his hiding place, he was caught. When the story circulated in the
+prison all kinds of vengeance were vowed against McBlank, who was much
+frightened. I heard him say that he would rather have lost his right
+arm than see the boy caught. What a come-down for a man who could throw
+his whole city for any state or national candidate at election time,
+to be compelled to apologize as McBlank was, to the lowest element
+in prison. Here indeed was the truth of that old saying: pride goeth
+before a fall.
+
+One of the best liked of the convicts I met during my first bit was
+Ferdinand Ward, who got two years for wrecking the firm in which
+General Grant and his son were partners. He did many a kindness in stir
+to those who were tough and had few friends. Another great favorite
+was Johnny Hope, son of Jimmy Hope, who stole three millions from the
+Manhattan Bank. The father got away, and Johnny, who was innocent,
+was nailed by a copper looking for a reputation, and settled for
+twenty years in Sing Sing, because he was his father's son and had the
+misfortune to meet an ambitious copper. When Johnny had been in prison
+about ten years, the inspector, who was the former copper, went to the
+Governor, and said he was convinced that the boy was innocent. But
+how about young Hope's wrecked life? Johnny's father, indeed, was a
+well-known grafter whom I met in Auburn, where we worked together for a
+while in the broom-shop. He was much older than I, and used to give me
+advice.
+
+"Don't ever do a day's work in your life, my boy," he would say,
+"unless you can't help it. You are too intelligent to be a drudge."
+
+Another common remark of his was: "Trust no convict," and a third was:
+"It is as easy to steal five thousand dollars as it is to steal five
+dollars."
+
+Old man Hope had stolen millions and ought to know what he was talking
+about. In personal appearance he was below the medium height, had light
+gray hair and as mild a pair of eyes as I ever saw in man or woman. I
+ranked him as a manly old fellow, and he was an idol among the small
+crooks, though he did not have much to do with them. He seemed to like
+to talk to me, partly because I never talked graft, and he detested
+such talk particularly among prison acquaintances. He referred one day
+to a pick pocket in stir who was always airing what he knew about the
+graft. "He's tiresome," said old Hope. "He is always talking shop."
+
+One of the worst hated men at Auburn was Weeks, a well-known club man
+and banker, who once stole over a million dollars. He was despised
+by the other convicts, for he was a "squealer." One of the screws in
+charge of the Underground Tunnel was doing things for Weeks, who had
+a snap,--the position of book-keeper, in the clothing department. In
+his desk he kept whiskey, beer and cigars, and lived well. One day a
+big bug paid him a visit, and Weeks belched how he had to give up his
+watch and chain in order to secure luxuries. His friend, the big bug,
+reported to the prison authorities, and the principal keeper went to
+Weeks and made the coward squeal on the keeper who had his "front." The
+screw lost his job, and when the convicts heard of it, they made Weeks'
+life miserable for years.
+
+But the man who was hated worst of all those in prison was Biff
+Ellerson. I never understood why the other cons hated him, unless
+it was that he always wore a necktie; this is not etiquette in stir,
+which in the convicts' opinion ought to be a place of mourning. He had
+been a broker and a clubman, and was high up in the world. Ellerson
+was a conscientious man, and once, when a mere boy, who had stolen
+a ten dollar watch, was given fifteen years, had publicly criticized
+the judge and raised a storm in the newspapers. Ellerson compared this
+lad's punishment with that of a man like Weeks, who had robbed orphans
+out of their all and only received ten years for it. Many is the time
+that this man, Biff Ellerson, has been kind to men in stir who hated
+him. He had charge of the dungeon at Auburn where convicts who had
+broken the rules were confined. I have known him to open my door and
+give me water on the quiet, many a time, and he did it for others who
+were ungrateful, and at the risk, too, of never being trusted again by
+the screws and of getting a dose of the cuddy-hole himself.
+
+By far the greater number of these swell grafters who steal millions
+die poor, for it is not what a man steals, but what he saves, that
+counts. I have often noticed that the bank burglar who is high up in
+his profession is not the one who has the most money when he gets to be
+forty-five or fifty years of age. The second or third class gun is more
+likely to lay by something. His general expenses are not so large and
+he does not need so much fall-money; and in a few years he can usually
+show more money than the big gun who has a dozen living on him. I knew
+a Big One who told me that every time he met a certain police official,
+his watch, a piece of jewelry, a diamond stud or even his cuff buttons
+were much admired. The policeman always had some relative or friend who
+desired just the kind of ornament the Big One happened to be wearing at
+the time.
+
+I cannot help comparing those swell guys whom I knew at Sing Sing
+with a third class pickpocket I met on the same bit. The big ones are
+dead or worse, but the other day I met, in New York, my old pickpocket
+friend in stir, Mr. Aut. I am positive that the hand-shake he gave me
+was only a muscular action, for Mr. Aut has "squared it", and the gun
+who has reformed and has become prosperous does not like to meet an
+old acquaintance, who knows too much about his past life. When I ran
+across him in the city I started in to talk about old times in stir
+and of pals we knew in the long ago, but he answered me by saying,
+"Nix", which meant "Drop It". To get him to talk I was forced to throw
+a few "Larrys" into him, such as: "Well, old man, only for your few
+mistakes of the past, you might be leader of Tammany Hall." Gradually
+he expanded and told me how much he had gained in weight since he
+left stir and what he had done for certain ungrateful grafters. He
+boasted that he could get bail for anyone to the sum of fifty thousand
+dollars, and he told the truth, for this man, who had been a third
+class dip, owns at the present time, three gin-mills and is something
+of a politician. He has three beautiful children and is well up in
+the world. His daughter was educated at a convent, and his son is at a
+well-known college.
+
+Yet I remember the time when this ex gun, Mr. Aut, and I, locked near
+one another in Sing Sing and consoled one another with what little
+luxuries we could get together. Our letters, booze and troubles were
+shared between us, and many is the time I have felt for him; for he
+had married a little shop girl and had two children at that time.
+When he got out of stir he started in to square it, that is, not to
+go to prison any more. He was wise and no one can blame him. He is a
+good father and a successful man. If he had been a better grafter it
+would not have been so easy for him to reform. I wish him all kinds
+of prosperity, but I don't like him as well as I did when we wore the
+striped garb and whispered good luck to one another in that mansion of
+woes on the Hudson.
+
+One of Mr. Aut's possessions makes me smile whenever I think of it.
+In his swell parlor, over a brand new piano, hangs an oil painting
+of himself, in which he takes great pride. I could not help thinking
+that that picture showed a far more prosperous man and one in better
+surroundings than a certain photograph of his which is quite as highly
+treasured as the more costly painting; although it is only a tintype,
+numbered two thousand and odd, in the Rogues' Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+_In Stir and Out._
+
+
+Some of the most disagreeable days I ever spent in prison were
+the holidays, only three of which during the year, however, were
+kept--Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In Sing Sing there
+was no work on those days, and we could lie abed longer in the morning.
+The food was somewhat better than usual. Breakfast consisted of boiled
+ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a cup of coffee with milk. After
+mess we went, as usual, to chapel, and then gave a kind of vaudeville
+show, all with local talent. We sang rag-time and sentimental songs,
+some of us played on an instrument, such as the violin, mandolin, or
+cornet, and the band gave the latest pieces from comic opera. After the
+show was over we went to the mess-room again where we received a pan
+containing a piece of pie, some cheese, a few apples, as much bread as
+we desired and--a real luxury in stir--two cigars. With our booty we
+then returned to our cells, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, and
+after the guards had made the rounds to see that none of the birds had
+gone astray, we were locked up until the next morning, without anything
+more to eat. We were permitted to talk to one another from our cells
+until five o'clock, when the night guards went on duty. Such is--just
+imagine it--a great day in Sing Sing! The gun, no matter how big a guy
+he is, even if he has robbed a bank and stolen millions, is far worse
+off than the meanest laborer, be he ever so poor. He may have only a
+crust, but he has that priceless boon, his liberty.
+
+At Auburn the routine on holidays is much the same as that of Sing
+Sing; but one is not compelled to go to chapel, which is a real
+kindness. I don't think a man ought to be forced to go to church, even
+in stir, against his will. On holidays in Auburn a man may stay in his
+cell instead of attending divine service, if he so desires, and not be
+punished for it. Many a con prefers not to go even to the vaudeville
+show, which at Auburn is given by outside talent, but remains quietly
+all day in his cell. There is one other great holiday privilege at
+Auburn, which some of the convicts appreciate more than I did. When
+the clock strikes twelve o'clock the convicts, locked in their cells,
+start in to make the rest of the night hideous, by pounding on the
+doors, playing all sorts of instruments, blowing whistles, and doing
+everything else that would make a noise. There is no more sleep that
+night, for everything is given over to Bedlam, until five thirty in the
+morning, when discipline again reigns, and the nervous man who detests
+these holidays sighs with pleasure, and says to himself: "I am so glad
+that at last everything is quiet in this cursed stir."
+
+What with poor food, little air and exercise, no female society, bad
+habits and holidays, it is no wonder that there are many attempts, in
+spite of the danger, to escape from stir. Most of these attempts are
+unsuccessful, but a few succeed. One of the cleverest escapes I know of
+happened during my term at Auburn. B---- was the most feared convict in
+the prison. He was so intelligent, so reckless and so good a mechanic
+that the guards were afraid he would make his elegant any day. Indeed,
+if ever a man threw away gifts for not even the proverbial mess of
+pottage, it was this man B----. He was the cleverest man I ever met in
+stir or out. It was after one of the delightful holidays in Auburn that
+B----, who was a nervous man, decided to make his gets. He picked a
+quarrel with another convict and was so rough that the principal keeper
+almost decided to let him off; but when B---- spat in his face he
+changed his mind and put him in the dungeon. I have already mentioned
+this ram-shackle building at Auburn. It was the worst yet. All B----'s
+clothing was taken off and an old coat, shirt, and trousers without
+buttons were given him. An old piece of bay rope was handed him to tie
+around his waist, and he was left in darkness. This was what he wanted,
+for, although they had stripped him naked and searched him, he managed
+to conceal a saw, which he used to such good purpose that on the second
+night he had sawed himself into the yard. Instead of trying to go over
+the wall, as most cons would have done, B---- placed a ladder, which
+he found in the repair shop, against the wall, and when the guards
+discovered next morning that B---- was not in the dungeon, and saw the
+ladder on the wall, they thought he had escaped, and did not search
+the stir but notified the towns to look after him. He was not found,
+of course, for he was hiding in the cellar of the prison. A night or
+two afterwards he went to the tailor shop, selected the best suit of
+clothes in the place, opened the safe which contained the valuables
+of the convicts, with a piece of steel and a hammer, thus robbing his
+fellow sufferers, and escaped by the ladder. After several months of
+freedom he was caught, sent back to stir, and forfeited half of his
+commutation time.
+
+A more tragic attempt was made by the convicts, Big Benson and Little
+Kick. They got tools from friends in the machine shop and started in
+to saw around the locks of their doors. They worked quietly, and were
+not discovered. The reason is that there is sometimes honor among
+thieves. Two of their friends in their own gallery, two on the gallery
+above and two on that underneath, tipped them off, by a cough or
+some other noise, whenever the night guard was coming; and they would
+cease their work with the saws. Convicts grow very keen in detecting
+the screw by the creaking of his boots on the wooden gallery floor;
+if they are not quite sure it is he, they often put a small piece of
+looking-glass underneath the door, and can thus see down the gallery in
+either direction a certain distance. Whenever Benson and Kick were at
+work, they would accompany the noise of the saw with some other noise,
+so as to drown the former, for they knew that, although they had some
+friends among the convicts, there were others who, if they got next,
+would tip off the keepers that an escape was to be made. In the morning
+they would putty up the cuts made in the door during the night. One
+night when everything was ready, they slipped from their cells, put the
+mug on the guard, took away his cannister, and tied him to the bottom
+of one of their cells. They did the same to another guard, who was
+on the watch in the gallery below, went to the outside window on the
+Hudson side of Sing Sing, and putting a Jack, which they had concealed
+in the cell, between the bars of the window, spread them far apart,
+so that they could make their exit. At this point however they were
+discovered by a third guard, who fired at them, hitting Little Kick in
+the leg. The shot aroused the sergeant of the guards and he gave the
+alarm. Big Benson was just getting through the window when the whole
+pack of guards fired at him, killing him as dead as a door-nail. Little
+Kick lost his nerve and surrendered, and was taken to the dungeon. Big
+Benson, who had been serving a term for highway robbery, was one of the
+best liked men in stir, and when rumors reached the convicts that he
+had been shot, pandemonium broke loose in the cells. They yelled and
+beat their coffee cups against the iron doors, and the officials were
+powerless to quiet them. There was more noise even than on a holiday at
+Auburn.
+
+Soon after I was transferred from Sing Sing to Auburn, a friend came to
+me and said: "Jimmy, are you on either of the shoe-shop galleries? No?
+Well, if you can get on Keeper Riley's gallery I think you can spring
+(escape)."
+
+Then he let me in on one of the cleverest beats I ever knew; if I could
+have succeeded in being put on that gallery I should not have finished
+my first term in State's prison. At that time work was slack and the
+men were locked in their cells most of the time. Leahy started in to
+dig out the bricks from the ceiling of his cell. Each day, when taking
+his turn for an hour in the yard, he would give the cement, which he
+had done up in small packages, to friends, who would dump it in their
+buckets, the contents of which they would then throw into the large
+cesspool. While exercising in the yard, the cons would throw the bricks
+Leahy had removed on an old brick pile under the archway. After he had
+removed sufficient stuff to make a hole big enough to crawl through,
+all he had left to do was to saw a few boards, and remove a few tiles,
+and then he was on the roof. It is the habit of the guard, when he goes
+the rounds, to rap the ceiling of every cell with his stick, to see
+if there is an excavation. Leahy had guarded against this by filling
+a small box with sand and placing it in the opening. Then he pasted a
+piece of linen over the box and whitewashed it. Even when the screw
+came around to glance in his cell Leahy would continue to work, for
+he had rigged up a dummy of himself in bed. When he reached the roof,
+he dropped to a lower building, reached the wall which surrounds the
+prison, and with a rope lowered himself to the ground. With a brand
+new suit of clothes which a friend had stolen from the shop, Leahy went
+forth into the open, and was never caught.
+
+At Sing Sing an old chum of mine named Tom escaped, and would never
+have been caught if he had not been so sentimental. Indeed, he was
+improvident in every way. He had been a well-known house-worker, and
+made lots of money at this graft, but he lived well and blew what he
+stole, and consequently did many years in prison. He was nailed for
+a house that was touched of "éclat" worth thousands, and convicted,
+though of this particular crime he was, I am convinced, innocent; of
+course, he howled like a stuck pig about the injustice of it, all his
+life. While he was in Raymond Street jail he got wind of the men who
+really did the job. They were pals and he asked them to try to turn
+him out. His girl, Tessie, heard of it and wanted to go to Police
+Headquarters and squeal on the others, to save her sweetheart. But Tom
+was frantic, for there was no squeal in him. You find grafters like
+that sometimes, and Tom was always sentimental. He certainly preferred
+to go to stir rather than have the name of being a belcher. So he went
+to Sing Sing for seven and a half years. He was a good mechanic and
+was assigned to a brick-laying job on the wall. He had an easy time
+in stir, for he had a screw right, and got many luxuries through the
+Underground; and was not watched very closely. One day he put a suit
+of clothes under his stripes, vamoosed into a wood near by, and removed
+his stripes. He kept on walking till he reached Connecticut, which, as
+I have said, is the softest state in the Union.
+
+Tom would never have finished that bit in stir, if, as I have also
+said, he had not been so sentimental. When in prison a grafter
+continually thinks about his old pals and hang-outs, and the last
+scenes familiar to him before he went to stir. Tom was a well-known
+gun, with his picture in the Hall of Fame, and yet, after beating
+prison, and leaving years behind, and knowing that if caught he would
+have to do additional time, would have the authorities sore against him
+and be confined in the dark cell, he yet, in spite of all that, after a
+short time, made for his old haunts on the Bowery, where he was nailed
+by a fly-cop and sent back to Sing Sing. So much for the force of habit
+and of environment, especially when a grafter is a good fellow and
+loves his old pals.
+
+On one occasion Tom was well paid for being a good fellow. Jack was
+a well-known pugilist who had become a grafter. His wife's sister had
+married a millionaire, and Jack stole the millions, which amounted, in
+this case, to only one hundred thousand dollars. For this he was put
+in prison for four years. While in stir, Tom, who had a screw right,
+did him many favors, which Jack remembered. Years afterwards they were
+both on the outside again. Tom was still a grafter, but Jack had gone
+to work for a police official as general utility man, and gained the
+confidence of his employer, who was chief of the detective force. The
+latter got Jack a position as private detective in one of the swellest
+hotels in Florida. Now, Tom happened to be grafting in that State, and
+met his old friend Jack at the hotel. Instead of tipping off the chief
+that Tom was a grafter, Jack staked his old pal, for he remembered the
+favors he had received in stir. Tom was at liberty for four years, and
+then was brought to police headquarters where the chief said to him:
+"I know that you met Jack in Florida, and I am sore because he did
+not tip me off." Tom replied indignantly: "He is not a hyena like your
+ilk. He is not capable of the basest of all crimes, ingratitude. I can
+forgive a man who puts his hand in my pocket and steals my money. I can
+forgive him, for it may do him good. He may invest the money and become
+an honored member of the community. But the crime no man can forgive
+is ingratitude. It is the most inhuman of crimes and only your ilk is
+capable of it."
+
+The Chief smiled at Tom's sentiment--that was always his weak
+point--poor Tom!--and said: "Well, you are a clever thief, and I'm glad
+I was wise enough to catch you." Whereupon Tom sneered and remarked: "I
+could die of old age in this city for all of you and your detectives. I
+was tipped off to you by a Dicky Bird (stool pigeon) damn him!" I have
+known few grafters who had as much feeling as Tom.
+
+More than five years passed, and the time for my release from Auburn
+drew near. The last weeks dragged terribly; they seemed almost as
+long as the years that had gone before. Sometimes I thought the time
+would never come. The day before I was discharged I bade good-bye to
+my friends, who said to me, smiling: "She has come at last," or "It's
+near at hand," or "It was a long time a-coming." That night I built
+many castles in the air, with the help of a large piece of opium: and
+continued to make the good resolutions I had begun some time before.
+I had permission from the night guard to keep my light burning after
+the usual hour, and the last book I read on my first term in stir was
+_Tristram Shandy_. Just before I went to bed I sang for the last time
+a popular prison song which had been running in my head for months:
+
+     "Roll round, '89, '90, '91, sweet '92 roll around.
+     How happy I shall be the morning I go free, sweet '92 roll
+     around."
+
+Before I fell asleep I resolved to be good, to quit opium and not to
+graft any more. The resolution was easily made and I went to bed happy.
+I was up at day-break and penned a few last words to my friends and
+acquaintances remaining in stir. I promised some of them that I would
+see their friends on the outside and send them delicacies and a little
+money. They knew that I would keep my promise, for I have always been a
+man of my word; as many of the most successful grafters are. It is only
+the vogel-grafter, the petty larceny thief or the "sure-thing" article,
+who habitually breaks his word. Many people think that a thief can not
+be trusted; and it certainly is true that the profession does not help
+to make a man virtuous in his personal relations. But it is also true
+that a man may be, and sometimes is, honorable in his dealings with
+his own world, and at the same time a desperate criminal in the other.
+It is not of course common, to find a thief who is an honest man; but
+is there very often an honest man anywhere, in the world of graft or
+out of it? If it is often, so much the better, but that has not been
+my experience. Does not everyone know that the men who do society the
+greatest injury have never done time; in fact, may never have broken
+any laws? I am not trying to excuse myself or my companions in crime,
+but I think the world is a little twisted in its ideas as to right and
+wrong, and who are the greatest sinners.
+
+When six o'clock on the final day came round it was a great relief. I
+went through the regular routine, and at eight o'clock was called to
+the front office, received a new suit of clothes, as well as my fare
+home and ten dollars with which to begin life afresh.
+
+"Hold on," I said, to the Warden. "I worked eighteen months. Under the
+new piece-price plan I ought to be allowed a certain percentage of my
+earnings."
+
+The Warden, who was a good fellow and permitted almost anything to come
+in by the Underground Tunnel, asked the clerk if there was any more
+money for me. The clerk consulted with the keepers and then reported to
+the Warden that I was the most tired man that ever entered the prison;
+adding that it was very nervy of me to want more money, after they had
+treated me far better than the parent of the Prodigal treated his son.
+The Warden, thereupon, remarked to me that if I went pilfering again
+and were not more energetic than I had been in prison, I would never
+eat. "Goodbye," he concluded.
+
+"Well," I said, "I hope we'll never meet again."
+
+With my discharge papers in my hand, and in my mind a resolution never
+to go back to the stir where so many of my friends, strong fellows,
+too, had lost their lives or had become physical or mental wrecks, I
+left Auburn penitentiary and went forth into the free world. I had
+gone to stir a boy of twenty-one, and left it a man of twenty-six.
+I entered healthy, and left broken down in health, with the marks of
+the jail-bird upon me; marks, mental and physical, that would never
+leave me, and habits that I knew would stick closer than a brother.
+I knew that there was nothing in a life of crime. I had tested that
+well enough. But there were times during the last months I spent in my
+cell, when, in spite of my good resolutions, I hated the outside world
+which had forced me into a place that took away from my manhood and
+strength. I knew I had sinned against my fellow men, but I knew, too,
+that there had been something good in me. I was half Irish, and about
+that race there is naturally something roguish; and that was part of
+my wickedness. When I left stir I knew I was not capable, after five
+years and some months of unnatural routine, of what I should have been
+by nature.
+
+A man is like an electric plant. Use poor fuel and you will have poor
+electricity. The food is bad in prison. The cells at Sing Sing are
+a crime against the criminal; and in these damp and narrow cells he
+spends, on the average, eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. In the
+name of humanity and science what can society expect from a man who has
+spent a number of years in such surroundings? He will come out of stir,
+as a rule, a burden on the tax-payers, unable to work, and confirmed
+in a life of crime; desperate, and willing to take any chance. The
+low-down, petty, canting thief, who works all the charitable societies
+and will rob only those who are his benefactors, or a door-mat, is
+utterly useless in prison or out. The healthy, intelligent, ambitious
+grafter is capable of reform and usefulness, if shown the error of his
+ways or taken hold of before his physical and mental health is ruined
+by prison life. You can appeal to his manhood at that early time.
+After he has spent a certain number of years in stir his teeth become
+decayed; he can not chew his food, which is coarse and ill-cooked; his
+stomach gets bad: and once his stomach becomes deranged it is only a
+short time before his head is in a like condition. Eventually, he may
+be transferred to the mad-house. I left Auburn stir a happy man, for
+the time, for I thought everything would be smooth sailing. As a matter
+of fact I could not know the actual realities I had to face, inside and
+outside of me, and so all my good resolutions were nothing but a dream.
+
+It was a fine May morning that I left Auburn and I was greatly excited
+and bewildered by the brightness and joy of everything about me. I took
+my hat off, gazed up at the clear sky, looked up and down the street
+and at the passers-by, with a feeling of pleasure and confusion. I
+turned to the man who had been released with me, and said, "Let's go
+and get something to eat." On the way to the restaurant, however, the
+jangling of the trolleys upset my nerves. I could not eat, and drank a
+couple of whiskies. They did not taste right. Everything seemed tame,
+compared with the air, which I breathed like a drunken man.
+
+I bought a few pounds of tea, canned goods, cheese and fruit, which I
+sent by a keeper to my friends in stir. I also bought for my friends a
+few dollars' worth of morphine and some pulverized gum opium. How could
+I send it to them, for the keeper was not "next" to the Underground?
+Suddenly I had an idea. I bought ten cents worth of walnuts, split
+them, took the meat out, put the morphine and opium in, closed them
+with mucilage, put them in a bag and sent them to the convicts with the
+basket of other things I had left with the innocent keeper.
+
+I got aboard my train, and as I pulled out of the town of Auburn gave
+a great sigh of relief. I longed to go directly to New York, for I
+always did like big cities, particularly Manhattan, and I was dying to
+see some of my old girls. But I stopped off at Syracuse, according to
+promises, to deliver some messages to the relatives of convicts, and
+so reached New York a few hours later than my family and friends had
+expected. They had gone to meet an earlier train, and had not waited,
+so that when I reached my native city after this long absence I found
+nobody at the station to welcome me back. It made me sad for a moment,
+but when I passed out into the streets of the big town I felt excited
+and joyous, and so confused that I thought I knew almost everybody on
+the street. I nearly spoke to a stranger, a woman, thinking she was
+Blonde Mamie.
+
+I soon reached the Bowery and there met some of my old pals; but was
+much surprised to find them changed and older. For years and years
+a convict lives in a dream. He is isolated from the realities of the
+outside world. In stir he is a machine, and his mind is continually
+dwelling on the last time he was at liberty; he thinks of his family
+and friends as they were then. They may have become old, sickly and
+wrinkled, but he does not realize this. When, set free, he tries to
+find them, he expects that they will be unchanged, but if he finds
+them at all, what a shock! An old-timer I knew, a man named Packey,
+who had served fifteen years out of a life sentence, and had been twice
+declared insane, told me that he had reached a state of mind in which
+he imagined himself to be still a young fellow, of the age he was when
+he first went to stir.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_At the Graft Again._
+
+
+I spent my first day in New York looking up my old pals and girls,
+especially the latter. How I longed to exchange friendly words with a
+woman! But the girls I knew were all gone, and I was forced to make new
+acquaintances on the spot. I spent all the afternoon and most of the
+evening with a girl I picked up on the Bowery; I thought she was the
+most beautiful creature in the world; but when I saw her again weeks
+afterwards, when women were not so novel to me, I found her almost
+hideous. I must have longed for a young woman's society, for I did not
+go to see my poor old mother until I had left my Bowery acquaintance.
+And yet my mother had often proved herself my only friend! But I had
+a long talk with her before I slept, and when I left her for a stroll
+in the wonderful city before going to bed my resolution to be good was
+keener than ever.
+
+As I sauntered along the Bowery that night the desire to talk to an
+old pal was strong. But where was I to find a friend? Only in places
+where thieves hung out. "Well," I said to myself, "there is no harm in
+talking to my old pals. I will tell them there is nothing in the graft,
+and that I have squared it." I dropped into a music hall, a resort for
+pickpockets, kept by an old gun, and there I met Teddy, whom I had not
+seen for years.
+
+"Hello, Jim," he said, giving me the glad hand, "I thought you were
+dead."
+
+"Not quite so bad as that, Teddy," I replied, "I am still in evidence."
+
+We had a couple of beers. I could not quite make up my mind to tell him
+I had squared it; and he put me next to things in town.
+
+"Take my advice," he said, "and keep away from ---- ---- (naming
+certain clubs and saloons where thieves congregated). The proprietors
+of these places and the guns that hang out there, many of them anyway,
+are not on the level. Some of the grafters who go there have the
+reputation of being clever dips, but they have protection from the
+Front Office men because they are rats and so can tear things open
+without danger. By giving up a certain amount of stuff and dropping
+a stall or two occasionally to keep up the flyman's reputation, they
+are able to have a bank account and never go to stir. The flymen hang
+out in these joints, waiting for a tip, and they are bad places for a
+grafter who is on the level."
+
+I listened with attention, and said, by force of habit:
+
+"Put me next to the stool-pigeons, Teddy. You know I am just back from
+stir."
+
+"Well," he answered, "outside of so and so (and he mentioned
+half-a-dozen men by name) none of them who hang out in those joints can
+be trusted. Come to my house, Jim, and we'll have a long talk about old
+times, and I will introduce you to some good people (meaning thieves)."
+
+I went with him to his home, which was in a tenement house in the lower
+part of the first ward. He introduced me to his wife and children and a
+number of dips, burglars and strong-armed men who made his place a kind
+of rendezvous. We talked old times and graft, and the wife and little
+boy of eight years old listened attentively. The boy had a much better
+chance to learn the graft than I had when a kid, for my father was an
+honest man.
+
+The three strong-arm men (highwaymen) were a study to me, for they were
+Westerners, with any amount of nerve. One of them, Denver Red, a big
+powerful fellow, mentioned a few bits he had done in Western prisons,
+explained a few of his grafts and seemed to despise New York guns, whom
+he considered cowardly. He said the Easterners feared the police too
+much, and always wanted to fix things before they dared to graft.
+
+I told them a little about New York State penitentiaries, and then
+Ted said to Denver Red: "What do you think of the big fellow?" Denver
+grinned, and the others followed suit, and I heard the latest story. A
+well-known politician, leader of his district, a cousin of Senator Wet
+Coin; a man of gigantic stature, with the pleasing name, I will say, of
+Flower, had had an adventure. He is even better developed physically
+than mentally, and virtually king of his district, and whenever he
+passes by, the girls bow to him, the petty thief calls him "Mister"
+and men and women alike call him "Big Flower." Well, one night not
+long before the gathering took place in Teddy's house, Big Flower was
+passing through the toughest portion of his bailiwick, humming ragtime,
+when my new acquaintances, the three strong-arm workers from the West,
+stuck him up with cannisters, and relieved him of a five carat diamond
+stud, a gold watch and chain and a considerable amount of cash. The
+next day there was consternation among the clan of the Wet Coins, for
+Big Flower, who had been thus nipped, was their idol. We all laughed
+heartily at the story, and I went home and to sleep.
+
+The next day I found it a very easy thing to drift back to my old
+haunts. In the evening I went to a sporting house on Twenty-seventh
+Street, where a number of guns hung out. I got the glad hand and an
+invitation to join in some good graft. I said I was done with the Rocky
+Path. They smiled and gently said: "We have been there, too, Jim."
+
+One of them added: "By the way, I hear you are up against the hop,
+Jim." It was Billy, and he invited me home with him. There I met Ida,
+as pretty a little shop girl as one wants to see. Billy said there
+was always an opening for me, that times were pretty good. He and Ida
+had an opium layout, and they asked me to take a smoke. I told them my
+nerves were not right, and that I had quit. "Poor fellow," said Billy.
+
+Perhaps it was the sight or smell of the hop, but anyway I got the
+yen-yen and shook as in an ague. My eyes watered and I grew as pale as
+a sheet. I thought my bones were unjointing and took a pint of whiskey;
+it had no effect. Then Billy acted as my physician and prepared a pill
+for me. So vanished one good resolution. My only excuse to myself was:
+Human nature is weak, ain't it? No sooner had I taken the first pill
+than a feeling of ecstasy came over me. I became talkative, and Billy,
+noticing the effect, said: "Jim, before you try to knock off the hop,
+you had better wait till you reach the next world." The opium brought
+peace to my nerves and dulled my conscience and I had a long talk with
+Billy and Ida about old pals. They told me who was dead, who were in
+stir and who were good (prosperous).
+
+Not many days after my opium fall I got a note from Ethel, who had
+heard that I had come home. In the letter she said that she was not
+happy with her husband, that she had married to please her father and
+to get a comfortable home. She wanted to make an appointment to meet
+me, whom, she said, she had always loved. I knew what her letter meant,
+and I did not answer it, and did not keep the appointment. My relation
+to her was the only decent thing in my life, and I thought I might
+as well keep it right. I have never seen her since the last time she
+visited me at Auburn.
+
+For some time after getting back from stir I tried for a job, but the
+effort was only half-hearted on my part, and people did not fall over
+themselves in their eagerness to find something for the ex-convict to
+do. Even if I had had the best intentions in the world, the path of the
+ex-convict is a difficult one, as I have since found. I was run down
+physically, and could not carry a hod or do any heavy labor, even if I
+had desired to. I knew no trade and should have been forever distrusted
+by the upper world. The only thing I could do well was to graft; and
+the only society that would welcome me was that of the under world. My
+old pals knew I had the requisite nerve and was capable of taking my
+place in any good mob. My resolutions began to ooze away, especially as
+at that time my father was alive and making enough money to support the
+rest of the family. So I had only myself to look out for--and that was
+a lot; for I had my old habits, and new ones I had formed in prison, to
+satisfy. When I stayed quietly at home I grew intensely nervous; and
+soon I felt that I was bound to slip back to the world of graft. I am
+convinced that I would never have returned to stir or to my old trade,
+however, if my environment had been different, on my release, from
+what it had been formerly; and if I could have found a job. I don't
+say this in the way of complaint. I now know that a man can reform
+even among his old associates. It is impossible, as the reader will
+see, I believe, before he finishes this book, for me ever to fall back
+again. Some men acquire wisdom at twenty-one, some not till they are
+thirty-five, and some never. Wisdom came to me when I was thirty-five.
+If I had had my present experience, I should not have fallen after my
+first bit; but I might not have fallen anyway, if I had been placed
+in a better environment after my first term in prison. A man can stand
+alone, if he is strong enough, and has sufficient reasons; but if he is
+tottering, he needs outside help.
+
+I was tottering, and did not get the help, and so I speedily began to
+graft again. I started in on easy game, on picking pockets and simple
+swindling. I made my first touch, after my return, on Broadway. One
+day I met the Kid there, looking for a dollar as hard as a financier.
+He asked me if I was not about ready to begin again, and pointed out
+a swell Moll, big, breezy and blonde, coming down the street, with
+a large wallet sticking out of her pocket. It seemed easy, with no
+come-back in sight, and I agreed to stall for the Kid. Just as she went
+into Denning's which is now Wanamaker's, I went in ahead of her, turned
+and met her. She stopped; and at that moment the Kid nicked her. We
+got away all right and found in the wallet over one hundred dollars and
+a small knife. In the knife were three rivets, which we discovered on
+inspection to be magnifying glasses. We applied our eyes to the same
+and saw some pictures which would have made Mr. Anthony Comstock howl;
+if he had found this knife on this aristocratic lady he would surely
+have sent her to the penitentiary. It was a beautiful pearl knife,
+gold tipped, and must have been a loss; and yet I felt I was justified
+in taking that wallet. I thought I had done the lady a good turn. She
+might have been fined, and why shouldn't I have the money, rather than
+the magistrate?
+
+The Kid was one of the cleverest dips I ever knew; he was delicate and
+cunning, and the best stone-getter in the city. But he had one weakness
+that made him almost a devil. He fell in love with every pretty face he
+saw, and cared no more for leading a girl astray than I minded kicking
+a cat. I felt sorry for many a little working girl he had shaken after
+a couple of weeks; and I used to jolly them to cheer them up.
+
+I once met Kate, one of them, and said, with a smile: "Did you hear
+about the Kid's latest? Why don't you have him arrested for bigamy?"
+
+She did not smile at first, but said: "He'll never have any luck. My
+mother is a widow, and she prays to God to afflict him with a widow's
+curse."
+
+"One of the Ten Commandments," I replied, "says, 'thou shalt not take
+the name of the Lord thy God in vain,' and between you and me, Kate,
+the commandment does not say that widows have the monopoly on cursing.
+It is a sin, anyway, whether it is a man, a girl or a widow."
+
+This was too deep for Kate.
+
+"Stop preaching, Jim," she said, "and give me a drink," and I did.
+After she had drunk half-a-dozen glasses of beer she felt better.
+
+Women are queer, anyway. No matter how bad they are, they are always
+good. All women are thieves, or rather petty pilferers, bless them!
+When I was just beginning to graft again, and was going it easy, I used
+to work a game which well showed the natural grafting propensities of
+women. I would buy a lot of Confederate bills for a few cents, and put
+them in a good leather. When I saw a swell-looking Moll, evidently out
+shopping, walking along the street, I would drop the purse in her path;
+and just as she saw it I would pick it up, as if I had just found it.
+Nine women out of ten would say, "It's mine, I dropped it." I would
+open the leather and let her get a peep of the bills, and that would
+set her pilfering propensities going. "It's mine," she would repeat.
+"What's in it?" I would hold the leather carefully away from her, look
+into it cautiously and say: "I can see a twenty dollar bill, a thirty
+dollar bill, and a one hundred dollar bill, but how do I know you
+dropped it?" Then she'd get excited and exclaim, "If you don't give it
+to me quick I'll call a policeman." "Madam," I would reply, "I am an
+honest workingman, and if you will give me ten dollars for a reward, I
+will give you this valuable purse." Perhaps she would then say: "Give
+me the pocket-book and I'll give you the money out of it." To that I
+would reply: "No, Madam, I wish you to receive the pocket-book just as
+it was." I would then hand her the book and she would give me a good
+ten dollar bill. "There is a woman down the street," I would continue,
+"looking for something." That would alarm her and away she would go
+without even opening the leather to see if her money was all right.
+She wouldn't shop any more that day, but would hasten home to examine
+her treasure--worth, as she would discover to her sorrow, about thirty
+cents. Then, no doubt, her conscience would trouble her. At least, she
+would weep; I am sure of that.
+
+When I got my hand in again, I began to go for stone-getting, which
+was a fat graft in those days, when the Lexow committee was beginning
+their reform. Everybody wore a diamond. Even mechanics and farmers
+were not satisfied unless they had pins to stick in their ties. They
+bought them on the installment plan, and I suppose they do yet. I could
+always find a laborer or a hod-carrier that had a stone. They usually
+called attention to it by keeping their hands carefully on it; and very
+often it found its way into my pocket, for carelessness is bound to
+come as soon as a man thinks he is safe. They probably thought of their
+treasure for months afterwards; at least, whenever the collector came
+around for the weekly installments of pay for stones they no longer
+possessed.
+
+It was about this time that I met General Brace and the Professor.
+One was a Harvard graduate, and the other came from good old Yale; and
+both were grafters. When I knew them they used to hang out in a joint
+on Seventh Street, waiting to be treated. They had been good grafters,
+but through hop and booze had come down from forging and queer-shoving
+to common shop-lifting and petty larceny business. General Brace
+was very reticent in regard to his family and his own past, but as I
+often invited him to smoke opium with me, he sometimes gave me little
+confidences. I learned that he came from a well-known Southern family,
+and had held a good position in his native city; but he was a blood,
+and to satisfy his habits he began to forge checks. His relatives
+saved him from prison, but he left home and started on the downward
+career of graftdom. We called him General Brace because he looked like
+a soldier and was continually on the borrow; but a good story always
+accompanied his asking for a loan and he was seldom refused. I have
+often listened to this man after he had smoked a quantity of opium,
+and his conversational powers were something remarkable. Many a gun and
+politician would listen to him with wonder. I used to call him General
+Brace Coleridge.
+
+The Professor was almost as good a talker. We used to treat them both,
+in order to get them to converse together. It was a liberal education
+to hear them hold forth in that low-down saloon, where some of the
+finest talks on literature and politics were listened to with interest
+by men born and bred on the East Side, with no more education than
+a turnip, but with keen wits. The graduates had good manners, and we
+liked them and staked them regularly. They used to write letters for
+politicians and guns who could not read or write. They stuck together
+like brothers. If one of them had five cents, he would go into a morgue
+(gin-mill where rot-gut whiskey could be obtained for that sum) and
+pour out almost a full tumbler of booze. Just as he sipped a little
+of the rot-gut, his pal would come in, as though by accident. If it
+was the General who had made the purchase, he would say: "Hello, old
+pal, just taste this fine whiskey. It tastes like ten-cent stuff." The
+Professor would take a sip and become enthusiastic. They would sip and
+exclaim in turn, until the booze was all gone, and no further expense
+incurred. This little trick grew into a habit, and the bar-tender got
+on to it, but he liked Colonel Brace and the Professor so much that he
+used to wink at it.
+
+I was in this rot-gut saloon one day when I met Jesse R----, with whom
+I had spent several years in prison. I have often wondered how this man
+happened to join the under world; for he not only came of a good family
+and was well educated, but was also of a good, quiet disposition, a
+prime favorite in stir and out. He was tactful enough never to roast
+convicts, who are very sensitive, and was so sympathetic that many
+a heartache was poured into his ear. He never betrayed a friend's
+confidence.
+
+I was glad to meet Jesse again, and we exchanged greetings in the
+little saloon. When he asked me what I was doing, I replied that I had
+a mortgage on the world and that I was trying to draw my interest from
+the same. I still had that old dream, that the world owed me a living.
+I confided in him that I regarded the world as my oyster more decidedly
+than I had done before I met him in stir. I found that Jesse, however,
+had squared it for good and was absolutely on the level. He had a good
+job as shipping clerk in a large mercantile house; when I asked him if
+he was not afraid of being tipped off by some Central Office man or by
+some stool-pigeon, he admitted that that was the terror of his life;
+but that he had been at work for eighteen months, and hoped that none
+of his enemies would turn up. I asked him who had recommended him for
+the job, and I smiled when he answered: "General Brace". That clever
+Harvard graduate often wrote letters which were of assistance to guns
+who had squared it; though the poor fellow could not take care of
+himself.
+
+Jesse had a story to tell which seemed to me one of the saddest I have
+heard: and as I grew older I found that most all stories about people
+in the under world, no matter how cheerfully they began, ended sadly.
+It was about his brother, Harry, the story that Jesse told. Harry was
+married, and there is where the trouble often begins. When Jesse was
+in prison Harry, who was on the level and occupied a good position as a
+book-keeper, used to send him money, always against his wife's wishes.
+She also complained because Harry supported his old father. Harry
+toiled like a slave for this woman who scolded him and who spent his
+money recklessly. He made a good salary, but he could not keep up with
+her extravagance. One time, while in the country, she met a sporting
+man, Mr. O. B. In a few weeks it was the old, old story of a foolish
+woman and a pretty good fellow. While she was in the country, her young
+son was drowned, and she sent Harry a telegram announcing it. But she
+kept on living high and her name and that of O. B. were often coupled.
+Harry tried to stifle his sorrow and kept on sending money to the
+bladder he called wife, who appeared in a fresh new dress whenever she
+went out with Mr. O. B. One day Harry received a letter, calling him to
+the office to explain his accounts. He replied that he had been sick,
+but would straighten everything out the next day. When his father went
+to awaken him in the morning, Harry was dead. A phial of morphine on
+the floor told the story. Jesse reached his brother's room in time to
+hear his old father's cry of anguish and to read a letter from Harry,
+explaining that he had robbed the firm of thousands, and asking his
+brother to be kind to Helene, his wife.
+
+Then Jesse went to see the woman, to tell her about her husband's
+death. He found her at a summer hotel with Mr. O. B., and heard the
+servants talk about them.
+
+"Jim," said Jesse to me, at this point in the story, "here is wise
+council. Wherever thou goest, keep the portals of thy lugs open; as
+you wander on through life you are apt to hear slander about your women
+folks. What is more entertaining than a little scandal, especially when
+it doesn't hit home? But don't look into it too deep, for it generally
+turns out true, or worse. I laid a trap for my poor brothers wife,
+and one of her letters, making clear her guilt, fell into my hands.
+A telegram in reply from Mr. O. B., likewise came to me, and in a
+murderous frame of mind, I read its contents, and then laughed like a
+hyena: 'I am sorry I cannot meet you, but I was married this morning,
+and am going on my wedding tour. _Au Revoir._' You ask me what became
+of my sister-in-law? Jim, she is young and pretty, and will get along
+in this world. But, truly, the wages of sin is to her Living Ashes."
+
+It was not very long after my return home that I was at work again,
+not only at safe dipping and swindling, but gradually at all my old
+grafts, including more or less house work. There was a difference,
+however. I grew far more reckless than I had been before I went to
+prison. I now smoked opium regularly, and had a lay-out in my furnished
+room and a girl to run it. The drug made me take chances I never used
+to take; and I became dead to almost everything that was good. I went
+home very seldom. I liked my family in a curious way, but I did not
+have enough vitality or much feeling about anything. I began to go out
+to graft always in a dazed condition, so much so that on one occasion
+a pal tried to take advantage of my state of mind. It was while I was
+doing a bit of house-work with Sandy and Hacks, two clever grafters.
+We inserted into the lock the front door key which we had made, threw
+off the tumblers, and opened the door. Hacks and I stalled while Sandy
+went in and got six hundred dollars and many valuable jewels. He did
+not show us much of the money, however. The next day the newspapers
+described the "touch," and told the amount of money which had been
+stolen. Then I knew I had been "done" by Sandy and Hacks, who stood
+in with him, but Sandy said the papers were wrong. The mean thief,
+however, could not keep his mouth shut, and I got him. I am glad
+I was not arrested for murder. It was a close shave, for I cut him
+unmercifully with a knife. In this I had the approval of my friends,
+for they all believed the worst thing a grafter could do was to sink a
+pal. Sandy did not squeal, but he swore he would get even with me. Even
+if I had not been so reckless as I was then, I would not have feared
+him, for I knew there was no come-back in him.
+
+Another thing the dope did was to make me laugh at everything. It was
+fun for me to graft, and I saw the humor of life. I remember I used to
+say that this world is the best possible; that the fine line of cranks
+and fools in it gives it variety. One day I had a good laugh in a
+Brooklyn car. Tim, George and I got next to a Dutchman who had a large
+prop in his tie. He stood for a newspaper under his chin, and his stone
+came as slick as grease. A minute afterwards he missed his property,
+and we did not dare to move. He told his wife, who was with him, that
+his stone was gone. She called him a fool, and said that he had left
+it at home, in the bureau drawer, that she remembered it well. Then
+he looked down and saw that his front was gone, too. He said to his
+wife: "I am sure I had my watch and chain with me," but his wife was
+so superior that she easily convinced him he had left it at home. The
+wisdom of women is beyond finding out. But I enjoyed that incident. I
+shall never forget the look that came over the Dutchman's face when he
+missed his front.
+
+I was too sleepy those days to go out of town much on the graft; and
+was losing my ambition generally. I even cared very little for the
+girls, and gave up many of my amusements. I used to stay most of the
+time in my furnished room, smoking hop. When I went out it was to get
+some dough quick, and to that end I embraced almost any means. At night
+I often drifted into some concert hall, but it was not like the old
+days when I was a kid. The Bowery is far more respectable now than it
+ever was before. Twenty years ago there was no worse place possible for
+ruining girls and making thieves than Billy McGlory's joint on Hester
+Street. About ten o'clock in the morning slumming parties would chuckle
+with glee when the doors at McGlory's would be closed and young girls
+in scanty clothing, would dance the can-can. These girls would often
+fight together, and frequently were beaten unmercifully by the men
+who lived on them and their trade. Often men were forcibly robbed in
+these joints. There was little danger of an arrest; for if the sucker
+squealed, the policeman on the beat would club him off to the beat of
+another copper, who would either continue the process, or arrest him
+for disorderly conduct.
+
+At this time, which was just before the Lexow Committee began its work,
+there were at least a few honest coppers. I knew one, however, that
+did not remain honest. It happened this way. The guns had been tearing
+open the cars so hard that the street car companies, as they had once
+before, got after the officials, who stirred up Headquarters. The riot
+act was read to the dips. This meant that, on the second offense, every
+thief would be settled for his full time and that there would be no
+squaring it. The guns lay low for a while, but two very venturesome
+grafters, Mack and Jerry, put their heads together and reasoned thus:
+"Now that the other guns are alarmed it is a good chance for us to get
+in our fine work."
+
+Complaints continued to come in. The police grew hot and sent Mr.
+F----, a flyman, to get the rascals. Mr. F---- had the reputation of
+being the most honest detective on the force. He often declared that
+he wanted promotion only on his merits. Whenever he was overheard in
+making this remark there was a quiet smile on the faces of the other
+coppers. F---- caught Mack dead to rights, and, not being a diplomat,
+did not understand when the gun tried to talk reason to him. Even a
+large piece of dough did not help his intellect, and Mack was taken to
+the station-house. When a high official heard about it he swore by all
+the gods that he would make an example of that notorious pickpocket,
+Mack; but human nature is weak, especially if it wears buttons. Mack
+sent for F----'s superior, the captain, and the following dialogue took
+place:
+
+_Captain_: What do you want?
+
+_Mack_: I'm copped.
+
+_Captain_: Yes, and you're dead to rights.
+
+_Mack_: I tried to do business with F----. What is the matter with him?
+
+_Captain_: He is a policeman. He wants his promotion by merit. (Even
+the Captain smiled.)
+
+_Mack_: I'd give five centuries (five hundred dollars) if I could get
+to my summer residence in Asbury Park.
+
+_Captain_: How long would it take you to get it?
+
+_Mack_: (He, too, was laconic.) I got it on me.
+
+_Captain_: Give it here.
+
+_Mack_: It's a sure turn-out?
+
+_Captain_: Was I ever known to go back on my word?
+
+Mack handed the money over, and went over to court in the afternoon
+with F----. The Captain was there, and whispered to F----: "Throw him
+out." That nearly knocked F---- down, but he and Mack took a car, and
+he said to the latter: "In the name of everything how did you hypnotize
+the old man?" Mack replied, with a laugh: "I tried to mesmerize you in
+the same way; but you are working on your merits."
+
+Mack was discharged, and F---- decided to be a diplomat henceforth.
+From an honest copper he became as clever a panther as ever shook coin
+from a gun. Isn't it likely that if a man had a large income he would
+never go to prison? Indeed, do you think that well-known guns could
+graft with impunity unless they had some one right? Nay! Nay! Hannah.
+They often hear the song of split half or no graft.
+
+But at that time I was so careless that I did not even have enough
+sense to save fall-money, and after about nine months of freedom I fell
+again. One day three of us boarded a car in Brooklyn and I saw a mark
+whom I immediately nicked for his red super, which I passed quickly
+to one of my stalls, Eddy. We got off the car and walked about three
+blocks, when Eddy flashed the super, to look at it. The sucker, who had
+been tailing, blew, and Eddy threw the watch to the ground, fearing
+that he would be nailed. A crowd gathered around the super, I among
+them, the other stall, Eddy having vamoosed, and the sucker. No man in
+his senses would have picked up that gold watch. But I did it and was
+nailed dead to rights. I felt that super belonged to me. I had nicked
+it cleverly, and I thought I had earned it! I was sentenced to four
+years in Sing Sing, but I did not hang my head with shame, this time,
+as I was taken to the station. It was the way of life and of those
+I associated with, and I was more a fatalist than ever. I hated all
+mankind and cared nothing for the consequences of my acts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_Back to Prison._
+
+
+I was not recognized by the authorities at Sing Sing as having been
+there before. I gave a different name and pedigree, of course, but
+the reason I was not known as a second-timer was that I had spent only
+nine months at Sing Sing on my first term, the remainder having been
+passed at Auburn. There was a new warden at Sing Sing, too, and some
+of the other officials had changed; and, besides, I must have been
+lucky. Anyway, none of the keepers knew me, and this meant a great
+deal to me; for if I had been recognized as a second-timer I should
+have had a great deal of extra time to serve. On my first term I had
+received commutation time for good behavior amounting to over a year,
+and there is a rule that if a released convict is sent back to prison,
+he must serve, not only the time given him on his second sentence, but
+the commutation time on his first bit. Somebody must have been very
+careless, for I beat the State out of more than a year.
+
+Some of the convicts, indeed, knew that I had served before; but they
+did not squeal. Even some of those who did not know me had an inkling
+of it, but would not tell. It was still another instance of honor among
+thieves. If they had reported me to the authorities, they might have
+had an easier time in stir and had many privileges, such as better
+jobs and better things to eat. There were many stool-pigeons there, of
+course, but somehow these rats did not get wind of me.
+
+It did not take me long to get the Underground Tunnel in working order
+again, and I received contraband letters, booze, opium and morphine
+as regularly as on my first bit. One of the screws running the Tunnel
+at the time, Jack R----, was a little heavier in his demands than I
+thought fair. He wanted a third instead of a fifth of the money sent
+the convicts from home. But he was a good fellow, and always brought
+in the hop as soon as it arrived. Like the New York police he was hot
+after the stuff, but who can blame him? He wanted to rise in the world,
+and was more ambitious than the other screws. I continued my pipe
+dreams, and my reading; indeed, they were often connected. I frequently
+used to imagine that I was a character in one of the books; and often
+choked the detestable Tarquin into insensibility.
+
+On one occasion I dreamed that I was arraigned before my Maker and
+charged with murder. I cried with fear and sorrow, for I felt that even
+before the just God there was no justice; but a voice silenced me and
+said that to be guilty of the crime of murder, it was not necessary
+to use weapons or poison. Suddenly I seemed to see the sad faces of
+my father and mother, and then I knew what the voice meant. Indeed, I
+was guilty. I heard the word, "Begone," and sank into the abyss. After
+many thousand years of misery I was led into the Chamber of Contentment
+where I saw some of the great men whose books I had read. Voltaire, Tom
+Paine and Galileo sat on a throne, but when I approached them with awe,
+the angel, who had the face of a keeper, told me to leave. I appealed
+to Voltaire, and begged him not to permit them to send me among the
+hymn-singers. He said he pitied me, but that I was not fit to be with
+the great elect. I asked him where Dr. Parkhurst was, and he answered
+that the doctor was hot stuff and had evaporated long ago. I was led
+away sorrowing, and awoke in misery and tears, in my dark and damp
+cell.
+
+On this bit I was assigned to the clothing department, where I stayed
+six months, but did very little work. Warden Sage replaced Warden
+Darson and organized the system of stool-pigeons in stir more carefully
+than ever before; so it was more difficult than it was before to
+neglect our work. I said to Sage one day: "You're a cheap guy. You
+ought to be President of a Woman's Sewing Society. You can do nothing
+but make an aristocracy of stool-pigeons." I gave up work after six
+months because of my health, which had been bad for a long time, but
+now grew worse. My rapid life on the outside, my bad habits, and my
+experience in prison were beginning to tell on me badly. There was a
+general breaking-down of my system. I was so weak and coughed so badly
+that they thought I was dying. The doctors said I had consumption and
+transferred me to the prison hospital, where I had better air and food
+and was far more comfortable in body but terribly low in my mind. I
+was so despondent that I did not even "fan my face" (turn my head away
+to avoid having the outside world become familiar with my features)
+when visitors went through the hospital. This was an unusual degree
+of carelessness for a professional gun. One reason I was so gloomy was
+that I was now unable to get hold of my darling hop.
+
+I was so despondent in the hospital that I really thought I should soon
+become an angel; and my environment was not very cheerful, for several
+convicts died on beds near me. Whenever anybody was going to die,
+every convict in the prison knew about it, for the attendants would
+put three screens around the dying man's bed. There were about twenty
+beds in the long room, and near me was an old boyhood pal, Tommy Ward,
+in the last stages of consumption. Tommy and I often talked together
+about death, and neither of us was afraid of it. I saw a dozen men die
+during my experience in state prisons and I never heard one of them
+clamor for a clergyman. Tommy was doing life for murder, and ought to
+have been afraid of death, if anyone was. But when he was about to die,
+he sent word to me to come to his bedside, and after a word or two of
+good-bye he went into his agony. The last words he ever said were: "Ah,
+give me a big Peter (narcotic)." He did not receive the last rites of
+the Catholic Church, and his ignorant family refused to bury him. So
+Tommy's cell number was put on the tombstone, if it could be called
+such, which marked his grave in the little burying ground outside the
+prison walls.
+
+Indeed, it is not easy to throw the religious con (confidence game)
+into a convict. Often, while we were in chapel, the dominie would tell
+us that life was short; but hardly one of the six or seven hundred
+criminals who were listening believed the assertion. They felt that
+the few years they were doing for the good of their country were as
+long as centuries. If there were a few "cons" who tried the cheerful
+dodge, they did not deceive anybody, for their brother guns knew that
+they were sore in their hearts because they had been caught without
+fall-money, and so had to serve a few million years in stir.
+
+After I got temporarily better in health and had left the hospital,
+I began to read Lavater on physiognomy more industriously than ever.
+With his help I became a close student of faces, and I learned to tell
+the thoughts and emotions of my fellow convicts. I watched them at
+work and when their faces flushed I knew they were thinking of Her.
+Sometimes I would ask a man how She was, and he would look confused,
+and perhaps angry because his day dream was disturbed. And how the
+men used to look at women visitors who went through the shops! It was
+against the rules to look at the inhabitants of the Upper World who
+visited stir, but I noticed that after women visitors had been there
+the convicts were generally more cheerful. Even a momentary glimpse of
+those who lived within the pale of civilization warmed their hearts.
+After the ladies had gone the convicts would talk about them for hours.
+Many of their remarks were vulgar and licentious, but some of the men
+were broken down with feeling and would say soft things. They would
+talk about their mothers and sweethearts and eventually drift back on
+their ill-spent lives. How often I thought of the life behind me! Then
+I would look at the men about me, some of whom had stolen millions and
+had international reputations--but all discouraged now, broken down in
+health, penniless and friendless. If a man died in stir he was just a
+cadaver for the dissecting table, nothing more. The end fitted in well
+with his misspent life. These reflections would bring us around again
+to good resolutions.
+
+People who have never broken the law--I beg pardon, who were never
+caught--can not understand how a man who has once served in stir will
+take another chance and go back and suffer the same tortures. A society
+lady I once met said she thought criminals who go on grafting, when
+they know what the result will be, must be lacking in imagination. I
+replied to her: "Madam, why do you lace tight and indulge in social
+dissipation even after you know it is bad for the health? You know it
+is a strain on your nerves, but you do it. Is it because you have no
+imagination? That which we all dread most--death--we all defy."
+
+The good book says that all men shall earn their bread by the sweat
+of their brow, but we grafters make of ourselves an exception, with
+that overweening egotism and brash desire to do others with no return,
+which is natural to everybody. Only when the round-up comes, either in
+the sick bed or in the toils, we often can not bear our burdens and
+look around to put the blame on someone else. If a man is religious,
+why should he not drop it on Jesus? Man! How despicable at times! How
+ungallant to his ancestor of the softer sex! From time immemorial he
+has exclaimed: "Only for her, the deceiving one, my better half, I
+should be perfect."
+
+Convicts, particularly if they are broken in health, often become
+like little children. It is not unusual for them to grow dependent on
+dumb pets, which they smuggle into prison by means of the Underground
+Tunnel. The man in stir who has a white mouse or robin is envied by
+the other convicts, for he has something to love. If an artist could
+only witness the affection that is centered on a mouse or dog, if he
+could only depict the emotions in the hard face of the criminal, what a
+story! I had a white rat, which I had obtained with difficulty through
+the Underground. I used to put him up my sleeve, and he would run all
+over my body, he was so tame. He would stand on his hind legs or lie
+down at my command. Sometimes, when I was lonely and melancholy, I
+loved this rat like a human being.
+
+In May, 1896, when I still had about a year to serve on my second
+term, a rumor circulated through the prison that some of the Salvation
+Army were going to visit the stir. The men were greatly excited at
+the prospect of a break in the dreary routine. I imagined that a big
+burly Salvationist, beating a drum, with a few very thin Salvation
+lasses, would march through the prison yard. I was dumbfounded by the
+reality, for I saw enter the Protestant chapel, which was crowded with
+eager convicts, two delicate, pretty women. No actor or actress ever
+got a warmer welcome than that given to Mrs. Booth and her secretary,
+Captain Jennie Hughes. After the clapping of hands and cheering had
+ceased, Mrs. Booth arose and made a speech, which was listened to in
+deep silence. Certainly she was eloquent, and what she said impressed
+many an old gun. She was the first visitor who ever promised practical
+Christianity and eventually carried out the promise. She promised to
+build homes for us after our release; and in many cases, she did, and
+we respect her. She spoke for an hour, and afterwards granted private
+interviews, and many of the convicts told her all their troubles, and
+she promised to take care of their old mothers, daughters and wives.
+
+Before leaving the chapel, she sang: "O Lord, let the waves of
+thy crimson sea roll over me." I did not see how such a pretty,
+intelligent, refined and educated woman could say such a bloody thing,
+but she probably had forgotten what the words really meant. At any
+rate, she is a good woman, for she tried hard to have the Parole Bill
+passed. That bill has recently become a law, and it is a good one, in
+my opinion; but it has one fault. It only effects first-timers. The
+second and third timers, who went to Sing Sing years ago when there was
+contract labor and who worked harder than any laborer in New York City,
+ought to have a chance, too. Show a little confidence in any man, even
+though he be a third-timer, as I have been, and he will be a better man
+for it.
+
+After the singing, on that first morning of Mrs. Booth's visit,
+she asked those convicts who wanted to lead a better life to stand
+up. About seventy men out of the five or six hundred arose, and
+the others remained seated. I was not among those who stood up. I
+never met anybody who could touch me in that way. I don't believe in
+instantaneous Christianity. I knew half a dozen of the men who stood
+up, and they were not very strong mentally. I often wondered what the
+motives were that moved the men in that manner. Man is a social animal,
+and Mrs. Booth was a magnetic woman. After I had heard her speak once,
+I knew that. She had a good personal appearance and one other requisite
+that appealed strongly to those who were in our predicament--her sex.
+Who could entirely resist the pleadings of a pretty woman with large
+black eyes?
+
+Certainly I was moved by this sincere and attractive woman, but my
+own early religious training had made me suspicious of the whole
+business. Whenever anybody tried to reform me through Christianity I
+always thought of that powerful Celt who used to rush at me in Sunday
+school with a hickory stick and shout "Who made you?" And I don't think
+that most of the men who profess religion in prison are sincere. They
+usually want to curry favor with the authorities, or get "staked" after
+they leave stir. One convict, whom I used to call "The Great American
+Identifier," because he used to graft by claiming to be a relative of
+everybody that died, from California to Maine and weeping over the dead
+body, was the worst hypocrite I ever saw--a regular Uriah Heep. He was
+one of Mrs. Booth's converts and stood up in chapel. After she went
+away he said to me: "What a blessing has been poured into my soul since
+I heard Mrs. Booth." Another hypocrite said to me on the same occasion:
+"I don't know what I would do only for Mrs. Booth. She has lightened
+my weary burdens." Now, I would not trust either of those men with a
+box of matches; and so I said to the Great American Identifier: "You
+are the meanest, most despicable thief in the whole stir. I'd respect
+you if you had the nerve to rob a live man, but you always stole from
+a cadaver." He was horrified at my language and began to talk of a
+favorite subject with him--his wealthy relatives.
+
+Some of these converts were not hypocrites, but I don't think even they
+received any good from their conversion. Some people go to religion
+because they have nothing else to distract their thoughts, and the
+subject sometimes is a mania with them. The doctors say that there is
+only one incurable mental disease--religious insanity. In the eyes
+of the reformers Mrs. Booth does a great thing by making some of us
+converts, but experts in mental diseases declare that it is very bad
+to excite convicts to such a pitch. Many of the weak-minded among them
+lose their balance and become insane through these violent religious
+emotions.
+
+I did not meet so many of the big guns on my second term as on my
+first; but, of course, I came across many of my old pals and formed
+some new acquaintances. It was on this term that four of us used to
+have what I called a tenement house oratory talk whenever we worked
+together in the halls. Some of us were lucky enough at times to serve
+as barbers, hall-men and runners to and from the shops, and we used to
+gather together in the halls and amuse ourselves with conversation.
+Dickey, Mull, Mickey and I became great pals in this way. Dickey was
+a desperate river pirate who would not stand a roast from anybody,
+but was well liked. Mull was one of the best principled convicts I
+ever knew in my life. He was quiet, delicate and manly, and opposed to
+abusing young boys, yet if you did him an injury he would cut the liver
+out of you. He was a good fellow. Mickey was what I called a tenement
+house philosopher. He'd stick his oar into every bit of talk that was
+started. One day the talk began on Tammany Hall and went something like
+this:
+
+"All crooked officials," said Mull, "including all of them, ought to be
+railroaded to Sing Sing."
+
+_Dickey_: "Through their methods the county offices are rotten from the
+judge to the policeman."
+
+_Mull_: "I agree with you."
+
+_Mickey_: "Ah, wat's the matter wid Tammany? My old man never voted any
+other ticket. Neither did yours. When you get into stir you act like
+college professors. Why don't you practice what you spout? I always
+voted the Tammany ticket--five or six times every election day. How is
+it I never got a long bit?"
+
+_Mull_: "How many times, Mickey, have you been in stir?"
+
+_Mickey_: "This is the fourth, but the highest I got was four years."
+
+_Dickey_: "You never done anything big enough to get four."
+
+_Mickey_: "I didn't, eh? You have been hollering that you are innocent,
+and get twenty years for piracy. I only get four, but I am guilty every
+time. There is a big difference between that and twenty, aint it?"
+
+Mull slapped Mickey on the back and said: "Never mind. You will get
+yours yet on the installment plan." Then, turning to me, Mull asked:
+"Jim, don't you think that if everything was square and on the level
+we'd stand a better chance?"
+
+"No," I replied. "In the first place we have not reached the
+millennium. In the second place they would devise some legal scheme to
+keep a third timer the rest of his natural days. I know a moccasin who
+would move heaven and earth to have such a bill passed, and he is one
+of the crookedest philanthropists in America to-day. I am a grafter,
+and I believe that the present administration is all right. I know that
+I can stay out of prison as long as I save my fall-money. When I blow
+that in I ought to go to prison. Every gun who is capable of stealing,
+knows that if he puts by enough money he can not only keep out of stir
+but can beat his way into heaven. I'm arguing as a professional thief."
+
+This was too much for Mickey, who said: "Why don't you talk United
+States and not be springing whole leaves out of a dictionary?"
+
+Just then Big Jim came up. He had heard what I said and he joined
+in: "You know why I got the tenth of a century? I had thousands in my
+pocket and went to buy some silk underwear at a haberdasher's in New
+York. But it seemed to me a waste of good coin to buy them, so I stole
+a dozen pair of silk stockings. They tried to arrest me, I shot, and
+got ten years. I always did despise a petty thief, but I never felt
+like kicking him till then. Ten years for a few stockings! Can you
+blame the judge? I didn't. Even a judge admires a good thief. If I had
+robbed a bank I'd never have got such a long bit. The old saying is
+true: Kill one man and you will be hanged. Kill sixteen, and the United
+States Government is likely to pension you."
+
+The tenement-house philosopher began to object again, when the guard,
+as usual, came along to stop our pleasant conversation. He thought we
+were abusing our privileges.
+
+It was during this bit that I met the man with the white teeth, as he
+is now known among his friends. I will call him Patsy, and tell his
+story, for it is an unusual one. He was a good deal older man than I
+and was one of the old-school burglars, and a good one. They were a
+systematic lot, and would shoot before they stood the collar; but they
+were gentlemanly grafters and never abused anybody. The first thing
+Patsy's mob did after entering a house was to round up all the inmates
+and put them into one room. There one burglar would stick them up
+with a revolver, while the others went through the house. On a fatal
+occasion Patsy took the daughter of the house, a young girl of eighteen
+or nineteen, in his arms and carried her down stairs into the room
+where the rest of the family had been put by the other grafters. As he
+carried the girl down stairs, she said: "Mr. Burglar, don't harm me."
+Patsy was masked, all but his mouth, and when he said: "You are as safe
+as if you were in your father's arms," she saw his teeth, which were
+remarkably fine and white. Patsy afterwards said that the girl was not
+a bit alarmed, and was such a perfect coquette that she noticed his
+good points. The next morning she told the police that one of the bad
+men had a beautiful set of teeth. The flymen rounded up half a dozen
+grafters on suspicion, among them Patsy; and no sooner did he open his
+mouth, than he was recognized, and settled for a long bit. Poor Patsy
+has served altogether about nineteen years, but now he has squared
+it, and is a waiter in a Bowery saloon, more content with his twelve
+dollars a week than he used to be with his thousands. I often go around
+and have a glass with him. He is now a quiet, sober fellow, and his
+teeth are as fine as ever.
+
+One day a man named "Muir," a mean, sure-thing grafter, came to the
+stir on a visit to some of his acquaintances. He had never done a bit
+himself, although he was a notorious thief. But he liked to look at the
+misfortunes of others, occasionally. On this visit he got more than he
+bargained for. He came to the clothing department where Mike, who had
+grafted with Muir in New York, and I, were at work. Muir went up to
+Mike and offered him a bill. Mike threw it in Muir's face and called
+him--well, the worst thing known in Graftdom. "If it wasn't for you,"
+he said, "I wouldn't be doing this bit."
+
+There are several kinds of sure-thing grafters. Some are crooked
+gamblers, some are plain stool-pigeons, some are discouraged thieves
+who continue to graft but take no risks. Muir was one of the meanest
+of the rats that I have known, yet in a way, he was handy to the
+professional gun. He had somebody "right" at headquarters and could
+generally get protection for his mob; but he would always throw the mob
+over if it was to his advantage. He and two other house-work men robbed
+a senator's home, and such a howl went up that the police offered all
+manner of protection to the grafter who would tip them off to who got
+the stuff. Grafters who work with the coppers don't want it known among
+those of their own kind, for they would be ostracized. If they do a
+dirty trick they try to throw it on someone else who would not stoop to
+such a thing. Muir was a diplomat, and tipped off the Central Office,
+and those who did the trick, all except Tom and Muir, were nailed. A
+few nights after that the whisper was passed among guns of both sexes,
+who had gathered at a resort up-town, that somebody had squealed. The
+muttered curses meant that some Central Office man had by wireless
+telegraphy put the under world next that somebody had tipped off the
+police. But it was not Muir that the hard names were said against: the
+Central Office man took care of that. With low cunning Muir had had the
+rumor circulated that it was Tom who had thrown them down, and Tommy
+was ostracized.
+
+I knew Muir and I knew Tommy, and I was sure that the latter was
+innocent. Some time after Tom had been cut by the rest of the gang I
+saw Muir drinking with two Central Office detectives, in a well-known
+resort, and I was convinced that he was the rat. His personal
+appearance bore out my suspicion. He had a weak face, with no fight in
+it. He was quiet of speech, always smiling, and as soft and noiseless
+as the animal called the snake. He had a narrow, hanging lip, small
+nose, large ears, and characterless, protruding eyes. The squint look
+from under the eye-brows, and the quick jerk of the hand to the chin,
+showed without doubt that he possessed the low cunning too of that
+animal called the rat. Partly through my influence, Muir gradually got
+the reputation of being a sure-thing grafter, but he was so sleek that
+he could always find some grafter to work with him. Pals with whom he
+fell out, always shortly afterwards came to harm. That was the case
+with Big Mike, who spat in Muir's face, when the latter visited him in
+Sing Sing. When Muir did pickpocket work, he never dipped himself, but
+acted as a stall. This was another sure-thing dodge. Muir never did a
+bit in stir because he was of more value to headquarters than a dozen
+detectives. The fact that he never did time was another thing that
+gradually made the gang suspicious of him. Therefore, at the present
+time he is of comparatively little value to the police force, and may
+be settled before long. I hope so.
+
+One of the meanest things Muir ever did was to a poor old "dago"
+grafter, a queer-maker (counterfeiter). The Italian was putting
+out unusually good stuff, both paper and metal, and the avaricious
+Muir thought he saw a good chance to get a big bit of money from
+the dago. He put up a plan with two Central Office men to bleed the
+counterfeiter. Then he went to the dago and said he had got hold of
+some big buyers from the West who would buy five thousand dollars worth
+of the "queer." They met the supposed buyers, who were in reality
+the two Central Office men, at a little saloon. After a talk the
+detectives came out in their true colors, showed their shields, and
+demanded one thousand dollars. The dago looked at Muir, who gave him
+the tip to pay the one thousand dollars. The Italian, however, thinking
+Muir was on the level, misunderstood the sign, and did not pay. The
+outraged detectives took the Italian to police headquarters, but did
+not show up the queer at first; they still wanted their one thousand
+dollars. So the dago was remanded and remanded, getting a hearing every
+twenty-four hours, but there was never enough evidence. Finally the
+poor fellow got a lawyer, and then the Central Office men gave up the
+game, and produced the queer as evidence. The United States authorities
+prosecuted the case, and the Italian was given three years and a half.
+After he was released he met Muir on the East Side, and tried to kill
+him with a knife. That is the only way Muir will ever get his deserts.
+A man like him very seldom dies in state's prison, or is buried in
+potter's field. He often becomes a gin-mill keeper and captain of his
+election district, for he understands how to control the repeaters who
+give Tammany Hall such large majorities on election day in Manhattan.
+
+It was on this second bit in prison, as I have said in another place,
+that the famous "fence" operated in stir. I knew him well. He was a
+clever fellow, and I often congratulated him on his success with the
+keepers; for he was no stool-pigeon and got his pull legitimately. He
+was an older grafter than I and remembered well Madame Mandelbaum, the
+Jewess, one of the best fences, before my time, in New York City. At
+the corner of Clinton and Rivington Streets there stood until a few
+years ago a small dry goods and notions store, which was the scene of
+transactions which many an old gun likes to talk about. What plannings
+of great robberies took place there, in Madame Mandelbaum's store!
+She would buy any kind of stolen property, from an ostrich feather
+to hundreds and thousands of dollars' worth of gems. The common
+shop-lifter and the great cracksman alike did business at this famous
+place. Some of the noted grafters who patronized her store were Jimmy
+Hope, Shang Draper, Billy Porter, Sheenie Mike, Red Leary, Johnnie
+Irving, Jack Walsh, alias John the Mick, and a brainy planner of big
+jobs, English George.
+
+Madame Mandelbaum had two country residences in Brooklyn where she
+invited her friends, the most famous thieves in two continents. English
+George, who used to send money to his son, who was being educated in
+England, was a frequent visitor, and used to deposit with her all
+his valuables. She had two beautiful daughters, one of whom became
+infatuated with George, who did not return her love. Later, she and
+her daughters, after they became wealthy, tried to rise in the world
+and shake their old companions. The daughters were finely dressed and
+well-educated, and the Madame hunted around for respectable husbands
+for them. Once a bright reporter wrote a play, in which the central
+character was Madame Mandelbaum. She read about it in the newspapers
+and went, with her two daughters, to see it. They occupied a private
+box, and were gorgeously dressed. The old lady was very indignant when
+she saw the woman who was supposed to be herself appear on the stage.
+The actress, badly dressed, and made up with a hooked nose, was jeered
+by the audience. After the play, Madame Mandelbaum insisted on seeing
+the manager of the theatre. She showed him her silks and her costly
+diamonds and then said: "Look at me. I am Madame Mandelbaum. Does that
+huzzy look anything like me?" Pointing to her daughters she continued:
+"What must my children think of such an impersonation? Both of them are
+better dressed and have more money and education than that strut, who
+is only a moment's plaything for bankers and brokers!"
+
+In most ways, of course, my life in prison during the second term was
+similar to what it was on my first term. Books and opium were my main
+pleasures. If it had not been for them and for the thoughts about life
+and about my fellow convicts which they led me to form, the monotony
+of the prison routine would have driven me mad. My health was by that
+time badly shattered. I was very nervous and could seldom sleep without
+a drug.
+
+My moral health was far worse, too, than it had been on my first term.
+Then I had made strong efforts to overcome the opium habit, and laid
+plans to give up grafting. Then I had some decent ambitions, and did
+not look upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas on the second
+term, I had grown to take a hopeless view of my case. I began to feel
+that I could not reform, no matter how hard I tried. It seemed to
+me, too, that it was hardly worth while now to make an effort, for I
+thought my health was worse than it really was and that I should die
+soon, with no opportunity to live the intelligent life I had learned to
+admire through my books. I still made good resolutions, and some effort
+to quit the hop, but they were weak in comparison with the efforts
+I had made during my first term. More and more it seemed to me that
+I belonged in the under world for good, and that I might as well go
+through it to the end. Stealing was my profession. It was all I knew
+how to do, and I didn't believe that anybody was interested enough in
+me to teach me anything else. On the other hand, what I had learned on
+the Rocky Path would never leave me. I was sure of my knowledge of the
+technique of graft, and I knew that a sucker was born every minute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_On the Outside Again._
+
+
+My time on the second bit was drawing to a close. I was eager to get
+out, of course, but I knew way down in my mind, that it would be only
+to graft again. I made a resolution that I would regain my health and
+gather a little fall-money before I started in hard again on the Rocky
+Path.
+
+On the day of my release, Warden Sage called me to his office and
+talked to me like a friend. He did not know that I was a second timer,
+or he might not have been so kind to me. He was a humane man, and in
+spite of his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced good
+things into Sing Sing. He improved the condition of the cells and we
+were not confined there so much as we had been before he came. On my
+first term many a man staid for days in his cell without ever going
+out; one man was confined twenty-eight days on bread and water. But
+under Mr. Sage punishments were not so severe. He even used to send
+delicacies to men chained up in the Catholic Chapel.
+
+I should like to say a good word for Head Keeper Connoughton, too.
+He was not generally liked, for he was a strict disciplinarian, but I
+think he was one of the best keepers in the country. He was stern, but
+not brutal, and when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton was very kind.
+He was not deceived by the fake lunatics, and used to say: "If you go
+to the mad-house, you are liable to become worse. If you are all right
+in the morning I will give you a job out in the air." Although Mr.
+Connoughton had had little schooling he was an intelligent man.
+
+I believe the best thing the community can do to reform criminals
+is to have a more intelligent class of keepers. As a rule they are
+ignorant, brutal and stupid, under-paid and inefficient; yet what is
+more important for the State's welfare than an intelligent treatment
+of convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long ones, for when
+the criminal is broken down in health and made fearful, suspicious and
+revengeful, what can you expect from him? However, in the mood I was in
+at the end of my second term, I did not believe that anything was any
+good as a preventive of crime. I knew that when I got on the outside I
+wouldn't think of what might happen to me. I knew that I couldn't or
+wouldn't carry a hod. What ambition I had left was to become a more
+successful crook than I had ever been before.
+
+Warden Sage gave me some good advice and then I left Sing Sing for New
+York. I did not get the pleasure from going out again that had been
+so keen after my first bit. My eye-sight was failing now, and I was
+sick and dull. My only thought was to get back to my old haunts, and
+I drank several large glasses of whiskey at Sing Sing town, to help
+me on my way. I intended to go straight home, as I felt very ill, to
+my father and mother, but I didn't see them for several days after my
+return to New York. The first thing I did in the city was to deliver
+some messages from my fellow convicts to their relatives. My third
+visit for that purpose was to the home of a fine young fellow I knew
+in stir. It was a large family and included a married sister and her
+children. They were glad to hear from Bobby, and I talked to them for
+some time about him, when the husband of the married sister came home,
+and began to quarrel with his wife. He accused her of having strange
+men in the house, meaning me. The younger brother and the rest of the
+family got back at the brother-in-law and gave him better than they
+got. The little brother fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder".
+The police surrounded the house and took us all to the station-house
+in the patrol wagon. And so I spent the first night after my return in
+confinement. It seemed natural, however. In the morning we were taken
+before the magistrate, and the mother and sister testified that I had
+taken them a message from their boy, and had committed no offense.
+The brother-in-law blurted out that he had married into a family of
+thieves, and that I had just returned from Sing Sing. I was discharged,
+but fined five dollars. Blessed are the peacemakers,--but not in my
+case!
+
+I passed the next day looking for old girls and pals, but I found few
+of them. Many were dead and others were in stir or had sunk so far
+down into the under world that even I could not find them. I was only
+about thirty-two years old, but I had already a long acquaintance with
+the past. Like all grafters I had lived rapidly, crowding, while at
+liberty, several days into one. When I got back from my second bit
+the greater part of my life seemed to be made up of memories of other
+days. Some of the old pals I did meet again had squared it, others were
+"dead" (out of the game) and some had degenerated into mere bums.
+
+There are several different classes of "dead ones":
+
+1. The man who has lost his nerve. He generally becomes a whiskey
+fiend. If he becomes hopelessly a soak the better class of guns shun
+him, for he is no good to work with. He will not keep an engagement, or
+will turn up at the place of meeting too late or too early. A grafter
+must be exactly on time. It is as bad to be too early as too late, for
+he must not be seen hanging around the place of meeting. Punctuality is
+more of a virtue in the under world than it is in respectable society.
+The slackest people I know to keep their appointments, are the honest
+ones; or grafters who have become whiskey fiends. These latter usually
+wind up with rot-gut booze and are sometimes seen selling songs on the
+Bowery.
+
+2. The man who becomes a copper. He is known as a stool-pigeon, and is
+detested and feared by all grafters. Nobody will go with him. Sometimes
+he becomes a Pinkerton man, and is a useful member of society. When
+he loses his grip with the upper world, he belongs to neither, for the
+grafters won't look at him.
+
+3. The man who knows a trade. This grafter often "squares" it, is apt
+to marry and remain honest. His former pals, who are still grafters,
+treat him kindly, for they know he is not a rat. They know, too, that
+he is a bright and intelligent man, and that it is well to keep on the
+right side of him. Such a man has often educated himself in stir, and,
+when he squares it, is apt to join a political club, and is called
+in by the leader to help out in an election, for he possesses some
+brains. The gun is apt to make him an occasional present, for he can
+help the grafter, in case of a fall, because of his connection with
+the politicians. This kind of "dead one" often keeps his friends the
+grafters, while in stir, next to the news in the city.
+
+4. The gun who is _supposed_ to square it. This grafter has got a
+bunch of money together and sees a good chance to open a gin-mill,
+or a Raines Law hotel, or a gambling joint. He knows how to take care
+of the repeaters, and is handy about election time. In return he gets
+protection for his illegal business. He is a go-between, and is on good
+terms with coppers and grafters. He supplies the grafter who has plenty
+of fall-money with bondsmen, makes his life in the Tombs easy, and gets
+him a good job while in stir. This man is supposed to be "dead," but he
+is really very much alive. Often a copper comes to him and asks for the
+whereabouts of some grafter or other. He will reply, perhaps: "I hear
+he is in Europe, or in the West." The copper looks wise and imagines he
+is clever. The "dead" one sneers, and, like a wise man, laughs in his
+sleeve; for he is generally in communication with the man looked for.
+
+5. The sure-thing grafter. He is a man who continues to steal, but
+wants above everything to keep out of stir, where he has spent many
+years. So he goes back to the petty pilfering he did as a boy. General
+Brace and the Professor belonged to this class of "dead ones." The
+second night I spent on the Bowery after my return from my second
+bit I met Laudanum Joe, who is another good example of this kind of
+"dead one." At one time he made thousands of dollars, but now he is
+discouraged and nervous. He looked bad (poorly dressed) but was glad to
+see me.
+
+"How is graft?" he asked.
+
+"I have left the Rocky Path," I replied, thinking I would throw a few
+"cons" into him. "I am walking straight. Not in the religious line,
+either."
+
+He smiled, which was tantamount to saying that I lied.
+
+"What are you working at?" he asked.
+
+"I am looking for a job," I replied.
+
+"Jimmy, is it true, that you are pipes (crazy)? I heard you got buggy
+(crazy) in your last bit."
+
+"Joe," I replied, "you know I was never bothered above the ears."
+
+"If you are going to carry the hod," he said, "you might as well go to
+the pipe-house, and let them cure you. Have you given up smoking, too?"
+he continued.
+
+He meant the hop. I conned him again and said: "Yes." He showed the old
+peculiar, familiar grin, and said:
+
+"Say, I have no coin. Take me with you and give me a smoke."
+
+I tried to convince him that there was nothing in it, but he was a
+doubter.
+
+"What are _you_ doing, Joe?" I asked.
+
+"O, just getting a few shillings," he replied, meaning that he was
+grafting.
+
+"Why don't you give up the booze?" I asked.
+
+I had made a break, for he said, quickly:
+
+"Why? Because I don't wear a Piccadilly collar?"
+
+All grafters of any original calibre are super-sensitive, to a point
+very near insanity. Laudanum Joe thought I had reference to his dress,
+which was very bum.
+
+"Joe," I said, "I never judge a man by his clothes, especially one that
+I know."
+
+"Jimmy," he said, "the truth is I can't stand another long bit in stir.
+I do a little petty pilfering that satisfies my wants--a cup of tea,
+plenty of booze, and a little hop. If I fall I only go to the workhouse
+for a couple of months. The screws know I have seen better days and I
+can get a graft and my booze while there. If I aint as prosperous as I
+was once, why not dream I'm a millionaire?"
+
+Some grafters who have been prosperous at one time fall even lower
+than Laudanum Joe. When they get fear knocked into them and can't
+do without whiskey they sink lower and lower. Hungry Bob is another
+example. I grafted with him as a boy, but when I met him on the Bowery
+after my second bit I hardly knew him, and at first he failed to
+recognize me entirely. I got him into a gin-mill, however, and he told
+how badly treated he had been just before we met. He had gone into a
+saloon kept by an old pal of his who had risen in the world, and asked
+him for fifteen cents to buy a bed in a lodging-house. "Go long, you
+pan-handler (beggar)," said his old friend. Poor Bob was badly cut up
+about it, and talked about ingratitude for a long time. But he had his
+lodging money, for a safe-cracker who knew Hungry Bob when he was one
+of the gayest grafters in town, happened to be in the saloon, and he
+gave the "bum" fifteen cents for old times sake.
+
+"How is it, Bob," I said to him, "that you are not so good as you were?"
+
+"You want to know what put me on the bum?" he answered. "Well, it's
+this way. I can't trust nobody, and I have to graft alone. That's one
+thing. Then, too, I like the booze too much, and when I'm sitting down
+I can't get up and go out and hustle the way I used to."
+
+Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort for sailors and hard-luck
+grafters in the lower Bowery, when a Sheenie I knew came in.
+
+"Hello, Jim," he said.
+
+"How's graft, Mike?" I replied.
+
+"Don't mention it."
+
+"What makes you look so glum?"
+
+"I'm only after being turned out of police court this morning."
+
+"What was the rap, Mike?"
+
+"I'm looking too respectable. They asked me where I got the clothes. I
+told them I was working, which was true. I have been a waiter for three
+months. The flymen took me to headquarters. I was gathered in to make
+a reputation for those two shoo-flies. Whenever I square it and go to
+work I am nailed regularly, because my mug is in the Hall of Fame. When
+I am arrested, I lose my job every time. Nobody knows you now, Jim. You
+could tear the town open."
+
+I made a mental resolution to follow Mike's advice very soon--as soon
+as my health was a little better. Just then Jack, a boyhood pal of
+mine, who knew the old girls, Sheenie Annie and the rest, came in. I
+was mighty glad to see him, and said so to him.
+
+"I guess you've got the advantage of me, bloke," was his reply.
+
+"Don't you remember Jimmy the Kid, ten years ago, in the sixth?" I
+jogged his memory with the names of a few pals of years ago, and when
+he got next, he said:
+
+"I wouldn't have known you, Jim. I thought you were dead many years ago
+in stir. I heard it time and time again. I thought you were past and
+gone."
+
+After a short talk, I said:
+
+"Where's Sheenie Annie?"
+
+"Dead," he replied.
+
+"Mamie?" I asked.
+
+"Dead," he replied.
+
+"Lucy?"
+
+"In stir."
+
+"Swedish Emmy?"
+
+"She's married."
+
+"Any good Molls now? I'm only after getting back from stir and am not
+next," I said.
+
+"T'aint like old times, Jim," he said. "The Molls won't steal now. They
+aint got brains enough. They are not innocent. They are ignorant. All
+they know how to do is the badger."
+
+I went with Jack to his house, where he had an opium layout. There
+we found several girls and grafters, some smoking hop, some with the
+subtle cigarette between their lips. I was introduced to an English
+grafter, named Harry. He said he was bloomin' glad to see me. He was
+just back from the West, he said, but I thought it was the pen. He
+began to abuse the States, and I said:
+
+"You duffer, did you ever see such pretty girls as here? Did you ever
+wear a collar and tie in the old country?"
+
+He grew indignant and shouted: "'Oly Cobblestones! In this ---- country
+I have two hundred bucks (dollars) saved up every time, but I never
+spend a cent of it. 'Ow to 'Ell am I better off here? I'm only stealin'
+for certain mugs (policemen) and fer those 'igher up, so they can buy
+real estate. They enjoy their life in this country and Europe off my
+'ard earned money and the likes of me. They die as respected citizens.
+I die in the work'us as an outcast. Don't be prating about your ----
+country!"
+
+As soon as I had picked out a good mob to join I began to graft again.
+Two of my new pals were safe-blowers, and we did that graft, and
+day-work, as well as the old reliable dipping. But I wasn't much at
+the graft during the seven months I remained on the outside. My health
+continued bad, and I did not feel like "jumping out" so much as I had
+done formerly. I did not graft except when my funds were very low, and
+so, of course, contrary to my plans, I saved no fall-money. I had a
+girl, an opium lay-out and a furnished room, where I used to stay most
+of the time, smoking with pals, who, like myself, had had the keen edge
+of their ambition taken off. I had a strange longing for music at that
+time; I suppose because my nerves were weaker than they used to be. I
+kept a number of musical instruments in my room, and used to sing and
+dance to amuse my visitors.
+
+During these seven months that I spent mainly in my room, I used to
+reflect and philosophize a lot, partly under the influence of opium.
+I would moralize to my girl or to a friend, or commune with my own
+thoughts. I often got in a state of mind where everything seemed a joke
+to me. I often thought of myself as a spectator watching the play of
+life. I observed my visitors and their characteristics and after they
+had left for the evening loved to size them up in words for Lizzie.
+
+My eyes were so bad that I did not read much, but I took it out in
+epigrams and wise sayings. I will give a few specimens of the kind of
+philosophy I indulged in.
+
+"You always ought to end a speech with a sneer or a laconic remark. It
+is food for thought. The listener will pause and reflect."
+
+"It is not what you make, but what you save, that counts. It isn't
+the big cracksman who gets along. It is the unknown dip who saves his
+earnings."
+
+"To go to Germany to learn the language is as bad as being in stir for
+ten years."
+
+"Jump out and be a man and don't join the Salvation Army."
+
+"Always say to the dip who says he wants to square it; Well, what's
+your other graft?"
+
+"When a con gets home he is apt to find his sweetheart married, and a
+'Madonna of the wash tubs.'"
+
+"He made good money and was a swell grafter, but he got stuck on a
+Tommy that absorbed his attention, and then he lost his punctuality and
+went down and out."
+
+"Do a criminal a bodily injury and he may forget. Wound his feelings
+and he will never forgive."
+
+"Most persons have seen a cow or a bull with a board put around its
+head in such a way that the animal can see nothing. It is a mode of
+punishment. Soon the poor beast will go mad, if the board is not
+removed. What chance has the convict, confined in a dark cell for
+years, to keep his senses? He suffers from astigmatism of the mind."
+
+"I am as much entitled to an opinion as any other quack on the face of
+the earth."
+
+"General Grant is one of my heroes. He was a boy at fifteen. He was
+a boy when he died. A boy is loyalty personified. General Grant had
+been given a task to do, and like a boy, he did it. He was one of our
+greatest men, and belongs with Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Robert
+Ingersoll."
+
+"Why don't we like the books we liked when we were boys? It is not
+because our judgment is better, but because we have a dream of our own
+now, and want authors to dream along the same lines."
+
+"The only gun with principles is the minor grafter."
+
+"The weakest man in the universe is he who falls from a good position
+and respectable society into the world of graft. Forgers and defaulters
+are generally of this class. A professional gun, who has been a thief
+all his life, is entitled to more respect."
+
+"In writing a book on crime, one ought to have in mind to give the
+public a truthful account of a thief's life, his crimes, habits,
+thoughts, emotions, vices and virtues, and how he lives in prison and
+out. I believe this ought to be done, and the man who does it well must
+season his writings with pathos, humor, sarcasm, tragedy, and thus give
+the real life of the grafter."
+
+"Sympathy with a grafter who is trying to square it is a tonic to his
+better self."
+
+"The other day I was with a reporter and a society lady who were
+seeing the town. The lady asked me how I would get her diamond pin.
+It was fastened in such a way that to get it, strong arm work would be
+necessary. I explained how I would "put the mug on her" while my husky
+pal went through her. 'But,' she said, 'that would hurt me.' As if the
+grafters cared! What a selfish lady to be always thinking of herself!"
+
+"Life is the basis of philosophy. Philosophy is an emanation from our
+daily routine. After a convict has paced his cell a few thousand times
+he sometimes has an idea. Philosophy results from life put through a
+mental process, just as opium, when subjected to a chemical experiment,
+produces laudanum. Why, therefore, is not life far stronger than a
+narcotic?"
+
+"I believe in platonic love, for it has been in my own life. A woman
+always wants love, whether she is eighteen or eighty--real love. Many
+is the time I have seen the wistful look in some woman's eye when she
+saw that it was only good fellowship or desire on my part."
+
+"In this age of commerce there is only one true friendship, the kind
+that comes through business."
+
+"An old adage has it that all things come to him who waits. Yes:
+poverty, old age and death. The successful man is he who goes and gets
+it."
+
+"If thy brother assaults you, do not weep, nor pray for him, nor turn
+the other cheek, but assail him with the full strength of your muscles,
+for man at his best is not lovable, nor at his worst, detestable."
+
+"There is more to be got in Germany, judging from what Dutch Lonzo
+used to say, than in England or America, only the Dutchmen are too
+thick-headed to find it out. A first class gun in Germany would be
+ranked as a ninth-rater here."
+
+"Grafters are like the rest of the world in this: they always attribute
+bad motives to a kind act."
+
+"From flim-flam (returning short change) to burglary is but a step,
+provided one has the nerve."
+
+"Why would a woman take to him (a sober, respectable man but lacking in
+temperament) unless she wanted a good home?"
+
+"If there is anything detestable, it is a grafter who will steal an
+overcoat in the winter time."
+
+"'Look for the woman.' A fly-cop gets many a tip from some tid-bit in
+whom a grafter has reposed confidence."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did not do, as I have said, any more grafting than was necessary
+during these seven months of liberty; but I observed continually,
+living in an opium dream, and my pals were more and more amusing to me.
+When I thought about myself and my superior intelligence, I was sad,
+but I thought about myself as little as possible. I preferred to let
+my thoughts dwell on others, who I saw were a a fine line of cranks and
+rogues.
+
+Somewhere in the eighties, before I went to stir, there was a synagogue
+at what is now 101 Hester Street. The synagogue was on the first floor,
+and on the ground floor was a gin-mill, run by an ex-Central Office
+man. Many pickpockets used to hang out there, and they wanted to drive
+the Jews out of the first floor, so that they could lay out a faro game
+there. So they swore and carried on most horribly on Saturdays, when
+the rabbi was preaching, and finally got possession of the premises.
+Only a block away from this old building was a famous place for dips
+to get "books", in the old days. Near by was Ridley's dry-goods store,
+in which there were some cash-girls who used to tip us off to who had
+the books, and were up to the graft themselves. They would yell "cash"
+and bump up against the sucker, while we went through him. The Jews
+were few in those days, and the Irish were in the majority. On the
+corner of Allen and Hester Streets stood the saloon of a well-known
+politician. Now a Jew has a shop there. Who would think that an Isaacs
+would supersede a Finnigan?
+
+At the gin-mill on Hester Street, I used to know a boy dip named Buck.
+When I got back from my second bit I found he had developed into a
+box-man, and had a peculiar disposition, which exists outside, as well
+as inside, Graftdom. He had one thousand eight hundred dollars in the
+bank, and a fine red front (gold watch and chain), but he was not a
+good fellow. He used to invite three or four guns to have a drink, and
+would order Hennessy's brandy, which cost twenty cents a glass. After
+we had had our drinks he would search himself and only find perhaps
+twenty cents in his clothes. He got into me several times before I
+"blew". One time, after he had ordered drinks, he began the old game,
+said he thought he had eighteen dollars with him, and must have been
+touched. Then he took out his gold watch and chain and threw it on the
+bar. But who would take it? I went down, of course, and paid for the
+drinks. When we went out together, he grinned, and said to me: "I pity
+you. You will never have a bank account, my boy."
+
+The next time Buck threw down his watch and said he would pay in the
+morning, I thought it was dirt, for I knew he had fifty dollars on him.
+So I said to the bartender: "Take it and hock it, and get what he owes
+you. This chump has been working it all up and down the line. I won't
+be touched by the d---- grafter any more."
+
+Buck was ready witted and turning to the bartender, said: "My friend
+here is learning how to play poker and has just lost eighteen dollars.
+He is a dead sore loser and is rattled."
+
+We went out with the watch, without paying for our drinks, and he said
+to me: "Jim, I don't believe in paying a gin-mill keeper. If the powers
+that be were for the people instead of for themselves they would have
+such drinkables free on every corner in old New York." The next time
+Buck asked me to have a drink I told him to go to a warm place in
+the next world. Buck was good to his family. He was married and had a
+couple of brats.
+
+Many a man educates himself in stir, as was my case. Jimmy, whom I ran
+up against one day on the street, is a good example. He had squared
+it and is still on the level. When I saw him, after my second bit, he
+was making forty dollars a week as an electrical engineer; and every
+bit of the necessary education he got in prison. At one time he was
+an unusually desperate grafter; and entirely ignorant of everything,
+except the technique of theft. Many years ago he robbed a jewelry
+store and was sent to Blackwell's Island for two years. The night of
+the day he was released he burglarized the same store and assaulted
+the proprietor. He was arrested with the goods on him and brought to
+General Sessions before Recorder Smythe, who had sentenced him before.
+He got ten years at Sing Sing and Auburn, and for a while he was one of
+the most dangerous and desperate of convicts, and made several attempts
+to escape. But one day a book on electricity fell into his hands, and
+from that time on he was a hard student. When he was released from stir
+he got a job in a large electrical plant up the State, and worked for
+a while, when he was tipped off by a country grafter who had known him
+in stir. He lost his job, and went to New York, where he met me, who
+was home after my first term. I gave him the welcome hand, and, after
+he had told me his story, I said: "Well, there is plenty of money in
+town. Jump out with us." He grafted with me and my mob for a while,
+but got stuck on a Tommy, so that we could not depend on him to keep
+his appointments, and we dropped him. After that he did some strong arm
+work with a couple of gorillas and fell again for five years. When he
+returned from stir he got his present position as electrical engineer.
+He had it when I met him after my second bit and he has it to-day. I am
+sure he is on the level and will be so as long as he holds his job.
+
+About this time I was introduced to a peculiar character in the shape
+of a few yards of calico. It was at Carey's place on Bleecker Street
+that I first saw this good-looking youth of nineteen, dressed in the
+latest fashion. His graft was to masquerade as a young girl, and for
+a long time Short-Haired Liz, as we called him, was very successful.
+He sought employment as maid in well-to-do families and then made away
+with the valuables. One day he was nailed, with twenty charges against
+him. He was convicted on the testimony of a chamber-maid, with whom,
+in his character of lady's maid, he had had a lark. Mr. R----, who was
+still influential, did his best for him, for his fall-money was big,
+and he only got a light sentence.
+
+I heard one day that an old pal of mine, Dannie, had just been hanged.
+It gave me a shock, for I had often grafted with him when we were kids.
+As there were no orchards on the streets of the east side, Dannie and I
+used to go to the improvised gardens that lined the side-walks outside
+of the green grocers' shops, and make away with strawberries, apples,
+and other fruits. By nature I suppose boys are no more bothered with
+consciences than are police officials. Dannie rose rapidly in the world
+of graft and became very dangerous to society. As a grafter he had one
+great fault. He had a very quick temper. He was sensitive, and lacking
+in self-control, but he was one of the cleverest guns that ever came
+from the Sixth Ward, a place noted for good grafters of both sexes. He
+married a respectable girl and had a nice home, for he had enough money
+to keep the police from bothering him. If it had not been for his bad
+temper, he might be grafting yet. He would shoot at a moment's notice,
+and the toughest of the hard element were afraid of him. One time he
+had it in for an old pal of his named Paddy. For a while Paddy kept
+away from the saloon on Pell Street where Dannie hung out, but Paddy,
+too, had nerve, and one day he turned up at his old resort, the Drum,
+as it was called. He saw Dannie and fired a cannister at him. Dannie
+hovered between life and death for months, and had four operations
+performed on him without anæsthetics. After he got well Dannie grafted
+on the Albany boats. One night he and his pals tried to get a Moll's
+leather, but some Western guns who were on the boat were looking for
+provender themselves and nicked the Moll. Dannie accused them of taking
+his property, and, as they would not give up, pulled his pistol. One
+of the Western guns jumped overboard, and the others gave up the stuff.
+Dannie was right, for that boat belonged to him and his mob.
+
+A few months after that event Dannie shot a mug, who had called him
+a rat, and went to San Antonio, Texas, where he secured a position
+as bartender. One day a well-known gambler who had the reputation
+of being a ten time killer began to shoot around in the saloon for
+fun. Dannie joined in the game, shot the gambler twice, and beat the
+latter's two pals into insensibility. A few months afterwards he came
+to New York with twenty-seven hundred dollars in his pocket; and he
+enjoyed himself, for it is only the New York City born who love the
+town. But he had better have stayed away, for in New York he met his
+mortal enemy, Splitty, who had more brains than Dannie, and was running
+a "short while house" in the famous gas house block in Hester Street.
+One night Dannie was on a drunk, spending his twenty-seven hundred
+dollars, and riding around in a carriage with two girls. Beeze, one of
+the Molls, proposed to go around to Splitty's. They went, and Beeze and
+the other girl were admitted, but Dannie was shut out. He fired three
+shots through the door. One took effect in Beeze's breast fatally, and
+Dannie was arrested.
+
+While in Tombs waiting trial he was well treated by the warden, who
+was leader of the Sixth Ward, and who used to permit Dannie's wife
+to visit him every night. At the same time Dannie became the victim
+of one of the worst cases of treachery I ever heard of. An old pal of
+his, George, released from Sing Sing, went to visit him in the Tombs.
+Dannie advised George not to graft again until he got his health back,
+suggesting that meanwhile he eat his meals at his (Dannie's) mother's
+house. The old lady had saved up about two hundred and fifty dollars,
+which she intended to use to secure a new trial for her son. George
+heard of the money and put up a scheme to get it. He told the old woman
+that Dannie was going to escape from the Tombs that night and that he
+had sent word to his mother to give him (George) the money. The villain
+then took the money and skipped the city, thus completing the dirtiest
+piece of work I ever heard of. "Good Heavens!" said Dannie, when he
+heard of it. "A study in black!" Dannie, poor fellow, was convicted,
+and, after a few months, hanged.
+
+Another tragedy in Manhattan was the end of Johnny T----. I had been
+out only a short time after my second bit, when I met him on the
+Bowery. He was just back, too, and complained that all his old pals
+had lost their nerve. Whenever he made a proposition they seemed to
+see twenty years staring them in the face. So he had to work alone. His
+graft was burglary, outside of New York. He lived in the city, and the
+police gave him protection for outside work. He was married and had two
+fine boys. One day a copper, contrary to the agreement, tried to arrest
+him for a touch made in Mt. Vernon. Johnny was indignant, and wouldn't
+stand for a collar under the circumstances. He put four shots into the
+flyman's body. He was taken to the station-house, and afterwards tried
+for murder. The boys collected a lot of money and tried to save him,
+but he had the whole police force against him and in a few months he
+was hanged.
+
+A friend of mine, L----, had a similar fate. He was a prime favorite
+with the lasses of easy virtue, and was liked by the guns. One night
+when I met him in a joint where grafters hung out, he displayed a split
+lip, given him by the biggest bully in the ward. It was all about a
+girl named Mollie whom the bully was stuck on and on whose account he
+was jealous of L----, whom all the women ran after. A few nights later,
+L---- met the bully who had beaten him and said he had a present for
+him. "Is it something good?" asked the gorilla. "Yes," said L----, and
+shot him dead. L---- tried to escape, but was caught in Pittsburg, and
+extradited to New York, where he was convicted partly on the testimony
+of the girl, whom I used to call Unlimited Mollie. She was lucky, for
+instead of drifting to the Bowery, she married a policeman, who was
+promoted. L---- was sentenced to be hanged, but he died game.
+
+I think kleptomania is not a very common kind of insanity, at least
+in my experience. Most grafters steal for professional reasons, but
+Big Sammy was surely a kleptomaniac. He had no reason to graft, for
+he was well up in the world. When I first met he was standard bearer
+at a ball given in his honor, and had a club named after him. He had
+been gin-mill keeper, hotel proprietor, and theatrical manager, and had
+saved money. He had, too, a real romance in his life, for he loved one
+of the best choir singers in the city. She was beautiful and loved him,
+and they were married. She did not know that Sammy was a gun; indeed,
+he was not a gun, really, for he only used to graft for excitement, or
+at least, what business there was in it was only a side issue. After
+their honeymoon Sammy started a hotel at a sea-side resort, where
+the better class of guns, gamblers and vaudeville artists spent their
+vacation. That fall he went on a tour with his wife who sang in many of
+the churches in the State. Sammy was a good box-man. He never used puff
+(nitro-glycerine), but with a few tools opened the safes artistically.
+His pal Mike went ahead of the touring couple, and when Sammy arrived
+at a town he was tipped off to where the goods lay. When he heard that
+the police were putting it on to the hoboes, he thought it was a good
+joke and kept it up. He wanted the police to gather in all the black
+sheep they could, for he was sorry they were so incompetent.
+
+The loving couple returned to New York, and were happy for a long
+time. But finally the wife fell ill, and under-went an operation, from
+the effects of which she never recovered. She became despondent and
+jealous of Sammy, though he was one of the best husbands I have known.
+One morning he had an engagement to meet an old pal who was coming
+home from stir. He was late, and starting off in a hurry, neglected
+to kiss his wife good-bye. She called after him that he had forgotten
+something. Sammy, feeling for his money and cannister, shouted back
+that everything was all right, and rushed off. His wife must have been
+in an unusually gloomy state of mind, for she took poison, and when
+Sammy returned, she was dead. It drove Sammy almost insane, for he
+loved her always. A few days afterwards he jumped out for excitement
+and forgetfulness and was so reckless when he tried to make a touch
+that he was shot almost to pieces. He recovered, however, and was
+sent to prison for a long term of years. He is out again, and is
+now regularly on the turf. During his bit in stir all his legitimate
+enterprizes went wrong, and when he was released, there was nothing for
+it but to become a professional grafter.
+
+During the seven months which elapsed between the end of my second, and
+the beginning of my third term, I was not a very energetic grafter, as
+I have said. Graft was good at the time and a man with the least bit
+of nerve could make out fairly well. My nerve had not deserted me, but
+somehow I was less ambitious. Philosophy and opium and bad health do
+not incline a man to a hustling life. The excitement of stealing had
+left me, and now it was merely business. I therefore did a great deal
+of swindling, which does not stir the imagination, but can be done more
+easily than other forms of graft. I was known at headquarters as a dip,
+and so I was not likely to be suspected for occasional swindling, just
+as I had been able to do house-work now and then without a fall.
+
+I did some profitable swindling at this time, with an Italian named
+Velica for a pal. It was a kind of graft which brought quick returns
+without much of an outlay. For several weeks we fleeced Velica's
+country men brown. I impersonated a contractor and Velica was my
+foreman. We put advertisements in the newspapers for men to work on the
+railroads or for labor on new buildings. We hired desk room in a cheap
+office, where we awaited our suckers, who came in droves, though only
+one could see us at a time. Our tools for this graft were pen, paper,
+and ink; and one new shovel and pick-axe. Velica did the talking and I
+took down the man's name and address. Velica told his countryman that
+we could not afford to run the risk of disappointing the railroad,
+so that he would have to leave a deposit as a guarantee that he would
+turn up in the morning. If he left a deposit of a few dollars we put
+his name on the new pick and shovel, which we told him he could come
+for in the morning. If we induced many to give us deposits, using the
+same pick and shovel as a bribe, we made a lot of money during the
+day. The next morning we would change our office and vary our form of
+advertisement.
+
+Sometimes we met our victims at saloons. Velica would be talking to
+some Italian immigrant who had money, when I would turn up and be
+introduced. Treating all around and flashing a roll of bills I could
+soon win the sucker's respect and confidence, and make him ante up on
+any old con. One day in a saloon in Newark we got an Italian guy for
+one hundred and fifty dollars. Before he left the place, however, he
+suspected something. We had promised him the position of foreman of
+a gang of laborers, and after we got his dough we could not let well
+enough alone, and offered to give his wife the privilege of feeding
+the sixty Italians of whom he was to be the foreman. I suppose the dago
+thought that we were too good, for he blew and pulled his gun. I caught
+him around the waist, and the bartender, who was with us, struck him
+over the head with a bottle of beer. The dago dropped the smoke-wagon
+and the bartender threatened to put him in prison for pulling a rod on
+respectable people. The dago left the saloon and never saw his money
+again.
+
+About this time, too, I had an opportunity to go into still another
+lucrative kind of swindling, but didn't. It was not conscience either
+that prevented me from swindling the fair sex, for in those days all
+touches,--except those made by others off myself--seemed legitimate.
+I did not go in for it because, at the time it was proposed to me,
+I had enough money for my needs, and as I have said, I was lazy. It
+was a good graft, however, and I was a fool for not ringing in on it.
+The scheme was to hire a floor in a private house situated in any
+good neighborhood. One of the mob had to know German, and then an
+advertisement would be inserted in the _Herald_ to the effect that
+a young German doctor who had just come from the old country wanted
+to meet a German lady of some means with a view to matrimony. A pal
+of mine who put such an advertisement in a Chicago paper received no
+less than one hundred and forty five answers from women ranging in age
+from fifteen to fifty. The grafters would read the letters and decide
+as to which ladies they thought had some money. When these arrived at
+the office, in answer to the grafters' letters, they would meet two or
+three men, impersonating the doctor and his friends, who had the gift
+of "con" to a remarkable degree. The doctor would suggest that if the
+lady would advance sufficient money to start him in business in the
+West it would be well. If he found she had plenty of money he married
+her immediately, one of his pals acting the clergyman. She then drew
+all her money from the bank, and they went to a hotel. There the doctor
+leaving her in their room, would go to see about the tickets for the
+West, and never return. The ladies always jumped at these offers, for
+all German women want to marry doctors or clergymen; and all women are
+soft, even if they are so apt to be natural pilferers themselves.
+
+When I was hard up, and if there was no good confidence game in sight,
+I didn't mind taking heavy chances in straight grafting; for I lived
+in a dream, and through opium, was not only lazy, but reckless. On one
+occasion a Jew fence had put up a plan to get a big touch, and picked
+me out to do the desperate part of the job. The fence was an expert in
+jewels and worked for one of the biggest firms that dealt in precious
+stones. He kept an eye on all such stores, watching for an opening
+to put his friends the grafters "next." To the place in question he
+was tipped off by a couple of penny weighters, who claimed it was a
+snap. He agreed with them, but kept his opinion to himself, and came
+to see me about it. I and two other grafters watched the place for a
+week. One day the two clerks went out together for lunch, leaving the
+proprietor alone in the store. This was the opportunity. I stationed
+one of my pals at the window outside and the other up the street to
+watch. If I had much trouble with "the mark" the pal at the window was
+to come to my assistance. With red pepper (to throw, if necessary, in
+the sucker's eyes) and a good black jack I was to go into the store and
+buy a baby's ring for one dollar. While waiting for my change, I was
+to price a piece of costly jewelry, and while talking about the merits
+of the diamond, hit my man on the head with the black jack. Then all I
+had to do was to go behind the counter and take the entire contents of
+the window--only a minute's work, for all the costly jewels were lying
+on an embroidered piece of velvet, and I had only to pick up the four
+corners of the velvet, bundle it into a green bag, and jump into the
+cab which was waiting for us a block away. Well, I had just about got
+the proprietor in a position to deal him the blow when the man at the
+window weakened, and came in and said, "Vix." I thought there was a
+copper outside, or that one of the clerks was returning, and told the
+jeweler I would send my wife for the ring. I went out and asked my pal
+what was the matter. He said he was afraid I would kill the old fellow,
+and that the come-back would be too strong. My other pal I found a
+block away. We all went back together to the fence, and then I opened
+on them, I tell you. I called them petty larceny barnacles, and came
+near clubbing them, I was so indignant. I have often had occasion to
+notice that most thieves who will steal a diamond or a "front" weaken
+when it comes to a large touch, even though there may be no more danger
+in it than in the smaller enterprises. I gave those two men a wide
+berth after that, and whenever I met them I sneered; for I could not
+get over being sore. The "touch" was a beauty, with very little chance
+of a come-back, for the police don't look among the pickpockets for
+the men who make this kind of touches, and I and my two companions were
+known to the coppers as dips.
+
+Just before I fell for my third and most terrible term, I met Lottie,
+and thought of marrying. I did not love her, but liked her pretty
+well, and I was beginning to feel that I ought to settle down and
+have a decent woman to look after me, for my health was bad and I had
+little ambition. Lottie seemed the right girl for the place. She was
+of German extraction, and used to shave me sometimes at her father's
+barber shop, where I first met her. She seemed to me a good, honest
+girl, and I thought I could not do better, especially as she was very
+fond of me. Women like the spruce dips, as I have said before, and even
+when my graft had broadened, I always retained the dress, manners and
+reputation of a pickpocket. Lottie promised to marry me, and said that
+she could raise a few hundred dollars from her father, with which I
+might start another barber shop, quit grafting, and settle down to my
+books, my hop and domestic life. One day she gave me a pin that cost
+nine dollars, she said, and she wouldn't let me make her a present. All
+in all, she seemed like a sensible girl, and I was getting interested
+in the marriage idea. One day, however, I discovered something. I
+was playing poker in the office of a hotel kept by a friend of mine,
+when a man and woman came down stairs together and passed through the
+office. They were my little German girl and the owner of a pawn-shop,
+a Sheenie of advanced years. Suddenly I realized where she had got the
+pin she gave me; and I began to believe stories I had heard about her.
+I thought I would test her character myself. I did, and found it weak.
+I did not marry her! What an escape! Every man, even a self-respecting
+gun, wants an honest woman, if it comes to hitching up for good.
+
+Soon after I escaped Lottie, I got my third fall for the stir. The
+other times that I had been convicted, I was guilty, but on this
+occasion I was entirely innocent. Often a man who has done time and is
+well-known to the police is rounded up on suspicion and convicted when
+he is innocent, and I fell a victim to this easy way of the officials
+for covering up their failure to find the right person. I had gone one
+night to an opium joint near Lovers Row, a section of Henry Street
+between Catherine and Oliver Streets, where some guns of both sexes
+were to have a social meeting. We smoked hop and drank heavily and told
+stories of our latest touches. While we were thus engaged I began to
+have severe pains in my chest, which had been bothering me occasionally
+for some time, and suddenly I had a hemorrhage. When I was able I left
+the joint to see a doctor, who stopped the flow of blood, but told
+me I would not live a month if I did not take good care of myself.
+I got aboard a car, went soberly home to my furnished room, and--was
+arrested.
+
+I knew I had not committed any crime this time and thought I should
+of course be released in the morning. Instead however of being taken
+directly to the station house, I was conducted to a saloon, and
+confronted with the "sucker". I had never seen him before, but he
+identified me, just the same, as the man who had picked his pocket.
+I asked him how long ago he had missed his valuables, and when he
+answered, "Three hours," I drew a long sigh of relief, for I was at
+the joint at that time, and thought I could prove an alibi. But though
+the rapper seemed to weaken, the copper was less trustful and read
+the riot act to him. I was so indignant I began to call the policeman
+down vigorously. I told him he had better try to make a reputation on
+me some other time, when I was really guilty, whereupon he lost his
+temper, and jabbed me in the chest with his club, which brought on
+another flow of blood from my lungs.
+
+In this plight I was taken to the station house, still confident I
+should soon be set at liberty, although I had only about eighty dollars
+for fall-money. I hardly thought I needed it, but I used it just the
+same, to make sure, and employed a lawyer. For a while things looked
+favorable to me, for I was remanded back from court every morning for
+eight days, on account of lack of evidence, which is almost equivalent
+to a turn-out in a larceny case. Even the copper began to pig it
+(weaken), probably thinking he might as well get a share of my "dough,"
+since it began to look as if I should beat the case. But on the ninth
+day luck turned against me. The Chief of detectives "identified" me as
+another man, whispering a few words to the justice, and I was committed
+under two thousand dollars bail to stand trial in General Sessions. I
+was sent to the Tombs to await trial, and I knew at last that I was
+lost. My character alone would convict me; and my lawyer had told
+me that I could not prove an alibi on the oaths of the thieves and
+disorderly persons who had been with me in the opium joint.
+
+No matter how confirmed a thief a man may be, I repeat, he hates to be
+convicted for something he has not done. He objects indeed more than
+an honest man would do, for he believes in having the other side play
+fair; whereas the honest man simply thinks a mistake has been made.
+While in the Tombs a murderous idea formed in my mind. I felt that I
+had been horribly wronged, and was hot for revenge. I was desperate,
+too, for I did not think I should live my bit out. Determined to make
+half a dozen angels, including myself, I induced a friend, who came
+to see me in the Tombs, to get me a revolver. I told him I wanted to
+create a panic with a couple of shots, and escape, but in reality I had
+no thought of escape. I was offered a light sentence, if I would plead
+guilty, but I refused. I believed I was going to die anyway, and that
+things did not matter; only I would have as much company as possible on
+the road to the other world. I meant to shoot the copper who had beaten
+me with his club, District Attorney Olcott, the judge, the complainant
+and myself as well, as soon as I should be taken into the court room
+for trial. The pistol however was taken away from me before I entered
+the court: I was convicted and sentenced to five years at Sing Sing.
+
+Much of the time I spent in stir on my third bit I still harbored
+this thought of murder. That was one reason I did not kill myself. The
+determination to do the copper on my release was always in my mind. I
+planned even a more cunning revenge. I imagined many a scheme to get
+him, and gloat over his dire misfortunes. One of my plans was to hunt
+him out on his beat, invite him to drink, and put thirty grains of
+hydrate of chloral in his glass. When he had become unconscious I would
+put a bottle of morphine in his trousers pocket, and then telephone to
+a few newspapers telling them that if they would send reporters to the
+saloon they would have a good story against a dope copper who smoked
+too much. The result would be, I thought, a rap against the copper
+and his disgrace and dismissal from the force would follow. Sometimes
+this seemed to me better than murder; for every copper who is "broke"
+immediately becomes a bum. When my copper should have become a bum I
+imagined myself catching him dead drunk and cutting his hamstrings.
+Certainly I was a fiend when I reflected on my wrongs, real and
+imaginary. At other times I thought I merely killed him outright.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+_In the Mad-House._
+
+
+On the road to Sing Sing again! The public may say I was surely an
+incorrigible and ought to have been shut up anyway for safe keeping,
+but are they right if they say so? During my confinement I often heard
+the prison chaplain preach from the text "Though thou sinnest ninety
+and nine times thy sin shall be forgiven thee."
+
+Probably Christ knew what He meant: His words do not apply to the
+police courts of Manhattan. These do not forgive, but send you up for
+the third term, which, if it is a long one, no man can pass through
+without impairment in body or in brain. It is better to make the
+convict's life as hard as hell for a short term, than to wear out his
+mind and body. People need not wonder why a man, knowing what is before
+him, steals and steals again. The painful experiences of his prison
+life, too often renewed, leave him as water leaves a rubber coat. Few
+men are really impressionable after going through the deadening life in
+stir.
+
+Five months of my third term I spent at Sing Sing, and then, as on my
+first bit, I was drafted to Auburn. At Sing Sing I was classified as
+a second term man. I have already explained that during my first term
+I earned over a year's commutation time; and that that time would have
+been legally forfeited when I was sent up again within nine months for
+my second bit if any one, except a few convicts, had remembered I had
+served before.
+
+When, on my third sentence, I now returned to Sing Sing, I found that
+the authorities were "next," and knew that I had "done" them on the
+second bit. They were sore, because it had been their own carelessness,
+and they were afraid of getting into trouble. To protect themselves
+they classified me as a second term man, but waited for a chance to do
+me. I suppose it was some d---- Dickey Bird (stool-pigeon) who got them
+next that I had done them; but I never heard who it was, though I tried
+to find out long and earnestly.
+
+When I got back to my cell in Sing Sing this third time I was gloomy
+and desperate to an unusual degree, still eaten up with my desire
+for vengeance on those who had sent me to stir for a crime I had not
+committed. My health was so bad that my friends told me I would never
+live my bit out, and advised me to get to Clinton prison, if possible,
+away from the damp cells at Sing Sing. But I took no interest in what
+they said, for I did not care whether I lived or died. I expected to
+die very soon, and in the meantime thought I was well enough where I
+was. I did not fear death, and I had my hop every day. All I wanted
+from the keepers was to be let alone in my cell and not annoyed with
+work. The authorities had an inkling that I was in a desperate state of
+mind, and probably believed it was healthier for them to let me alone
+a good deal of the time.
+
+Before long schemes began to form in my head to make my gets (escape).
+I knew I wouldn't stop at murder, if necessary in order to spring; for,
+as I have said, I cared not whether I lived or died. On the whole,
+however, I rather preferred to become an angel at the beginning of
+my bit than at the end. I kept my schemes for escape to myself, for I
+was afraid of a leak, but the authorities must somehow have suspected
+something, for they kept me in my cell twenty-three hours out of the
+twenty-four. Perhaps it was just because they had it in for me for
+beating them on my second bit. As before, I consoled myself, while
+waiting a chance to escape, with some of my favorite authors; but my
+eye-sight was getting bad and I could not read as much as I used to.
+
+It was during these five months at Sing Sing that I first met Dr.
+Myers, of whom I saw much a year or two later in the mad-house. At Sing
+Sing he had some privileges, and used to work in the hall, where it was
+easy for me to talk to him through my cell door. This remarkable man,
+had been a splendid physician in Chicago. He had beaten some insurance
+companies out of one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, but was
+in Sing Sing because he had been wrongfully convicted on a charge of
+murder. He liked me, especially when later we were in the insane asylum
+together, because I would not stand for the abuse given to the poor
+lunatics, and would do no stool-pigeon or other dirty work for the
+keepers. He used to tell me that I was too bright a man to do any work
+with my hands. "Jim," he said once, "I would rather see you marry my
+daughter than give her to an ignorant business man. I know you would
+treat her kindly and that she would learn something of the world. As
+my wife often said, I would rather die at thirty-eight after seeing the
+world and enjoying life than live in a humdrum way till ninety."
+
+He explained the insurance graft to me, and I still think it the surest
+and most lucrative of all grafts. For a man with intelligence it is
+the very best kind of crooked work. About the only way the insurance
+companies can get back at the thieves is through a squeal. Here are a
+few of the schemes he told me for this graft:
+
+A man and his female pal take a small house in town or on the outskirts
+of a large city. The man insures his life for five thousand dollars.
+After they have lived there a while, and passed perhaps as music
+teachers, they take the next step, which is to get a dead body. Nothing
+is easier. The man goes to any large hospital, represents himself as a
+doctor and for twenty-five dollars can generally get a stiff, which he
+takes away in a barrel or trunk. He goes to a furnished room, already
+secured, and there dresses the cadaver in his own clothes, putting his
+watch, letters and money in the cadavers pockets. In the evening he
+takes the body to some river or stream and throws it in. He knows from
+the newspapers when the body has been found, and notifies his woman
+pal, who identifies it as her husband's body. There are only two snags
+that one must guard against in this plot. The cadaver must not differ
+much in height from the person that has been insured; and its lungs
+must not show that they were those of anybody dead before thrown into
+the water. The way to prepare against this danger is to inject some
+water with a small medical pump into the lungs of the stiff before it
+is thrown overboard. Then it is easy for the "widow" to get the money,
+and meet the alleged dead man in another country.
+
+A more complicated method, in which more money is involved, is as
+follows. The grafter hires an office and represents himself as an
+artist, a bric-à-brac dealer, a promoter or an architect. Then he jumps
+to another city and takes out a policy under the tontien or endowment
+plan. When the game is for a very large amount three or four pals are
+necessary. If no one of the grafters is a doctor, a physician must
+be impersonated, but this is easy. If there are, say, ten thousand
+physicians in Manhattan, not many of whom have an income of ten
+thousand a year, it is perhaps not difficult to get a diploma. After
+a sheepskin is secured, the grafter goes to another State, avoiding,
+unless he is a genuine physician, New York and Illinois, for they have
+boards of regents. The acting quack registers so that he can practice
+medicine and hangs out his shingle. The acting business man takes out a
+policy, and pays the first premium. Before the first premium is paid he
+is dead, for all the insurance company knows. Often a live substitute,
+instead of a dead one, is secured. The grafter goes to the charity
+hospital and looks over the wrecks waiting to die. Some of these poor
+dying devils jump at the chance to go West. It is necessary, of course,
+to make sure that the patient will soon become an angel, or everything
+will fall through. Then the grafter takes the sick man to his house and
+keeps him out of sight. When he is about to die he calls in the grafter
+who is posing as a physician. After the death of the substitute the
+doctor signs the death certificate, the undertaker prepares the body,
+which is buried. The woman grafter is at the funeral, and afterwards
+she sends in her claim to the companies. On one occasion in Dr. Myers's
+experience, he told me, the alleged insured man was found later with
+his head blown off, but when the wife identified the body, the claim
+had been paid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon, after I had been at Sing Sing five months, I was
+taken from my cell, shackled hand and foot, and sent, with fifty
+other convicts, to Auburn. When I had been at Auburn prison about six
+months I grew again exceedingly desperate, and made several wild and
+ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I would take no back talk from the
+keepers, and began to be feared by them. One day I had a fight with
+another convict. He struck me with an iron weapon, and I sent him to
+the hospital with knife thrusts through several parts of his body.
+Although I had been a thief all my life, and had done some strong arm
+work, by nature I was not quarrelsome, and I have never been so quick
+to fight as on my third term. I was locked up in the dungeon for a week
+and fed on bread and water in small quantities. After my release I was
+confined to my cell for several days, and used to quarrel with whoever
+came near me. The keepers began to regard me as a desperate character,
+who would cause them a great deal of trouble; and feared that I might
+escape or commit murder at any time. One day, I remember, a keeper
+threatened to club me with a heavy stick he had. I laughed at him and
+told him to make a good job of it, for I had some years still to serve,
+and if he did not kill me outright, I would have plenty of time to get
+back at him. The cur pigged it (weakened). They really wanted to get
+rid of me, however, and one morning the opportunity came.
+
+I was feeling especially bad that morning and went to see the doctor,
+who told me I had consumption, and transferred me to the consumptive
+ward in the prison. There the doctor and four screws came to my
+bedside, and the doctor inserted a hyperdermic needle into my arm. When
+I awoke I found myself in the isolated dungeon, nicknamed the Keeley
+Cure by the convicts, where I was confined again for several weeks, and
+had a hyperdermic injection every day. At the end of that time I was
+taken before the doctors, who pronounced me insane. With three other
+convicts who were said to be "pipes" (insane) I was shackled hand and
+foot, put on a train and taken to the asylum for the criminal insane
+at Matteawan. I had been in bad places before, but at Matteawan I first
+learned what it is to be in Hell.
+
+Why was I put in the Pipe House? Was I insane?
+
+In one way I have been insane all my life, until recently. There is a
+disease called astigmatism of the conscience, and I have been sorely
+afflicted with that. I have always had the delusion, until the last
+few months, that it is well to "do" others. In that way I certainly was
+"pipes." And in another way, too, I was insane. After a man has served
+many years in stir and has contracted all the vices, he is not normal,
+even if he is not violently insane. His brain loses its equilibrium,
+no matter how strong-minded he may be, and he acquires astigmatism of
+the mind, as well as of the conscience. The more astigmatic he becomes,
+the more frequently he returns to stir, where his disease grows worse,
+until he is prison-mad.
+
+To the best of my knowledge and belief I was not insane in any definite
+way--no more so than are nine out of ten of the men who had served
+as much time in prison as I. I suppose I was not sent to the criminal
+insane asylum because of a perverted conscience. The stir, I believe,
+is supposed to cure that. Why did they send me to the mad-house? I
+don't know, any more than my reader, unless it was because I caused
+the keepers and doctors too much trouble, or because for some reason or
+other they wanted to do me.
+
+But whether I had a delusion or not--and I am convinced myself that
+I have always been right above the ears--there certainly are many
+perfectly sane men confined in our state asylums for the criminal
+insane. Indeed, if all the fake lunatics were sent back to prison, it
+would save the state the expense of building so many hospitals. But I
+suppose the politicians who want patronage to distribute would object.
+
+Many men in prison fake insanity, as I have already explained. Many
+of them desire to be sent to Matteawan or Dannemora insane asylums,
+thinking they will not need to work there, will have better food and
+can more easily escape. They imagine that there are no stool-pigeons in
+the pipe-house, and that they can therefore easily make their elegant
+(escape). When they get to the mad-house they find themselves sadly
+mistaken. They find many sane stool-pigeons there, and their plans for
+escape are piped off as well there as in stir. And in other ways, as
+I shall explain, they are disappointed. The reason the "cons" don't
+get on to the situation in the mad-house through friends who have been
+there is that they think those who have been in the insane asylum are
+really pipes. When I got out of the mad-house and told my friends about
+it, they were apt to remark, laconically, "He's in a terrible state."
+When they get there themselves, God help them. I will narrate what
+happened to me, and some of the horrible things I saw there.
+
+After my pedigree was taken I was given the regulation clothes, which,
+in the mad-house, consist of a blue coat, a pair of grey trousers, a
+calico shirt, socks and a pair of slippers. I was then taken to the
+worst violent ward in the institution, where I had a good chance to
+observe the real and the fake lunatics. No man or woman, not even an
+habitual criminal, can conceive, unless he has been there himself,
+what our state asylums are. My very first experience was a jar. A big
+lunatic, six feet high and a giant in physique, came up to me in the
+ward, and said: "I'll kick your head off, you ijit (idiot). What the
+---- did you come here for? Why didn't you stop off at Buffalo?" I
+thought that if all the loons were the size of this one I wasn't going
+to have much show in that violent ward; for I weighed only one hundred
+and fifteen pounds at the time. But the big lunatic changed his note,
+smiled and said: "Say, Charley, have you got any marbles?" I said,
+"No," and then, quick as a flash, he exclaimed: "Be Japes, you don't
+look as if you had enough brains to play them."
+
+I had been in this ward, which was under the Head Attendant, nick-named
+"King" Kelly, for two days, when I was taken away to a dark room in
+which a demented, scrofulous negro had been kept. For me not even
+a change of bed-clothing was made. In rooms on each side of me were
+epileptics and I could hear, especially when I was in the ward, raving
+maniacs shouting all about me. I was taken back to the first ward,
+where I stayed for some time. I began to think that prison was heaven
+in comparison with the pipe house. The food was poor, we were not
+supposed to do any work, and we were allowed only an hour in the yard.
+We stayed in our ward from half past five in the morning until six
+o'clock at night, when we went to bed. It was then I suffered most,
+for there was no light and I could not read. In stir I could lie on
+my cot and read, and soothe my nerves. But in the mad-house I was not
+allowed to read, and lay awake continually at night listening to the
+idiots bleating and the maniacs raving about me. The din was horrible,
+and I am convinced that in the course of time even a sane man kept in
+an insane asylum will be mad; those who are a little delusional will go
+violently insane. My three years in an insane asylum convinced me that,
+beyond doubt, a man contracts a mental ailment just as he contracts
+a physical disease on the outside. I believe in mental as well as
+physical contagion, for I have seen man after man, a short time after
+arriving at the hospital, become a raving maniac.
+
+For weeks and months I had a terrible fight with myself to keep my
+sanity. As I had no books to take up my thoughts I got into the habit
+of solving an arithmetical problem every day. If it had not been for
+my persistence in this mental occupation I have no doubt I should have
+gone violently insane.
+
+It is only the sensitive and intelligent man who, when placed in such
+a predicament, really knows what torture is. The cries of the poor
+demented wretches about me were a terrible lesson. They showed me more
+than any other experience I ever passed through the error of a crooked
+life.
+
+I met many a man in the violent ward who had been a friend of mine
+and good fellow on the outside. Now the brains of all of them were
+gone, they had the most horrible and the most grotesque delusions. But
+horrible or grotesque they were always piteous. If I were to point out
+the greatest achievement that man has accomplished to distinguish him
+from the brute, it would be the taking care of the insane. A child is
+so helpless that when alms is asked for his maintenance it is given
+willingly, for every man and woman pities and loves a child. A lunatic
+is as helpless as a child, and often not any more dangerous. The maniac
+is misrepresented, for in Matteawan and Dannemora taken together there
+are very few who are really violent.
+
+And now I come to the most terrible part of my narrative, which many
+people will not believe--and that is the cruelty of the doctors and
+attendants, cruelty practiced upon these poor, deluded wretches.
+
+With my own eyes I saw scores of instances of abuse while I was at
+Matteawan and later at Dannemora. It is, I believe, against the law to
+strike an insane man, but any man who has ever been in these asylums
+knows how habitual the practice is. I have often seen idiots in the
+same ward with myself violently attacked and beaten by several keepers
+at once. Indeed, some of us used to regard a beating as our daily
+medicine. Patients are not supposed to do any work; but those who
+refused to clean up the wards and do other work for the attendants were
+the ones most likely to receive little mercy.
+
+I know how difficult it is for the public to believe that some of their
+institutions are as rotten as those of the Middle Ages; and when a
+man who has been both in prison and in the pipe house is the one who
+makes the accusation, who will believe him? Of course, his testimony
+on the witness stand is worthless. I will merely call attention,
+however, to the fact that the great majority of the insane are so
+only in one way. They have some delusion, but are otherwise capable of
+observation and of telling the truth. I will also add that the editor
+of this book collected an immense number of instances of brutality from
+several men, besides myself, who had spent years there, and that those
+instances also pointed to the situation that I describe. Moreover, I
+can quote the opinion of the writer on criminology--Josiah Flynt--as
+corroborative of my statements. He has said in my presence and in that
+of the editor of this book, Mr. Hapgood, that his researches have led
+him to believe that the situation in our state asylums for the criminal
+insane is horrible in the extreme.
+
+Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be brutal? In the first place,
+there is very little chance of a come-back, for who will believe men
+who have ever been shut up in an insane asylum? And very often these
+attendants themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin with, they are
+men of low intelligence, as is shown by the fact that they will work
+for eighteen dollars a month, and after they have associated with
+insane men for years they are apt to become delusional themselves.
+Taking care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on the intelligence
+of the best men. Is it any wonder that the ordinary attendant often
+becomes nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor idiot who won't
+do dirty work or whose silly noises get on his nerves? I have noticed
+attendants who, after they had been in the asylum a few months,
+acquired certain insane characteristics, such as a jerking of the
+head from one side to the other, looking up at the sky, cursing some
+imaginary person, and walking with the body bent almost double.
+
+Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something that made me realize I
+was up against a hard joint. An attendant in the isolation ward had an
+incurable patient under him, whom he was in the habit of compelling to
+do his work for him, such as caning chairs and cleaning cuspidors. The
+attendants had two birds in his room, and he used to make Mickey, the
+incurable idiot, clean out the cage for him. One day Mickey put the
+cages under the boiling water, to clean them as usual. The attendant
+had forgot to remove the birds, and they were killed by the hot water.
+Another crank, who was in the bath room with Mickey, spied the dead
+pets, and he and Mickey began to eat them. They were picking the bones
+when the attendant and two others discovered them--and treated them as
+a golfer treats his golf-balls.
+
+Another time I saw an insane epileptic patient try to prevent four
+attendants from playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He was delusional
+on religious subjects and thought the attendants were doing wrong. The
+reward he received for caring for the religious welfare of his keepers
+was a kick in the stomach by one of the attendants, while another hit
+him in the solar plexus, knocking him down, and a third jammed his head
+on the floor until the blood flowed. After he was unconscious a doctor
+gave him a hyperdermic injection and he was put to bed. How often,
+indeed, have I seen men knocked out by strong arm work, or strung up
+to the ceiling with a pair of suspenders! How often have I seen them
+knocked unconscious for a time or for eternity--yes--for eternity, for
+insane men sometimes do die, if they are treated too brutally. In that
+case, the doctor reports the patient as having died of consumption, or
+some other disease. I have seen insane men turned into incurable idiots
+by the beatings they have received from the attendants. I saw an idiot
+boy knocked down with an iron pot because he insisted on chirping out
+his delusion. I heard a patient about to be beaten by four attendants
+cry out: "My God, you won't murder me?" and the answer was, "Why not?
+The Coroner would say you died of dysentery." The attendants tried
+often to force fear into me by making me look at the work they had done
+on some harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances of this kind. I
+could give scores of them, with names of attendants and patients, and
+sometimes even the dates on which these horrors occurred. But I must
+cut short this part of my narrative. Every word of it, as sure as I
+have a poor old mother, is true, but it is too terrible to dwell upon,
+and will probably not be believed. It will be put down as one of my
+delusions, or as a lie inspired by the desire of vengeance.
+
+Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the authorities in the insane
+asylum, for I objected vigorously to the treatment of men really
+insane. It is as dangerous to object to the curriculum of a mad-house
+in the State of New York as it is to find fault with the running of
+the government in Russia. In stir I never saw such brutality as takes
+place almost every day in the pipe house. I reported what I saw, and
+though I was plainly told to mind my own business, I continued to
+object every time I saw a chance, until soon the petty spite of the
+attendants was turned against me. I was reported continually for things
+I had not done, I had no privileges, not even opium or books, and was
+so miserable that I repeatedly tried to be transferred back to prison.
+A doctor once wrote a book called _Ten Years in a Mad-House_, in which
+he says "God help the man who has the attendants against him; for these
+demented brutes will make his life a living hell." Try as I might,
+however, I was not transferred back to stir, partly because of the
+sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry favor with the attendants,
+invented lies about attempts on my part to escape. If I had not had
+such a poor opinion of the powers that be and had stopped finding fault
+I should no doubt have been transferred back to what was beginning to
+seem to me, by contrast, a delightful place--state's prison.
+
+The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe house was paresis. I thought
+a great deal about it, and observed the cranks about me continually. I
+noticed that almost all insane persons are musical, that they can hum a
+tune after hearing it only once. I suppose the meanest faculty in the
+human brain is that of memory, and that idiots, lunatics and madmen
+learn music so easily because that part of the brain which is the
+seat of memory is the only one that is active; the other intellectual
+qualities being dead, so that the memory is untroubled by thought.
+
+I was often saddened at the sight of poor George, who had been a good
+dip and an old pal of mine. When he first saw me in the pipe house he
+asked me about his girl. I told him she was still waiting, and he said:
+"Why doesn't she visit me then?" When I replied: "Wait awhile," he
+smiled sadly, and said: "I know." He then put his finger to his head,
+and, hanging his head, his face suddenly became a blank. I was helpless
+to do anything for him. I was so sorry for him sometimes that I wanted
+to kill him and myself and end our misery.
+
+Another friend of mine thought he had a number of white blackbirds and
+used to talk to them excitedly about gold. This man had a finely shaped
+head. I have read in a book of phrenology that a man's intelligence
+can be estimated by the shape of his head. I don't think this theory
+amounts to anything, for most of the insane men I knew had good heads.
+I have formed a little theory of my own (I am as good a quack as
+anybody else) about insanity. I used to compare a well shaped lunatic's
+head to a lady's beautiful jewel box from which my lady's maid had
+stolen the precious stones. The crank's head contained both quantity
+and quality of brains, but the grey matter was lacking. The jewel box
+and the lunatic's head were both beautiful receptacles, but the value
+had flown.
+
+Another lunatic, a man named Hogan, thought that girls were continually
+bothering him. "Now go away, Liz, and leave me alone," he would
+say. One day a lady about fifty years old visited the hospital with
+Superintendent Allison, and came to the violent ward where Hogan
+and I were. She was not a bit afraid, and went right up to Hogan
+and questioned him. He exclaimed, excitedly, "Go away, Meg. You're
+disfigured enough without my giving you another sockdolager." She
+stayed in the ward a long while and asked many questions. She had as
+much nerve as any lady I ever saw. As she and Allison were leaving
+the ward, Hogan said: "Allison, chain her up. She is a bad egg." The
+next day I learned that this refined, delicate and courageous woman
+had once gone to war with her husband, a German prince, who had been
+with General Sherman on his memorable march to the sea. She was born
+an American, and belonged to the Jay family, but was now the Princess
+Salm-Salm.
+
+The most amusing crank (if the word amusing can be used of an insane
+man) in the ward was an Englishman named Alec. He was incurably insane,
+but a good musician and mathematician. One of his delusions was that
+he was the sacred camel in the London Zoo. His mortal enemy was a
+lunatic named Jimmy White, who thought he was a mule. Jimmy often came
+to me and said: "You didn't give your mule any oats this morning." He
+would not be satisfied until I pretended to shoe him. Alec had great
+resentment for Jimmy because when Alec was a camel in the London
+Zoo Jimmy used to prevent the ladies and the kids from giving him
+sweets. When Jimmy said: "I never saw the man before," Alec replied
+indignantly, "I'm no man. I'm a sacred camel, and I won't be interfered
+with by an ordinary, common mule, like you."
+
+There are divers sorts of insanity. I had an interview with a doctor,
+a high officer in the institution, which convinced me, perhaps without
+reason, that insanity was not limited to the patients and attendants.
+One day an insane man was struck by an attendant in the solar plexus.
+He threw his hands up in the air, and cried: "My God, I'm killed." I
+said to another man in the ward: "There's murder." He said: "How do
+you know?" I replied: "I have seen death a few times." In an hour, sure
+enough, the report came that the insane man was dead. A few days later
+I was talking with the doctor referred to and I said:
+
+"I was an eye-witness of the assault on D----." And I described the
+affair.
+
+"You have been reported to me repeatedly," he replied.
+
+"By whom?" I asked, "attendants or patients?"
+
+"By patients," he replied.
+
+"Surely," I remarked, "you don't believe half what insane men tell you,
+do you? Doctor, these same patients (in reality sane stool-pigeons)
+that have been reporting me, have accused you of every crime in the
+calendar."
+
+"Oh, but," he said, "I am an old man and the father of a family."
+
+"Doctor," I continued, "do you believe that a man can be a respectable
+physician and still be insane?"
+
+"What do you mean?" he said.
+
+"In California lately," I replied, "A superintendent of an insane
+asylum has been accused of murder, arson, rape and peculation. This
+man, too, was more than fifty, had a mother, a wife and children, and
+belonged to a profession which ought to be more sympathetic with a
+patient than the church with its communicants. When a man will stoop to
+such crimes, is it not possible that there is a form of mental disease
+called partial, periodical paralysis of the faculty humane, and was not
+Robert Louis Stevenson right when he wrote _Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde_?"
+
+The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and shouted: "Don't you dare to tell
+anybody about this interview." I looked into his eyes and smiled, for
+I am positive that at that moment I looked into the eyes of a madman.
+
+King Kelly, an attendant who had been on duty in insane asylums for
+many years, was very energetic in trying to get information from the
+stool-pigeons. The patients used to pass notes around among themselves,
+and the attendants were always eager to get hold of those notes,
+expecting to find news of beats (escapes) about to be attempted. I knew
+that King Kelly was eager to discover "beats" and as I, not being a
+stool-pigeon, was in bad odor with him, I determined to give him a jar.
+So one day I wrote him the following note:
+
+"Mr. Kelly; You have been in this hospital for years. The socks and
+suspenders which should go to the patients are divided impartially
+between you and the other attendants. Of the four razors, which lately
+arrived for patients, two are in your trunk, one you sent to your
+brother in Ireland, and the fourth you keep in the ward for show, in
+case the doctor should be coming around."
+
+That night when I was going to bed I slipped the note into the Kings
+hand and whispered: "There's going to be a beat tonight." The King
+turned pale, and hurriedly ordered the men in the ward to bed, so that
+he could read the note. Before reading it he handed it to a doctor, to
+be sure to get the credit of stopping the beat as soon as possible.
+The doctor read it and gave the King the laugh. In the morning, when
+the doctor made his rounds, Mr. Kelly said to him: "We have one or two
+funny men in the ward who, instead of robbing decent people, could
+have made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's." The result was that the
+doctor put me down for three or four new delusions. Knowing the Celtic
+character thoroughly I used to crack many a joke on the King. I would
+say to another patient, as the King passed: "If it hadn't been for
+Kelly we should have escaped that time sure." That would make him wild.
+My gift of ridicule was more than once valuable to me in the mad-house.
+
+But I must say that the King was pretty kind when a patient was ill.
+When I was so ill and weak that I didn't care whether I died or not,
+the old King used to give me extras,--milk, eggs and puddings. And
+in his heart the old man hated stool-pigeons, for by nature he was a
+dynamiter and believed in physical force and not mental treachery.
+
+The last few months I served in the insane asylum was at Dannemora,
+where I was transferred from Matteawan. The conditions at the two
+asylums are much the same. While at Dannemora I continued my efforts
+to be sent back to stir to finish my sentence, and used to talk to the
+doctors about it as often as I had an opportunity. A few months before
+I was released I had an interview with a Commissioner--the first one in
+three years, although I had repeatedly demanded to talk to one.
+
+"How is it," I said, "that I am not sent back to stir?"
+
+He turned to the ward doctor and asked: "What is this mans condition?"
+
+"Imaginary wrongs," replied the doctor.
+
+That made me angry, and I remarked, sarcastically: "It is curious
+that when a man tries to make a success at little things he is a dead
+failure."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the Superintendent, trying to feel me out for
+a new delusion.
+
+I pointed to the doctor and said: "Only a few years ago this man was
+interlocutor in an amateur minstrel troupe. As a barn-stormer he was a
+failure. Since he has risen to the height of being a mad-house doctor
+he is a success."
+
+Then I turned to the Commissioner and said: "Do you know what
+constitutes a cure in this place and in Matteawan?"
+
+"I'd like to know," he replied.
+
+"Well," I said, "when a man stoops to carrying tales on other patients
+and starts in to work cleaning cuspidors, then, and not till then, he
+is cured. Everybody knows that, in the eyes of attendants and doctors,
+the worst delusions in the asylum are wanting to go home, demanding
+more food, and disliking to do dirty work and bear tales."
+
+I don't know whether my talk with the Commissioner had any effect
+or not, but a little while after that, when my term expired, I was
+released. I had been afraid I should not be, for very often a man is
+kept in the asylum long after his term expires, even though he is no
+more insane than I was. When the stool-pigeons heard that I was to be
+released they thought I must have been a rat under cover, and applied
+every vile name to me.
+
+I had been in hell for several years; but even hell has its uses. When
+I was sent up for my third term, I thought I should not live my bit
+out, and that, as long as I did live, I should remain a grafter at
+heart. But the pipe house cured me, or helped to cure me, of a vice
+which, if it had continued, would have made me incapable of reform,
+even if I had lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I went to the
+mad-house there had been periods when I had little opium, either
+because I could not obtain it, or because I was trying to knock it
+off. My sufferings in consequence had been violent, but the worst moral
+and physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot came to me after I
+had entered the pipe house; for I could practically get no opium. That
+deprivation, added to the horrors I saw every day, was enough to make
+any man crazy. At least, I thought so at the time. I must have had a
+good nervous system to have passed through it all.
+
+Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at all. During my first
+months in the madhouse, the doctor occasionally took pity on me and
+gave me a little of the drug, but taken in such small quantities it
+was worse than useless. He used to give me sedatives, however, which
+calmed me for a time. Occasionally, too, I would get a little hop from
+a trusty, who was a friend of mine, and I had smuggled in some tablets
+of morphine from stir; but the supply was soon exhausted, and I saw
+that the only thing to do was to knock it off entirely. This I did,
+and made no more attempts to obtain the drug. For the last two years in
+the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can not describe the agonies
+I went through. Every nerve and muscle in my body was in pain most of
+the time, my stomach was constantly deranged, my eyes and mouth exuded
+water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of suicide were constant with
+me. Of course, I could never have given up this baleful habit through
+my own efforts alone. The pipe house forced me to make the attempt, and
+after I had held off for two years, I had enough strength to continue
+in the right path, although even now the longing for it returns to
+me. It does not seem possible that I can ever go back to it, for that
+terrible experience in the mad-house made an indelible impression. I
+shall never be able to wipe out those horrors entirely from my mind.
+When under the influence of opium I used frequently to imagine I
+smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I never smell certain sweet
+perfumes now without the whole horrible experience rushing before my
+mind. Life in a mad-house taught me a lesson I shall never forget.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+_Out of Hell._
+
+
+I left Dannemora asylum for the criminal insane on a cold winter
+morning. I had my tickets to New York, but not a cent of money.
+Relatives or friends are supposed to provide that. I was happy,
+however, and I made a resolution, which this time I shall keep, never
+to go to stir or the pipe house again. I knew very well that I could
+never repeat such an experience without going mad in reality; or dying.
+The first term I spent in stir I had my books and a new life of beauty
+and thought to think about. Once for all I had had that experience. The
+thought of going through prison routine again--the damp cells, the poor
+food, the habits contracted, with the mad-house at the end--no, that
+could never be for me again. I felt this, as I heard the loons yelling
+good-bye to me from the windows. I looked at the gloomy building
+and said to myself: "I have left Hell, and I'll shovel coal before I
+go back. All the ideas that brought me here I will leave behind. In
+the future I will try to get all the good things out of life that I
+can--the really good things, a glimpse of which I got through my books.
+I think there is still sufficient grey matter in my brain for that."
+
+I took the train for New York, but stopped off at Plattsburg and Albany
+to deliver some messages from the poor unfortunates to their relatives.
+I arrived in New York at twelve o'clock at night, having had nothing to
+eat all day. My relatives and friends had left the station, but were
+waiting up for me in my brother's house. This time I went straight
+to them. My father had died while I was in the pipe house, and now I
+determined that I would be at last a kind son to the mother who had
+never deserted me. I think she felt that I had changed and the tears
+that flowed from her eyes were not all from unhappiness. She told me
+about my father's last illness, and how cheerful he had been. "I bought
+him a pair of new shoes a month before he died," she said. "He laughed
+when he saw them and said: 'What extravagance! To buy shoes for a dying
+man!'"
+
+Living right among them, I met again, of course, many of my old
+companions in crime, and found that many of them had thought I was
+dead. It was only the other day that I met "Al", driving a peddlers
+wagon. He, like me, had squared it. "I thought you died in the pipe
+house, Jim," he said. This has happened to me a dozen times since my
+return. I had spent so much time in stir that the general impression
+among the guns at home seemed to be that I had "gone up the escape."
+
+As a general thing I found that guns who had squared it and become
+prosperous had never been very successful grafters. Some of the best
+box-men and burglars in the business are now bar-tenders in saloons
+owned by former small fry among the dips. There are waiters now in
+saloons and concert halls on the bowery who were far cleverer thieves
+than the men who employ them, and who are worth thousands. Hungry Joe
+is an instance. Once he was King of confidence men, and on account of
+his great plausibility got in on a noted person, on one occasion, for
+several thousand dollars. And now he will beg many a favor of men he
+would not look at in the old days.
+
+A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive. I had always known
+that, but never realized it so keenly as I have since my return from
+the mad-house. Above everything else a grafter is suspicious, whether
+he has squared it or not--suspicious of his pals and of everybody
+else. When my old pals saw that I was not working with them, they
+wondered what my private graft was. When I told them I was on the level
+and was looking for a job, they either laughed or looked at me with
+suspicion in their eyes. They saw I was looking good (well-dressed)
+and they could not understand it. They put me down, some of them, as
+a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively that I am no longer with
+them, and most of them have given me the frosty mit. Only the bums
+who used to be grafters sail up to me in the Bowery. They have not
+got enough sense left even for suspicion. The dips who hang out in the
+thieves' resorts are beginning to hate me; not because I want to injure
+them, for I don't, but because they think I do. I told one of them, an
+old friend, that I was engaged in some literary work. He was angry in
+an instant and said: "You door mat thief. You couldn't get away with a
+coal-scuttle."
+
+One day I was taking the editor of this book through the Bowery,
+pointing out to him some of my old resorts, when I met an old pal
+of mine, who gave me the glad hand. We had a drink, and I, who was
+feeling good, started in to jolly him a little. He had told me about
+an old pal of ours who had just fallen for a book and was confined in a
+Brooklyn jail. I took out a piece of "copy" paper and took the address,
+intending to pay a visit to him, for everybody wants sympathy. What
+a look went over that grafter's face! I saw him glance quickly at the
+editor and then at me, and I knew then he had taken alarm, and probably
+thought we were Pinkerton men, or something as bad. I tried to carry
+it off with a laugh, for the place was full of thieves, and told him
+I would get him a job on a newspaper. He answered hastily that he had
+a good job in the pool-room and was on the level. He started in to try
+to square it with my companion by saying that he "adored a man who had
+a job." A little while afterwards he added that he hated anybody who
+would graft after he had got an honest job. Then, to wind up his little
+game of squaring himself, he ended by declaring that he had recently
+obtained a very good position.
+
+That was one of the incidents that queered me with the more intelligent
+thieves. He spread the news, and whenever I meet one of that gang on
+the Bowery I get the cold shoulder, a gun is so mighty quick to grow
+suspicious. A grafter who follows the business for years is a study
+in psychology, and his two most prominent characteristics are fear and
+suspicion. If some stool-pigeon tips him off to the police, and he is
+sent to stir, he invariably suspects the wrong person. He tells his
+friends in stir that "Al done him," and pretty soon poor Al, who may
+be an honest thief, is put down as a rat. If Al goes to stir very often
+the result is a cutting match between the two.
+
+There are many convicts in prison who lie awake at night concocting
+stories about other persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions. If
+the prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper he invariably reads the
+society news very carefully. He can tell more about the Four Hundred
+than the swells will ever know about themselves; and he tells very
+little good of them. Such stories are fabricated in prison and repeated
+out of it.
+
+When I was in Auburn stir I knew a young fellow named Sterling, as
+straight a thief as ever did time. He had the courage of a grenadier
+and objected to everything that was mean and petty. He therefore
+had many enemies in prison, and they tried to make him unpopular by
+accusing him of a horrible crime. The story reached my ears and I
+tried to put a stop to it, but I only did him the more harm. When
+Sterling heard the tale he knocked one of his traducers senseless
+with an iron bar. Tongues wagged louder than ever and one day he
+came to me and talked about it and I saw a wild look in his eyes.
+His melancholia started in about that time, and he began to suspect
+everybody, including me. His enemies put the keepers against him and
+they made his life almost unbearable. Generally the men that tip off
+keepers to the alleged violent character of some convict are the worst
+stool-pigeons in the prison. Even the Messiah could not pass through
+this world without arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the name of
+common sense, then, could Sterling, or I, or any other grafter expect
+otherwise than to be traduced? It was the politicians who were the
+cause of Christ's trials; and the politicians are the same to-day as
+they were then. They have very little brains, but they have the low
+cunning which is the first attribute of the human brute. They pretend
+to be the people's advisers, but pile up big bank accounts. Even the
+convict scum that come from the lower wards of the city have all the
+requisites of the successful politician. Nor can one say that these
+criminals are of low birth, for they trace their ancestors back for
+centuries. The fact that convicts slander one another with glee and
+hear with joy of the misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that
+they come from a very old family; from the wretched human stock that
+demanded the crucifixion of Christ.
+
+This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something I should like to
+eliminate from my own character. Even now I am afflicted with it.
+Since my release I often have the old feeling come over me that I am
+being watched; and sometimes without any reason at all. Only recently
+I was riding on a Brooklyn car, when a man sitting opposite happened
+to glance at me two or three times. I gave him an irritated look. Then
+he stared at me, to see what was the matter, I suppose. That was too
+much, and I asked him, with my nerves on edge, if he had ever seen me
+before. He said "No", with a surprised look, and I felt cheap, as I
+always do after such an incident. A neighbor of mine has a peculiar
+habit of watching me quietly whenever I visit his family. I know that
+he is ignorant of my past but when he stares at me, I am rattled.
+I begin to suspect that he is studying me, wondering who I am. The
+other day I said to him, irritably: "Mr. K----, you have a bad habit
+of watching people." He laughed carelessly and I, getting hot, said:
+"Mr. K---- when I visit people it is not with the intention of stealing
+anything." I left the house in a huff and his sister, as I afterwards
+found, rebuked him for his bad manners.
+
+Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being over suspicious. I am
+suspicious even of my family. Sometimes when I sit quietly at home
+with my mother in the evening, as has grown to be a habit with me, I
+see her look at me. I begin immediately to think that she is wondering
+whether I am grafting again. It makes me very nervous, and I sometimes
+put on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be alone. One day, when
+I was in stir, my mother visited me, as she always did when they gave
+her a chance. In the course of our conversation she told me that on my
+release I had better leave the city and go to some place where I was
+not known. "For," she said, "your character, my boy, is bad." I grabbed
+her by the arm and exclaimed: "Who is it that is circulating these
+d---- stories about me?" My poor mother merely meant, of course, that
+I was known as a thief, but I thought some of the other convicts had
+slandered me to her. It was absurd, of course, but the outside world
+cannot understand how suspicious a grafter is. I have often seen a man,
+who afterwards became insane, begin being queer through suspiciousness.
+
+Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious of me, when I
+told them I had squared it, or when I refused to say anything about
+my doings. Of course I don't care, for I hate the Bowery now and
+everything in it. Whenever I went, as I did several times with my
+editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust passed over me. I pity my
+old pals, but they no longer interest me. I look upon them as failures.
+I have seen a new light and I shall follow it. Whatever the public may
+think of this book, it has already been a blessing to me. For it has
+been honest work that I and my friend the editor have done together,
+and leads me to think that there may yet be a new life for me. I
+feel now that I should prefer to talk and associate with the meanest
+workingman in this city than with the swellest thief. For a long time
+I have really despised myself. When old friends and relatives look at
+me askance I say to myself: "How can I prove to them that I am not the
+same as I was in the past?" No wonder the authorities thought I was
+mad. I have spent the best years of my life behind the prison bars. I
+could have made out of myself almost anything I wanted, for I had the
+three requisites of success: personal appearance, health and, I think,
+some brains. But what have I done? After ruining my life, I have not
+even received the proverbial mess of pottage. As I look back upon my
+life both introspectively and retrospectively I do not wonder that
+society at large despises the criminal.
+
+I am not trying to point a moral or pose as a reformer. I cannot say
+that I quit the old life because of any religious feeling. I am not
+one of those who have reformed by finding Jesus at the end of a gas
+pipe which they were about to use as a black jack on a citizen, just
+in order to finger his long green. I only saw by painful experience
+that there is nothing in a life of crime. I ran up against society,
+and found that I had struck something stronger and harder than a stone
+wall. But it was not that alone that made me reform. What was it?
+Was it the terrible years I spent in prison? Was it the confinement
+in a mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine become drivelling
+idiots? Was it my reading of the great authors, and my becoming
+acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the great men of the world?
+Was it a combination of these things? Perhaps so, but even that does
+not entirely explain it, does not go deep enough. I have said that I
+am not religious, and I am not. And yet I have experienced something
+indefinable, which I suppose some people might call an awakening of
+the soul. What is that, after all, but the realization that your way of
+life is ruining you even to the very foundation of your nature?
+
+Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking in religion; for
+certainly the character of Christ strongly appeals to me. I don't care
+for creeds, but the personality of the Nazarene, when stripped of the
+aroma of divinity, appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether they
+are atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any man that has understanding
+reveres the life of Christ, for He practiced what He preached and died
+for humanity. He was a perfect specimen of manhood, and had developed
+to the highest degree that trait which is lacking in most all men--the
+faculty humane.
+
+I believe that a time comes in the lives of many grafters when they
+desire to reform. Some do reform for good and all, and I shall show the
+world that I am one of them; but the difficulties in the way are great,
+and many fall again by the wayside.
+
+They come out of prison marked men. Many observers can tell an
+ex-convict on sight. The lock-step is one of the causes. It gives a
+man a peculiar gait which he will retain all his life. The convicts
+march close together and cannot raise their chests. They have to keep
+their faces turned towards the screw. Breathing is difficult, and most
+convicts suffer in consequence from catarrh, and a good many from lung
+trouble. Walking in lock-step is not good exercise, and makes the men
+nervous. When the convict is confined in his cell he paces up and down.
+The short turn is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his mind.
+That short walk will always have control of me. I cannot sit down now
+to eat or write, without jumping up every five minutes in order to
+take that short walk. I have become so used to it that I do not want
+to leave the house, for I can pace up and down in my room. I can take
+that small stretch all day long and not be tired, but if I walk a long
+straight distance I get very much fatigued. When I wait for a train
+I always begin that short walk on the platform. I have often caught
+myself walking just seven feet one way, and then turning around and
+walking seven feet in the opposite direction. Another physical mark,
+caused by a criminal life rather than by a long sojourn in stir, is
+an expressionless cast of countenance. The old grafter never expresses
+any emotions. He has schooled himself until his face is a mask, which
+betrays nothing.
+
+A much more serious difficulty in the way of reform is the ex-convict's
+health which is always bad if a long term of years has been served.
+Moreover, his brain has often lost its equilibrium and powers of
+discernment. When he gets out of prison his chance of being able to
+do any useful work is slight. He knows no trade, and he is not strong
+enough to do hard day labor. He is given only ten dollars, when he
+leaves stir, with which to begin life afresh. A man who has served a
+long term is not steady above the ears until he has been at liberty
+several months; and what can such a man do with ten dollars? It would
+be cheaper for the state in the end to give an ex-convict money enough
+to keep him for several months; for then a smaller percentage would
+return to stir. It would give the man a chance to make friends, to look
+for a job, and to show the world that he is in earnest.
+
+A criminal who is trying to reform is generally a very helpless
+being. He was not, to begin with, the strongest man mentally, and
+after confinement is still less so. He is preoccupied, suspicious
+and a dreamer, and when he gets a glimpse of himself in all his
+naked realities, is apt to become depressed and discouraged. He is
+easily led, and certainly no man needs a good friend as much as the
+ex-convict. He is distrusted by everybody, is apt to be "piped off"
+wherever he goes, and finds it hard to get work which he can do. There
+are hundreds of men in our prisons to-day who, if they could find
+somebody who would trust them and take a genuine interest in them,
+would reform and become respectable citizens. That is where the Tammany
+politician, whom I have called Senator Wet Coin is a better man than
+the majority of reformers. When a man goes to him and says he wants to
+square it he takes him by the hand, trusts and helps him. Wet Coin does
+not hand him a soup ticket and a tract nor does he hold on tight to his
+own watch chain fearing for his red super, hastily bidding the ex-gun
+to be with Jesus.
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+The life of the thief is at an end; and the life of the man and good
+citizen has begun. For I am convinced that Jim is strictly on the
+level, and will remain so. The only thing yet lacking to make his
+reform sure is a job. I, and those of my friends who are interested,
+have as yet failed to find anything for him to do that is, under the
+circumstances, desirable. The story of my disappointments in this
+respect is a long one, and I shall not tell it. I have learned to think
+that patience is the greatest of the virtues; and of this virtue an
+ex-gun needs an enormous amount. If Jim and his friends prove good in
+this way, the job will come. But waiting is hard, for Jim is nervous,
+in bad health, with an old mother to look after, and with new ambitions
+which make keen his sense of time lost.
+
+One word about his character: I sometimes think of my friend the
+ex-thief as "Light-fingered Jim"; and in that name there lingers a note
+of vague apology. As he told his story to me, I saw everywhere the mark
+of the natural rogue, of the man grown with a roguish boy's brain.
+The humor of much of his tale seemed to me strong. I was never able
+to look upon him as a deliberate malefactor. He constantly impressed
+me as gentle and imaginative, impressionable and easily influenced,
+but not naturally vicious or vindictive. If I am right, his reform is
+nothing more or less than the coming to years of sober maturity. He is
+now thirty-five years old, and as he himself puts it: "Some men acquire
+wisdom at twenty-one, others at thirty-five, and some never."
+
+
+
+
+EVERYMAN
+
+The XVth Century morality play, with reproductions of old wood cuts.
+$1.00, postage paid or at your bookseller's. The first book to bear the
+imprint of Fox, Duffield & Company.
+
+
+"In typography, in paper and in make-up the edition is admirable. It is
+a good beginning and sets a very high standard."
+
+     _The Sun, New York._
+
+"The best of the old moralities, easy to read and fair to look upon."
+
+     _Evening Post, New York._
+
+"The book is well done, and should find a place on the shelves and in
+the spirits of all who care for the best in life and art."
+
+     JOHN CORBIN, in
+     _The New York Times_.
+
+"Everyman" in book form will be welcomed by the large number of people
+whose attention has been called to this ancient morality play by its
+admirable presentation in different cities."
+
+     _The Outlook, New York._
+
+"The first publication of (the new house) "Everyman," the fifteenth
+century morality play given in Boston this winter, is of artistic
+design and of handsome, agreeable type. The old woodcuts are reproduced
+from the first ancient edition of the play."
+
+     _Boston Journal._
+
+
+     NEW YORK
+     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY,
+     36 East 21st Street.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Autobiography of a Thief, by Hutchins Hapgood
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45169 ***
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-Project Gutenberg's The Autobiography of a Thief, by Hutchins Hapgood

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-Title: The Autobiography of a Thief

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-Author: Hutchins Hapgood

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-Release Date: March 18, 2014 [EBook #45169]

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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A THIEF ***

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-

-

-<div class="tnbox">

-<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>

-<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

-Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original

-document have been preserved.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class="figcenter">

-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="386" height="600" alt="Cover" />

-</div>

-

-<h1>

-<i>The</i> Autobiography <i>of</i> a Thief.

-</h1>

-

-<div class="figcenter">

-<img src="images/title.jpg" width="339" height="550" alt="Title Page" />

-</div>

-

-<p class="center b20 p6">

-<i>The</i> Autobiography <i>of</i><br />

-a Thief</p>

-

-<hr />

-<p class="center b12" >

-<i>Recorded by</i><br />

-<br />

-HUTCHINS HAPGOOD<br />

-<br />

-<span class="s08"><i>Author of "The Spirit of the Ghetto," etc.</i></span></p>

-

-<hr />

-<p class="center b12">

-<i>NEW YORK</i><br />

-FOX, DUFFIELD &amp; COMPANY<br />

-1903

-</p>

-

-<p class="center b12 p6">

-Copyright, 1903, <span class='smcap'>By<br />

-Fox, Duffield &amp; Company</span>

-</p>

-<hr class="l15" />

-<p class="center">

-<i>Entered at the Library of Congress, Washington, U. S. A.</i>

-</p>

-<hr class="l15" />

-<p class="center">

-<i>Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.</i>

-</p>

-<hr class="l15" />

-<p class="center">

-

-<i>Published May, 1903.</i>

-</p>

-

-<p class="p6">

-"<i>Oh, happy he who can still hope to emerge from this

-sea of error!</i>"

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-<span class='smcap'>Faust.</span>

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-"<i>There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake,

-but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour,

-or the like; therefore why should I be angry with a

-man for loving himself better than me? And if any man

-should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but

-like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch because they

-can do no other.</i>"

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-<span class='smcap'>Bacon.</span>

-</p>

-<p>

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_7' name='Page_7'>[7]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CONTENTS.

-</h2>

-

-<table summary="Table of Contents">

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc"><span class='smcap s08'>Chapter</span></td>

-    <td>&nbsp;</td>

-    <td class="tdr"><span class='smcap s08'>Page</span></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>&nbsp;</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>Editor's Note</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">I.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>Boyhood and Early Crime</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">II.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>My First Fall</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">III.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>Mixed Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">IV.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>When the Graft Was Good</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">V.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">VI.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>What the Burglar Faces</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">VII.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>In Stir</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">VIII.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>In Stir</span> (<span class='smcap'>Continued</span>)</td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">IX.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>In Stir and Out</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">X.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>At the Graft Again</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">XI.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>Back to Prison</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">XII.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>On the Outside Again</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">XIII.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>In the Mad-House</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">XIV.</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>Out of Hell</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_332">332</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>&nbsp;</td>

-    <td><span class='smcap'>Editor's Postscript</span></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-<p>

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_9' name='Page_9'>[9]</a></span>

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_8' name='Page_8'></a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-Editor's Note.

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-I met the ex-pickpocket and burglar whose

-autobiography follows soon after his release

-from a third term in the penitentiary. For

-several weeks I was not particularly interested

-in him. He was full of a desire to publish in

-the newspapers an exposé of conditions obtaining

-in two of our state institutions, his motive

-seeming partly revenge and partly a very genuine

-feeling that he had come in contact with

-a systematic crime against humanity. But as

-I continued to see more of him, and learned

-much about his life, my interest grew; for I

-soon perceived that he not only had led a

-typical thief's life, but was also a man of more

-than common natural intelligence, with a gift of

-vigorous expression. With little schooling he

-had yet educated himself, mainly by means of

-the prison libraries, until he had a good and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_10' name='Page_10'>[10]</a></span>

-individually expressed acquaintance with many

-of the English classics, and with some of the

-masterpieces of philosophy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That this ex-convict, when a boy on the

-East Side of New York City, should have

-taken to the "graft" seemed to me, as he

-talked about it, the most natural thing in the

-world. His parents were honest, but ignorant

-and poor. One of his brothers, a normal and

-honorable man, is a truck driver with a large

-family; and his relatives and honest friends in

-general belong to the most modest class of

-working people. The swell among them is

-another brother, who is a policeman; but Jim,

-the ex-convict, is by far the cleverest and most

-intelligent of the lot. I have often seen him

-and his family together, on Saturday nights,

-when the clan gathers in the truckman's house

-for a good time, and he is the life of the occasion,

-and admired by the others. Jim was an

-unusually energetic and ambitious boy, but

-the respectable people he knew did not appeal

-to his imagination. As he played on the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_11' name='Page_11'>[11]</a></span>

-street, other boys pointed out to him the swell

-thief at the corner saloon, and told him tales

-of big robberies and exciting adventures, and

-the prizes of life seemed to him to lie along

-the path of crime. There was no one to teach

-him what constitutes real success, and he went

-in for crime with energy and enthusiasm.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was only after he had become a professional

-thief and had done time in the prisons

-that he began to see that crime does not pay.

-He saw that all his friends came to ruin,

-that his own health was shattered, and that

-he stood on the verge of the mad-house. His

-self-education in prison helped him, too, to

-the perception that he had made a terrible

-mistake. He came to have intellectual ambitions

-and no longer took an interest in his old

-companions. After several weeks of constant

-association with him I became morally certain

-that his reform was as genuine as possible

-under the circumstances; and that, with fair

-success in the way of getting something to do,

-he would remain honest.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_12' name='Page_12'>[12]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I therefore proposed to him to write an

-autobiography. He took up the idea with

-eagerness, and through the entire period of

-our work together, has shown an unwavering

-interest in the book and very decided acumen

-and common sense. The method employed

-in composing the volume was that, practically,

-of the interview. From the middle of March

-to the first of July we met nearly every afternoon,

-and many evenings, at a little German

-café on the East Side. There, I took voluminous

-notes, often asking questions, but

-taking down as literally as possible his story

-in his own words; to such a degree is this

-true, that the following narrative is an authentic

-account of his life, with occasional descriptions

-and character-sketches of his friends of

-the Under World. Even without my explicit

-assurance, the autobiography bears sufficient

-internal evidence of the fact that, essentially,

-it is a thief's own story. Many hours of the

-day time, when I was busy with other things,

-my friend&mdash;for I have come to look upon him

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_13' name='Page_13'>[13]</a></span>

-as such&mdash;was occupied with putting down on

-paper character-sketches of his pals and their

-careers, or recording his impressions of the

-life they had followed. After I had left town

-for the summer, in order to prepare this volume,

-I wrote to Jim repeatedly, asking for

-more material on certain points. This he

-always furnished in a manner which showed

-his continued interest, and a literary sense,

-though fragmentary, of no common kind.

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-H. H.

-</p>

-<p>

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_14' name='Page_14'></a></span>

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_15' name='Page_15'>[15]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p class="center b15 p6">

-<i>The</i> Autobiography <i>of</i> a Thief.

-</p>

-

-<hr class="l15" />

-

-<h2 class="chap1">

-CHAPTER I.<br />

-<i>Boyhood and Early Crime.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-I have been a professional thief for more

-than twenty years. Half of that time I have

-spent in state's prison, and the other half in

-"grafting" in one form or another. I was a

-good pickpocket and a fairly successful burglar;

-and I have known many of the best crooks in

-the country. I have left the business for good,

-and my reasons will appear in the course of

-this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire

-frankness. I shall not try to defend myself.

-I shall try merely to tell the truth. Perhaps

-in so doing I shall explain myself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was born on the east side of New York

-City in 1868, of poor but honest parents. My

-father was an Englishman who had married an

-Irish girl and emigrated to America, where he

-had a large family, no one of whom, with the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_16' name='Page_16'>[16]</a></span>

-exception of myself, went wrong. For many

-years he was an employee of Brown Brothers

-and Company and was a sober, industrious

-man, and a good husband and kind father. To

-me, who was his favorite, he was perhaps too

-kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember

-that when I was five years old he

-bought me a twenty-five dollar suit of clothes.

-I was a vigorous, handsome boy, with red,

-rosy cheeks and was not only the pet of my

-family, but the life of the neighborhood as

-well.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At that time, which is as far back as I can

-remember, we were living on Munro Street, in

-the Seventh Ward. This was then a good

-residential neighborhood, and we were comfortable

-in our small, wooden house. The people

-about us were Irish and German, the large

-Jewish emigration not having begun yet. Consequently,

-lower New York did not have such

-a strong business look as it has now, but was

-cleanly and respectable. The gin-mills were

-fewer in number, and were comparatively

-decent. When the Jews came they started

-many basement saloons, or cafés, and for the

-first time, I believe, the social evil began to be

-connected with the drinking places.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_17' name='Page_17'>[17]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I committed my first theft at the age of six.

-Older heads put me up to steal money from

-the till of my brother's grocery store. It happened

-this way. There were several much

-older boys in the neighborhood who wanted

-money for row-boating and theatres. One was

-eighteen years old, a ship-caulker; and another

-was a roustabout of seventeen. I used to watch

-these boys practice singing and dancing in the

-big marble lots in the vicinity. How they fired

-my youthful imagination! They told me about

-the theatres then in vogue&mdash;Tony Pastor's,

-the old Globe, Wood's Museum and Josh

-Hart's Theatre Comique, afterwards owned by

-Harrigan and Hart.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One day, George, the roustabout, said to me:

-"Kid, do you want to go row-boating with us?"

-When I eagerly consented he said it was too

-bad, but the boat cost fifty cents and he only

-had a ten-cent stamp (a small paper bill: in

-those days there was very little silver in circulation).

-I did not bite at once, I was so young,

-and they treated me to one of those wooden

-balls fastened to a rubber string that you throw

-out and catch on the rebound. I was tickled

-to death. I shall never forget that day as

-long as I live. It was a Saturday, and all

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_18' name='Page_18'>[18]</a></span>

-day long those boys couldn't do too much for

-me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Towards evening they explained to me how

-to rob my brother's till. They arranged to be

-outside the store at a certain hour, and wait

-until I found an opportunity to pass the money

-to them. My mother watched in the store that

-evening, but when she turned her back I

-opened the till and gave the eight or ten dollars

-it contained to the waiting boys. We all

-went row-boating and had a jolly time. But

-they were not satisfied with that. What I had

-done once, I could do again, and they held out

-the theatre to me, and pretended to teach me

-how to dance the clog. Week in and week

-out I furnished them with money, and in recompense

-they would sometimes take me to a

-matinée. What a joy! How I grew to love

-the vaudeville artists with their songs and

-dances, and the wild Bowery melodramas! It

-was a great day for Indian plays, and the

-number of Indians I have scalped in imagination,

-after one of these shows, is legion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Some of the small boys, however, who did not

-share in the booty grew jealous and told my

-father what was doing. The result was that

-a certain part of my body was sore for weeks

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_19' name='Page_19'>[19]</a></span>

-afterwards. My feelings were hurt, too, for I

-did not know at that time that I was doing

-anything very bad. My father, indeed, accompanied

-the beating with a sermon, telling

-me that I had not only broken God's law but

-had robbed those that loved me. One of my

-brothers, who is now a policeman in the city

-service, told me that I had taken my ticket for

-the gallows. The brother I had robbed, who

-afterwards became a truckman, patted me on

-the head and told me not to do it again. He

-was always a good fellow. And yet they all

-seemed to like to have me play about the

-streets with the other little boys, perhaps because

-the family was large, and there was not

-much room in the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So I had to give up the till; but I hated to,

-for even at that age I had begun to think that

-the world owed me a living! To get revenge

-I used to hide in a charcoal shed and throw

-pebbles at my father as he passed. I was indeed

-the typical bad boy, and the apple of my

-mother's eye.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I couldn't steal from the till any more,

-I used to take clothes from my relatives and

-sell them for theatre money; or any other

-object I thought I could make away with. I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_20' name='Page_20'>[20]</a></span>

-did not steal merely for theatre money but

-partly for excitement too. I liked to run the

-risk of being discovered. So I was up to any

-scheme the older boys proposed. Perhaps if

-I had been raised in the wild West I should

-have made a good trapper or cow-boy, instead

-of a thief. Or perhaps even birds' nests and

-fish would have satisfied me, if they had been

-accessible.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of my biggest exploits as a small boy

-was made when I was eight years old. Tom's

-mother had a friend visiting her, whom Tom

-and I thought we would rob. Tom, who was

-a big boy, and some of his friends, put me

-through a hall bed-room window, and I made

-away with a box of valuable jewelry. But

-it did me no good for the big boys sold it to a

-woman who kept a second-hand store on

-Division Street, and I received no part of the

-proceeds.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-My greatest youthful disappointment came

-about four weeks later. A boy put me up to

-steal a box out of a wagon. I boldly made

-away with it and ran into a hall-way, where he

-was waiting. The two of us then went into

-his back-yard, opened the box and found a

-beautiful sword, the handle studded with little

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_21' name='Page_21'>[21]</a></span>

-stones. But the other boy had promised me

-money, and here was only a sword! I cried for

-theatre money, and then the other boy boxed

-my ears. He went to his father, who was a

-free mason, and got a fifty cent "stamp." He

-gave me two three-cent pieces and kept the rest.

-I shall never forget that injustice as long as I

-live. I remember it as plainly as if it happened

-yesterday. We put the sword under a mill in

-Cherry Street and it disappeared a few hours

-later. I thought the boy and his father had

-stolen it, and told them so. I got another

-beating, but I believe my suspicion was correct,

-for the free mason used to give me a ten cent

-stamp whenever he saw me&mdash;to square me, I

-suppose.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When it came to contests with boys of my

-own size I was not so meek, however. One

-day I was playing in Jersey, in the back-yard

-of a boy friend's house. He displayed his

-pen-knife, and it took my fancy. I wanted to

-play with it, and asked him to lend it to me.

-He refused, and I grabbed his hand. He

-plunged the knife into my leg. I didn't like

-that, and told him so, not in words, but in

-action. I remember that I took his ear nearly

-off with a hatchet. I was then eight years old.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_22' name='Page_22'>[22]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-About this time I began to go to Sunday

-School, with what effect on my character remains

-to be seen. One day I heard a noted

-priest preach. I had one dollar and eighty

-cents in my pocket which I had stolen from

-my brother. I thought that each coin in my

-pocket was turning red-hot because of my

-anxiety to spend it. While the good man was

-talking of the Blessed One I was inwardly

-praying for him to shut up. He had two

-beautiful pictures which he intended to give

-to the best listener among the boys. When

-he had finished his talk he called me to him,

-gave me the pictures and said: "It's such

-boys as you who, when they grow up, are a

-pride to our Holy Church."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A year later I went to the parochial school,

-but did not stay long, for they would not

-have me. I was a sceptic at seven and an

-agnostic at eight, and I objected to the prayers

-every five minutes. I had no respect for

-ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination

-in the slightest, partly because I learned

-at an early age to see the hypocrisy of many

-good people. One day half a dozen persons

-were killed in an explosion. One of them I

-had known. Neighbors said of him: "What

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_23' name='Page_23'>[23]</a></span>

-a good man has gone," and the priest and my

-mother said he was in heaven. But he was

-the same man who had often told me not to

-take money from the money-drawer, for that

-was dangerous, but to search my father's

-pockets when he was asleep. For this advice

-I had given the rascal many a dollar. Ever

-after that I was suspicious of those who were

-over-virtuous. I told my mother I did not

-believe her and the priest, and she slapped

-my face and told me to mind my catechism.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Everything mischievous that happened at

-the parochial school was laid to my account,

-perhaps not entirely unjustly. If a large firecracker

-exploded, it was James&mdash;that was my

-name. If some one sat on a bent pin, the

-blame was due to James. If the class tittered

-teacher Nolan would rush at me with a

-hickory stick and yell: "It's you, you devil's

-imp!" and then he'd put the question he had

-asked a hundred times before: "Who med

-(made) you?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was finally sent away from the parochial

-school because I insulted one of the teachers,

-a Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing

-him whenever he studied his catechism, which

-I believed he already knew by heart. This

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_24' name='Page_24'>[24]</a></span>

-brother's favorite, by the way, was a boy who

-used to say his prayers louder than anybody

-else. I met him fifteen years afterwards in

-state's prison. He had been settled for "vogel-grafting,"

-that is, taking little girls into

-hall-ways and robbing them of their gold ear-rings.

-He turned out pretty well, however,

-in one sense, for he became one of the best

-shoe-makers in Sing Sing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Although, as one can see from the above

-incidents, I was not given to veneration, yet in

-some ways I was easily impressed. I always

-loved old buildings, for instance. I was

-baptized in the building which was until lately

-the Germania Theatre, and which was then a

-church; and that old structure always had a

-strange fascination for me. I used to hang

-about old churches and theatres, and preferred

-on such occasions to be alone. Sometimes I

-sang and danced, all by myself, in an old

-music hall, and used to pore over the names

-marked in lead pencil on the walls. Many is

-the time I have stood at night before some

-old building which has since been razed to the

-ground, and even now I like to go round

-to their sites. I like almost anything that is

-old, even old men and women. I never loved

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_25' name='Page_25'>[25]</a></span>

-my mother much until she was an old woman.

-All stories of the past interested me; and

-later, when I was in prison, I was specially

-fond of history.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After I was dismissed from the parochial

-school, I entered the public school, where I

-stayed somewhat longer. There I studied

-reading, writing, arithmetic and later, grammar,

-and became acquainted with a few specimens

-of literature. I remember Longfellow's

-<i>Excelsior</i> was a favorite of mine. I was a

-bright, intelligent boy, and, if it had not been

-for conduct, in which my mark was low, I

-should always have had the gold medal, in a

-class of seventy. I used to play truant constantly,

-and often went home and told my

-mother that I knew more than the teacher.

-She believed me, for certainly I was the most

-intelligent member of my family.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yes, I was more intelligent than my parents

-or any of my brothers and sisters. Much good

-it has done me! Now that I have "squared

-it" I see a good deal of my family, and they

-are all happy in comparison with me. On

-Saturday nights I often go around to see my

-brother the truckman. He has come home

-tired from his week's work, but happy with his

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_26' name='Page_26'>[26]</a></span>

-twelve dollar salary and the prospect of a

-holiday with his wife and children. They sit

-about in their humble home on Saturday night,

-with their pint of beer, their songs and their

-jovial stories. Whenever I am there, I am, in

-a way, the life of the party. My repartee is

-quicker than that of the others. I sing gayer

-songs and am jollier with the working girls who

-visit my brother's free home. But when I look

-at my stupid brother's quiet face and calm and

-strong bearing, and then realize my own

-shattered health and nerves and profound discontent,

-I know that my slow brother has been

-wiser than I. It has taken me many years on

-the rocky path to realize this truth. For by

-nature I am an Ishmælite, that is, a man of

-impulse, and it is only lately that wisdom has

-been knocked into me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Certainly I did not realize my fate when I

-was a kid of ten, filled with contempt for my

-virtuous and obscure family! I was overflowing

-with spirits and arrogance, and began to

-play "hooky" so often that I practically quit

-school about this time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was then, too, that we moved again, this

-time to Cherry Street, to the wreck of my life.

-At the end of the block on which we lived was

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_27' name='Page_27'>[27]</a></span>

-a corner saloon, the headquarters of a band of

-professional thieves. They were known as the

-Old Border Gang, and among them were

-several very well-known and successful crooks.

-They used to pass our way regularly, and boys

-older than I (my boy companions always had

-the advantage of me in years) used to point the

-famous "guns" out to me. When I saw one

-of these great men pass, my young imagination

-was fired with the ambition to be as he was!

-With what eagerness we used to talk about

-"Juggy," and the daring robbery he committed

-in Brooklyn! How we went over again and

-again in conversation, the trick by which

-Johnny the "grafter" had fooled the detective

-in the matter of the bonds!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-We would tell stories like these by the hour,

-and then go round to the corner, to try to get

-a look at some of the celebrities in the saloon.

-A splendid sight one of these swell grafters

-was, as he stood before the bar or smoked his

-cigar on the corner! Well dressed, with clean

-linen collar and shirt, a diamond in his tie, an

-air of ease and leisure all about him, what a

-contrast he formed to the respectable hod-carrier

-or truckman or mechanic, with soiled

-clothes and no collar! And what a contrast

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_28' name='Page_28'>[28]</a></span>

-was his dangerous life to that of the virtuous

-laborer!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The result was that I grew to think the

-career of the grafter was the only one worth trying

-for. The real prizes of the world I knew

-nothing about. All that I saw of any interest

-to me was crooked, and so I began to pilfer

-right and left: there was nothing else for me

-to do. Besides I loved to treat those older

-than myself. The theatre was a growing

-passion with me and I began to be very much

-interested in the baseball games. I used to

-go to the Union grounds in Brooklyn, where

-after the third inning, I could usually get admitted

-for fifteen cents, to see the old Athletics

-or Mutuals play. I needed money for these

-amusements, for myself and other boys, and I

-knew of practically only one way to get it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If we could not get the money at home,

-either by begging or stealing, we would tap

-tills, if possible, in the store of some relative;

-or tear brass off the steps in the halls of flats

-and sell it at junk shops. A little later, we

-used to go to Grand Street and steal shoes

-and women's dresses from the racks in the

-open stores, and pawn them. In the old

-Seventh Ward there used to be a good many

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_29' name='Page_29'>[29]</a></span>

-silver plates on the doors of private houses.

-These we would take off with chisels and sell

-to metal dealers. We had great fun with a

-Dutchman who kept a grocery store on Cherry

-Street. We used to steal his strawberries,

-and did not care whether he saw us or not.

-If he grabbed one of us, the rest of the gang

-would pelt him with stones until he let go, and

-then all run around the corner before the

-"copper" came into sight.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-All this time I grew steadily bolder and

-more desperate, and the day soon came when

-I took consequences very little into consideration.

-My father and mother sometimes

-learned of some exploit of mine, and a beating

-would be the result. I still got the blame for

-everything, as in school, and was sometimes

-punished unjustly. I was very sensitive and

-this would rankle in my soul for weeks, so that

-I stole harder than ever. And yet I think

-that there was some good in me. I was never

-cruel to any animals, except cats; for cats, I

-used to tie their tails together and throw them

-over a clothesline to dry. I liked dogs,

-horses, children and women, and have always

-been gentle to them. What I really was was

-a healthy young animal, with a vivid imagination

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_30' name='Page_30'>[30]</a></span>

-and a strong body. I learned early to

-swim and fight and play base-ball. Dime and

-nickel novels always seemed very tame to me;

-I found it much more exciting to hear true

-stories about the grafters at the corner saloon!&mdash;big

-men, with whom as yet I did not dare

-to speak; I could only stare at them with

-awe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I shall never forget the first time I ever saw

-a pickpocket at work. It was when I was

-about thirteen years old. A boy of my own

-age, Zack, a great pal of mine, was with me.

-Zack and I understood one another thoroughly

-and well knew how to get theatre money by

-petty pilfering, but of real graft we were as

-yet ignorant, although we had heard many

-stories about the operations of actual, professional

-thieves. We used to steal rides in the

-cars which ran to and from the Grand Street

-ferries; and run off with overcoats and satchels

-when we had a chance. One day we were

-standing on the rear platform when a woman

-boarded the car, and immediately behind her

-a gentlemanly looking man with a high hat.

-He was well-dressed and looked about thirty-five

-years old. As the lady entered the car,

-the man, who stayed outside on the platform,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_31' name='Page_31'>[31]</a></span>

-pulled his hand away from her side and with

-it came something from her pocket&mdash;a silk

-handkerchief. I was on the point of asking

-the woman if she had dropped something,

-when Zack said to me, "Mind your own business."

-The man, who had taken the pocket-book

-along with the silk handkerchief, seeing

-that we were "next," gave us the handkerchief

-and four dollars in ten and fifteen cent

-paper money ("stamps").

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Zack and I put our heads together. We

-were "wiser" than we had been half an hour

-before. We had learned our first practical

-lesson in the world of graft. We had seen a

-pickpocket at work, and there seemed to us no

-reason why we should not try the game ourselves.

-Accordingly a day or two afterwards

-we arranged to pick our first pocket. We

-had, indeed, often taken money from the

-pockets of our relatives, but that was when

-the trousers hung in the closet or over a chair,

-and the owner was absent. This was the first

-time we had hunted in the open, so to speak;

-the first time our prey was really alive.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was an exciting occasion. Zack and I,

-who were "wise," (that is, up to snuff) got

-several other boys to help us, though we did

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_32' name='Page_32'>[32]</a></span>

-not tell them what was doing, for they "were

-not buried" yet, that is, "dead," or ignorant.

-We induced five or six of them to jump on

-and off the rear platform of a car, making as

-much noise and confusion as possible, so as to

-distract the attention of any "sucker" that

-might board. Soon I saw a woman about to

-get on the car. My heart beat with excitement,

-and I signalled to Zack that I would

-make the "touch." In those days women

-wore big sacques with pockets in the back,

-open, so that one could look in and see what

-was there. I took the silk handkerchief on

-the run, and with Zack following, went up a

-side street and gloried under a lamp-post.

-In the corner of the handkerchief, tied up,

-were five two-dollar bills, and for weeks I was

-J. P. Morgan.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For a long time Zack and I felt we were

-the biggest boys on the block. We boasted

-about our great "touch" to the older boys of

-eighteen or nineteen years of age who had

-pointed out to us the grafters at the corner

-saloon. They were not "in it" now. They

-even condescended to be treated to a drink

-by us. We spent the money recklessly, for

-we knew where we could get more. In this

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_33' name='Page_33'>[33]</a></span>

-state of mind, soon after that, I met the

-"pick" whom we had seen at work. He had

-heard of our achievement and kindly "staked"

-us, and gave us a few private lessons in picking

-pockets. He saw that we were promising

-youngsters, and for the sake of the profession

-gave us a little of his valuable time. We

-were proud enough, to be taken notice of by

-this great man. We felt that we were rising

-in the world of graft, and began to wear collars

-and neckties.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_34' name='Page_34'>[34]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER II.<br />

-<i>My First Fall.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-For the next two years, until I was fifteen,

-I made a great deal of money at picking

-pockets, without getting into difficulties with

-the police. We operated, at that time, entirely

-upon women, and were consequently

-known technically as Moll-buzzers&mdash;or "flies"

-that "buzz" about women.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In those days, and for several years later,

-Moll-buzzing, as well as picking pockets in

-general, was an easy and lucrative graft.

-Women's dresses seemed to be arranged for

-our especial benefit; the back pocket, with its

-purse and silk handkerchief could be picked

-even by the rawest thief. It was in the days

-when every woman had to possess a fine silk

-handkerchief; even the Bowery "cruisers"

-(street-walkers) carried them; and to those

-women we boys used to sell the handkerchiefs

-we had stolen, receiving as much as a dollar,

-or even two dollars, in exchange.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was a time, too, before the great department

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_35' name='Page_35'>[35]</a></span>

-stores and delivery wagon systems, and

-shoppers were compelled to carry more money

-with them than they do now, and to take

-their purchases home themselves through the

-streets. Very often before they reached their

-destination they had unconsciously delivered

-some of the goods to us. At that time, too,

-the wearing of valuable pins and stones, both

-by men and women, was more general than

-it is now. Furthermore, the "graft" was

-younger. There were not so many in the

-business, and the system of police protection

-was not so good. Altogether those were halcyon

-days for us.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The fact that we were very young helped

-us particularly in this business, for a boy can

-get next to a woman in a car or on the street

-more easily than a man can. He is not so apt

-to arouse her suspicions; and if he is a handsome,

-innocent-looking boy, and clever, he can

-go far in this line of graft. He usually begins

-this business when he is about thirteen, and by

-the age of seventeen generally graduates into

-something higher. Living off women, in any

-form, does not appeal very long to the imagination

-of the genuine grafter. Yet I know

-thieves who continue to be Moll-buzzers all

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_36' name='Page_36'>[36]</a></span>

-their lives; and who are low enough to make

-their living entirely off poor working girls.

-The self-respecting grafter detests this kind;

-and, indeed, these buzzers never see prosperous

-days after their boyhood. The business

-grows more difficult as the thief grows older.

-He cannot approach his prey so readily, and

-grows shabbier with declining returns; and

-shabbiness makes it difficult for him to mix up

-in crowds where this kind of work is generally

-done.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For several years we youngsters made a

-great deal of money at this line. We made a

-"touch" almost every day, and I suppose our

-"mob," composed of four or five lads who

-worked together, averaged three or four hundred

-dollars a week. We worked mainly on

-street cars at the Ferry, and the amount of

-"technique" required for robbing women was

-very slight. Two or three of us generally

-went together. One acted as the "dip," or

-"pick," and the other two as "stalls." The

-duty of the "stalls" was to distract the attention

-of the "sucker" or victim, or otherwise

-to hide the operations of the "dip". One

-stall would get directly in front of the woman

-to be robbed, the other directly behind her. If

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_37' name='Page_37'>[37]</a></span>

-she were in such a position in the crowd as to

-render it hard for the "dip," or "wire" to

-make a "touch," one of the stalls might bump

-against her, and beg her pardon, while the dip

-made away with her "leather," or pocket-book.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Shortly before I was fifteen years old I was

-"let in" to another kind of graft. One day

-Tim, Zack and I were boasting of our earnings

-to an older boy, twenty years of age, whose

-name was Pete. He grinned, and said he knew

-something better than Moll-buzzing. Then

-he told us about "shoving the queer" and got

-us next to a public truckman who supplied

-counterfeit bills. Our method was to carry

-only one bad bill among several good ones, so

-that if we were collared we could maintain our

-innocence. We worked this as a "side-graft,"

-for some time. Pete and I used to go to mass

-on Sunday morning, and put a bad five dollar

-bill in the collector's box, taking out four dollars

-and ninety cents in change, in good money.

-We irreverently called this proceeding "robbing

-the dago in Rome." We use to pick "leathers,"

-at the same time, from the women in the congregation.

-In those days I was very liberal in my

-religious views. I was not narrow, or bigoted.

-I attended Grace Church, in Tenth Street,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_38' name='Page_38'>[38]</a></span>

-regularly and was always well repaid. But

-after a while this lucrative graft came to an

-end, for the collector began to get "next".

-One day he said to me, "Why don't you get

-your change outside? This is the fourth time

-you have given me a big bill." So we got

-"leary" (suspicious) and quit.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-With my big rosy cheeks and bright eyes

-and complexion I suppose I looked, in those

-days, very holy and innocent, and used to work

-this graft for all it was worth. I remember

-how, in church, I used tracts or the Christian

-Advocate as "stalls"; I would hand them to

-a lady as she entered the church, and, while

-doing so, pick her pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Even at the early age of fifteen I began

-to understand that it was necessary to save

-money. If a thief wants to keep out of the

-"pen" or "stir," (penitentiary) capital is a

-necessity. The capital of a grafter is called

-"spring-money," for he may have to use it at

-any time in paying the lawyer who gets him

-off in case of an arrest, or in bribing the

-policeman or some other official. To "spring,"

-is to escape from the clutches of the law.

-If a thief has not enough money to hire a

-"mouth-piece" (criminal lawyer) he is in a

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_39' name='Page_39'>[39]</a></span>

-bad way. He is greatly handicapped, and can

-not "jump out" (steal) with any boldness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But I always had great difficulty in saving

-"fall-money," (the same as spring-money; that

-is money to be used in case of a "fall," or

-arrest). My temperament was at fault. When

-I had a few hundred dollars saved up I began

-to be troubled, not from a guilty conscience,

-but because I could not stand prosperity.

-The money burned a hole in my pocket.

-I was fond of all sorts of amusements, of

-"treating," and of clothes. Indeed, I was

-very much of a dude; and this for two reasons.

-In the first place I was naturally vain, and

-liked to make a good appearance. A still

-more substantial reason was that a good personal

-appearance is part of the capital of a

-grafter, particularly of a pickpocket. The

-world thinks that a thief is a dirty, disreputable

-looking object, next door to a tramp in

-appearance. But this idea is far from being

-true. Every grafter of any standing in the

-profession is very careful about his clothes.

-He is always neat, clean, and as fashionable as

-his income will permit. Otherwise he would

-not be permitted to attend large political

-gatherings, to sit on the platform, for instance,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_40' name='Page_40'>[40]</a></span>

-and would be handicapped generally in his

-crooked dealings with mankind. No advice

-to young men is more common in respectable

-society than to dress well. If you look prosperous

-the world will treat you with consideration.

-This applies with even greater force

-to the thief. Keep up a "front" is the universal

-law of success, applicable to all grades

-of society. The first thing a grafter is apt to

-say to a pal whom he has not seen for a long

-time is, "You are looking good," meaning that

-his friend is well-dressed. It is sure flattery,

-and if a grafter wants to make a borrow he is

-practically certain of opening the negotiations

-with the stereotyped phrase: "You are looking

-good;" for the only time you can get anything

-off a grafter is when you can make him

-think you are prosperous.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But the great reason why I never saved

-much "fall-money" was not "booze," or theatres,

-or clothes. "Look for the woman" is a

-phrase, I believe, in good society; and it certainly

-explains a great deal of a thief's misfortunes.

-Long before I did anything in

-Graftdom but petty pilfering, I had begun to

-go with the little girls in the neighborhood.

-At that time they had no attraction for me,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_41' name='Page_41'>[41]</a></span>

-but I heard older boys say that it was a manly

-thing to lead girls astray, and I was ambitious

-to be not only a good thief, but a hard case

-generally. When I was nine or ten years old

-I liked to boast of the conquests I had made

-among little working girls of fourteen or

-fifteen. We used to meet in the hall-ways of

-tenement houses, or at their homes, but there

-was no sentiment in the relations between us,

-at least on my part. My only pleasure in

-it was the delight of telling about it to my

-young companions.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I was twelve years old I met a little

-girl for whom I had a somewhat different

-feeling. Nellie was a pretty, blue-eyed little

-creature, or "tid-bit," as we used to say, who

-lived near my home on Cherry Street. I

-used to take her over on the ferry for a ride,

-or treat her to ice-cream; and we were really

-chums; but when I began to make money I

-lost my interest in her; partly, too, because at

-that time I made the acquaintance of a married

-woman of about twenty-five years old.

-She discovered me one day in the hallway

-with Nellie, and threatened to tell the holy

-brother on us if I didn't fetch her a pint of

-beer. I took the beer to her room, and that

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_42' name='Page_42'>[42]</a></span>

-began a relationship of perhaps a year. She

-used to stake me to a part of the money her

-husband, a workingman, brought her every

-Saturday night.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Although the girls meant very little to me

-until several years later, I nevertheless began

-when I was about fifteen to spend a great deal

-of money on them. It was the thing to do,

-and I did it with a good grace. I used to take

-all kinds of working girls to the balls in Walhalla

-Hall in Orchard Street; or in Pythagoras,

-or Beethoven Halls, where many pretty little

-German girls of respectable families used

-to dance on Saturday nights. It was my

-pride to buy them things&mdash;clothes, pins, and

-to take them on excursions; for was I not

-a rising "gun," with money in my pocket?

-Money, however, that went as easily as it had

-come.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Perhaps if I had been able to save money

-at that time I might not have fallen (that is,

-been arrested) so early. My first fall came,

-however, when I was fifteen years old; and if

-I was not a confirmed thief already, I certainly

-was one by the time I left the Tombs, where

-I stayed ten days. It happened this way.

-Zack and I were grafting, buzzing Molls, with

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_43' name='Page_43'>[43]</a></span>

-a pal named Jack, who afterwards became a

-famous burglar. He had just escaped from

-the Catholic Protectory, and told us his

-troubles. Instead of being alarmed, however,

-I grew bolder, for if Jack could "beat" the

-"Proteck" in three months, I argued I could

-do it in twenty-four hours. We three ripped

-things open for some time; but one day we

-were grafting on Sixth Avenue, just below

-Twentieth Street, when I fell for a "leather."

-The "sucker," a good-looking Moll was coming

-up the Avenue. Her "book," which

-looked fat, was sticking out of her skirt. I,

-who was the "wire," gave Jack and Zack the

-tip (thief's cough), and they stalled, one in

-front, one behind. The girl did not "blow"

-(take alarm) and I got hold of the leather

-easily. It looked like a get-away, for no one

-on the sidewalk saw us. But as bad luck would

-have it, a negro coachman, standing in the

-street by the pavement, got next, and said to

-me, "What are you doing there?" I replied,

-"Shut up, and I'll give you two dollars." But

-he caught hold of me and shouted for the

-police. I passed the leather to Jack, who

-"vamoosed." Zack hit the negro in the face

-and I ran up Seventh Avenue, but was caught

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_44' name='Page_44'>[44]</a></span>

-by a flyman (policeman), and taken to the

-station house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On the way to the police station I cried

-bitterly, for, after all, I was only a boy. I

-realized for the first time that the way of the

-transgressor is hard. It was in the afternoon,

-and I spent the time until next morning at ten,

-when I was to appear before the magistrate, in

-a cell in the station-house, in the company of

-an old grafter. In the adjoining cells were

-drunkards, street-walkers and thieves who had

-been "lined up" for the night, and I spent the

-long hours in crying and in listening to their

-indecent songs and jokes. The old grafter

-called to one of the Tenderloin girls that he

-had a kid with him who was arrested for Moll-buzzing.

-At this they all expressed their

-sympathy with me by saying that I would

-either be imprisoned for life or be hanged.

-They got me to sing a song, and I convinced

-them that I was tough.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In the morning I was arraigned in the

-police court. As there was no stolen property

-on me, and as the sucker was not there to

-make a complaint, I was "settled" for assault

-only, and sent to the Tombs for ten days.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-My experience in the Tombs may fairly be

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_45' name='Page_45'>[45]</a></span>

-called, I think, the turning point of my life.

-It was there that I met "de mob". I learned

-new tricks in the Tombs; and more than that,

-I began definitely to look upon myself as a

-criminal. The Tombs of twenty years ago

-was even less cheerful than it is at present.

-The Boys' Prison faced the Women's Prison,

-and between these two was the place where

-those sentenced to death were hanged. The

-boys knew when an execution was to take

-place, and we used to talk it over among ourselves.

-One man was hanged while I was

-there; and if anybody thinks that knowledge

-of such things helps to make boys seek the

-path of virtue, let him go forth into the world

-and learn something about human nature.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On my arrival in the Tombs, Mrs. Hill, the

-matron, had me searched for tobacco, knives

-or matches, all of which were contraband;

-then I was given a bath and sent into the

-corridor of the cells where there were about

-twenty-five other boys, confined for various

-crimes, ranging from petty larceny to offenses

-of the gravest kind. On the second day I met

-two young "dips" and we exchanged our experiences

-in the world of graft. I received my

-first lesson in the art of "banging a super,"

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_46' name='Page_46'>[46]</a></span>

-that is, stealing a watch by breaking the ring

-with the thumb and forefinger, and thus

-detaching it from the chain. They were two

-of the best of the Sixth Ward pickpockets, and

-we made a date to meet "on the outside."

-Indeed, it was not many weeks after my release

-before I could "bang a super," or get a man's

-"front" (watch and chain) as easily as I could

-relieve a Moll of her "leather".

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As I look back upon the food these young

-boys received in the tombs, it seems to me of

-the worst. Breakfast consisted of a chunk of

-poor bread and a cup of coffee made of burnt

-bread crust. At dinner we had soup (they

-said, at least, there was meat in it), bread and

-water; and supper was the same as breakfast.

-But we had one consolation. When we went

-to divine service we generally returned happy;

-not because of what the good priest said, but

-because we were almost sure of getting tobacco

-from the women inmates.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Certainly the Gerry Society has its faults;

-but since its organization young boys who

-have gone wrong but are not yet entirely

-hardened, have a much better show to become

-good citizens than they used to have. That

-Society did not exist in my day; but I know

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_47' name='Page_47'>[47]</a></span>

-a good deal about it, and I am convinced that

-it does a world of good; for, at least, when

-it takes children into its charge it does not

-surround them with an atmosphere of social

-crime.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While in the Tombs I experienced my first

-disillusionment as to the honor of thieves. I

-was an impulsive, imaginative boy, and that a

-pal could go back on me never seemed possible.

-Many of my subsequent misfortunes were due

-to the treachery of my companions. I have

-learned to distrust everybody, but as a boy of

-fifteen I was green, and so the treachery I

-shall relate left a sore spot in my soul.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It happened this way. On a May day,

-about two months before I was arrested, two

-other boys and I had entered the basement of

-a house where the people were moving, had

-made away with some silverware, and sold it

-to a Christian woman in the neighborhood for

-one twentieth of its value. When I had nearly

-served my ten days' sentence for assault, my

-two pals were arrested and "squealed" on me.

-I was confronted with them in the Tombs.

-At first I was mighty glad to see them, but

-when I found they had "squealed," I set my

-teeth and denied all knowledge of the "touch."

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_48' name='Page_48'>[48]</a></span>

-I protested my innocence so violently that the

-police thought the other boys were merely

-seeking a scape-goat. They got twenty days

-and my term expired forty-eight hours afterwards.

-The silverware I stole that May

-morning is now an heirloom in the family of

-the Christian woman to whom I sold it so

-cheap.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If I had always been as earnest a liar as I

-was on that occasion in the Tombs I might

-never have gone to "stir" (penitentiary); but

-I grew more indifferent and desperate as time

-went on; and, in a way, more honest, more

-sincerely a criminal: I hardly felt like denying

-it. I know some thieves who, although they

-have grafted for twenty-five years, have not

-yet "done time"; some of them escaped

-because they knew how to throw the innocent

-"con" so well. Take Tim, for instance.

-Tim and I grafted together as boys. He was

-not a very skilful pickpocket, and he often

-was on the point of arrest; but he had a talent

-for innocence, and the indignation act he

-would put up would melt a heart of stone.

-He has, consequently, never been in stir, while

-I, a much better thief, have spent half of my

-adult life there. That was partly because I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_49' name='Page_49'>[49]</a></span>

-felt, when I had once made a touch, that the

-property belonged to me. On one occasion I

-had robbed a "bloke" of his "red super"

-(gold watch), and made away with it all right,

-when I carelessly dropped it on the sidewalk.

-A crowd had gathered about, and no man

-really in his right mind, would have picked up

-that super. But I did it, and was nailed dead

-to rights by a "cop." Some time afterwards

-a pal asked me why the deuce I had been so

-foolish. "Didn't the super belong to me," I

-replied, indignantly. "Hadn't I earned it?"

-I was too honest a thief. That was one of

-my weaknesses.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_50' name='Page_50'>[50]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER III.<br />

-<i>Mixed-Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-For a time&mdash;a short time&mdash;after I left the

-Tombs I was quiet. My relatives threw the

-gallows "con" into me hard, but at that time

-I was proof against any arguments they could

-muster. They were not able to show me anything

-that was worth while; they could not

-deliver the goods, so what was the use of

-talking?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Although I was a disgrace at home, I was

-high cock-a-lorum among the boys in the

-neighborhood. They began to look up to me,

-as I had looked up to the grafters at the corner

-saloon. They admired me because I was

-a fighter and had "done time." I went up in

-their estimation because I had suffered in the

-good cause. And I began to get introductions

-to the older grafters in the seventh ward&mdash;grafters

-with diamond pins and silk hats. It

-was not long before I was at it harder than

-ever, uptown and downtown. I not only continued

-my trade as Moll-buzzer, but began to

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_51' name='Page_51'>[51]</a></span>

-spread myself, got to be quite an adept in

-touching men for vests and supers and fronts;

-and every now and then "shoved the queer"

-or worked a little game of swindling. Our

-stamping-ground for supers and vests at that

-time was Fulton, Nassau, Lower Broadway

-and Wall Streets, and we covered our territory

-well. I used to work alone considerably.

-I would board a car with a couple of newspapers,

-would say, "News, boss?" to some

-man sitting down, would shove the paper in

-front of his face as a stall, and then pick his

-super or even his entire "front" (watch and

-chain). If you will stand for a newspaper

-under your chin I can get even your socks.

-Many is the "gent" I have left in the car with

-his vest entirely unbuttoned and his "front"

-gone. When I couldn't get the chain, I would

-snap the ring of the watch with my thumb and

-fore-finger, giving the thief's cough to drown

-the slight noise made by the breaking ring,

-and get away with the watch, leaving the

-chain dangling. Instead of a newspaper, I

-would often use an overcoat as a stall.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was only when I was on the "hurry-up,"

-however, that I worked alone. It is more

-dangerous than working with a mob, but if I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_52' name='Page_52'>[52]</a></span>

-needed a dollar quick I'd take any risk. I'd

-jump on a car, and tackle the first sucker I

-saw. If I thought it was not diplomatic to

-try for the "front," and if there was no stone

-in sight, I'd content myself with the "clock"

-(watch). But it was safer and more sociable

-to work with other guys. We usually went in

-mobs of three or four, and our methods were

-much more complicated than when we were

-simply moll-buzzing. Each thief had his

-special part to play, and his duty varied with

-the position of the sucker and the pocket the

-"leather" was in. If the sucker was standing

-in the car, my stall would frequently stand

-right in front, facing him, while I would put

-my hand under the stall's arm and pick the

-sucker's leather or super. The other stalls

-would be distracting the attention of the

-sucker, or looking out for possible interruptions.

-When I had got possession of the

-leather I would pass it quickly to the stall

-behind me, and he would "vamoose." Sometimes

-I would back up to the victim, put my

-hand behind me, break his ring and pick the

-super, or I would face his back, reach round,

-unbutton his vest while a pal stalled in front

-with a newspaper, a bunch of flowers, a fan,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_53' name='Page_53'>[53]</a></span>

-or an overcoat, and get away with his entire

-front.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A dip, as I have said, pays special attention

-to his personal appearance; it is his stock in

-trade; but when I began to meet boys who

-had risen above the grade of Moll-buzzers, I

-found that the dip, as opposed to other grafters,

-had many other advantages, too. He

-combines pleasure and instruction with business,

-for he goes to the foot-ball games, the

-New London races, to swell theatres where

-the graft is good, and to lectures. I have

-often listened to Bob Ingersoll, the greatest

-orator, in my opinion, that ever lived. I

-enjoyed his talk so much that I sometimes

-forgot to graft. But as a general rule, I was

-able to combine instruction with business. I

-very seldom dropped a red super because of

-an oratorical flourish; but the supers did not

-come my way all the time, I had some waiting

-to do, and in the meantime I improved

-my mind. Then a dip travels, too, more than

-most grafters; he jumps out to fairs and large

-gatherings of all descriptions, and grows to be

-a man of the world. When in the city he

-visits the best dance halls, and is popular

-because of his good clothes, his dough, and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_54' name='Page_54'>[54]</a></span>

-his general information, with men as well as

-women. He generally lives with a Moll who

-has seen the world, and who can add to his

-fund of information. I know a dip who could

-not read or write until he met a Moll, who

-gave him a general education and taught him

-to avoid things that interfered with his line

-of graft; she also took care of his personal

-appearance, and equipped him generally for an

-A No. 1 pickpocket. Women are much the

-same, I believe, in every rank of life.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was at this time, when I was a kid of

-fifteen, that I first met Sheenie Annie, who

-was a famous shop-lifter. She was twenty-one

-years old, and used to give me good

-advice. "Keep away from heavy workers,"

-(burglars) she would say; "there is a big bit

-in that." She had lived in Graftdom ever

-since she was a tid-bit, and she knew what she

-was talking about. I did not work with her

-until several years later, but I might as well

-tell her sad story now. I may say, as a kind

-of preface, that I have always liked the girl

-grafter who could take care of herself instead

-of sucking the blood out of some man. When

-I find a little working girl who has no other

-ambition than to get a little home together,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_55' name='Page_55'>[55]</a></span>

-with a little knick-knack on the wall, a little

-husband and a little child, I don't care for her.

-She is a nonentity. But such was not Sheenie

-Annie, who was a bright, intelligent, ambitious,

-girl; when she liked a fellow she would do

-anything for him, but otherwise she wouldn't

-let a man come near her.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The little Jewish lassie, named Annie, was

-born in the toughest part of New York.

-Later on, as she advanced in years and became

-an expert pilferer, she was given the nickname

-of "Sheenie." She was brought up on the

-street, surrounded by thieves and prostitutes.

-Her only education was what she received

-during a year or two in the public school.

-She lived near Grand Street, then a popular

-shopping district. As a very little girl she and

-a friend used to visit the drygoods stores and

-steal any little notion they could. There was

-a crowd of young pickpockets in her street,

-and she soon got on to this graft, and became

-so skilful at it that older guns of both sexes

-were eager to take her under their tuition and

-finish her education. The first time I met

-her was in a well-known dance-hall&mdash;Billy

-McGlory's&mdash;and we became friends at once,

-for she was a good girl and full of mischief.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_56' name='Page_56'>[56]</a></span>

-She was not pretty, exactly, but she was passable.

-She was small, with thick lips, plump,

-had good teeth and eyes as fine and piercing

-as any I ever saw in man or woman. She

-dressed well and was a good talker, as nimble-witted

-and as good a judge of human nature

-as I ever met in her sex.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sheenie Annie's graft broadened, and from

-dipping and small shop-lifting she rose to a

-position where she doubled up with a mob of

-clever hotel workers, and made large amounts

-of money. Here was a girl from the lowest

-stratum of life, not pretty or well shaped, but

-whom men admired because of her wit and

-cleverness. A big contractor in Philadelphia

-was her friend for years. I have seen letters

-from him offering to marry her. But she had

-something better.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For she was an artist at "penny-weighting"

-and "hoisting." The police admitted that she

-was unusually clever at these two grafts, and

-they treated her with every consideration.

-Penny-weighting is a very "slick" graft. It

-is generally worked in pairs, by either sex or

-both sexes. A man, for instance, enters a

-jewelry store and looks at some diamond rings

-on a tray. He prices them and notes the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_57' name='Page_57'>[57]</a></span>

-costly ones. Then he goes to a fauny shop

-(imitation jewelry) and buys a few diamonds

-which match the real ones he has noted. Then

-he and his pal, usually a woman, enter the

-jewelry store and ask to see the rings.

-Through some little "con" they distract the

-jeweler's attention, and then one of them (and

-at this Sheenie Annie was particularly good)

-substitutes the bogus diamonds for the good

-ones; and leaves the store without making a

-purchase.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I can give an example of how Sheenie Annie

-"hoisted," from my own experience with her.

-On one occasion, when I was about eighteen

-years old, Sheenie and I were on a racket together.

-We had been "going it" for several

-days and needed some dough. We went into

-a large tailoring establishment, where I tried

-on some clothes, as a stall. Nothing suited

-me.&mdash;I took good care of that&mdash;but in the

-meantime Annie had taken two costly overcoats,

-folded them into flat bundles, and, raising

-her skirt quickly, had hidden the overcoats

-between her legs. We left the store together.

-She walked so straight that I thought she had

-got nothing, but when we entered a saloon a

-block away, and the swag was produced, I was

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_58' name='Page_58'>[58]</a></span>

-forced to laugh. We "fenced" the overcoats

-and with the proceeds continued our spree.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Once Sheenie "fell" at this line of graft.

-She had stolen some costly sealskins from a

-well-known furrier, and had got away with

-them. But on her third visit to the place she

-came to grief. She was going out with a sealskin

-coat under her skirt when the office-boy,

-who was skylarking about, ran into her, and

-upset her. When the salesman, who had

-gone to her rescue, lifted her up, she lost her

-grip on the sealskin sacque, and it fell to the

-floor. It was a "blow," of course, and she

-got nailed, but as she had plenty of fall-money,

-and a well-known politician dead to rights, she

-only got nine months in the penitentiary.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sheenie Annie was such a good shop-lifter

-that, with only an umbrella as a stall, she

-could make more money in a week than a poor

-needle-woman could earn in months. But

-she did not care for the money. She was a

-good fellow, and was in for fun. She was

-"wise," too, and I liked to talk to her, for she

-understood what I said, and was up to snuff,

-which was very piquant to me. She had done

-most of the grafts that I had done myself, and

-her tips were always valuable.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_59' name='Page_59'>[59]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-To show what a good fellow she was, her

-sweetheart, Jack, and another burglar named

-Jerry were doing night work once, when they

-were unlucky enough to be nailed. Sheenie

-Annie went on the stand and swore perjury

-in order to save Jack. He got a year, but

-Jerry, who had committed the same crime, got

-six. While he was in prison Annie visited

-him and put up a plan by which he escaped,

-but he would not leave New York with her,

-and was caught and returned to "stir." Annie

-herself fell in half a dozen cities, but never

-received more than a few months. After I

-was released from serving my second bit in

-the "pen," I heard Annie had died insane. An

-old girl pal of hers told me that she had died a

-horrible death, and that her last words were

-about her old friends and companions. Her

-disease was that which attacks only people

-with brains. She died of paresis.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Two other girls whom I knew when I was

-fifteen turned out to be famous shop-lifters&mdash;Big

-Lena and Blonde Mamie, who afterwards

-married Tommy, the famous cracksman. They

-began to graft when they were about fourteen,

-and Mamie and I used to work together. I

-was Mamie's first "fellow," and we had royal

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_60' name='Page_60'>[60]</a></span>

-good times together. Lena, poor girl, is now

-doing five years in London, but she was one

-of the most cheerful Molls I ever knew. I

-met her and Mamie for the first time one day

-as they were coming out of an oyster house

-on Grand Street. I thought they were good-looking

-tid-bits, and took them to a picnic.

-We were so late that instead of going home

-Mamie and I spent the night at the house of

-Lena's sister, whose husband was a receiver of

-stolen goods, or "fence," as it is popularly

-called. In the morning Lena, Mamie and I

-made our first "touch" together. We got a

-few "books" uptown, and Mamie banged a

-satchel at Sterns. After that we often jumped

-out together, and took in the excursions.

-Sometimes Mamie or Lena would dip and I

-would stall, but more frequently I was the

-pick. We used to turn our swag over to

-Lena's sister's husband, Max, who would give

-us about one-sixth of its value.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-These three girls certainly were a crack-a-jack

-trio. You can't find their likes nowadays.

-Even in my time most of the girls I knew did

-not amount to anything. They generally married,

-or did worse. There were few legitimate

-grafters among them. Since I have been

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_61' name='Page_61'>[61]</a></span>

-back this time I have seen a great many of

-the old picks and night-workers I used to

-know. They tell the same story. There are

-no Molls now who can compare with Big

-Lena, Blonde Mamie, and Sheenie Annie.

-Times are bad, anyway.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After my experience in the Tombs I rose

-very rapidly in the world of graft, and distanced

-my old companions. Zack, the lad

-with whom I had touched my first Moll, soon

-seemed very tame to me. I fell away from

-him because he continued to eat bolivers

-(cookies), patronize the free baths, and stole

-horse-blankets and other trivial things when

-he could not get "leathers." He was not fast

-enough for me. Zack "got there," nevertheless,

-and for little or nothing, for several

-years later I met him in State's prison. He

-told me he was going to Colorado on his

-release. I again met him in prison on my

-second bit. He was then going to Chicago.

-On my third hit I ran up against the same old

-jail-bird, but this time his destination was

-Boston. To-day he is still in prison.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As I fell away from the softies I naturally

-joined hands with more ambitious grafters,

-and with those with brains and with good connections

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_62' name='Page_62'>[62]</a></span>

-in the upper world. As a lad of

-from fifteen to eighteen I associated with

-several boys who are now famous politicians

-in this city, and "on the level," as that phrase

-is usually meant. Jack Lawrence was a well-educated

-boy, and high up as far as his family

-was concerned. His father and brothers held

-good political positions, and it was only a

-taste for booze and for less genteel grafting

-that held Jack back. As a boy of sixteen or

-seventeen he was the trusted messenger of a

-well-known Republican politician, named J. I.

-D. One of Jacks pals became a Federal

-Judge, and another, Mr. D&mdash;&mdash;, who was

-never a grafter, is at present a city magistrate

-in New York.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While Jack was working for J. I. D., the

-politician, he was arrested several times. Once

-he abstracted a large amount of money from

-the vest pocket of a broker as he was standing

-by the old <i>Herald</i> building. He was nailed,

-and sent word to his employer, the politician,

-who went to police headquarters, highly indignant

-at the arrest of his trusted messenger.

-He easily convinced the broker and the magistrate

-that Jack was innocent; and as far as

-the Republican politician's business was concerned,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_63' name='Page_63'>[63]</a></span>

-Jack was honest, for J. I. D. trusted

-him, and Jack never deceived him. There

-are some thieves who will not "touch" those

-who place confidence in them, and Jack was

-one of them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After he was released, the following conversation,

-which Jack related to me, took

-place between him and the politician, in the

-latter's office.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How was it?" the Big One said, "that

-you happened to get your fingers into that

-man's pocket?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Jack gave the "innocent con."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"None of that," said J. I. D., who was a

-wise guy, "I know you have a habit of taking

-small change from strangers' pockets."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Jack then came off his perch and gave his

-patron a lesson in the art of throwing the mit

-(dipping). At this the politician grinned, and

-remarked: "You will either become a reputable

-politician, for you have the requisite character,

-or you will die young."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Jack was feared, hated and envied by the

-other young fellows in J. I. D.'s office, for as

-he was such a thorough rascal, he was a great

-favorite with those high up. But he never

-got J. I. D.'s full confidence until after he was

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_64' name='Page_64'>[64]</a></span>

-tested in the following way. One day the

-politician put his gold watch on a table in his

-office. Jack saw it, picked it up and put it in

-the Big One's drawer. The latter entered the

-room, saw that the watch was gone, and said:

-"I forgot my watch. I must have left it

-home."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No," said Jack, "you left it on the table,

-and I put it in your desk." A smile spread

-over the patron's face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jack, I can trust you. I put it there

-just to test your honesty."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy hesitated a moment, then, looking

-into the man's face, replied; "I know right

-well you did, for you are a wise guy."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After that J. I. D. trusted Jack even with

-his love affairs.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As Jack advanced in life he became an

-expert "gun," and was often nailed, and frequently

-brought before Magistrate D&mdash;&mdash;, his

-old friend. He always got the benefit of the

-doubt. One day he was arraigned before the

-magistrate, who asked the flyman the nature of

-the complaint. It was the same as usual&mdash;dipping.

-Jack, of course, was indignant at such

-an awful accusation, but the magistrate told

-him to keep still, and, turning to the policeman,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_65' name='Page_65'>[65]</a></span>

-asked the culprit's name. When the

-copper told him, the magistrate exclaimed:

-"Why, that is not his name. I knew him

-twenty years ago, and he was a d&mdash;&mdash; rascal

-then; but that was not his name."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Jack was shocked at such language from

-the bench, and swore with such vehemence

-that he was innocent, that he again got the

-benefit of the doubt, and was discharged, and

-this time justly, for he had not made this particular

-"touch." He was hounded by a copper

-looking for a reputation. Jack, when he

-was set free, turned to the magistrate, and

-said: "Your honor, I thank you, but you only

-did your duty to an innocent man." The

-magistrate had a good laugh, and remarked:

-"Jack, I wouldn't believe you if you swore on

-a stack of Bibles."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A curious trait in a professional grafter is

-that, if he is "pinched" for something he did

-not do, although he has done a hundred other

-things for which he has never been pinched,

-he will put up such a wail against the abominable

-injustice that an honest man accused of

-the same offense would seem guilty in comparison.

-The honest man, even if he had the

-ability of a Philadelphia lawyer, could not do

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_66' name='Page_66'>[66]</a></span>

-the strong indignation act that is characteristic

-of the unjustly accused grafter. Old thieves

-guilty of a thousand crimes will nourish

-revenge for years against the copper or judge

-who sends them up to "stir" on a false accusation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I was from fifteen to seventeen years

-old, I met the man who, some think, is now

-practically leader of Tammany Hall. I will

-call him Senator Wet Coin. At that time he

-was a boy eighteen or nineteen and strictly on

-the level. He knew all the grafters well, but

-kept off the Rocky Path himself. In those

-days he "hung out" in an oyster shanty and

-ran a paper stand. It is said he materially

-assisted Mr. Pulitzer in making a success of

-the <i>World</i>, when that paper was started. He

-never drank, in spite of the name I have given

-him. In fact, he derived his real nickname

-from his habit of abstinence. He was the

-friend of a Bowery girl who is now a well-known

-actress. She, too, was always on the

-level in every way; although her brother was

-a grafter; this case, and that of Senator Wet

-Coin prove that even in an environment of

-thieves it is possible to tread the path of virtue.

-Wet Coin would not even buy a stolen

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_67' name='Page_67'>[67]</a></span>

-article; and his reward was great. He became

-captain of his election district, ran for assemblyman,

-was elected, and got as high a position,

-with the exception of that of Governor,

-as is possible in the State; while in the city,

-probably no man is more powerful.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Senator Wet Coin made no pretensions to

-virtue; he never claimed to be better than

-others. But in spite of the accusations against

-him, he has done far more for the public good

-than all the professional reformers, religious

-and other. He took many noted and professional

-criminals in the prime of their success,

-gave them positions and by his influence kept

-them honest ever since. Some of them are

-high up, even run gin-mills to-day. I met one

-of them after my second bit, who used to make

-his thousands. Now he has a salary of eighteen

-dollars a week and is contented. I had

-known him in the old days, and he asked:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What are you doing?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The same old thing," I admitted. "What

-are you up to?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I have squared it, Jim," he replied earnestly.

-"There's nothing in the graft. Why

-don't you go to sea?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'd as lief go to stir," I replied.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_68' name='Page_68'>[68]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-We had a couple of beers and a long talk,

-and this is the way he gave it to me:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I never thought I could live on eighteen

-dollars a week. I have to work hard but I

-save more money than I did when I was making

-hundreds a week; for when it comes hard,

-it does not go easy. I look twice at my earnings

-before I part with them. I live quietly with my

-sister and am happy. There's nothing in the

-other thing, Jim. Look at Hope. Look at

-Dan Noble. Look at all the other noted grafters

-who stole millions and now are willing to

-throw the brotherly hand for a small borrow.

-If I had the chance to make thousands to-morrow

-in the under world, I would not chance

-it. I am happy. Better still, I am contented.

-Only for Mr. Wet Coin I'd be splitting matches

-in the stir these many years. Show me the

-reformer who has done as much for friends

-and the public as Wet Coin."

-</p>

-

-

-<p class="p2">

-A "touch" that pleased me mightily as a

-kid was made just before my second fall.

-Superintendent Walling had returned from a

-summer resort, and found that a mob of

-"knucks" (another name for pick-pockets)

-had been "tearing open" the Third Avenue

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_69' name='Page_69'>[69]</a></span>

-cars outside of the Post Office. About fifty

-complaints had been coming in every day for

-several weeks; and the Superintendent thought

-he would make a personal investigation and

-get one of the thieves dead to rights. He

-made a front that he was easy and went down

-the line. He did not catch any dips, but when

-he reached police head-quarters he was minus

-his gold watch and two hundred and fifty dollars

-in money. The story leaked out, and Superintendent

-Walling was unhappy. There would

-never have been a come-back for this "touch"

-if an old gun, who had just been nailed, had

-not "squealed" as to who touched the boss.

-"Little Mick" had done it, and the result was

-that he got his first experience in the House of

-Refuge.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was only a short time after Little Mick's

-fall that it came my turn to go to the House

-of Refuge. I had grown tougher and much

-stuck on myself and was taking bigger risks.

-I certainly had a swelled head in those days.

-I was seventeen years old at the time, and

-was grafting with Jack T&mdash;&mdash;, who is now in

-Byrnes's book, and one of the swellest "Peter"

-men (safe-blowers) in the profession. Jack and

-I, along with another pal, Joe Quigley, got a

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_70' name='Page_70'>[70]</a></span>

-duffer, an Englishman, for his "front," on

-Grand Street, near Broadway. It was a

-"blow," and I, who was the "wire," got

-nailed. If I had not given my age as fifteen

-I should have been sent to the penitentiary.

-As it was I went to the House of Refuge for

-a year. Joe Quigley slipped up on the same

-game. He was twenty, but gave his age as

-fifteen. He had had a good shave by the

-Tombs barber, there was a false date of birth

-written in his Aunt's Bible, which was produced

-in court by his lawyer, and he would

-probably have gone with me to the House of

-Refuge, had not a Central Office man who

-knew him, happened in; Joe was settled for

-four years in Sing Sing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I arrived at the House of Refuge,

-my pedigree was taken and my hair clipped.

-Then I went into the yard, looked down the

-line of boys on parade and saw about forty

-young grafters whom I knew. One of them

-is now a policeman in New York City, and,

-moreover, on the level. Some others, too,

-but not many, who were then in the House of

-Refuge, are now honest. Several are running

-big saloons and are captains of their election

-districts, or even higher up. These men are

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_71' name='Page_71'>[71]</a></span>

-exceptions, however, for certainly the House

-of Refuge was a school for crime. Unspeakably

-bad habits were contracted there. The

-older boys wrecked the younger ones, who,

-comparatively innocent, confined for the crime

-of being orphans, came in contact with others

-entirely hardened. The day time was spent

-in the school and the shop, but there was an

-hour or two for play, and the boys would

-arrange to meet for mischief in the basement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Severe punishments were given to lads of

-fifteen, and their tasks were harder than those

-inflicted in State's prison. We had to make

-twenty-four pairs of overalls every day; and if

-we did not do our work we were beaten on an

-unprotected and tender spot until we promised

-to do our task. One morning I was made to

-cross my hands, and was given fifteen blows

-on the palms with a heavy rattan stick. The

-crime I had committed was inattention. The

-principal had been preaching about the Prodigal

-Son. I, having heard it before, paid little

-heed; particularly as I was a Catholic, and his

-teachings did not count for me. They called

-me a "Papist," and beat me, as I described.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I say without hesitation that lads sent to

-an institution like the House of Refuge, the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_72' name='Page_72'>[72]</a></span>

-Catholic Protectory, or the Juvenile Asylum,

-might better be taken out and shot. They

-learn things there they could not learn even in

-the streets. The newsboy's life is pure in

-comparison. As for me, I grew far more desperate

-there than I had been before: and I

-was far from being one of the most innocent

-of boys. Many of the others had more to

-learn than I had, and they learned it. But

-even I, hard as I already was, acquired much

-fresh information about vice and crime; and

-gathered in more pointers about the technique

-of graft.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_73' name='Page_73'>[73]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER IV.<br />

-<i>When the Graft Was Good.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-I stayed in the House of Refuge until I

-was eighteen, and when released, went through

-a short period of reform. I "lasted," I think,

-nearly three weeks, and then started in to

-graft again harder than ever. The old itch

-for excitement, for theatres, balls and gambling,

-made reform impossible. I had already

-formed strong habits and desires which could

-not be satisfied in my environment without

-stealing. I was rapidly becoming a confirmed

-criminal. I began to do "house-work," which

-was mainly sneak work up town. We would

-catch a basement open in the day time, and

-rummage for silverware, money or jewels.

-There is only a step from this to the business

-of the genuine burglar, who operates in the

-night time, and whose occupation is far more

-dangerous than that of the sneak thief. However,

-at this intermediate kind of graft, our

-swag, for eighteen months, was considerable.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_74' name='Page_74'>[74]</a></span>

-One of our methods was to take servant girls

-to balls and picnics and get them to tip us off

-to where the goods were and the best way to

-get them. Sometimes they were guilty, more

-often merely suckers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-During the next three years, at the expiration

-of which I made my first trip to Sing

-Sing, I stole a great deal of money and lived

-very high. I contracted more bad habits,

-practically ceased to see my family at all, lived

-in a furnished room and "hung out" in the

-evening at some dance-hall, such as Billy

-McGlory's Old Armory, George Doe's or

-"The" Allen's. Sheenie Annie was my sweetheart

-at this period, and after we had made a

-good touch what times we would have at

-Coney Island or at Billy McGlory's! Saturday

-nights in the summer time a mob of three

-or four of us, grafters and girls, would go to

-the island and stop at a hotel run by an ex-gun.

-At two or three o'clock in the morning

-we'd all leave the hotel, with nothing on but

-a quilt, and go in swimming together. Sheenie

-Annie, Blonde Mamie and Big Lena often

-went with us. At other times we took respectable

-shop-girls, or even women who belonged

-to a still lower class. What boy with an

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_75' name='Page_75'>[75]</a></span>

-ounce of thick blood in his body could refuse

-to go with a girl to the Island?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Billy McGlory's! What times we had

-there, on dear old Saturday nights! At this

-place, which contained a bar-room, dance-room,

-pool-room and a piano, congregated downtown

-guns, house-men and thieves of both

-sexes. No rag-time was danced in those days,

-but early in the morning we had plenty of the

-cancan. The riots that took place there would

-put to shame anything that goes on now.<a name='FA_A' id='FA_A' href='#FN_A' class='fnanchor'>[A]</a> I

-never knew the town so tight-shut as it is at

-present. It is far better, from a moral point

-of view than it has ever been before; at least,

-in my recollection. "The" Allen's was in

-those days a grade more decent than McGlory's;

-for at "The's" nobody who did not wear

-a collar and coat was admitted. I remember

-a pal of mine who met a society lady on a

-slumming expedition with a reporter. It was

-at McGlory's. The lady looked upon the

-grafter she had met as a novelty. The grafter

-looked upon the lady in the same way, but

-consented to write her an article on the Bowery.

-He sent her the following composition,

-which he showed to me first, and allowed me

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_76' name='Page_76'>[76]</a></span>

-to copy it. I always did like freaks. I won't

-put in the bad grammar and spelling, but the

-rest is:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"While strolling, after the midnight hour,

-along the Lane, that historic thoroughfare

-sometimes called the Bowery, I dropped into

-a concert hall. At a glance, I saw men who

-worked hard during the week and needed a

-little recreation. Near them were their sisters

-(that is, if we all belong to the same human

-family), who had fallen by the wayside. A

-man was trying to play a popular song on a

-squeaky piano, while another gent tried to

-sing the first part of the song, when the whole

-place joined in the chorus with a zest. I

-think the song was most appropriate. It was

-a ditty of the slums entitled, 'Dear Old

-Saturday Night.'"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I was about nineteen I took another

-and important step in the world of graft.

-One night I met a couple of swell grafters,

-one of whom is at the present time a Pinkerton

-detective. They took me to the Haymarket,

-where I met a crowd of guns who

-were making barrels of money. Two of them,

-Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, became my

-friends, and introduced me to Mr. R&mdash;&mdash;, who

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_77' name='Page_77'>[77]</a></span>

-has often kept me out of prison. He was a

-go-between, a lawyer, and well-known to all

-good crooks. If we "fell" we had to notify

-him and he would set the underground wires

-working, with the result that our fall money

-would need replenishing badly, but that we'd

-escape the stir.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That I was not convicted again for three

-years was entirely due to my fall money and to

-the cleverness of Mr. R&mdash;&mdash;. Besides these

-expenses, which I considered legitimate, I

-used to get "shaken down" regularly by the

-police and detectives. The following is a

-typical case:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was standing one day on the corner of

-Grand Street and the Bowery when a copper

-who knew me came up and said: "There's a

-lot of knocking (complaining) going on about

-the Grand Street cars being torn open. The

-old man (the chief) won't stand for it much

-longer."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It wasn't me," I said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, it was one of the gang," he replied,

-"and I will have to make an arrest soon, or

-take some one to headquarters for his mug,"

-(that is, to have his picture taken for the

-rogues' gallery).

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_78' name='Page_78'>[78]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I knew what that meant, and so I gave him

-a twenty dollar bill. But I was young and

-often objected to these exorbitant demands.

-More than anybody else a thief hates to be

-"touched," for he despises the sucker on whom

-he lives. And we were certainly touched with

-great regularity by the coppers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Still, we really had nothing to complain of

-in those days, for we made plenty of money

-and had a good time. We even used to buy

-our collars, cuffs and gloves cheap from grafters

-who made it their business to steal those

-articles. They were cheap guns,&mdash;pipe fiends,

-petty larceny thieves and shop-lifters&mdash;but

-they helped to make our path smoother.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After I met the Haymarket grafter I used

-to jump out to neighboring cities on very

-profitable business. A good graft was to

-work the fairs at Danbury, Waverly, Philadelphia

-and Pittsburg, and the foot-ball games

-at Princeton. I always travelled with three

-or four others, and went for gatherings where

-we knew we would find "roofers," or country

-gentlemen. On my very first jump-out I got

-a fall, but the copper was open to reason.

-Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, splendid

-pickpockets, (I always went with good thieves,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_79' name='Page_79'>[79]</a></span>

-for I had become a first-class dip and had a

-good personal appearance) were working with

-me in Newark, where Vice-President Hendricks

-was to speak. I picked a watch in the

-crowd, and was nailed. But Dutch Lonzo,

-who had the gift of gab better than any man I

-ever met, took the copper into a saloon. We

-all had a drink, and for twenty-five dollars I

-escaped even the station-house. Unfortunately,

-however, I was compelled to return the

-watch; for the copper had to "square" the

-sucker. Then the copper said to Dutch Lonzo,

-whom he knew: "Go back and graft, if you

-want, but be sure to look me up." In an hour

-or two we got enough touches to do us for

-two weeks. Senator Wet Coin was at this

-speech with about two hundred Tammany

-braves, and we picked so many pockets that a

-newspaper the next day said there must have

-been at least one hundred and ninety-nine

-pickpockets in the Tammany delegation. We

-fell quite often on these trips, but we were

-always willing to help the coppers pay for

-their lower flats. I sometimes objected because

-of their exorbitant demands, but I was

-still young. I knew that longshoremen did

-harder work for less pay than the coppers,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_80' name='Page_80'>[80]</a></span>

-and I thought, therefore, that the latter were

-too eager to make money on a sure-thing

-graft. And I always hated a sure-thing graft.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But didn't we strike it rich in Connecticut!

-Whether the people of that State suffer from

-partial paralysis or not I don't know, but certainly

-if all States were as easy as Connecticut

-the guns would set up as Vanderbilts. I never

-even got a tumble in Connecticut. I ripped

-up the fairs in every direction, and took every

-chance. The inhabitants were so easy that

-we treated them with contempt.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After a long trip in Connecticut I nearly

-fell on my return, I was that raw. We were

-breech-getting (picking men's pockets) in the

-Brooklyn cars. I was stalling in front, Lonzo

-was behind and Charlie was the pick. Lonzo

-telephoned to me by gestures that Charlie had

-hold of the leather, but it wouldn't come. I

-was hanging on a strap, and, pretending to slip,

-brought my hand down heavily on the sucker's

-hat, which went over his ears. The leather

-came, was slipped to me, Lonzo apologized for

-spoiling the hat and offered the sucker a five

-dollar bill, which he politely refused. Now

-that was rough work, and we would not have

-done it, had we not been travelling so long

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_81' name='Page_81'>[81]</a></span>

-among the Reubs in Connecticut. We could

-have made our gets all right, but we were so confident

-and delayed so long that the sucker blew

-before we left the car, and Lonzo and Charlie

-were nailed, and the next morning arraigned.

-In the meantime, however, we had started the

-wires working, and notified Mr. R.&mdash;&mdash; and

-Lonzo's wife to "fix" things in Brooklyn.

-The reliable attorney got a bondsman, and

-two friends of his "fixed" the cops, who made

-no complaint. Lonzo's wife, an Irishwoman

-and a handsome grafter, had just finished a

-five year bit in London. It cost us six hundred

-dollars to "fix" that case, and there was

-only two hundred and fifty dollars in the

-leather.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That made Lonzo's wife exceedingly angry.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Good Lord," she said. "There's panthers

-for you in New York! There's the blokes

-that shakes you down too heavy. I'd want an

-unlimited cheque on the Bank of England if

-you ever fell again."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A little philosophy on the same subject was

-given me one day by an English Moll, who

-had fallen up-State and had to "give up"

-heavily.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I've been in a good many cities and 'amlets

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_82' name='Page_82'>[82]</a></span>

-in this country," said she, "but gad! blind me if

-I ever want to fall in an 'amlet in this blooming

-State again. The New York police are at

-least a little sensible at times, but when these

-Rufus's up the State get a Yorker or a wise guy,

-they'll strip him down to his socks. One of these

-voracious country coppers who sing sweet

-hymns in jail is a more successful gun than

-them that hit the rocky path and take brash to

-get the long green. It is only the grafter that

-is supposed to protect the people who makes a

-success of it. The hypocritical mouthings of

-these people just suit the size of their Bibles."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lonzo and I, and Patsy, a grafter I had

-picked up about this time, made several fat

-trips to Philadelphia. At first we were leary

-of the department stores, there had been so

-many "hollers," and worked the "rattlers"

-(cars) only. We were told by some local guns

-that we could not "last" twenty-four hours in

-Philadelphia without protection, but that was

-not our experience. We went easy for a time,

-but the chances were too good, and we began

-voraciously to tear open the department stores,

-the churches and the theatres; and without a

-fall. Whenever anybody mentioned the fly-cops

-(detectives) of Philadelphia it reminded

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_83' name='Page_83'>[83]</a></span>

-us of the inhabitants of Connecticut. They

-were not "dead": such a word is sacred.

-Their proper place was not on the police force,

-but on a shelf in a Dutchman's grocery store

-labelled the canned article. Philadelphia was

-always my town, but I never stayed very long,

-partly because I did not want to become known

-in such a fat place, and partly because I could

-not bear to be away from New York very long;

-for, although there is better graft in other cities,

-there is no such place to live in as Manhattan.

-I had no fear of being known in Philadelphia

-to the police; but to local guns who would

-become jealous of our grafting and tip us off.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On one of my trips to the City of Brotherly

-Love I had a poetical experience. The graft

-had been good, and one Sunday morning I

-left Dan and Patsy asleep, and went for a walk

-in the country, intending, for a change, to

-observe the day of rest. I walked for several

-hours through a beautiful, quiet country, and

-about ten o'clock passed a country church.

-They were singing inside, and for some reason,

-probably because I had had a good walk in

-the country, the music affected me strangely.

-I entered, and saw a blind evangelist and his

-sister. I bowed my head, and my whole past

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_84' name='Page_84'>[84]</a></span>

-life came over me. Although everything had

-been coming my way, I felt uneasy, and

-thought of home for the first time in many

-weeks. I went back to the hotel in Philadelphia,

-feeling very gloomy, and shut myself up

-in my room. I took up my pen and began a

-letter to a Tommy (girl) in New York. But

-I could not forget the country church, and

-instead of writing to the little Tommy, I

-wrote the following jingles:

-</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<p class="o1">

-"When a child by mother's knee

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-I would watch, watch, watch

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-By the deep blue sea,

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-And the moon-beams played merrily

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-On our home beside the sea.

-</p>

-</div></div></div>

-

-<p>

-<span class='smcap'>Chorus.</span>

-</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<p class="o1">

-"The Evening Star shines bright-i-ly

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-Above our home beside the sea,

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-And the moon-beams danced beamingly

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-On our home beside the sea.

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-But now I am old, infirm and grey

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-I shall never see those happy days;

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-I would give my life, all my wealth, and fame

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-To hear my mother gently call my name."

-</p>

-</div></div></div>

-

-<p>

-Towards evening Patsy and Dan returned

-from a good day's work. Patsy noticed I

-was quiet and unusually gloomy, and asked:

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_85' name='Page_85'>[85]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What's the matter? Didn't you get anything?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No," I replied, "I'm going back to New

-York."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Where have you been?" asked Dan.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"To church," I replied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"In the city?" he asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No," I replied, "in the country."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I cautioned you," said Dan, "against taking

-such chances. There's no dough in these

-country churches. If you want to try lone

-ones on a Sunday take in some swell church

-in the city."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The following Sunday I went to a fashionable

-church and got a few leathers, and afterwards

-went to all the swell churches in the

-city. I touched them, but they could not

-touch me. I heard all the ministers in Philadelphia,

-but they could not move me the way

-that country evangelist did. They were all

-artificial in comparison.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Shortly after my poetical experience in Philadelphia

-I made a trip up New York State

-with Patsy, Dan and Joe, and grafted in a

-dozen towns. One day when we were on the

-cars going from Albany to Amsterdam, we

-saw a fat, sleepy-looking Dutchman, and I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_86' name='Page_86'>[86]</a></span>

-nicked him for a clock as he was passing

-along the aisle to the end of the car. It took

-the Dutchman about ten minutes after he had

-returned to his seat to blow that his super was

-gone, and his chain hanging down. A look

-of stupid surprise spread over his innocent

-countenance. He looked all around, picked

-up the end of his chain, saw it was twisted, put

-his hand in his vest pocket, then looked again

-at the end of the chain, tried his pocket again,

-then went through all of his pockets, and

-repeated each of these actions a dozen times.

-The passengers all got "next," and began to

-grin. "Get on to the Hiker," (countryman)

-said Patsy to Joe, and they both laughed. I

-told the Dutchman that the clock must have

-fallen down the leg of his underwear; whereupon

-the Reuben retired to investigate,

-searched himself thoroughly and returned,

-only to go through the same motions, and

-then retire to investigate once more. It

-was as good as a comedy. But it was well

-there were no country coppers on that train.

-They would not have cared a rap about the

-Dutchman's loss of his property, but we four

-probably should have been compelled to divide

-with them.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_87' name='Page_87'>[87]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Grafters are a superstitious lot. Before we

-reached Buffalo a feeling came over me that I

-had better not work in that town; so Joe, Dan

-and an English grafter we had picked up,

-named Scotty, stopped at Buffalo, and Patsy

-and I went on. Sure enough, in a couple of

-days Joe wired me that Scotty had fallen for

-a breech-kick and was held for trial. I wired to

-Mr. R&mdash;&mdash;, who got into communication with

-Mr. J&mdash;&mdash;, a Canadian Jew living in Buffalo,

-who set the wires going. The sucker proved

-a very hard man to square, but a politician

-who was a friend of Mr. J&mdash;&mdash; showed him

-the errors of his way, and before very long

-Scotty returned to New York. An English

-Moll-buzzer, a girl, got hold of him and took

-him back to London. It was just as well, for

-it was time for our bunch to break up. We

-were getting too well-known; and falls were

-coming too frequent. So we had a general

-split. Joe went to Washington, Patsy down

-East, Scotty to "stir" in London and I stayed

-in Manhattan, where I shortly afterwards met

-Big Jack and other burglars and started in on

-that dangerous graft. But before I tell about

-my work in that line, I will narrate the story

-of Mamie and Johnny, a famous cracksman,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_88' name='Page_88'>[88]</a></span>

-whom I met at this time. It is a true love

-story of the Under World. Johnny, and

-Mamie, who by the way is not the same as

-Blonde Mamie, are still living together in New

-York City, after many trials and tribulations,

-one of the greatest of which was Mamie's enforced

-relation with a New York detective.

-But I won't anticipate on the story, which

-follows in the next chapter.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_89' name='Page_89'>[89]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER V.<br />

-<i>Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-Johnny met Mamie when he was sixteen.

-At that time he was looked up to in the

-neighborhood as one of the most promising of

-the younger thieves.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was an intelligent, enterprising boy and

-had, moreover, received an excellent education

-in the school of crime. His parents had died

-before he was twelve years old, and after that

-the lad lived at the Newsboys' Lodging House,

-in Rivington Street, which at that time and

-until it ceased to exist was the home of boys

-some of whom afterwards became the swellest

-of crooks, and some very reputable citizens

-and prominent politicians. A meal and a bed

-there cost six cents apiece and even the

-youngest and stupidest waif could earn or steal

-enough for that.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Johnny became an adept at "hooking"

-things from grocery stores and at tapping tills.

-When he was thirteen years old he was

-arrested for petty theft, passed a night in the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_90' name='Page_90'>[90]</a></span>

-police station, and was sent to the Catholic

-Protectory, where he was the associate of

-boys much older and "wiser" in crime than

-he. At that place were all kinds of incurables,

-from those arrested for serious felonies to

-those who had merely committed the crime of

-being homeless. From them Johnny learned

-the ways of the under world very rapidly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After a year of confinement he was clever

-enough to make a key and escape. He safely

-passed old "Cop O'Hagen," whose duty it was

-to watch the Harlem bridge, and returned to

-the familiar streets in lower New York, where

-the boys and rising pickpockets hid him from

-the police, until they forgot about his escape.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-From that time Johnny's rise in the world

-of graft was rapid. He was so successful in

-stealing rope and copper from the dry-docks

-that the older heads took him in hand and used

-to put him through the "fan-light" windows

-of some store, where his haul was sometimes

-considerable. He began to grow rich, purchased

-some shoes and stockings, and assumed

-a "tough" appearance, with great pride. He

-rose a step higher, boarded tug-boats and

-ships anchored at the docks, and constantly

-increased his income. The boys looked upon

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_91' name='Page_91'>[91]</a></span>

-him as a winner in his line of graft, and as he

-gave "hot'l" (lodging-house) money to those

-boys who had none, he was popular. So

-Johnny became "chesty", began to "spread"

-himself, to play pool, to wear good linen collars

-and to associate with the best young

-thieves in the ward.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was at this time that he met Mamie, who

-was a year or two younger than he. She was

-a small, dark, pale-faced little girl, and as neat

-and quick-witted as Johnny. She lived with

-her parents, near the Newsboys' Lodging

-House, where Johnny still "hung out". Mamie's

-father and mother were poor, respectable

-people, who were born and bred in the old

-thirteenth ward, a section famous for the many

-shop girls who were fine "spielers" (dancers).

-Mamie's mother was one of the most skillful

-of these dancers, and therefore Mamie came

-by her passion for the waltz very naturally;

-and the light-footed little girl was an early

-favorite with the mixed crowd of dancers who

-used to gather at the old Concordia Assembly

-Rooms, on the Bowery.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was at this place that Johnny and Mamie

-met for the first time. It was a case of mutual

-admiration, and the boy and girl started in to

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_92' name='Page_92'>[92]</a></span>

-"keep company." Johnny became more ambitious

-in his line of graft; he had a girl! He

-needed money to buy her presents, to take her

-to balls, theatres and picnics; and he began to

-"gun", which means to pickpockets, an occupation

-which he found far more lucrative than

-"swagging" copper from the docks or going

-through fan-light windows. He did not remain

-content, however, with "dipping" and, with

-several much older "grafters", he started in to

-do "drag" work.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Drag" work is a rather complicated kind

-of stealing and success at it requires considerable

-skill. Usually a "mob" of four grafters

-work together. They get "tipped off" to

-some store where there is a line of valuable

-goods, perhaps a large silk or clothing-house.

-One of the four, called the "watcher", times

-the last employee that leaves the place to be

-"touched". The "watcher" is at his post

-again early in the morning, to find out at what

-time the first employee arrives. He may even

-hire a furnished room opposite the store, in

-order to secure himself against identification

-by some Central Office detective who might

-stroll by. When he has learned the hours of

-the employees he reports to his "pals". At

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_93' name='Page_93'>[93]</a></span>

-a late hour at night the four go to the store,

-put a spindle in the Yale lock, and break it

-with a blow from a hammer. They go inside,

-take another Yale lock, which they have

-brought with them, lock themselves in, go

-upstairs, carry the most valuable goods downstairs

-and pile them near the door. Then

-they go away, and, in the morning, before the

-employees are due, they drive up boldly to the

-store with a truck; representing a driver, two

-laborers, and a shipping clerk. They load the

-wagon with the goods, lock the door, and drive

-away. They have been known to do this work

-in full view of the unsuspecting policeman on

-the beat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While Johnny had advanced to this distinguished

-work, Mamie, too, had become a

-bread-earner, of a more modest and a more

-respectable kind. She went to work in a factory,

-and made paper boxes for two and one-half

-dollars a week. So the two dressed very

-well, and had plenty of spending money.

-Unless Johnny had some work to do they

-always met in the evening, and soon were

-seriously in love with one another. Mamie

-knew what Johnny's line of business was, and

-admired his cleverness. The most progressive

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_94' name='Page_94'>[94]</a></span>

-people in her set believed in "getting

-on" in any way, and how could Mamie be

-expected to form a social morality for herself?

-She thought Johnny was the nicest boy in the

-world, and Johnny returned her love to the

-full. So Johnny finally asked her if she would

-"hitch up" with him for life, and she gladly

-consented.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They were married and set up a nice home

-in Allen Street. It was before the time

-when the Jews acquired an exclusive right to

-that part of the town, and in this neighborhood

-Mamie and Johnny had many friends

-who used to visit them in the evening; for

-the loving couple were exceedingly domestic,

-and, when Johnny had no business on hand,

-seldom went out in the evening. Johnny was

-a model husband. He had no bad habits,

-never drank or gambled, spent as much time

-as he could with his wife, and made a great

-deal of money. Mamie gave up her work in

-the shop, and devoted all her attention to

-making Johnny happy and his home pleasant.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For about four years Johnny and Mamie

-lived very happily together. Things came

-their way; and Johnny and his pals laid by a

-considerable amount of money against a rainy

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_95' name='Page_95'>[95]</a></span>

-day. To be sure, they had their little troubles.

-Johnny "fell," that is to say, was arrested, a

-score of times, but succeeded in getting off.

-It was partly due to good luck, and partly to

-the large amount of fall-money he and his pals

-had gathered together.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On one occasion it was only Mamie's cleverness

-and devotion that saved Johnny, for a

-time, from the penitentiary. One dark night

-Johnny and three pals, after a long conversation

-in the saloon of a ward politician, visited

-a large jewelry store on Fulton Street, Brooklyn,

-artistically opened the safe, and made

-away with fifteen thousand dollars. It was a

-bold and famous robbery, and the search for

-the thieves was long and earnest. Johnny

-and his friends were not suspected at first, but

-an old saying among thieves is, "wherever

-there are three or four there is always a leak,"

-a truth similar to that announced by Benjamin

-Franklin: "Three can keep a secret when two

-are dead."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of Johnny's pals, Patsy, told his girl in

-confidence how the daring "touch" was made.

-That was the first link in the long chain of

-gossip which finally reached the ears of the

-watching detectives; and the result was that

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_96' name='Page_96'>[96]</a></span>

-Patsy and Johnny were arrested. It was impossible

-to "settle" this case, no matter how

-much "fall-money" they had at their disposal;

-for the jeweler belonged to the Jewelers' Protective

-Association, which will prosecute those

-who rob anyone belonging to their organization.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As bribery was out of the question, Johnny

-and Patsy, who were what is called in the

-underworld "slick articles," put their heads

-together, and worked out a scheme. The day

-of their trial in the Brooklyn Court came

-around. They were waiting their turn in the

-prisoner's "pen," adjoining the Court, when

-Mamie came to see them. The meeting between

-her and Johnny was very affecting.

-After a few words Mamie noticed that her

-swell Johnny wore no neck-tie. Johnny,

-seemingly embarrassed, turned to a Court

-policeman, and asked him to lend him his tie

-for a short time. The policeman declined,

-but remarked that Mamie had a tie that

-would match Johnny's complexion very well.

-Mamie impulsively took off her tie, put it

-on Johnny, kissed him, and left the Court-house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Johnny was to be tried in ten minutes, but

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_97' name='Page_97'>[97]</a></span>

-he induced his lawyer to have the trial put

-off for half an hour; and another case was tried

-instead. Then he took off Mamie's neck-tie,

-tore the back out of it, and removed two fine

-steel saws. He gave one to Patsy, and in a

-few minutes they had penetrated a small iron

-bar which closed a little window leading to an

-alley. Patsy was too large to squeeze himself

-through the opening, but "stalled" for Johnny

-while the latter "made his gets". When they

-came to put these two on trial there was a

-sensation in Court. No Johnny! Patsy knew

-nothing about it, he said; and he received six

-years for his crime.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Johnny's day for a time in the "stir"

-soon came around. He made a good "touch",

-and got away with the goods, but was betrayed

-by a pal, a professional thief who was

-in the pay of the police, technically called a

-"stool-pigeon". Mamie visited Johnny in the

-Tombs, and when she found the case was

-hopeless she wanted to go and steal something

-herself so that she might accompany her

-boy to prison. But when Johnny told her

-there were no women at Sing Sing she gave

-up the idea. Johnny went to prison for four

-years, and Mamie went to a tattooer, and, as a

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_98' name='Page_98'>[98]</a></span>

-proof of her devotion, had Johnny's name

-indelibly stamped upon her arm.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mamie, in consequence of her fidelity to

-Johnny, whom she regularly visited at Sing

-Sing, was a heroine and a martyr in the eyes

-of the grafters of both sexes. The money she

-and Johnny had saved began to dwindle, and

-soon she was compelled to work again at box-making.

-She remained faithful to Johnny,

-although many a good grafter tried to make

-up to the pretty girl. When Johnny was

-released from Sing Sing, Mamie was even

-happier than he. They had no money now,

-but some politicians and saloon-keepers who

-knew that Johnny was a good money-getter,

-set them up in a little house. And they resumed

-their quiet domestic life together.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Their happiness did not last long, however.

-Johnny needed money more than ever now and

-resumed his dangerous business. He got in

-with a quartette of the cleverest safe-crackers

-in the country, and made a tour of the

-Eastern cities. They made many important

-touches, but finally Johnny was again under

-suspicion for a daring robbery in Union

-Square, and was compelled to become a solitary

-fugitive. He sent word, through an old-time

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_99' name='Page_99'>[99]</a></span>

-burglar, to Mamie, exhorted her to keep

-up the home, and promised to send money

-regularly. He was forced, however, to stay

-away from New York for several years, and

-did not dare to communicate with Mamie.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At first, Mamie tried to resume her work at

-box-making. But she had had so much leisure

-and had lived so well that she found the

-work irksome and the pay inadequate. Mamie

-knew many women pickpockets and shop-lifters,

-friends of her husband. When some

-of these adventurous girls saw that Mamie was

-discontented with her lot, they induced her to

-go out and work with them. So Mamie became

-a very clever shop-lifter, and, for a time,

-made considerable money. Then many of the

-best "guns" in the city again tried to make

-up to Mamie, and marry her. Johnny was

-not on the spot, and that, in the eyes of a

-thief, constitutes a divorce. But Mamie still

-loved her wayward boy and held the others

-back.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In the meantime Johnny had become a

-great traveller. He knew that the detectives

-were so hot on his track that he dared to stay

-nowhere very long; nor dared to trust anyone:

-so he worked alone. He made a number

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_100' name='Page_100'>[100]</a></span>

-of daring robberies, all along the line from

-Montreal to Detroit, but they all paled in comparison

-with a touch he made at Philadelphia,

-a robbery which is famous in criminal

-annals.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had returned to Philadelphia, hoping

-to get a chance to send word to Mamie,

-whom he had not seen for years, and for

-whom he pined. While in the city of brotherly

-love he was "tipped off" to a good thing.

-He boldly entered a large mercantile house,

-and, in thirteen minutes, he opened a time-lock

-vault, and abstracted three hundred thousand

-dollars worth of negotiable bonds and

-escaped.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The bold deed made a sensation all over

-the country. The mercantile house and the

-safe manufacturers were so hot for the thief

-that the detectives everywhere worked hard

-and "on the level". Johnny was not suspected

-then, and never "did time" for this

-touch. For a while he hid in Philadelphia;

-boarded there with a poor, respectable family,

-representing himself as a laborer out of work.

-He spent the daytime in a little German beer

-saloon, playing pinocle with the proprietor;

-and was perfectly safe.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_101' name='Page_101'>[101]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But his longing for Mamie had grown so

-strong that he could not bear it. He knew

-that the detectives were still looking for him

-because of the old crime, and that they were

-hot to discover the thief of the negotiable

-bonds. He sent word to Mamie, nevertheless,

-through an old pal he found at Philadelphia,

-and arranged to see her at Mount Vernon,

-near New York.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The two met in the side room of a little

-saloon near the railway station; and the greeting

-was affectionate in the extreme. They

-had not seen one another for years! And

-hardly a message had been exchanged. After

-a little Johnny told Mamie, proudly, that

-it was he who had stolen the negotiable

-bonds.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now," he added, "we are rich. After a

-little I can sell these bonds for thirty cents

-on the dollar and then you and I will go away

-and give up this life. I am getting older

-and my nerve is not what it was once. We'll

-settle down quietly in London or some town

-where we are not known, and be happy.

-Won't we, dear?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mamie said "Yes," but she appeared confused.

-When Johnny asked her what was

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_102' name='Page_102'>[102]</a></span>

-the matter, she burst into tears; and choked

-and sobbed for some time before she could

-say a word. She ordered a glass of whiskey,

-which she never used to drink in the old days,

-and when the bar-tender had left, she turned

-to the worried Johnny, embraced him tenderly

-and said, in a voice which still trembled:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Johnny, will you forgive me if I tell you

-something? It's pretty bad, but not so bad

-as it might be, for I love only you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Johnny encouraged her with a kiss and she

-continued, in a broken voice:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"When you were gone again, Johnny, I

-tried to make my living at the old box-making

-work; but the pay wasn't big enough for me

-then. So I began to graft&mdash;dipping and shop-lifting&mdash;and

-made money. But a Central Office

-man you used to know&mdash;Jim Lennon&mdash;got

-on to me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jim Lennon?" said Johnny, "Sure, I

-knew him. He used to be sweet on you,

-Mamie. He treated you right, I hope."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mamie blushed and looked down.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well?" said Johnny.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jim came to me one day," she continued,

-"and told me he wouldn't stand for what I

-was doing. He said the drygoods people

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_103' name='Page_103'>[103]</a></span>

-were hollering like mad; and that he'd have to

-arrest me if I didn't quit. I tried to square

-him with a little dough, but I soon saw that

-wasn't what he was after."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"'Look here, Mamie,' he finally said. 'It's

-just this way. Johnny is a good fellow, but

-he's dead to you and dead to me. He's done

-time, and that breaks all marriage ties. Now,

-I want you to hitch up with me, and lead an

-honest life. I'll give you a good home, and

-you won't run any more risk of the pen!'"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Johnny grew very pale as Mamie said the

-last words; and when she stopped speaking,

-he said quietly:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And you did it?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mamie again burst into tears. "Oh, Johnny,"

-she cried, "what else could I do. He wouldn't

-let me go on grafting, and I had to live."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And so you married him?" Johnny insisted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The reply was in a whisper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes," she said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For the next thirty seconds Johnny thought

-very rapidly. This woman had his liberty in

-her hands. He had told her about the negotiable

-bonds. Besides, he loved Mamie and

-understood the difficulty of her position. His

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_104' name='Page_104'>[104]</a></span>

-life as a thief had made him very tolerant in

-some respects. He therefore swallowed his

-emotion, and turned a kind face to Mamie.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You still love me?" he asked, "better

-than the copper?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Sure," said Mamie, warmly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now listen," said Johnny, the old business-like

-expression coming back into his face.

-"I am hounded for the old trick; and the

-detectives are looking everywhere for these

-negotiable bonds, which I have here, in this

-satchel. Can I trust you with them? Will

-you mind them for me, until things quiet

-down?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Of course, I will," said Mamie, gladly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So they parted once more. Johnny went

-into hiding again, and Mamie went to the

-detective's house, with the negotiable bonds.

-She had no intention of betraying Johnny;

-for she might be arrested for receiving stolen

-goods; and, besides, she still loved her first

-husband. So she planted the bonds in the

-bottom of the detective's trunk.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here was a pretty situation. Her husband,

-the detectives, and many other "fly-cops" all

-over the country, were looking for these negotiable

-bonds, at the very moment when they

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_105' name='Page_105'>[105]</a></span>

-were safely stowed away in the detective's

-trunk. Mamie and Johnny, who continued to

-meet occasionally, often smiled at the humor

-of the situation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Soon, however, suspicion for the Philadelphia

-touch began to attach to Johnny. Mamie's

-detective asked her one evening if she

-had heard anything about Johnny, of late.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not for years," said Mamie, calmly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But one night, several Central Office men

-followed Mamie as she went to Mt. Vernon to

-meet Johnny; and when the two old lovers

-parted, Johnny was arrested on account of the

-fifteen thousand dollar robbery in Brooklyn,

-from the penalty of which he had escaped by

-means of Mamie's neck-tie many years before.

-The detectives suspected Johnny of having

-stolen the bonds, but of this they could get no

-evidence. So he was sent to Sing Sing for six

-years on the old charge. When he was safely

-in prison the detectives induced him to return

-the bonds, on the promise that he would

-not be prosecuted at his release, and would be

-paid a certain sum of money. The mercantile

-house agreed, and Johnny sent word to Mamie

-to give up the bonds. Then, of course, the

-detective knew about the trick that Mamie

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_106' name='Page_106'>[106]</a></span>

-had played him. But he, like Johnny, was a

-philosopher, and forgave the clever woman.

-When he first heard of it, however, he had

-said to her, indignantly:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You cow, if you had given the bonds to

-me, I would have been made a police captain,

-and you my queen."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As soon as Johnny got out of stir, Mamie

-quit the detective, and the couple are now living

-again together in a quiet, domestic manner,

-in Manhattan.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_107' name='Page_107'>[107]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER VI.<br />

-<i>What The Burglar Faces.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-For a long time I took Sheenie Annie's

-advice and did not do any night work. It is

-too dangerous, the come-back is too sure, you

-have to depend too much on the nerve of your

-pals, the "bits" are too long; and it is very

-difficult to square it. But as time went on I

-grew bolder. I wanted to do something new,

-and get more dough. My new departure was

-not, however, entirely due to ambition and

-the boldness acquired by habitual success.

-After a gun has grafted for a long time his

-nervous system becomes affected, for it is certainly

-an exciting life. He is then very apt to

-need a stimulant. He is usually addicted to

-either opium or chloral, morphine or whiskey.

-Even at this early period I began to take a

-little opium, which afterwards was one of the

-main causes of my constant residence in stir,

-and was really the wreck of my life, for when

-a grafter is doped he is inclined to be very

-reckless. Perhaps if I had never hit the hop

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_108' name='Page_108'>[108]</a></span>

-I would not have engaged in the dangerous

-occupation of a burglar.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I will say one thing for opium, however.

-That drug never makes a man careless of his

-personal appearance. He will go to prison

-frequently, but he will always have a good

-front, and will remain a self-respecting thief.

-The whiskey dip, on the other hand, is apt to

-dress carelessly, lose his ambition and, eventually

-to go down and out as a common "bum".

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I began night-work when I was about twenty

-years old, and at first I did not go in for it

-very heavily. Big Jack, Jerry, Ed and I made

-several good touches in Mt. Vernon and in

-hotels at summer resorts and got sums ranging

-from two hundred to twenty-seven hundred

-dollars. We worked together for nearly a

-year with much success and only an occasional

-fall, and these we succeeded in squaring. Once

-we had a shooting-match which made me a

-little leary. I was getting out the window

-with my swag, when a shot just grazed my eye.

-I nearly decided to quit then, but, I suppose

-because it was about that time I was beginning

-to take opium, I continued with more

-boldness than ever.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One night Ed, a close pal of mine, was operating

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_109' name='Page_109'>[109]</a></span>

-with me out in Jersey. We were working

-in the rear of a house and Ed was just

-shinning up the back porch to climb in the

-second story window, when a shutter above

-was thrown open and, without warning, a pistol

-shot rang out.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Down came Ed, falling like a log at my feet.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Are you hurt?" said I.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Done!" said he, and I saw it was so.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now a man may be nervy enough, but self-preservation

-is the first rule of life. I turned

-and ran at the top of my speed across two

-back yards, then through a field, then over a

-fence into what seemed a ploughed field

-beyond. The ground was rough and covered

-with hummocks, and as I stumbled along I

-suddenly tripped and fell ten feet down into

-an open grave. The place was a cemetery,

-though I had not recognized it in the darkness.

-For hours I lay there trembling, but

-nobody came and I was safe. It was not long

-after that, however, that something did happen

-to shake my nerve, which was pretty good.

-It came about in the following way.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A jeweler, who was a well-known "fence",

-put us on to a place where we could get thousands.

-He was one of the most successful

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_110' name='Page_110'>[110]</a></span>

-"feelers-out" in the business. The man who

-was my pal on this occasion, Dal, looked the

-place over with me and though we thought it

-a bit risky, the size of the graft attracted us.

-We had to climb up on the front porch, with

-an electric light streaming right down on us.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I had reached the porch when I got the

-well-known signal of danger. I hurriedly descended

-and asked Dal what was the matter.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jim," he said, "there's somebody off there,

-a block away."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-We investigated, and you can imagine how

-I felt when we found nothing but an old goat.

-It was a case of Dal's nerves, but the best of

-us get nervous at times.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I went to the porch again and opened the

-window with a putty knife (made of the rib of

-a woman's corset), when I got the "cluck"

-again, and hastily descended, but again found

-it was Dal's imagination.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Then I grew hot, and said: "You have

-knocked all the nerve out of me, for sure."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jim," he replied, "I ain't feeling good."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Was it a premonition? He wanted to quit

-the job, but I wouldn't let him. I opened up

-on him. "What!" I said. "You are willing

-to steal one piece of jewelry and take your

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_111' name='Page_111'>[111]</a></span>

-chance of going to stir, but when we get a

-good thing that would land us in Easy Street

-the rest of our lives, you weaken!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dal was quiet, and his face unusually pale.

-He was a good fellow, but his nerve was gone.

-I braced him up, however, and told him we'd

-get the "éclat" the third time, sure. Then

-climbing the porch the third time, I removed

-my shoes, raised the window again, and had

-just struck a light when a revolver was pressed

-on my head. I knocked the man's hand up,

-quick, and jumped. As I did so I heard a

-cry and then the beating of a policeman's

-stick on the sidewalk.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I ran, with two men after me, and came to

-the gateway of a yard, where I saw a big

-bloodhound chained to his kennel. He

-growled savagely, but it was neck or nothing,

-so I patted his head just as though I were not

-shaking with fear, slipped down on my hands

-and knees and crept into his dog-house. Why

-didn't he bite me? Was it sympathy? When

-my pursuers came up, the owner of the house,

-who had been aroused by the cries, said: "He

-is not here. This dog would eat him up."

-When the police saw the animal they were

-convinced of it too.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_112' name='Page_112'>[112]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A little while later I left my friend's kennel.

-It was four o'clock in the morning and I had

-no shoes on and only one dollar and sixty cents

-in my pocket. I sneaked through the back

-window of the first house I saw, stole a pair

-of shoes and eighty dollars from a room

-where a man and his wife were sleeping.

-Then I took a car. Knowing that I was still

-being looked for, I wanted to get rid of my

-hat, as a partial disguise. On the seat with

-me was a working man asleep. I took his

-old soft hat, leaving my new derby by his

-side, and also took his dinner pail. Then

-when I left the car I threw away my collar

-and necktie, and reached New York, disguised

-as a workingman. The next day the

-papers told how poor old Dal had been

-arrested. Everything that had happened for

-weeks was put on him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A week later Dal was found dead in his

-cell, and I believe he did the Dutch act

-(suicide), for I remember one day, months

-before that fatal night, Dal and I were sitting

-in a politicians saloon, when he said to me:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jim, do you believe in heaven?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No," said I.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Do you believe in hell?" he asked.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_113' name='Page_113'>[113]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No," said I.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I've got a mind to find out," he said

-quickly, and pointed a big revolver at his

-teeth. One of the guns in the saloon said:

-"Let him try it," but I knocked the pistol

-away, for something in his manner made me

-think seriously he would shoot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You poor brute," I said to him. "I'll put

-your ashes in an urn some day and write

-"Dear Old Saturday Night" for an epitaph for

-you; but it isn't time yet."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It did not take many experiences like the

-above to make me very leary of night-work;

-and I went more slowly for some time. I

-continued to dip, however, more boldly than

-ever and to do a good deal of day work; in

-which comparatively humble graft the servant

-girls, as I have already said, used to help us

-out considerably. This class of women never

-interested me as much as the sporting characters,

-but we used to make good use of them;

-and sometimes they amused us.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I remember an entertaining episode which

-took place while Harry, a pal of mine at the time,

-and I, were going with a couple of these hard-working

-Molls. Harry was rather inclined to

-be a sure-thing grafter, of which class of thieves

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_114' name='Page_114'>[114]</a></span>

-I shall say more in another chapter; and after

-my recent dangerous adventures I tolerated

-that class more than was customary with me.

-Indeed, if Harry had been the real thing I

-would have cut him dead; as it was he came

-near enough to the genuine article to make me

-despise him in my ordinary mood. But, as I

-say, I was uncommonly leary just at that

-time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He and I were walking in Stuyvesant Square

-when we met a couple of these domestic slaves.

-With a "hello," we rang in on them, walked

-them down Second Avenue and had a few

-drinks all around. My girl told me whom

-she was working with. Thinking there might

-be something doing I felt her out further,

-with a view to finding where in the house the

-stuff lay. Knowing the Celtic character

-thoroughly, I easily got the desired information.

-We took the girls into Bonnell's Museum,

-at Eighth Street and Broadway, and saw a

-howling border melodrama, in which wild

-Indians were as thick as Moll-buzzers in 1884.

-Mary Anne, who was my girl, said she should

-tell her mistress about the beautiful play; and

-asked for a program. They were all out, and

-so I gave her an old one, of another play,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_115' name='Page_115'>[115]</a></span>

-which I had in my pocket. We had a good

-time, and made a date with them for another

-meeting, in two weeks from that night; but

-before the appointed hour we had beat Mary

-Anne's mistress out of two hundred dollars

-worth of silverware, easily obtained, thanks to

-the information I had received from Mary

-Anne. When we met the girls again, I found

-Mary Anne in a great state of indignation; I

-was afraid she was "next" to our being the

-burglars, and came near falling through the

-floor. But her rage, it seemed, was about the

-play. She had told her mistress about the wild

-Indian melodrama she had seen, and then had

-shown her the program of <i>The Banker's

-Daughter</i>.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But there is no such thing as an Indian in

-<i>The Banker's Daughter</i>," her mistress had said.

-"I fear you are deceiving me, Mary Anne, and

-that you have been to some low place on the

-Bowery."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The other servants in the house got next

-and kidded Mary Anne almost to death about

-Indians and <i>The Banker's Daughter</i>. After

-I had quieted her somewhat she told me about

-the burglary that had taken place at her house,

-and Harry and I were much interested. She

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_116' name='Page_116'>[116]</a></span>

-was sure the touch had been made by two

-"naygers" who lived in the vicinity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was shortly after this incident that I beat

-Blackwell's Island out of three months. A

-certain "heeler" put me on to a disorderly

-house where we could get some stones. I had

-everything "fixed." The "heeler" had arranged

-it with the copper on the beat, and it

-seemed like a sure thing; although the Madam,

-I understood, was a good shot and had plenty

-of nerve. My accomplice, the heeler, was a

-sure thing grafter, who had selected me because

-I had the requisite nerve and was no

-squealer. At two o'clock in the morning a

-trusted pal and I ascended from the back porch

-to the Madam's bed-room. I had just struck

-a match, when I heard a female voice say,

-"What are you doing there?" and a bottle,

-fired at my head, banged up against the wall

-with a crash. I did not like to alarm women,

-and so I made my "gets" out the window, over

-the fence, and into another street, where I was

-picked up by a copper, on general principles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The Madam told him that the thief was

-over six feet tall and had a fierce black mustache.

-As I am only five feet seven inches

-and was smoothly shaven, it did not seem like

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_117' name='Page_117'>[117]</a></span>

-an identification; although when she saw me

-she changed her note, and swore I was the

-man. The copper, who knew I was a grafter,

-though he did not think I did that kind of

-work, nevertheless took me to the station-house,

-where I convinced two wardmen that

-I had been arrested unjustly. When I was

-led before the magistrate in the morning, the

-copper said the lady's description did not

-tally with the short, red-haired and freckled

-thief before his Honor. The policemen all

-agreed, however, that I was a notorious

-grafter, and the magistrate, who was not

-much of a lawyer, sent me to the Island for

-three months on general principles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was terribly sore, for I knew I had been

-illegally treated. I felt as much a martyr as

-if I had not been guilty in the least; and I

-determined to escape at all hazards; although

-my friends told me I would be released any

-day; for certainly the evidence against me

-had been insufficient.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After I had been on the Island ten days I

-went to a friend, who had been confined there

-several months and said: "Eddy, I have

-been unjustly convicted for a crime I committed&mdash;such

-was my way of putting it&mdash;and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_118' name='Page_118'>[118]</a></span>

-I am determined to make my elegant, (escape)

-come what will. Do you know the weak

-spots of this dump?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He put me "next", and I saw there was a

-chance, a slim one, if a man could swim and

-didn't mind drowning. I found another pal,

-Jack Donovan, who, like me, could swim like

-a fish; he was desperate too, and willing to

-take any chance to see New York. Five or

-six of us slept together in one large cell, and

-on the night selected for our attempt, Jack

-and I slipped into a compartment where about

-twenty short term prisoners were kept. Our

-departure from the other cell, from which it

-was very difficult to escape after once being

-locked in for the night, was not noticed by

-the night guard and his trusty because our

-pals in the cell answered to our names when

-they were called. It was comparatively easy

-to escape from the large room where the short

-term men were confined. Into this room, too,

-Jack and I had taken tools from the quarry

-during the daytime.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was twelve o'clock on a November night

-when we made our escape. We took ropes

-from the canvas cot, tied them together, and

-lowered ourselves to the ground on the outside,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_119' name='Page_119'>[119]</a></span>

-where we found bad weather, rain and

-hail. We were unable to obtain a boat, but

-secured a telegraph pole, rolled it into the

-water, and set off with it for New York. The

-terrific tide at Hellgate soon carried us well

-into the middle of Long Island Sound, and

-when we had been in the water half an hour,

-we were very cold and numb, and began to think

-that all was over. But neither of us feared

-death. All I wanted was to save enough

-money to be cremated; and I was confident

-my friends would see to that. I don't think

-fear of death is a common trait among grafters.

-Perhaps it is lack of imagination; more likely,

-however, it is because they think they won't

-be any the worse off after death.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Still, I was not sorry when a wrecking boat

-suddenly popped our way. The tug did not

-see us, and hit Jack's end of the pole a hard

-blow that must have shaken him off. I heard

-him holler "Save me," and I yelled too. I

-didn't think anything about capture just then.

-All my desire to live came back to me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was pulled into the boat. The captain

-was a good fellow. He was "next" and only

-smiled at my lies. What was more to the

-purpose he gave me some good whiskey,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_120' name='Page_120'>[120]</a></span>

-and set me ashore in Jersey City. Jack was

-drowned. All through life I have been used

-to losing a friend suddenly by the wayside;

-but I have always felt sad when it happened.

-And yet it would have been far better for me

-if I had been picked out for an early death.

-I guess poor Jack was lucky.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Certainly there are worse things than death.

-Through these three years of continual and

-for the most part successful graft, I had known

-a man named Henry Fry whose story is one

-of the saddest. If he had been called off suddenly

-as Jack was, he would certainly have

-been deemed lucky by those who knew; for

-he was married to a bad woman. He was

-one of the most successful box-men (safe-blowers)

-in the city, and made thousands, but

-nothing was enough for his wife. She used

-to say, when he would put twelve hundred

-dollars in her lap, "This won't meet expenses.

-I need one thousand dollars more." She was

-unfaithful to him, too, and with his friends.

-When I go to a matinée and see a lot of

-sleek, fat, inane looking women, I wonder who

-the poor devils are who are having their life

-blood sucked out of them. Certainly it was so

-with Henry, or Henny, as we used to call him.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_121' name='Page_121'>[121]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One day, I remember, we went down the

-Sound with a well-known politician's chowder

-party, and Henny was with us. Two weeks

-earlier New York had been startled by a daring

-burglary. A large silk-importer's place of

-business was entered and his safe, supposed

-to be burglar-proof, was opened. He was

-about to be married, and his valuable wedding

-presents, which were in the safe, and six thousand

-dollars worth of silk, were stolen. It was

-Henny and his pals who had made the touch,

-but on this beautiful night on the Sound,

-Henny was sad. We were sitting on deck,

-as it was a hot summer night, when Henny

-jumped off his camp-stool and asked me to

-sing a song. I sang a sentimental ditty, in

-my tenor voice, and then Henny took me to

-the side of the boat, away from the others.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Kid," he said, "I feel trouble coming

-over me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Cheer up," I replied. "You're a little

-down-hearted, that's all."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I wish to God," he said, "I was like

-you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I pulled out a five dollar bill and a two dollar

-bill and remarked: "I've got just seven

-dollars to my name."

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_122' name='Page_122'>[122]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He turned to me and said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But you are happy. You don't let anything

-bother you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Henny did not drink as a rule; that was

-one reason he was such a good box-man, but

-on this occasion we had a couple of drinks,

-and I sang "I love but one." Then Henny

-ordered champagne, grew confidential, and

-told me his troubles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Kid" he said, "I've got thirty five hundred

-dollars on me. I have been giving my

-wife a good deal of money, but don't know

-what she does with it. In sixty days I have

-given her three thousand dollars, and she

-complains about poverty all the time."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Henny had a nice flat of seven or eight

-rooms; he owed nothing and had no children.

-He said he was unable to find any

-bank books in his wife's trunk, and was confident

-she was not laying the money by. She

-did not give it to her people, but even borrowed

-money from her father, a well-to-do

-builder.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Two days after the night of the excursion,

-one of Henny's pals in the silk robbery, went

-into a gin mill, treated everybody, and threw

-a one thousand dollar bill down on the bar.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_123' name='Page_123'>[123]</a></span>

-Grafters, probably more than others, like this

-kind of display. It is the only way to rise in

-their society. A Central Office detective saw

-this little exhibition, got into the grafters confidence

-and weeded him out a bit. A night

-or two afterwards Henny was in bed at home,

-when the servant girl, who was in love with

-Henny, and detested his wife because she

-treated her husband so badly (she used to say

-to me, "She ain't worthy to tie his shoe string")

-came to the door and told Henny and his wife

-that a couple of men and a policeman in uniform

-were inquiring for him. Henny replied

-sleepily that they were friends of his who had

-come to buy some stones; but the girl was

-alarmed. She knew that Henny was crooked

-and feared that those below meant him no

-good. She took the canvas turn-about containing

-burglar's tools which hung on the wall

-near the bed, and pinned it around her waist,

-under her skirt, and then admitted the three

-visitors.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The sergeant said to Henny, who had dressed

-himself, "You are under suspicion for the silk

-robbery." Yet there was, as is not uncommon,

-a "but," which is as a rule a monetary consideration.

-Henny knew that the crime was old,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_124' name='Page_124'>[124]</a></span>

-and, as he thought his "fence" was safe, he did

-not see how there could be a come-back. So

-he did not take the hint to shell out, and

-worked the innocent con. But those whose

-business it is to watch the world of prey, put

-two and two together, and were "next" that

-Henny and his mob had pulled off the trick.

-So they searched the house, expecting to find,

-if not <i>éclat</i>, at least burglars tools; for they

-knew that Henny was at the top of the ladder,

-and that he must have something to work with.

-While the sergeant was going through Henny's

-trunk, one of the flymen fooled with the pretty

-servant girl. She jumped, and a pair of turners

-fell on the floor. It did not take the flyman

-long to find the whole kit of tools.

-Henny was arrested, convicted, and sent to

-Sing Sing for five years. While in prison he

-became insane, his delusion being that he was

-a funny man on the Detroit Free Press, which

-he thought was owned by his wife.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I never discovered what Henny's wife did

-with the money she had from him. When I

-last heard of her she was married to another

-successful grafter, whom she was making

-unhappy also. In a grafter's life a woman

-often takes the part of the avenger of society.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_125' name='Page_125'>[125]</a></span>

-She turns against the grafters their own weapons,

-and uses them with more skill, for no

-man can graft like a woman.

-</p>

-

-

-<p class="p2">

-I had now been grafting for three years in

-the full tide of success. Since the age of eighteen

-I had had no serious fall. I had made

-much money and lived high. I had risen in

-the world of graft, and I had become, not only

-a skillful pickpocket, but a good swindler and

-drag-worker and had done some good things

-as a burglar. I was approaching my twenty-first

-year, when, as you will see, I was to go to

-the penitentiary for the first time. This is a

-good place, perhaps, to describe my general

-manner of life, my daily menu, so to speak,

-during these three fat years: for after my first

-term in state's prison things went from bad to

-worse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I lived in a furnished room; or at a hotel.

-If there was nothing doing in the line of graft,

-I'd lie abed late, and read the newspapers to

-see if any large gathering, where we might

-make some touches, was on hand. One of my

-girls, of whom there was a long succession, was

-usually with me. We would breakfast, if the

-day was an idle one, about one or two o'clock

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_126' name='Page_126'>[126]</a></span>

-in the afternoon. Then we'd send to the restaurant

-and have a beefsteak or chops in our

-rooms, and perhaps a whiskey sour. If it was

-another grafter's girl I'd won I'd be greatly

-pleased, for that kind of thing is a game with

-us. In the afternoon I'd take in some variety

-show; or buy the "Tommy" a present; if it

-was summer we might go to a picnic, or to the

-Island. If I was alone, I would meet a pal,

-play billiards or pool, bet on the races, baseball

-and prize fights, jump out to the Polo

-grounds, or go to Patsy's house and have a

-game of poker. Patsy's wife was a handsome

-grafter; and Patsy was jealous. Every gun

-is sensitive about his wife, for he doesn't know

-how long he will have her with him. In the

-evening I would go to a dance-hall; or to

-Coney Island if the weather was good.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If it was a busy day, that is, if there was a

-touch to be pulled off, we would get up in the

-morning or the afternoon, according to the

-best time for the particular job in hand. In

-the afternoon we would often graft at the

-Polo grounds, where we had a copper "right."

-We did not have the same privileges at the

-race track, because it was protected by the

-Pinkerton men. We'd console ourselves at

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_127' name='Page_127'>[127]</a></span>

-the Polo grounds, which we used to tear wide

-open, and where I never got even a hint of a

-fall; the coppers got their percentage of the

-touches. In the morning we would meet at

-one of the grafters homes or rooms and talk

-over our scheme for the day or night. If we

-were going outside the city we would have to

-rise very early. Sometimes we were sorry we

-had lost our sleep; particularly the time we

-tried to tear open the town of Sing Sing, near

-which the famous prison is. We found nothing

-to steal there but pig iron, and there were

-only two pretty girls in the whole village.

-We used to jump out to neighboring towns,

-not always to graft, but sometimes to see our

-girls, for like sailors, the well-dressed, dapper

-pickpocket has a girl in every port. If we

-made a good touch in the afternoon we'd go

-on a spree in the evening with Sheenie Annie,

-Blonde Mamie, Big Lena or some other good-natured

-lasses, or we'd go over and inspect

-the Jersey maidens. After a good touch we

-would put some of the dough away for fall-money,

-or for our sick relatives or guns in

-stir or in the hospital. We'd all chip in to

-help out a woman grafter in trouble, and pool

-a piece of jewelry sometimes, for the purpose.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_128' name='Page_128'>[128]</a></span>

-Then, our duty done, we would put on our

-best front, and visit our friends and sporting

-places. Among others we used to jump over

-to a hotel kept by an ex-gun, one of the best

-of the spud men (green goods men), who is

-now on the level and a bit of a politician.

-He owns six fast horses, is married and has

-two beautiful children.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A few months before I was sent to the penitentiary

-for the first time, I had my only true

-love affair. I have liked many girls, but sentiment

-of the kind I felt for Ethel has played

-little part in my life. For Ethel I felt the

-real thing, and she for me. She was a good,

-sensible girl, and came from a respectable

-family. She lived with her father, who was a

-drummer, and took care of the house for him.

-She was a good deal of a musician, and, like

-most other girls, she was fond of dancing. I

-first met her at Beethoven Hall, and was introduced

-to her by a man, an honest laborer,

-who was in love with her. I liked her at first

-sight, but did not love her until I had talked

-with her. In two weeks we were lovers, and

-went everywhere together. The workingman

-who loved her too was jealous and began to

-knock me. He told her I was a grafter, but

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_129' name='Page_129'>[129]</a></span>

-she would not believe him; and said nothing

-to me about it, but it came to my ears through

-an intimate girl pal of hers. Shortly after

-that I fell for a breech-kick (was arrested for

-picking a man's trouser's pocket), but I had a

-good lawyer and the copper was one of those

-who are open to reason. I lay a month in

-the Tombs, however, before I got off, and

-Ethel learned all about it. She came to the

-Tombs to see me, but, instead of reproaches,

-I got sympathy from her. After I was released

-I gave her some of my confidence.

-She asked me if I wouldn't be honest, and go

-to work; and said she would ask her father

-to get me a job. Her father came to me and

-painted what my life would be, if I kept on.

-I thought the matter over sincerely. I had

-formed expensive habits which I could not

-keep up on any salary I could honestly make.

-Away down in my mind (I suppose you would

-call it soul) I knew I was not ready for reform.

-I talked with Ethel, and told her that

-I loved her, but that I could not quit my life.

-She said she would marry me anyway. But I

-thought the world of her, and told her that

-though I had blasted my own life I would not

-blast hers. I would not marry her, she was

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_130' name='Page_130'>[130]</a></span>

-so good and affectionate. When we parted, I

-said to myself: Man proposes, habit disposes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was certainly lucky that I did not marry

-that sweet girl, for a month after I had split

-with her, I fell for a long term in state's

-prison. It was for a breech-kick, which I

-could not square. I had gone out of my hotel

-one morning for a bottle of whiskey when I

-met two grafters, Johnny and Alec, who were

-towing a "sucker" along with them. They

-gave me the tip that it was worth trying. Indeed,

-I gathered that the man must have his

-bank with him, and I nicked him in a car for

-his breech-leather. A spectator saw the deed

-and tipped off a copper. I was nailed, but

-had nothing on me, for I had passed the

-leather to Alec. I was not in the mood for

-the police station, and with Alec's help I

-"licked" the copper, who pulled his gun and

-fired at us as we ran up a side street. Alec

-blazed back, and escaped, but I was arrested.

-I could not square it, as I have said, for I had

-been wanted at Headquarters for some time

-past, because I did not like to give up, and

-was no stool-pigeon. I notified Mr. R&mdash;&mdash;,

-who was told to keep his hands off. I had

-been tearing the cars open for so long that

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_131' name='Page_131'>[131]</a></span>

-the company wanted to "do" me. They got

-brassy-mouthed and yelled murder. I saw I

-had a corporation against me and hadn't a

-living chance to beat it. So I pleaded guilty

-and received five years and seven months at

-Sing Sing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A boy of twenty-one, I was hand-cuffed

-with two old jail-birds, and as we rode up on

-a Fourth Avenue car to the Grand Central

-Station, I felt deeply humiliated for the first

-time in my life. When the passengers stared

-at me I hung my head with shame.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_132' name='Page_132'>[132]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER VII.<br />

-<i>In Stir.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-I hung my head with shame, but not because

-of contrition. I was ashamed of being

-caught and made a spectacle of. All the way

-to Sing Sing station people stared at us as if

-we were wild animals. We walked from the

-town to the prison, in close company with two

-deputy sheriffs. I observed considerably,

-knowing that I should not see the outside

-world again for a number of years. I looked

-with envy at the people we passed who seemed

-honest, and thought of home and the chances

-I had thrown away.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I reached the stir I was put through

-the usual ceremonies. My pedigree was taken,

-but I told the examiners nothing. I gave

-them a false name and a false pedigree. Then

-a bath was given to my clothes and I was

-taken to the tailor shop. When my hair had

-been cropped close and a suit of stripes given

-me I felt what it was to be the convicted

-criminal. It was not a pleasant feeling, I can

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_133' name='Page_133'>[133]</a></span>

-tell you, and when I was taken to my cell my

-heart sank indeed. A narrow room, seven

-feet, four inches long; dark, damp, with

-moisture on the walls, and an old iron cot with

-plenty of company, as I afterwards discovered&mdash;this

-was to be my home for years. And I

-as full of life as a young goat! How could I

-bear it?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After I had been examined by the doctor

-and questioned about my religion by the chaplain,

-I was left to reflect in my cell. I was

-interrupted in my melancholy train of thought

-by two convicts who were at work in the hall

-just outside my cell. I had known them on

-the outside, and they, taking good care not to

-be seen by the screws (keepers) tipped me off

-through my prison door to everything in stir

-which was necessary for a first timer to know.

-They told me to keep my mouth shut, to take

-everything from the screws in silence, and if

-assigned to a shop to do my work. They

-told me who the stool-pigeons were, that is to

-say, the convicts who, in order to curry favor

-and have an easy time, put the keepers next

-to what other convicts are doing, and so help

-to prevent escapes. They tipped me off to

-those keepers who were hard to get along

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_134' name='Page_134'>[134]</a></span>

-with, and put me next to the Underground

-Tunnel, and who were running it. Sing Sing,

-they said, is the best of the three New York

-penitentiaries: for the grub is better than at

-the others, there are more privileges, and,

-above all, it is nearer New York, so that your

-friends can visit you more frequently. They

-gave me a good deal of prison gossip, and

-told me who among my friends were there,

-and what their condition of health was. So

-and so had died or gone home, they said, such

-and such had been drafted to Auburn or

-Clinton prisons. If I wanted to communicate

-with my friends in stir all that was necessary

-for me to do was to write a few stiffs (letters)

-and they would be sent by the Underground

-Tunnel. They asked me about their old pals,

-hang-outs and girls in New York, and I, in

-turn gave them a lot of New York gossip.

-Like all convicts they shed a part of the

-things they had received from home, gave me

-canned goods, tobacco and a pipe. It did not

-take me long to get on to the workings of the

-prison.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was particularly interested in the Underground

-Tunnel, for I saw at once its great

-usefulness. This is the secret system by

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_135' name='Page_135'>[135]</a></span>

-which contraband articles, such as whiskey,

-opium and morphine are brought into the

-prison. When a rogue is persuasive with the

-coin of the realm he can always find a keeper

-or two to bring him what he considers the

-necessaries of life, among which are opium,

-whiskey and tobacco. If you have a screw

-"right," you can be well supplied with these

-little things. To get him "right" it is often

-necessary to give him a share&mdash;about twenty

-per cent&mdash;of the money sent you from home.

-This system is worked in all the State prisons

-in New York, and during my first term, or

-any of the other terms for that matter, I had

-no difficulty in supplying my growing need for

-opium.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I do not want people to get the idea that it

-is always necessary to bribe a keeper, in order

-to obtain these little luxuries; for many a

-screw has brought me whiskey and hop, and

-contraband letters from other inmates, without

-demanding a penny. A keeper is a human

-being like the rest of us, and he is sometimes

-moved by considerations other than of pelf.

-No matter how good and conscientious he

-may be, a keeper is but a man after all, and,

-having very little to do, especially if he is in

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_136' name='Page_136'>[136]</a></span>

-charge of an idle gang of "cons" he is apt to

-enter into conversation with them, particularly

-if they are better educated or more interesting

-than he, which often is the case. They tell

-him about their escapades on the outside and

-often get his sympathy and friendship. It is

-only natural that those keepers who are good

-fellows should do small favors for certain convicts.

-They may begin by bringing the convicts

-newspapers to read, but they will end by

-providing them with almost everything. Some

-of them, however, are so lacking in human

-sympathy, that their kindness is aroused only

-by a glimpse of the coin of the realm; or by

-the prospect of getting some convict to do

-their dirty work for them, that is, to spy upon

-their fellow prisoners.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At Auburn penitentiary, whither I was

-drafted after nine months at Sing Sing, a few

-of the convicts peddled opium and whiskey,

-with, of course, the connivance of the keepers.

-There are always some persons in prison as

-well as out who want to make capital out of

-the misfortunes of others. These peddlars,

-were despised by the rest of the convicts, for

-they were invariably stool-pigeons; and young

-convicts who never before knew the power of

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_137' name='Page_137'>[137]</a></span>

-the drug became opium fiends, all on account

-of the business propensities of these detestable

-rats (stool-pigeons) who, because they

-had money and kept the screws next to those

-cons who tried to escape, lived in Easy Street

-while in stir.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While on this subject, I will tell about a

-certain famous "fence" (at one of these

-prisons) although he did not operate until my

-second term. At that time things were booming

-on the outside. The graft was so good

-that certain convicts in my clique were getting

-good dough sent them by their pals who

-were at liberty; and many luxuries came in,

-therefore, by the Underground Tunnel. Now

-those keepers who are next to the Underground

-develop, through their association with

-convicts, a propensity to graft, but usually

-have not the nerve to hustle for the goods.

-So they are willing to accept stolen property,

-not having the courage and skill to steal, from

-the inhabitants of the under world. A convict,

-whom I knew when at liberty, named

-Mike, thought he saw an opportunity to do

-a good "fencing" business in prison. He

-gave a "red-front" (gold watch and chain),

-which he had stolen in his good days, to a

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_138' name='Page_138'>[138]</a></span>

-certain keeper who was running the Underground,

-and thus got him "right." Then

-Mike made arrangements with two grafters on

-the outside to supply the keeper and his

-friends with what they wanted. If the keeper

-said his girl wanted a stone, Mike would send

-word to one of the thieves on the outside to

-supply a good diamond as quickly as possible.

-The keeper would give Mike a fair price for

-these valuable articles and then sell the stones

-or watches, or make his girl a present.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Other keepers followed suit, for they couldn't

-see how there was any "come-back" possible,

-and soon Mike was doing a thriving business.

-It lasted for five or six months, when Mike

-stopped it as a regular graft because of the

-growing cupidity of the keepers. One of

-them ordered a woman's watch and chain and

-a pair of diamond ear-rings through the

-Underground Tunnel. Mike obtained the

-required articles, but the keeper paid only half

-of what he promised, and Mike thereupon

-shut up shop. Occasionally, however, he continued

-to sell goods stolen by his pals who

-were at liberty, but only for cash on the spot,

-and refused all credit. The keepers gradually

-got a great feeling of respect for this convict

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_139' name='Page_139'>[139]</a></span>

-"fence" who was so clever and who stood up

-for his rights; and the business went on

-smoothly again, for a while.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But finally it was broken up for good. A

-grafter on the outside, Tommy, sent through

-the Underground a pawn ticket for some valuable

-goods, among them a sealskin sacque

-worth three hundred dollars, which he had

-stolen and hocked in Philadelphia. Mike

-sold the pawn-ticket to a screw. Soon after

-that Tommy, or one of his pals, got a fall and

-"squealed". The police got "next" to where

-the goods were, and when the keeper sent the

-ticket and the money to redeem the articles

-they allowed them to be forwarded to the

-prison, but arrested the keeper for receiving

-stolen goods. He was convicted and sentenced

-to ten years, but got off through influence.

-That, however, finished the "fence" at

-the institution.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-To resume the thread of my narrative, the day

-after I reached Sing Sing I was put through

-the routine that lasted all the time I was there.

-At six-thirty in the morning we were awakened

-by the bell and marched in lock-step (from

-which many of us were to acquire a peculiar

-gait that was to mark us through life and help

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_140' name='Page_140'>[140]</a></span>

-prevent us from leading decent lives) to the

-bucket-shop, where we washed, marched to

-the mess for breakfast at seven-thirty, then

-to the various shops to work until eleven-thirty,

-when at the whistle we would form

-again into squads and march, again in the

-lock-step, fraternally but silently, to our solemn

-dinner, which we ate in dead silence. Silence,

-indeed, except on the sly, was the general rule

-of our day, until work was over, when we

-could whisper together until five o'clock, the

-hour to return to our cells, into which we

-would carry bread for supper, coffee being

-conveyed to us through a spout in the wall.

-The food at Sing Sing was pretty good.

-Breakfast consisted of hash or molasses, black

-coffee and bread; and at dinner we had pork

-and beans, potatoes, hot coffee and bread.

-Pork and beans gave place to four eggs on

-Friday, and sometimes stews were given us.

-It was true what I'd heard, that Sing Sing has

-the best food of any institution I have known.

-After five o'clock I would read in my cell by

-an oil lamp (since my time electricity has been

-put in the prison) until nine o'clock, when I

-had to put out my light and go to bed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I had a great deal more time for reading

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_141' name='Page_141'>[141]</a></span>

-and meditation in my lonely cell than one

-would think by the above routine. I was put

-to work in the shop making chairs. It was

-the first time I had ever worked in my life,

-and I took my time about it. I felt no strong

-desire to work for the State. I was expected

-to cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually

-caned about two. I did not believe in work.

-I felt at that time that New York State owed

-me a living. I was getting a living all right,

-but I was ungrateful. I did not thank them a

-wee bit. I must have been a bad example to

-other "cons," for they began to get as tired as

-myself. At any rate, I lost my job, and was

-sent back to my cell, where I stayed most of

-the time while at Sing Sing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I worked, indeed, very little at any time

-during my three bits in the penitentiary. The

-prison at Sing Sing, during the nine months I

-was there on my first term, was very crowded,

-and there was not enough work to go round;

-and I was absolutely idle most of the time.

-When I had been drafted to Auburn I found

-more work to do, but still very little, for it

-was just then that the legislature had shut

-down on contract labor in the prisons. The

-outside merchants squealed because they could

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_142' name='Page_142'>[142]</a></span>

-not compete with unpaid convict labor; and

-so the prison authorities had to shut down

-many of their shops, running only enough to

-supply the inside demand, which was slight.

-For eighteen months at Auburn I did not

-work a day. I think it was a very bad thing

-for the health of convicts when this law was

-passed; for certainly idleness is a very bad

-thing for most of them; and to be shut up

-nearly all the time in damp, unhealthy cells

-like those at Sing Sing, is a terrible strain on

-the human system.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Personally, however, I liked to be in my

-cell, especially during my first year of solitary

-confinement, before my health began to give

-way; for I had my books from the good

-prison libraries, my pipe or cigarettes, and

-last, but not least, I had a certain portion of

-opium that I used every day.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For me, prison life had one great advantage.

-It broke down my health and confirmed me

-for many years in the opium habit, as we shall

-see; but I educated myself while in stir. Previous

-to going to Sing Sing my education had

-been almost entirely in the line of graft; but

-in stir, I read the English classics and became

-familiar with philosophy and the science of

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_143' name='Page_143'>[143]</a></span>

-medicine and learned something about chemistry.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of my favorite authors was Voltaire,

-whom I read, of course, in a translation. His

-"Dictionary" was contraband in prison but I

-read it with profit. Voltaire was certainly one

-of the shrewdest of men, and as up to snuff as

-any cynical grafter I know, and yet he had a

-great love for humanity. He was the philosopher

-of humanity. Goethe said that Luther

-threw the world back two hundred years, but

-I deny it; for Luther, like Voltaire, pointed

-out the ignorance and wickedness of the

-priests of their day. These churchmen did

-not understand the teachings of Christ. Was

-Voltaire delusional? The priests must have

-thought so, but they were no judges, for they

-were far worse and less humane than the

-French revolutionists. The latter killed outright,

-but the priests tortured in the name of

-the Most Humane. I never approved of the

-methods of the French revolutionists, but certainly

-they were gentle in comparison with the

-priests of the Spanish Inquisition.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I think that, in variety of subjects, Voltaire

-has no equal among writers. Shrewd as he

-was, he had a soul, and his moral courage was

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_144' name='Page_144'>[144]</a></span>

-grand. His defense of young Barry, who was

-arrested for using language against the church,

-showed his kindness and breadth of mind. On

-his arrival in Paris, when he was only a stripling,

-he denounced the cowardly, fawning sycophants

-who surrounded Louis XIV,<a name='FA_B' id='FA_B' href='#FN_B' class='fnanchor'>[B]</a> and

-wrote a sarcastic poem on His Nibs, and was

-confined in the Bastille for two years. His

-courage, his wit, his sarcasms, his hatred of

-his persecutors, and his love and kindness,

-stamp him as one of the great, healthy intellects

-of mankind. What a clever book is

-<i>Candide</i>! What satire! What wit! As I

-lay on my cot how often I laughed at his

-caustic comments on humanity! And how he

-could hate! I never yet met a man of any

-account who was not a good hater. I own

-that Voltaire was ungallant toward the fair

-sex. But that was his only fault.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I enjoyed Victor Hugo because he could

-create a great character, and was capable of

-writing a story with a plot. I rank him as a

-master of fiction, although I preferred his

-experience as a traveller, to his novels, which

-are not real enough. Ernest Renan was a

-bracing and clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_145' name='Page_145'>[145]</a></span>

-in reading his <i>Life of Jesus</i>. I

-expected to get a true outline of Christ's time

-and a character sketch of the man himself,

-but I didn't. I went to the fountain for a

-glass of good wine, but got only red lemonade.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I liked Dumas, and revelled in the series

-beginning with <i>The Three Musketeers</i>. I

-could not read Dumas now, however. I also

-enjoyed Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey, for they

-are very sensational; but that was during my

-first term in stir. I could not turn a page of

-their books now, for they would seem idiotic

-to me. Balzac is a bird of another feather.

-In my opinion he was one of the best dissectors

-of human nature that the world ever produced.

-Not even Shakespeare was his equal.

-His depth in searching for motives, his discernment

-in detecting a hypocrite, his skill in

-showing up women, with their follies, their

-loves, their little hypocrisies, their endearments,

-their malice and their envy is unrivalled.

-It is right that Balzac should show woman

-with all her faults and follies and virtues, for

-if she did not possess all these characteristics,

-how could man adore her?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In his line I think Thackeray is as great as

-Balzac. When I had read <i>Vanity Fair</i>, <i>Pendennis</i>,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_146' name='Page_146'>[146]</a></span>

-<i>The Newcomes</i> and <i>Barry Lyndon</i>, I was

-so much interested that I read anything of his

-I could lay my hands on, over and over again.

-With a novel of Thackeray's in my hand I

-would become oblivious to my surroundings,

-and long to know something of this writers

-personality. I think I formed his mental

-make-up correctly, for I imagined him to be

-gentle and humane. Any man with ability

-and brains equal to his could not be otherwise.

-What a character is Becky Sharp! In her

-way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie

-Annie. She did not love Rawdon as a good

-wife should. If she had she would not be the

-interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful

-to Rawdon for three reasons; first, he married

-her; second, he gave her a glimpse into

-a station in life her soul longed for; third, he

-came from a good family, and was a soldier

-and tall, and it is well-known that little women

-like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky.

-She often grinned at his lack of brains. She

-grinned at everything, and when we learn that

-Becky got religion at the end of the book,

-instead of saying, God bless her, we only

-grin, too.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Pendennis</i> is a healthy book. I always

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_147' name='Page_147'>[147]</a></span>

-sympathize with Pen and Laura in their struggles

-to get on, and when the baby was born I

-was willing to become Godpapa, just for its

-Mamma's sake. <i>The Newcomes</i> I call Thackeray's

-masterpiece. It is truer to life than

-any other book I ever read. Take the scene

-where young Clive throws the glass of wine in

-his cousin's face. The honest horror of the

-father, his indignation when old Captain Costigan

-uses bad language, his exit when he hears

-a song in the Music Hall&mdash;all this is true

-realism. But the scene that makes this book

-Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old

-Colonel is dying. The touching devotion of

-Madam and Ethel, the love for old Tom, his

-last word "<i>adsum</i>" the quiet weeping of his

-nurse, and the last duties to the dead; the

-beautiful tenderness of the two women, of a

-kind that makes the fair sex respected by all

-men&mdash;I can never forget this scene till my

-dying day.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I was sick in stir a better tonic than

-the quack could prescribe was Thackeray's

-<i>Book of Snobs</i>. Many is the night I could

-not sleep until I had read this book with a

-relish. It acted on me like a bottle of good

-wine, leaving me peaceful after a time of

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_148' name='Page_148'>[148]</a></span>

-pleasure. In this book are shown up the

-little egotisms of the goslings and the foibles

-of the sucklings in a masterly manner.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I read every word Dickens ever wrote; and

-I often ruminated in my mind as to which of

-his works is the masterpiece. <i>Our Mutual

-Friend</i> is weak in the love scenes, but the

-book is made readable by two characters,

-Noddy Boffin and Silas Wegg. Where Wegg

-reads, as he thinks, <i>The Last of the Russians</i>,

-when the book was <i>The Decline and Fall Of

-the Roman Empire</i>, there is the quintessence

-of humor. Silas's wooden leg and his occupation

-of selling eggs would make anybody

-smile, even a dip who had fallen and had no

-money to square it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The greatest character in <i>David Copperfield</i>

-is Uriah Heep. The prison scene where this

-humble hypocrite showed he knew his Bible

-thoroughly, and knew the advantage of having

-some holy quotations pat, reminded me

-often of men I have known in Auburn and

-Sing Sing prisons. Some hypocritical jail-bird

-would dream that he could succeed on

-the outside by becoming a Sunday School

-superintendent; and four of the meanest

-thieves I ever knew got their start in that

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_149' name='Page_149'>[149]</a></span>

-way. Who has not enjoyed Micawber, with

-his frothy personality and straitened circumstances,

-and the unctuous Barkis.&mdash;Poor

-Emily! Who could blame her? What woman

-could help liking Steerforth? It is strange

-and true that good women are won by men

-they know to be rascals. Is it the contrast

-between Good and Evil, or is it because the

-ne'er-do-well has a stronger character and

-more magnetic force? Agnes was one of the

-best women in the world. Contrast her with

-David's first wife. Agnes was like a fine

-violin, while Dora was like a wailing hurdy-gurdy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Oliver Twist</i> is Dickens's strongest book.

-He goes deeper into human nature there than

-in any other of his writings. Fagin, the Jew,

-is a very strong character, but overdrawn.

-The picture of Fagin's dens and of the people

-in them, is true to life. I have seen similar

-gatherings many a time. The ramblings of

-the Artful Dodger are drawn from the real

-thing, but I never met in real life such a brutal

-character as Bill Sykes; and I have met

-some tough grafters, as the course of this

-book will show. Nancy Sykes, however, is

-true to life. In her degradation she was still

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_150' name='Page_150'>[150]</a></span>

-a woman. I contend that a woman is never

-so low but a man was the cause. One passage

-in the book has often touched me, as it

-showed that Nancy had not lost her sex.

-When she and Bill were passing the prison,

-she turned towards it and said: "Bill, they

-were fine fellows that died to-day." "Shut

-your mouth," said Bill. Now I don't think

-there is a thief in the United States who

-would have answered Nancy's remark that

-way. Strong arm workers who would beat

-your brains out for a few dollars would be

-moved by that touch of pity in Nancy's voice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Oliver himself is the great character,

-and his story reminds me of my own. The

-touching incident in the work-house where his

-poor stomach is not full, and he asks for a

-second platter of mush to the horror of the

-teachers, is not overdrawn. When I was in

-one of our penal institutions, at a later time of

-my life, I was ill, and asked for extra food;

-but my request was looked upon as the audacity

-of a hardened villain. I had many such

-opportunities to think of Oliver.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I always liked those authors who wrote as

-near life as decency would permit. Sterne's

-<i>Tristram Shandy</i> has often amused me, and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_151' name='Page_151'>[151]</a></span>

-<i>Tom Jones</i>, <i>Roderick Random</i> and <i>Peregrine

-Pickle</i> I have read over and over again. I

-don't see why good people object to such

-books. Some people are forever looking after

-the affairs of others and neglecting their own;

-especially a man whom I will call Common

-Socks who has put himself up as a mentor for

-over seventy millions of people. Let me tell

-the busy ladies who are afraid that such books

-will harm the morals of young persons that

-the more they are cried down the more they

-will be read. For that matter they ought to

-be read. Why object to the girl of sixteen

-reading such books and not to the woman of

-thirty-five? I think their mental strength is

-about equal. Both are romantic and the

-woman of thirty-five will fall in love as quickly

-as the girl of sixteen. I think a woman is

-always a girl; at least, it has been so in my

-experience. One day I was grafting in Philadelphia.

-It was raining, and a woman was

-walking along on Walnut Street. She slipped

-on the wet sidewalk and fell. I ran to her

-assistance, and saw that her figure was slim

-and girlish and that she had a round, rosy face,

-but that her hair was pure white. When I

-asked her if she was hurt, she said "yes," but

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_152' name='Page_152'>[152]</a></span>

-when I said "Let me be your grandson and

-support you on my way," I put my foot into

-it, for, horrors! the look she gave me, as she

-said in an icy voice, "I was never married!"

-I wondered what manner of men there were

-in Philadelphia, and, to square myself, I said:

-"Never married! and with a pair of such

-pretty ankles!" Then she gave me a look,

-thanked me, and walked away as jauntily as

-she ever did in her life, though she must have

-been suffering agonies from her sprained

-ankle. Since that time I have been convinced

-that they of the gentle sex are girls from

-fifteen to eighty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I read much of Lever, too, while I was in

-stir. His pictures of Ireland and of the noisy

-strife in Parliament, the description of Dublin

-with its spendthrifts and excited populace, the

-gamblers and the ruined but gay young gentlemen,

-all mixed up with the grandeur of Ireland,

-are the work of a master. I could only

-compare this epoch of worn-out regalia with a

-St. Patrick's day parade twenty years ago in

-the fourth ward of Manhattan.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Other books I read in stir were Gibbon's

-<i>Roman Empire</i>, Carlyle's <i>Frederick the Great</i>,

-and many of the English poets. I read

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_153' name='Page_153'>[153]</a></span>

-Wordsworth, Gray and Goldsmith, but I liked

-Tom Moore and Robert Burns better. The

-greatest of all the poets, however, in my estimation,

-is Byron. His loves were many, his

-adventures daring, and his language was as

-broad and independent as his mind.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_154' name='Page_154'>[154]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER VIII.<br />

-In Stir (<i>continued</i>).

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-Sing Sing was overflowing with convicts,

-and after I had been there nine months, I and

-a number of others were transferred to Auburn

-penitentiary. There I found the cells drier,

-and better than at Sing Sing, but the food not

-so good. The warden was not liked by the

-majority of the men, but I admired him for

-two things. He believed in giving us good

-bread; and he did not give a continental what

-came into the prison, whether it was a needle

-or a cannister, as long as it was kept in the

-cell and not used.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was in Auburn stir that opium grew to

-be a habit with me. I used to give the keepers

-who were running the Underground one

-dollar of every five that were sent me, and

-they appreciated my kindness and kept me supplied

-with the drug. What part the hop began

-to play in my life may be seen from the routine

-of my days at Auburn; particularly at those

-periods when there was no work to be done.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_155' name='Page_155'>[155]</a></span>

-After rising in the morning I would clean

-out my cell, and turn up my bed and blankets;

-then I went to breakfast, then if there

-was no work to do, back to my cell, where I

-ate a small portion of opium, and sometimes

-read the daily paper, which was also contraband.

-It is only the stool-pigeons, those convicts

-who have money, or the cleverest among

-the rascals, who get many of these privileges.

-After I had had my opium and the newspaper

-I would exercise with dumb-bells and think or

-read in my cell. Then I would have a plunge

-bath and a nap, which would take me up to

-dinner time. After dinner I would read in

-my cell again until three o'clock, when I would

-go to the bucket-shop or exercise for half an

-hour in the yard, in lock step, with the others;

-then back to the cell, taking with me bread

-and a cup of coffee made out of burnt bread

-crust, for my supper. In the evening I would

-read and smoke until my light went out, and

-would wind up the day with a large piece of

-opium, which grew larger, as time passed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For a long time I was fairly content with

-what was practically solitary confinement. I

-had my books, my pipe, cigarettes and my

-regular supply of hop. Whether I worked in

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_156' name='Page_156'>[156]</a></span>

-the daytime or not I would usually spend my

-evenings in the same way. I would lie on my

-cot and sometimes a thought like the following

-would come to me: "Yes, I have stripes

-on. When I am released perhaps some one

-will pity me, particularly the women. They

-may despise and avoid me, most likely they

-will. But I don't care. All I want is to get

-their wad of money. In the meantime I have

-my opium and my thoughts and am just as

-happy as the millionaire, unless he has a

-narcotic."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After the drug had begun to work I would

-frequently fall into a deep sleep and not wake

-until one or two o'clock the following morning;

-then I would turn on my light, peer

-through my cell door, and try to see through

-the little window out in the corridor. A peculiar

-nervousness often came over me at this

-hour, particularly if the weather had been

-rainy, and my imagination would run on a

-ship-wreck very often, or on some other painful

-subject; and I might tell the story to myself

-in jingles, or jot it down on a piece of

-paper. Then my whole being would be quiet.

-A gentle, soothing melancholy would steal

-upon me. Often my imagination was so powerfully

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_157' name='Page_157'>[157]</a></span>

-affected that I could really see the events

-of my dream. I could see the ship tossing

-about on waves mountain high. Then and

-only then I was positive I had a soul. I was

-in such a state of peace that I could not bear

-that any human being should suffer. At first

-the scenes before my imagination would be

-most harrowing, with great loss of life, but

-when one of the gentle sex appeared vividly

-before me a shudder passed over me, and I

-would seek consolation in jingles such as the

-following:

-</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<p class="o1">

-A gallant bark set sail one day

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-For a port beyond the sea,

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-The Captain had taken his fair young bride

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-To bear him company.

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-This little brown lass

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-Was of Puritan stock.

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-Her eyes were the brightest e'er seen.

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-They never came back;

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-The ship it was wrecked

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-In a storm in the old Gulf Stream.

-</p>

-

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<p class="o1">

-Two years had passed, then a letter came

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-To a maid in a New England town.

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-It began Darling Kate, it ended Your Jack,

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-I am alive in a foreign land.

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-The Captain, his gentle young wife and your own

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-Were saved by that hand unseen,

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_158' name='Page_158'>[158]</a></span>

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-But the rest&mdash;&mdash;they went down

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-In that terrible storm

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-That night in the old Gulf Stream.

-</p>

-</div></div></div>

-

-<p>

-But these pleasures would soon leave me,

-and I would grow very restless. My only

-resource was another piece of opium. Sometimes

-I awoke much excited, paced my cell

-rapidly and felt like tearing down the door.

-Sometimes a book would quiet me. The best

-soother I had was the most beautiful poem in

-the English language&mdash;Walt Whitman's <i>Ode

-To Death</i>. When I read this poem, I often

-imagined I was at the North Pole, and that

-strange shapes in the clouds beckoned me to

-come to them. I used to forget myself, and

-read aloud and was entirely oblivious to my

-surroundings, until I was brought to myself

-by the night guard shouting, "What in &mdash;&mdash; is

-the matter with you?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After getting excited in this way I usually

-needed another dose of hop. I have noticed

-that the difference between opium and alcohol

-is that the latter is a disintegrator and tears

-apart, while the opium is a subtle underminer.

-Opium, for a long time anyway, stimulates the

-intelligence; while the reverse is true of alcohol.

-It was under the influence of opium

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_159' name='Page_159'>[159]</a></span>

-that I began to read philosophy. I read

-Hume and Locke, and partly understood them,

-I think, though I did not know that Locke is

-pronounced in only one syllable till many

-years after I had read and re-read parts of

-<i>The Human Understanding</i>. It was not only

-the opium, but my experience on the outside,

-that made me eager for philosophy and the

-deeper poetry; for a grafters wits, if they

-don't get away from him altogether, become

-keen through his business, since he lives by

-them. It was philosophy, and the spectacle of

-men going suddenly and violently insane all

-about me, that led me first to think of self-control,

-though I did not muster enough to

-throw off the opium habit till many years

-afterwards. I began to think of will-power

-about this time, and I knew it was an acquired

-virtue, like truth and honesty. I think, from

-a moral standpoint, that I lived as good a life

-in prison as anybody on the outside, for at

-least I tried to overcome myself. It was life

-or death, or, a thousand times worse, an insane

-asylum. Opium led me to books besides

-those on philosophy, which eventually helped

-to cure me. At this time I was reading Balzac,

-Shakespeare, Huxley, Tyndall and Lavater.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_160' name='Page_160'>[160]</a></span>

-One poem of Shakespeare's touched me

-more than any other poem I ever read&mdash;<i>The

-Rape of Lucrece</i>. It was reading such as this

-that gave me a broader view, and I began to

-think that this was a terrible life I was leading.

-But, as the reader will see, I did not

-know what hell was until several years later.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I had been in stir about four years on my

-first bit when I began to appreciate how terrible

-a master I had come under. Of course, to

-a certain extent, the habit had been forced

-upon me. After a man has had for several

-years bad food, little air and exercise, no natural

-companionship, particularly with the other

-sex, from whom he is entirely cut off, he really

-needs a stimulant. Many men fall into the

-vilest of habits. I found, for my part, that

-only opium would calm me. It takes only a

-certain length of time for almost all convicts

-to become broken in health, addicted to one

-form or another of stimulant which in the long

-run pulls them down completely. Diseases of

-various kinds, insanity and death, are the result.

-But before the criminal is thus released,

-he grows desperate in the extreme; particularly

-if he resorts to opium, for that drug

-makes one reckless. The hop fiend never

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_161' name='Page_161'>[161]</a></span>

-takes consequences into consideration. Under

-its influence I became very irritable and

-unruly, and would take no back talk from the

-keepers. They and the stool-pigeons began

-to be afraid of me. I would not let them

-pound me in any way, and I often got into

-a violent fight.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As long as I had my regular allowance of

-opium, which in the fourth year of my term

-was about twenty grains a day, I was peaceable

-enough. It was when I began to lessen

-the amount, with the desire to give it up, that

-I became so irritable and violent. The strain

-of reform, even in this early and unsuccessful

-attempt, was terrible. At times I used to go

-without the full amount for several days; but

-then I would relapse and go on a debauch

-until I was almost unconscious. After recovery,

-I would make another resolution, only to

-fall again.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But my life in stir was not all that of the

-solitary; there were means, even when I was

-in the shop, of communicating with my fellow

-convicts; generally by notes, as talking was

-forbidden. Notes, too, were contraband, but

-we found means of sending them through cons

-working in the hall. Sometimes good-natured

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_162' name='Page_162'>[162]</a></span>

-or avaricious keepers would carry them; but

-as a rule a convict did not like to trust a note

-to a keeper. He was afraid that the screw

-would read it, whereas it was a point of honor

-with a convict to deliver the note unread.

-The contents of these notes were usually

-news about our girls or pals, which we had

-received through visitors&mdash;rare, indeed!&mdash;or

-letters. By the same means there was much

-betting done on the races, baseball games and

-prize fights. We could send money, too, or

-opium, in the same way, to a friend in need;

-and we never required an I. O. U.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-We were allowed to receive visitors from

-the outside once every two months; also a

-box could be delivered to us at the same intervals

-of time. My friends, especially my

-mother and Ethel, sent me things regularly,

-and came to see me. They used to send me

-soap, tooth brushes and many other delicacies,

-for even a tooth brush is a delicacy in prison.

-Ethel stuck to me for three years and visited

-me regularly during that period. Then her

-visits ceased, and I heard that she had married.

-I couldn't blame her, but I felt bad about it

-all the same.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But my mother came as often as the two

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_163' name='Page_163'>[163]</a></span>

-months rolled by; not only during this first

-term, but during all my bits in stir. Certainly

-she has stuck to me through thick and thin.

-She has been my only true friend. If she

-had fallen away from me, I couldn't have

-blamed her; she would only have gone with

-the rest of the world; but she didn't. She

-was good not only to me, but to my friends,

-and she had pity for everybody in stir. I remember

-how she used to talk about the rut

-worn in the stone pavement at Sing Sing,

-where the men paced up and down. "Talk

-about the Bridge of Sighs!" she used to say.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When a man is in stir he begins to see

-what an ungrateful brute he has been; and

-he begins to separate true friends from false

-ones. He thinks of the mother he neglected

-for supposed friends of both sexes, who are

-perhaps friendly at the beginning of his sentence,

-but soon desert him if he have a number

-of years to serve. Long after all others

-have ceased coming to see him, his old mother,

-bowed and sad, will trudge up the walk from

-the station to visit her thoughtless and erring

-son! She carries on her arm a heavy basket

-of delicacies for the son who is detested by all

-good citizens, and in her heart there is still

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_164' name='Page_164'>[164]</a></span>

-hope for her boy. She has waited many years

-and she will continue to wait. What memories

-come to the mother as she sees the mansion

-of woes on the Hudson looming up

-before her! Her son is again a baby in her

-imagination; or a young fellow, before he

-began to tread the rocky path!&mdash;They soon

-part, for half an hour is all that is given, but

-they will remember forever the mothers kiss,

-the son's good-bye, the last choking words of

-love and familiar advice, as she says: "Trust

-in God, my lad."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After one of my mothers visits I used to

-have more sympathy for my fellow convicts.

-I was always a keen observer, and in the shops

-or at mess time, and when we were exercising

-together in lock step, or working about the

-yard or in the halls, I used to "feel out" my

-brother "cons," often with a kindly motive.

-I grew very expert in telling when a friend

-was becoming insane; for imprisonment leads

-to insanity, as everybody knows. Many a

-time a man I knew in stir would grow nervous

-or absent-minded, then suspicious, and finally

-would be sent to the madhouse at Dannemora

-or Matteawan.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For instance, take a friend of mine named

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_165' name='Page_165'>[165]</a></span>

-Billy. He was doing a bit of ten years. In

-the fifth year of his sentence I noticed that he

-was brooding, and I asked him what was the

-matter.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am afraid," he said, "that my wife is

-going outside of me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You are not positive, are you?" I asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well," he answered, "she visited me the

-other day, and she was looking good (prosperous).

-My son was with her, and he looked

-good, too. She gave me five dollars and

-some delicacies. But she never had five dollars

-when I was on the outside."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"She's working," said I, trying to calm him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No; she has got a father and mother," he

-replied, "and she is living with them."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Billy," I continued, "how long have you

-been in stir?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Growing on six years," he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Billy," I proceeded, "what would you do

-if you were on the outside and she was in

-prison for six years?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well," he replied, "I'd have to give myself

-some rope."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Philosophers claim that it is just as hard

-for a woman to live alone as for a man," I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_166' name='Page_166'>[166]</a></span>

-said. "You're unreasonable, Billy. Surely

-you can't blame her."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Billy's case is an instance of how, when a

-convict has had bad food, bad air and an

-unnatural routine for some time, he begins to

-borrow trouble. He grows anæmic and then

-is on the road to insanity. If he has a wife

-he almost always grows suspicious of her,

-though he does not speak about it until he

-has been a certain number of years in prison.

-It was not long after the above conversation

-took place that Billy was sent to the insane

-asylum at Matteawan.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sometimes, after a man has begun to grow

-insane, he will show it by reticence, rather

-than by talkativeness, according to his disposition.

-One of my intimate friends, in stir

-much longer than I, was like a ray of sunshine,

-witty and a good story teller. His

-laugh was contagious and we all liked to see

-him. He was one of the best night prowlers

-(burglars) in the profession, and had many

-other gifts. After he had been in stir, however,

-for a few years, he grew reticent and

-suspicious, thought that everybody was a

-stool-pigeon, and died a raving maniac a few

-years later at Matteawan.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_167' name='Page_167'>[167]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sometimes a convict will grow so nervous

-that he will attempt to escape, even when

-there is no chance, or will sham insanity. An

-acquaintance of mine, Louis, who had often

-grafted with me when we were on the outside,

-told me one day he did not expect to live his

-bit out. When confined a man generally

-thinks a lot about his condition, reads a book

-on medicine and imagines he has every disease

-the book describes. Louis was in this

-state, and he consulted me and two others as

-to whether he ought not to "shoot a bug"

-(sham insanity); and so get transferred to the

-hospital. One advised him to attack a keeper

-and demand his baby back. But as Billy had

-big, black eyes and a cadaverous face, I told

-him he'd better shoot the melancholy bug; for

-he could do that better. Accordingly in the

-morning when the men were to go to work in

-the stone yard, Billy appeared in the natural

-(naked). He had been stalled off by two

-friends until he had reached the yard. There

-the keepers saw him, and as they liked him,

-they gently took him to the hospital. He was

-pronounced incurably insane by two experts,

-and transferred to the madhouse. The change

-of air was so beneficial that Louis speedily recovered

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_168' name='Page_168'>[168]</a></span>

-his senses. At least, the doctors

-thought so when he was discovered trying to

-make his elegant (escape); and he was sent

-back to stir.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As a rule, however, those who attempted to

-sham insanity failed. They were usually lacking

-in originality. At any hour of the day or

-night the whole prison might be aroused by

-some convict breaking up house, as it was

-called when a man tried to shoot the bug. He

-might break everything in his cell, and yell so

-loud that the other convicts in the cells near

-by would join in and make a horrible din.

-Some would curse, and some laugh or howl.

-If it was at night and they had been awakened

-out of an opium sleep, they would damn him

-a thousand miles deep. His friends, however,

-who knew that he was acting, would plug his

-game along by talking about his insanity in

-the presence of stool-pigeons. These latter

-would tell the keepers that he was buggy (insane),

-and, if there was not a blow, he might

-be sent to the hospital. Before that happened,

-however, he had generally demolished all his

-furniture. The guards would go to his cell,

-and chain him up in the Catholic chapel until

-he could be examined by the doctor. Warden

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_169' name='Page_169'>[169]</a></span>

-Sage was a humane man, and used to go

-to the chapel himself and try to quiet the fake

-lunatic, and give him dainties from his own

-table. During the night the fake had historic

-company, for painted on the walls were, on

-one side of him, Jesus, and on the other, Judas

-and Mary Magdalene.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A favorite method of shooting the bug, and

-a rather difficult one for the doctors to detect,

-was that of hearing voices in one's cell. This

-is more dangerous for the convict than for

-anybody else, for when a fake tries to imagine

-he hears voices, he usually begins to really

-believe he does, and then from a fake he becomes

-a genuine freak. Another common

-fake is to tell the keeper that you have a snake

-in your arm, and then take a knife and try to

-cut it out; but it requires nerve to carry this

-fake through. Sometimes the man who wants

-to make the prison hospital merely fakes ordinary

-illness. If he has a screw or a doctor

-"right" he may stay for months in the comparatively

-healthy hospital at Sing Sing,

-where he can loaf all day, and get better food

-than at the public mess. It is as a rule only

-the experienced guns who are clever enough

-to work these little games.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_170' name='Page_170'>[170]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For faking, conversing, loafing in the shop,

-and for many other forbidden things, we were

-often punished, though the screws as often

-winked at small misdemeanors. At Sing Sing

-they used to hang us up by the wrists sometimes

-until we fainted. Auburn had a jail,

-now used as the condemned cells, where there

-was no bed and no light. In this place the

-man to be punished would remain from four

-to ten days and live on ten ounces of bread

-and half a jug of water a day. In addition,

-the jail was very damp, worse even than the

-cells at Sing Sing, where I knew many convicts

-who contracted consumption of the lungs

-and various kidney complaints.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Indeed, a great deal of dying goes on in

-State's prison. During my first term it seemed

-as if three niggers died to every white man.

-A dozen of us working around the front would

-comment on the "stiffs" when they were carried

-out. One would ask, "Who's dead?"

-The reply might be, "Only a nigger." One

-day I was talking in the front with a hall-room

-man when a stiff was put in the wagon.

-"Who's dead?" I asked. The hall-man wanted

-to bet it was a nigger. I bet him a dollar it

-was a white man, and then asked the hospital

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_171' name='Page_171'>[171]</a></span>

-nurse, who said it was not a nigger, but an

-old pal of mine, named Jerry Donovan. I felt

-sore and would not accept the money I had

-won. Poor Jerry and I did house-work together

-for three months, some of which I have

-told of, and he was a good fellow, and a sure

-and reliable grafter. And now he had "gone

-up the escape," and was being carried to the

-little graveyard on the side of the hill where

-only an iron tag would mark his place of

-repose.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-My intelligence was naturally good, and

-when I began to get some education I felt

-myself superior to many of my companions in

-stir. I was not alone in this feeling, for in

-prison there are many social cliques; though

-fewer than on the outside. Men who have

-been high up and have held responsible positions

-when at liberty make friends in stir with

-men they formerly would not have trusted as

-their boot-blacks. The professional thieves

-usually keep together as much as possible in

-prison, or communicate together by means of

-notes; though sometimes they associate with

-men who, not professional grafters, have been

-sent up for committing some big forgery, or

-other big swindle. The reason for this is

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_172' name='Page_172'>[172]</a></span>

-business; for the gun generally has friends

-among the politicians, and he wants to associate

-while in stir only with others who have

-influence. It is the guns who are usually

-trusted by the screws in charge of the Underground

-Tunnel, for the professional thief is

-less likely to squeal than the novice. Therefore,

-the big forger who has stolen thousands,

-and may be a man of ability and education

-appreciates the friendship of the professional

-pickpocket who can do him little favors, such

-as railroading his mail through the Underground,

-and providing him with newspapers,

-or a bottle of booze.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The pull of the professional thief with outside

-politicians often procures him the respect

-and consideration of the keepers. One day a

-convict, named Ed White, was chinning with

-an Irish screw, an old man who had a family

-to support. Jokes in stir lead to friendship,

-and when the keeper told Ed that he was

-looking for a job for his daughter, who was a

-stenographer, Ed said he thought he could

-place her in a good position. The old screw

-laughed and said; "You loafer, if you were

-made to carry a hod you wouldn't be a splitting

-matches in stir." But Ed meant what he

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_173' name='Page_173'>[173]</a></span>

-had said, and wrote to the famous Tammany

-politician, Mr. Wet Coin, who gave the girl a

-position as stenographer at a salary of fourteen

-dollars a week. The old screw took his

-daughter to New York, and when he returned

-to Auburn he began to "Mister" Ed. "I

-'clare to God," he said, "I don't know what to

-make out of you. Here you are eating rotten

-hash, cooped up like a wild animal, with

-stripes, when you might be making twelve to

-fifteen dollars a week." Ed replied, sarcastically,

-"That would about keep me in cigar

-money."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of the biggest men I knew in stir was

-Jim A. McBlank, at one time chief of police

-and Mayor of Coney Island. He was sent to

-Sing Sing for his repeating methods at election,

-at which game he was A No. 1. He got

-so many repeaters down to the island that

-they were compelled to register as living under

-fences, in dog kennels, tents, or any old

-place. There was much excitement in the

-prison when the Lord of Coney Island was

-shown around the stir by Principal Keeper

-Connoughton. He was a good mechanic, and

-soon had a gang of men working under him;

-though he was the hardest worker of them all.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_174' name='Page_174'>[174]</a></span>

-After he had been there awhile the riff-raff of

-of the prison, though they had never heard

-the saying that familiarity breeds contempt,

-dropped calling him Mr. McBlank, and saluted

-him as plain Jimmy. He was never in touch,

-however, with the majority of the convicts,

-for he was too close to the authorities; and

-the men believe that convicts can not be on

-friendly terms with the powers that be unless

-they are stool-pigeons. Another thing that

-made the "cons" dislike the Mayor was the

-fact, that, when he was chief of police, he had

-settled a popular dip named Feeley for ten

-years and a half. The very worst thing

-against him, however, was his private refrigerator

-in which he kept butter, condensed milk

-and other luxuries, which he did not share

-with the other convicts. One day a young

-convict named Sammy, tried to beat Sing

-Sing. He bricked himself up in the wall,

-leaving a movable opening at the bottom.

-While waiting a chance to escape Sammy used

-to sally forth from his hiding-place and steal

-something good from McBlank's box. One

-night, while helping himself to the Mayor's

-delicacies, he thought he heard a keeper, and

-hastily plunging his arm into the refrigerator

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_175' name='Page_175'>[175]</a></span>

-he made away with a large piece of butter.

-What did the ex-Chief of police do but report

-the loss of his butter to the screws which put

-them next to the fact that the convict they

-had been looking for for nine nights was still

-in the stir. The next night they would have

-rung the "all-right" bell, and given up the

-search, and indeed, they rang the bell, but

-watched; and when Sammy, thinking he could

-now go to New York, came out of his hiding

-place, he was caught. When the story circulated

-in the prison all kinds of vengeance

-were vowed against McBlank, who was much

-frightened. I heard him say that he would

-rather have lost his right arm than see the boy

-caught. What a come-down for a man who

-could throw his whole city for any state or

-national candidate at election time, to be compelled

-to apologize as McBlank was, to the

-lowest element in prison. Here indeed was

-the truth of that old saying: pride goeth before

-a fall.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of the best liked of the convicts I met

-during my first bit was Ferdinand Ward, who

-got two years for wrecking the firm in which

-General Grant and his son were partners.

-He did many a kindness in stir to those who

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_176' name='Page_176'>[176]</a></span>

-were tough and had few friends. Another

-great favorite was Johnny Hope, son of Jimmy

-Hope, who stole three millions from the

-Manhattan Bank. The father got away, and

-Johnny, who was innocent, was nailed by a

-copper looking for a reputation, and settled

-for twenty years in Sing Sing, because he was

-his father's son and had the misfortune to

-meet an ambitious copper. When Johnny

-had been in prison about ten years, the inspector,

-who was the former copper, went to

-the Governor, and said he was convinced that

-the boy was innocent. But how about young

-Hope's wrecked life? Johnny's father, indeed,

-was a well-known grafter whom I met in

-Auburn, where we worked together for a

-while in the broom-shop. He was much older

-than I, and used to give me advice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't ever do a day's work in your life,

-my boy," he would say, "unless you can't

-help it. You are too intelligent to be a

-drudge."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Another common remark of his was: "Trust

-no convict," and a third was: "It is as easy

-to steal five thousand dollars as it is to steal

-five dollars."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Old man Hope had stolen millions and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_177' name='Page_177'>[177]</a></span>

-ought to know what he was talking about. In

-personal appearance he was below the medium

-height, had light gray hair and as mild a pair

-of eyes as I ever saw in man or woman. I

-ranked him as a manly old fellow, and he was

-an idol among the small crooks, though he did

-not have much to do with them. He seemed

-to like to talk to me, partly because I never

-talked graft, and he detested such talk particularly

-among prison acquaintances. He referred

-one day to a pick pocket in stir who was

-always airing what he knew about the graft.

-"He's tiresome," said old Hope. "He is always

-talking shop."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of the worst hated men at Auburn was

-Weeks, a well-known club man and banker,

-who once stole over a million dollars. He was

-despised by the other convicts, for he was a

-"squealer." One of the screws in charge of

-the Underground Tunnel was doing things for

-Weeks, who had a snap,&mdash;the position of book-keeper,

-in the clothing department. In his

-desk he kept whiskey, beer and cigars, and

-lived well. One day a big bug paid him a

-visit, and Weeks belched how he had to give

-up his watch and chain in order to secure luxuries.

-His friend, the big bug, reported to

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_178' name='Page_178'>[178]</a></span>

-the prison authorities, and the principal keeper

-went to Weeks and made the coward squeal

-on the keeper who had his "front." The

-screw lost his job, and when the convicts heard

-of it, they made Weeks' life miserable for

-years.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But the man who was hated worst of all

-those in prison was Biff Ellerson. I never

-understood why the other cons hated him,

-unless it was that he always wore a necktie;

-this is not etiquette in stir, which in the convicts'

-opinion ought to be a place of mourning.

-He had been a broker and a clubman, and was

-high up in the world. Ellerson was a conscientious

-man, and once, when a mere boy, who

-had stolen a ten dollar watch, was given fifteen

-years, had publicly criticized the judge and

-raised a storm in the newspapers. Ellerson

-compared this lad's punishment with that of a

-man like Weeks, who had robbed orphans out

-of their all and only received ten years for it.

-Many is the time that this man, Biff Ellerson,

-has been kind to men in stir who hated him.

-He had charge of the dungeon at Auburn

-where convicts who had broken the rules were

-confined. I have known him to open my door

-and give me water on the quiet, many a time,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_179' name='Page_179'>[179]</a></span>

-and he did it for others who were ungrateful,

-and at the risk, too, of never being trusted

-again by the screws and of getting a dose of

-the cuddy-hole himself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-By far the greater number of these swell

-grafters who steal millions die poor, for it is

-not what a man steals, but what he saves, that

-counts. I have often noticed that the bank

-burglar who is high up in his profession is not

-the one who has the most money when he gets

-to be forty-five or fifty years of age. The

-second or third class gun is more likely to lay

-by something. His general expenses are not

-so large and he does not need so much fall-money;

-and in a few years he can usually

-show more money than the big gun who has a

-dozen living on him. I knew a Big One who

-told me that every time he met a certain police

-official, his watch, a piece of jewelry, a diamond

-stud or even his cuff buttons were much

-admired. The policeman always had some

-relative or friend who desired just the kind

-of ornament the Big One happened to be wearing

-at the time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I cannot help comparing those swell guys

-whom I knew at Sing Sing with a third class

-pickpocket I met on the same bit. The big ones

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_180' name='Page_180'>[180]</a></span>

-are dead or worse, but the other day I met, in

-New York, my old pickpocket friend in stir,

-Mr. Aut. I am positive that the hand-shake

-he gave me was only a muscular action, for

-Mr. Aut has "squared it", and the gun who

-has reformed and has become prosperous does

-not like to meet an old acquaintance, who

-knows too much about his past life. When I

-ran across him in the city I started in to talk

-about old times in stir and of pals we knew in

-the long ago, but he answered me by saying,

-"Nix", which meant "Drop It". To get

-him to talk I was forced to throw a few "Larrys"

-into him, such as: "Well, old man, only for

-your few mistakes of the past, you might be

-leader of Tammany Hall." Gradually he

-expanded and told me how much he had

-gained in weight since he left stir and what he

-had done for certain ungrateful grafters. He

-boasted that he could get bail for anyone to

-the sum of fifty thousand dollars, and he told

-the truth, for this man, who had been a third

-class dip, owns at the present time, three gin-mills

-and is something of a politician. He

-has three beautiful children and is well up in

-the world. His daughter was educated at a

-convent, and his son is at a well-known college.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet I remember the time when this ex gun,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_181' name='Page_181'>[181]</a></span>

-Mr. Aut, and I, locked near one another in

-Sing Sing and consoled one another with what

-little luxuries we could get together. Our letters,

-booze and troubles were shared between

-us, and many is the time I have felt for him;

-for he had married a little shop girl and had

-two children at that time. When he got out

-of stir he started in to square it, that is, not to

-go to prison any more. He was wise and no

-one can blame him. He is a good father and

-a successful man. If he had been a better

-grafter it would not have been so easy for him

-to reform. I wish him all kinds of prosperity,

-but I don't like him as well as I did when we

-wore the striped garb and whispered good

-luck to one another in that mansion of woes on

-the Hudson.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of Mr. Aut's possessions makes me smile

-whenever I think of it. In his swell parlor,

-over a brand new piano, hangs an oil painting

-of himself, in which he takes great pride. I

-could not help thinking that that picture

-showed a far more prosperous man and one in

-better surroundings than a certain photograph

-of his which is quite as highly treasured as the

-more costly painting; although it is only a tintype,

-numbered two thousand and odd, in the

-Rogues' Gallery.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_182' name='Page_182'>[182]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER IX.<br />

-<i>In Stir and Out.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-Some of the most disagreeable days I ever

-spent in prison were the holidays, only three

-of which during the year, however, were kept&mdash;Fourth

-of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

-In Sing Sing there was no work on

-those days, and we could lie abed longer in

-the morning. The food was somewhat better

-than usual. Breakfast consisted of boiled ham,

-mashed potatoes and gravy, and a cup of

-coffee with milk. After mess we went, as

-usual, to chapel, and then gave a kind of

-vaudeville show, all with local talent. We

-sang rag-time and sentimental songs, some of

-us played on an instrument, such as the violin,

-mandolin, or cornet, and the band gave the

-latest pieces from comic opera. After the

-show was over we went to the mess-room

-again where we received a pan containing a

-piece of pie, some cheese, a few apples, as

-much bread as we desired and&mdash;a real luxury

-in stir&mdash;two cigars. With our booty we then

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_183' name='Page_183'>[183]</a></span>

-returned to our cells, at about eleven o'clock

-in the morning, and after the guards had made

-the rounds to see that none of the birds had

-gone astray, we were locked up until the next

-morning, without anything more to eat. We

-were permitted to talk to one another from

-our cells until five o'clock, when the night

-guards went on duty. Such is&mdash;just imagine

-it&mdash;a great day in Sing Sing! The gun, no

-matter how big a guy he is, even if he has

-robbed a bank and stolen millions, is far

-worse off than the meanest laborer, be he

-ever so poor. He may have only a crust, but

-he has that priceless boon, his liberty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At Auburn the routine on holidays is much

-the same as that of Sing Sing; but one is not

-compelled to go to chapel, which is a real

-kindness. I don't think a man ought to be

-forced to go to church, even in stir, against

-his will. On holidays in Auburn a man may

-stay in his cell instead of attending divine service,

-if he so desires, and not be punished for

-it. Many a con prefers not to go even to the

-vaudeville show, which at Auburn is given by

-outside talent, but remains quietly all day in

-his cell. There is one other great holiday

-privilege at Auburn, which some of the convicts

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_184' name='Page_184'>[184]</a></span>

-appreciate more than I did. When the

-clock strikes twelve o'clock the convicts, locked

-in their cells, start in to make the rest of the

-night hideous, by pounding on the doors,

-playing all sorts of instruments, blowing whistles,

-and doing everything else that would

-make a noise. There is no more sleep that

-night, for everything is given over to Bedlam,

-until five thirty in the morning, when discipline

-again reigns, and the nervous man who

-detests these holidays sighs with pleasure,

-and says to himself: "I am so glad that at

-last everything is quiet in this cursed stir."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-What with poor food, little air and exercise,

-no female society, bad habits and holidays, it

-is no wonder that there are many attempts,

-in spite of the danger, to escape from stir.

-Most of these attempts are unsuccessful, but a

-few succeed. One of the cleverest escapes I

-know of happened during my term at Auburn.

-B&mdash;&mdash; was the most feared convict in the

-prison. He was so intelligent, so reckless and

-so good a mechanic that the guards were

-afraid he would make his elegant any day.

-Indeed, if ever a man threw away gifts for not

-even the proverbial mess of pottage, it was

-this man B&mdash;&mdash;. He was the cleverest man I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_185' name='Page_185'>[185]</a></span>

-ever met in stir or out. It was after one

-of the delightful holidays in Auburn that

-B&mdash;&mdash;, who was a nervous man, decided

-to make his gets. He picked a quarrel with

-another convict and was so rough that the

-principal keeper almost decided to let him off;

-but when B&mdash;&mdash; spat in his face he changed

-his mind and put him in the dungeon. I have

-already mentioned this ram-shackle building

-at Auburn. It was the worst yet. All B&mdash;&mdash;'s

-clothing was taken off and an old coat, shirt,

-and trousers without buttons were given him.

-An old piece of bay rope was handed him to

-tie around his waist, and he was left in darkness.

-This was what he wanted, for, although

-they had stripped him naked and searched

-him, he managed to conceal a saw, which he

-used to such good purpose that on the second

-night he had sawed himself into the yard.

-Instead of trying to go over the wall, as most

-cons would have done, B&mdash;&mdash; placed a ladder,

-which he found in the repair shop, against the

-wall, and when the guards discovered next

-morning that B&mdash;&mdash; was not in the dungeon,

-and saw the ladder on the wall, they thought

-he had escaped, and did not search the stir

-but notified the towns to look after him. He

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_186' name='Page_186'>[186]</a></span>

-was not found, of course, for he was hiding in

-the cellar of the prison. A night or two afterwards

-he went to the tailor shop, selected the

-best suit of clothes in the place, opened the

-safe which contained the valuables of the convicts,

-with a piece of steel and a hammer, thus

-robbing his fellow sufferers, and escaped by

-the ladder. After several months of freedom

-he was caught, sent back to stir, and forfeited

-half of his commutation time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A more tragic attempt was made by the

-convicts, Big Benson and Little Kick. They

-got tools from friends in the machine shop

-and started in to saw around the locks of their

-doors. They worked quietly, and were not

-discovered. The reason is that there is sometimes

-honor among thieves. Two of their

-friends in their own gallery, two on the gallery

-above and two on that underneath, tipped

-them off, by a cough or some other noise,

-whenever the night guard was coming; and

-they would cease their work with the saws.

-Convicts grow very keen in detecting the

-screw by the creaking of his boots on the

-wooden gallery floor; if they are not quite

-sure it is he, they often put a small piece of

-looking-glass underneath the door, and can

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_187' name='Page_187'>[187]</a></span>

-thus see down the gallery in either direction a

-certain distance. Whenever Benson and

-Kick were at work, they would accompany the

-noise of the saw with some other noise, so as

-to drown the former, for they knew that,

-although they had some friends among the

-convicts, there were others who, if they got

-next, would tip off the keepers that an escape

-was to be made. In the morning they would

-putty up the cuts made in the door during the

-night. One night when everything was ready,

-they slipped from their cells, put the mug on

-the guard, took away his cannister, and tied

-him to the bottom of one of their cells. They

-did the same to another guard, who was on

-the watch in the gallery below, went to the

-outside window on the Hudson side of Sing

-Sing, and putting a Jack, which they had concealed

-in the cell, between the bars of the window,

-spread them far apart, so that they could

-make their exit. At this point however they

-were discovered by a third guard, who fired at

-them, hitting Little Kick in the leg. The

-shot aroused the sergeant of the guards and

-he gave the alarm. Big Benson was just getting

-through the window when the whole pack

-of guards fired at him, killing him as dead as

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_188' name='Page_188'>[188]</a></span>

-a door-nail. Little Kick lost his nerve and

-surrendered, and was taken to the dungeon.

-Big Benson, who had been serving a term for

-highway robbery, was one of the best liked

-men in stir, and when rumors reached the convicts

-that he had been shot, pandemonium

-broke loose in the cells. They yelled and

-beat their coffee cups against the iron doors,

-and the officials were powerless to quiet them.

-There was more noise even than on a holiday

-at Auburn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Soon after I was transferred from Sing Sing

-to Auburn, a friend came to me and said:

-"Jimmy, are you on either of the shoe-shop

-galleries? No? Well, if you can get on

-Keeper Riley's gallery I think you can spring

-(escape)."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Then he let me in on one of the cleverest

-beats I ever knew; if I could have succeeded

-in being put on that gallery I should not have

-finished my first term in State's prison. At

-that time work was slack and the men were

-locked in their cells most of the time. Leahy

-started in to dig out the bricks from the ceiling

-of his cell. Each day, when taking his

-turn for an hour in the yard, he would give

-the cement, which he had done up in small

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_189' name='Page_189'>[189]</a></span>

-packages, to friends, who would dump it in

-their buckets, the contents of which they

-would then throw into the large cesspool.

-While exercising in the yard, the cons would

-throw the bricks Leahy had removed on an

-old brick pile under the archway. After he

-had removed sufficient stuff to make a hole

-big enough to crawl through, all he had left to

-do was to saw a few boards, and remove a few

-tiles, and then he was on the roof. It is the

-habit of the guard, when he goes the rounds,

-to rap the ceiling of every cell with his stick,

-to see if there is an excavation. Leahy had

-guarded against this by filling a small box

-with sand and placing it in the opening.

-Then he pasted a piece of linen over the box

-and whitewashed it. Even when the screw

-came around to glance in his cell Leahy

-would continue to work, for he had rigged up

-a dummy of himself in bed. When he reached

-the roof, he dropped to a lower building,

-reached the wall which surrounds the prison,

-and with a rope lowered himself to the ground.

-With a brand new suit of clothes which a

-friend had stolen from the shop, Leahy went

-forth into the open, and was never caught.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At Sing Sing an old chum of mine named

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_190' name='Page_190'>[190]</a></span>

-Tom escaped, and would never have been

-caught if he had not been so sentimental.

-Indeed, he was improvident in every way.

-He had been a well-known house-worker, and

-made lots of money at this graft, but he lived

-well and blew what he stole, and consequently

-did many years in prison. He was nailed for

-a house that was touched of "éclat" worth

-thousands, and convicted, though of this particular

-crime he was, I am convinced, innocent;

-of course, he howled like a stuck pig

-about the injustice of it, all his life. While

-he was in Raymond Street jail he got wind of

-the men who really did the job. They were

-pals and he asked them to try to turn him

-out. His girl, Tessie, heard of it and wanted

-to go to Police Headquarters and squeal on

-the others, to save her sweetheart. But Tom

-was frantic, for there was no squeal in him.

-You find grafters like that sometimes, and

-Tom was always sentimental. He certainly

-preferred to go to stir rather than have the

-name of being a belcher. So he went to Sing

-Sing for seven and a half years. He was a

-good mechanic and was assigned to a brick-laying

-job on the wall. He had an easy time

-in stir, for he had a screw right, and got many

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_191' name='Page_191'>[191]</a></span>

-luxuries through the Underground; and was

-not watched very closely. One day he put a

-suit of clothes under his stripes, vamoosed

-into a wood near by, and removed his stripes.

-He kept on walking till he reached Connecticut,

-which, as I have said, is the softest state

-in the Union.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Tom would never have finished that bit in

-stir, if, as I have also said, he had not been so

-sentimental. When in prison a grafter continually

-thinks about his old pals and hang-outs,

-and the last scenes familiar to him before

-he went to stir. Tom was a well-known gun,

-with his picture in the Hall of Fame, and yet,

-after beating prison, and leaving years behind,

-and knowing that if caught he would have to

-do additional time, would have the authorities

-sore against him and be confined in the dark

-cell, he yet, in spite of all that, after a short

-time, made for his old haunts on the Bowery,

-where he was nailed by a fly-cop and sent

-back to Sing Sing. So much for the force of

-habit and of environment, especially when a

-grafter is a good fellow and loves his old

-pals.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On one occasion Tom was well paid for

-being a good fellow. Jack was a well-known

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_192' name='Page_192'>[192]</a></span>

-pugilist who had become a grafter. His wife's

-sister had married a millionaire, and Jack stole

-the millions, which amounted, in this case, to

-only one hundred thousand dollars. For this

-he was put in prison for four years. While in

-stir, Tom, who had a screw right, did him

-many favors, which Jack remembered. Years

-afterwards they were both on the outside

-again. Tom was still a grafter, but Jack had

-gone to work for a police official as general

-utility man, and gained the confidence of his

-employer, who was chief of the detective

-force. The latter got Jack a position as private

-detective in one of the swellest hotels in

-Florida. Now, Tom happened to be grafting

-in that State, and met his old friend Jack at

-the hotel. Instead of tipping off the chief

-that Tom was a grafter, Jack staked his old

-pal, for he remembered the favors he had

-received in stir. Tom was at liberty for four

-years, and then was brought to police headquarters

-where the chief said to him: "I

-know that you met Jack in Florida, and I am

-sore because he did not tip me off." Tom

-replied indignantly: "He is not a hyena like

-your ilk. He is not capable of the basest of

-all crimes, ingratitude. I can forgive a man

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_193' name='Page_193'>[193]</a></span>

-who puts his hand in my pocket and steals my

-money. I can forgive him, for it may do him

-good. He may invest the money and become

-an honored member of the community. But

-the crime no man can forgive is ingratitude.

-It is the most inhuman of crimes and only

-your ilk is capable of it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The Chief smiled at Tom's sentiment&mdash;that

-was always his weak point&mdash;poor Tom!&mdash;and

-said: "Well, you are a clever thief, and

-I'm glad I was wise enough to catch you."

-Whereupon Tom sneered and remarked: "I

-could die of old age in this city for all of you

-and your detectives. I was tipped off to you

-by a Dicky Bird (stool pigeon) damn him!"

-I have known few grafters who had as much

-feeling as Tom.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-More than five years passed, and the time

-for my release from Auburn drew near. The

-last weeks dragged terribly; they seemed

-almost as long as the years that had gone

-before. Sometimes I thought the time would

-never come. The day before I was discharged

-I bade good-bye to my friends, who said to

-me, smiling: "She has come at last," or "It's

-near at hand," or "It was a long time a-coming."

-That night I built many castles in the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_194' name='Page_194'>[194]</a></span>

-air, with the help of a large piece of opium:

-and continued to make the good resolutions I

-had begun some time before. I had permission

-from the night guard to keep my light

-burning after the usual hour, and the last

-book I read on my first term in stir was <i>Tristram

-Shandy</i>. Just before I went to bed I

-sang for the last time a popular prison song

-which had been running in my head for

-months:

-</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<p class="o1">

-"Roll round, '89, '90, '91, sweet '92 roll around.

-</p>

-<p class="o1">

-How happy I shall be the morning I go free, sweet '92 roll around."

-</p>

-</div></div></div>

-

-<p>

-Before I fell asleep I resolved to be good,

-to quit opium and not to graft any more.

-The resolution was easily made and I went to

-bed happy. I was up at day-break and penned

-a few last words to my friends and acquaintances

-remaining in stir. I promised some of

-them that I would see their friends on the

-outside and send them delicacies and a little

-money. They knew that I would keep my

-promise, for I have always been a man of my

-word; as many of the most successful grafters

-are. It is only the vogel-grafter, the petty

-larceny thief or the "sure-thing" article, who

-habitually breaks his word. Many people

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_195' name='Page_195'>[195]</a></span>

-think that a thief can not be trusted; and it

-certainly is true that the profession does not

-help to make a man virtuous in his personal

-relations. But it is also true that a man may

-be, and sometimes is, honorable in his dealings

-with his own world, and at the same time a

-desperate criminal in the other. It is not of

-course common, to find a thief who is an

-honest man; but is there very often an honest

-man anywhere, in the world of graft or out of

-it? If it is often, so much the better, but that

-has not been my experience. Does not everyone

-know that the men who do society the

-greatest injury have never done time; in fact,

-may never have broken any laws? I am not

-trying to excuse myself or my companions in

-crime, but I think the world is a little twisted

-in its ideas as to right and wrong, and who are

-the greatest sinners.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When six o'clock on the final day came

-round it was a great relief. I went through

-the regular routine, and at eight o'clock was

-called to the front office, received a new suit

-of clothes, as well as my fare home and ten dollars

-with which to begin life afresh.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hold on," I said, to the Warden. "I

-worked eighteen months. Under the new

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_196' name='Page_196'>[196]</a></span>

-piece-price plan I ought to be allowed a certain

-percentage of my earnings."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The Warden, who was a good fellow and

-permitted almost anything to come in by the

-Underground Tunnel, asked the clerk if there

-was any more money for me. The clerk consulted

-with the keepers and then reported to

-the Warden that I was the most tired man

-that ever entered the prison; adding that it

-was very nervy of me to want more money,

-after they had treated me far better than the

-parent of the Prodigal treated his son. The

-Warden, thereupon, remarked to me that if I

-went pilfering again and were not more energetic

-than I had been in prison, I would never

-eat. "Goodbye," he concluded.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well," I said, "I hope we'll never meet

-again."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-With my discharge papers in my hand, and in

-my mind a resolution never to go back to the

-stir where so many of my friends, strong fellows,

-too, had lost their lives or had become physical

-or mental wrecks, I left Auburn penitentiary

-and went forth into the free world. I had

-gone to stir a boy of twenty-one, and left it a

-man of twenty-six. I entered healthy, and left

-broken down in health, with the marks of the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_197' name='Page_197'>[197]</a></span>

-jail-bird upon me; marks, mental and physical,

-that would never leave me, and habits that I

-knew would stick closer than a brother. I

-knew that there was nothing in a life of crime.

-I had tested that well enough. But there

-were times during the last months I spent in

-my cell, when, in spite of my good resolutions,

-I hated the outside world which had forced me

-into a place that took away from my manhood

-and strength. I knew I had sinned against

-my fellow men, but I knew, too, that there

-had been something good in me. I was half

-Irish, and about that race there is naturally

-something roguish; and that was part of my

-wickedness. When I left stir I knew I was

-not capable, after five years and some months

-of unnatural routine, of what I should have

-been by nature.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A man is like an electric plant. Use poor

-fuel and you will have poor electricity. The

-food is bad in prison. The cells at Sing Sing

-are a crime against the criminal; and in these

-damp and narrow cells he spends, on the average,

-eighteen hours out of the twenty-four.

-In the name of humanity and science what

-can society expect from a man who has spent

-a number of years in such surroundings? He

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_198' name='Page_198'>[198]</a></span>

-will come out of stir, as a rule, a burden on

-the tax-payers, unable to work, and confirmed

-in a life of crime; desperate, and willing to

-take any chance. The low-down, petty, canting

-thief, who works all the charitable societies

-and will rob only those who are his benefactors,

-or a door-mat, is utterly useless in

-prison or out. The healthy, intelligent, ambitious

-grafter is capable of reform and usefulness,

-if shown the error of his ways or taken

-hold of before his physical and mental health

-is ruined by prison life. You can appeal to

-his manhood at that early time. After he has

-spent a certain number of years in stir his teeth

-become decayed; he can not chew his food,

-which is coarse and ill-cooked; his stomach

-gets bad: and once his stomach becomes

-deranged it is only a short time before his

-head is in a like condition. Eventually, he

-may be transferred to the mad-house. I left

-Auburn stir a happy man, for the time, for I

-thought everything would be smooth sailing.

-As a matter of fact I could not know the actual

-realities I had to face, inside and outside

-of me, and so all my good resolutions were

-nothing but a dream.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was a fine May morning that I left Auburn

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_199' name='Page_199'>[199]</a></span>

-and I was greatly excited and bewildered by

-the brightness and joy of everything about

-me. I took my hat off, gazed up at the clear

-sky, looked up and down the street and at the

-passers-by, with a feeling of pleasure and confusion.

-I turned to the man who had been

-released with me, and said, "Let's go and get

-something to eat." On the way to the restaurant,

-however, the jangling of the trolleys upset

-my nerves. I could not eat, and drank a

-couple of whiskies. They did not taste right.

-Everything seemed tame, compared with the

-air, which I breathed like a drunken man.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I bought a few pounds of tea, canned goods,

-cheese and fruit, which I sent by a keeper to

-my friends in stir. I also bought for my

-friends a few dollars' worth of morphine and

-some pulverized gum opium. How could I

-send it to them, for the keeper was not "next"

-to the Underground? Suddenly I had an

-idea. I bought ten cents worth of walnuts,

-split them, took the meat out, put the morphine

-and opium in, closed them with mucilage,

-put them in a bag and sent them to the convicts

-with the basket of other things I had left

-with the innocent keeper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I got aboard my train, and as I pulled out

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_200' name='Page_200'>[200]</a></span>

-of the town of Auburn gave a great sigh of

-relief. I longed to go directly to New York,

-for I always did like big cities, particularly

-Manhattan, and I was dying to see some of

-my old girls. But I stopped off at Syracuse,

-according to promises, to deliver some messages

-to the relatives of convicts, and so reached

-New York a few hours later than my family

-and friends had expected. They had gone

-to meet an earlier train, and had not waited,

-so that when I reached my native city after

-this long absence I found nobody at the station

-to welcome me back. It made me sad for a

-moment, but when I passed out into the streets

-of the big town I felt excited and joyous, and

-so confused that I thought I knew almost

-everybody on the street. I nearly spoke to a

-stranger, a woman, thinking she was Blonde

-Mamie.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I soon reached the Bowery and there met

-some of my old pals; but was much surprised

-to find them changed and older. For years

-and years a convict lives in a dream. He is

-isolated from the realities of the outside world.

-In stir he is a machine, and his mind is continually

-dwelling on the last time he was at

-liberty; he thinks of his family and friends as

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_201' name='Page_201'>[201]</a></span>

-they were then. They may have become old,

-sickly and wrinkled, but he does not realize

-this. When, set free, he tries to find them,

-he expects that they will be unchanged, but if

-he finds them at all, what a shock! An old-timer

-I knew, a man named Packey, who had

-served fifteen years out of a life sentence, and

-had been twice declared insane, told me that

-he had reached a state of mind in which he

-imagined himself to be still a young fellow, of

-the age he was when he first went to stir.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_202' name='Page_202'>[202]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER X.<br />

-<i>At the Graft Again.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-I spent my first day in New York looking

-up my old pals and girls, especially the latter.

-How I longed to exchange friendly words

-with a woman! But the girls I knew were all

-gone, and I was forced to make new acquaintances

-on the spot. I spent all the afternoon

-and most of the evening with a girl I picked

-up on the Bowery; I thought she was the

-most beautiful creature in the world; but

-when I saw her again weeks afterwards, when

-women were not so novel to me, I found

-her almost hideous. I must have longed for

-a young woman's society, for I did not go to

-see my poor old mother until I had left my

-Bowery acquaintance. And yet my mother

-had often proved herself my only friend!

-But I had a long talk with her before I slept,

-and when I left her for a stroll in the wonderful

-city before going to bed my resolution to

-be good was keener than ever.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_203' name='Page_203'>[203]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As I sauntered along the Bowery that night

-the desire to talk to an old pal was strong.

-But where was I to find a friend? Only in

-places where thieves hung out. "Well," I

-said to myself, "there is no harm in talking to

-my old pals. I will tell them there is nothing

-in the graft, and that I have squared it."

-I dropped into a music hall, a resort for pickpockets,

-kept by an old gun, and there I met

-Teddy, whom I had not seen for years.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, Jim," he said, giving me the glad

-hand, "I thought you were dead."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not quite so bad as that, Teddy," I replied,

-"I am still in evidence."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-We had a couple of beers. I could not

-quite make up my mind to tell him I had

-squared it; and he put me next to things in

-town.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Take my advice," he said, "and keep

-away from &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; (naming certain clubs

-and saloons where thieves congregated). The

-proprietors of these places and the guns that

-hang out there, many of them anyway, are

-not on the level. Some of the grafters who

-go there have the reputation of being clever

-dips, but they have protection from the Front

-Office men because they are rats and so can

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_204' name='Page_204'>[204]</a></span>

-tear things open without danger. By giving

-up a certain amount of stuff and dropping a

-stall or two occasionally to keep up the flyman's

-reputation, they are able to have a bank

-account and never go to stir. The flymen

-hang out in these joints, waiting for a tip, and

-they are bad places for a grafter who is on

-the level."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I listened with attention, and said, by force

-of habit:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Put me next to the stool-pigeons, Teddy.

-You know I am just back from stir."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well," he answered, "outside of so and so

-(and he mentioned half-a-dozen men by name)

-none of them who hang out in those joints

-can be trusted. Come to my house, Jim, and

-we'll have a long talk about old times, and I

-will introduce you to some good people (meaning

-thieves)."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I went with him to his home, which was in

-a tenement house in the lower part of the first

-ward. He introduced me to his wife and

-children and a number of dips, burglars and

-strong-armed men who made his place a kind

-of rendezvous. We talked old times and

-graft, and the wife and little boy of eight

-years old listened attentively. The boy had

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_205' name='Page_205'>[205]</a></span>

-a much better chance to learn the graft than I

-had when a kid, for my father was an honest

-man.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The three strong-arm men (highwaymen)

-were a study to me, for they were Westerners,

-with any amount of nerve. One of them,

-Denver Red, a big powerful fellow, mentioned

-a few bits he had done in Western prisons,

-explained a few of his grafts and seemed to

-despise New York guns, whom he considered

-cowardly. He said the Easterners feared the

-police too much, and always wanted to fix things

-before they dared to graft.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I told them a little about New York State

-penitentiaries, and then Ted said to Denver

-Red: "What do you think of the big fellow?"

-Denver grinned, and the others followed suit,

-and I heard the latest story. A well-known

-politician, leader of his district, a cousin of

-Senator Wet Coin; a man of gigantic stature,

-with the pleasing name, I will say, of Flower,

-had had an adventure. He is even better

-developed physically than mentally, and virtually

-king of his district, and whenever he

-passes by, the girls bow to him, the petty thief

-calls him "Mister" and men and women alike

-call him "Big Flower." Well, one night not

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_206' name='Page_206'>[206]</a></span>

-long before the gathering took place in Teddy's

-house, Big Flower was passing through the

-toughest portion of his bailiwick, humming ragtime,

-when my new acquaintances, the three

-strong-arm workers from the West, stuck him

-up with cannisters, and relieved him of a five

-carat diamond stud, a gold watch and chain

-and a considerable amount of cash. The next

-day there was consternation among the clan

-of the Wet Coins, for Big Flower, who had

-been thus nipped, was their idol. We all

-laughed heartily at the story, and I went

-home and to sleep.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The next day I found it a very easy thing

-to drift back to my old haunts. In the

-evening I went to a sporting house on Twenty-seventh

-Street, where a number of guns

-hung out. I got the glad hand and an invitation

-to join in some good graft. I said I was

-done with the Rocky Path. They smiled and

-gently said: "We have been there, too,

-Jim."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of them added: "By the way, I hear

-you are up against the hop, Jim." It was

-Billy, and he invited me home with him.

-There I met Ida, as pretty a little shop girl as

-one wants to see. Billy said there was always

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_207' name='Page_207'>[207]</a></span>

-an opening for me, that times were pretty

-good. He and Ida had an opium layout, and

-they asked me to take a smoke. I told them

-my nerves were not right, and that I had quit.

-"Poor fellow," said Billy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Perhaps it was the sight or smell of the

-hop, but anyway I got the yen-yen and shook

-as in an ague. My eyes watered and I grew

-as pale as a sheet. I thought my bones were

-unjointing and took a pint of whiskey; it had

-no effect. Then Billy acted as my physician

-and prepared a pill for me. So vanished one

-good resolution. My only excuse to myself

-was: Human nature is weak, ain't it? No

-sooner had I taken the first pill than a feeling

-of ecstasy came over me. I became talkative,

-and Billy, noticing the effect, said: "Jim,

-before you try to knock off the hop, you had

-better wait till you reach the next world."

-The opium brought peace to my nerves and

-dulled my conscience and I had a long talk

-with Billy and Ida about old pals. They told

-me who was dead, who were in stir and who

-were good (prosperous).

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Not many days after my opium fall I got a

-note from Ethel, who had heard that I had

-come home. In the letter she said that she

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_208' name='Page_208'>[208]</a></span>

-was not happy with her husband, that she had

-married to please her father and to get a comfortable

-home. She wanted to make an appointment

-to meet me, whom, she said, she

-had always loved. I knew what her letter

-meant, and I did not answer it, and did not keep

-the appointment. My relation to her was the

-only decent thing in my life, and I thought I

-might as well keep it right. I have never

-seen her since the last time she visited me at

-Auburn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For some time after getting back from stir

-I tried for a job, but the effort was only half-hearted

-on my part, and people did not fall

-over themselves in their eagerness to find

-something for the ex-convict to do. Even if

-I had had the best intentions in the world,

-the path of the ex-convict is a difficult one, as

-I have since found. I was run down physically,

-and could not carry a hod or do any

-heavy labor, even if I had desired to. I knew

-no trade and should have been forever distrusted

-by the upper world. The only thing

-I could do well was to graft; and the only

-society that would welcome me was that of

-the under world. My old pals knew I had

-the requisite nerve and was capable of taking

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_209' name='Page_209'>[209]</a></span>

-my place in any good mob. My resolutions

-began to ooze away, especially as at that time

-my father was alive and making enough money

-to support the rest of the family. So I had

-only myself to look out for&mdash;and that was a

-lot; for I had my old habits, and new ones I

-had formed in prison, to satisfy. When I

-stayed quietly at home I grew intensely nervous;

-and soon I felt that I was bound to slip

-back to the world of graft. I am convinced

-that I would never have returned to stir or to my

-old trade, however, if my environment had been

-different, on my release, from what it had been

-formerly; and if I could have found a job. I

-don't say this in the way of complaint. I now

-know that a man can reform even among his

-old associates. It is impossible, as the reader

-will see, I believe, before he finishes this book,

-for me ever to fall back again. Some men

-acquire wisdom at twenty-one, some not till

-they are thirty-five, and some never. Wisdom

-came to me when I was thirty-five. If I had

-had my present experience, I should not have

-fallen after my first bit; but I might not have

-fallen anyway, if I had been placed in a better

-environment after my first term in prison. A

-man can stand alone, if he is strong enough,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_210' name='Page_210'>[210]</a></span>

-and has sufficient reasons; but if he is tottering,

-he needs outside help.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was tottering, and did not get the help,

-and so I speedily began to graft again. I

-started in on easy game, on picking pockets

-and simple swindling. I made my first touch,

-after my return, on Broadway. One day I

-met the Kid there, looking for a dollar as hard

-as a financier. He asked me if I was not

-about ready to begin again, and pointed out a

-swell Moll, big, breezy and blonde, coming

-down the street, with a large wallet sticking

-out of her pocket. It seemed easy, with no

-come-back in sight, and I agreed to stall for the

-Kid. Just as she went into Denning's which

-is now Wanamaker's, I went in ahead of her,

-turned and met her. She stopped; and at

-that moment the Kid nicked her. We got

-away all right and found in the wallet over

-one hundred dollars and a small knife. In

-the knife were three rivets, which we discovered

-on inspection to be magnifying glasses.

-We applied our eyes to the same and saw

-some pictures which would have made Mr.

-Anthony Comstock howl; if he had found this

-knife on this aristocratic lady he would surely

-have sent her to the penitentiary. It was a

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_211' name='Page_211'>[211]</a></span>

-beautiful pearl knife, gold tipped, and must

-have been a loss; and yet I felt I was justified

-in taking that wallet. I thought I had done

-the lady a good turn. She might have been

-fined, and why shouldn't I have the money,

-rather than the magistrate?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The Kid was one of the cleverest dips I

-ever knew; he was delicate and cunning, and

-the best stone-getter in the city. But he had

-one weakness that made him almost a devil.

-He fell in love with every pretty face he saw,

-and cared no more for leading a girl astray

-than I minded kicking a cat. I felt sorry for

-many a little working girl he had shaken after

-a couple of weeks; and I used to jolly them to

-cheer them up.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I once met Kate, one of them, and said,

-with a smile: "Did you hear about the Kid's

-latest? Why don't you have him arrested

-for bigamy?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She did not smile at first, but said: "He'll

-never have any luck. My mother is a widow,

-and she prays to God to afflict him with a

-widow's curse."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"One of the Ten Commandments," I replied,

-"says, 'thou shalt not take the name of

-the Lord thy God in vain,' and between you

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_212' name='Page_212'>[212]</a></span>

-and me, Kate, the commandment does not

-say that widows have the monopoly on cursing.

-It is a sin, anyway, whether it is a man,

-a girl or a widow."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This was too deep for Kate.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Stop preaching, Jim," she said, "and give

-me a drink," and I did. After she had drunk

-half-a-dozen glasses of beer she felt better.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Women are queer, anyway. No matter

-how bad they are, they are always good. All

-women are thieves, or rather petty pilferers,

-bless them! When I was just beginning to

-graft again, and was going it easy, I used to

-work a game which well showed the natural

-grafting propensities of women. I would buy

-a lot of Confederate bills for a few cents, and

-put them in a good leather. When I saw a

-swell-looking Moll, evidently out shopping,

-walking along the street, I would drop the

-purse in her path; and just as she saw it I

-would pick it up, as if I had just found it.

-Nine women out of ten would say, "It's mine,

-I dropped it." I would open the leather and

-let her get a peep of the bills, and that would

-set her pilfering propensities going. "It's

-mine," she would repeat. "What's in it?" I

-would hold the leather carefully away from

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_213' name='Page_213'>[213]</a></span>

-her, look into it cautiously and say: "I can

-see a twenty dollar bill, a thirty dollar bill, and

-a one hundred dollar bill, but how do I know

-you dropped it?" Then she'd get excited and

-exclaim, "If you don't give it to me quick I'll

-call a policeman." "Madam," I would reply,

-"I am an honest workingman, and if you will

-give me ten dollars for a reward, I will give

-you this valuable purse." Perhaps she would

-then say: "Give me the pocket-book and I'll

-give you the money out of it." To that I

-would reply: "No, Madam, I wish you to receive

-the pocket-book just as it was." I would

-then hand her the book and she would give

-me a good ten dollar bill. "There is a

-woman down the street," I would continue,

-"looking for something." That would alarm

-her and away she would go without even opening

-the leather to see if her money was all

-right. She wouldn't shop any more that day,

-but would hasten home to examine her treasure&mdash;worth,

-as she would discover to her sorrow,

-about thirty cents. Then, no doubt, her

-conscience would trouble her. At least, she

-would weep; I am sure of that.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I got my hand in again, I began to

-go for stone-getting, which was a fat graft in

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_214' name='Page_214'>[214]</a></span>

-those days, when the Lexow committee was

-beginning their reform. Everybody wore a

-diamond. Even mechanics and farmers were

-not satisfied unless they had pins to stick in

-their ties. They bought them on the installment

-plan, and I suppose they do yet. I

-could always find a laborer or a hod-carrier

-that had a stone. They usually called attention

-to it by keeping their hands carefully on

-it; and very often it found its way into my

-pocket, for carelessness is bound to come as

-soon as a man thinks he is safe. They probably

-thought of their treasure for months afterwards;

-at least, whenever the collector came

-around for the weekly installments of pay for

-stones they no longer possessed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was about this time that I met General

-Brace and the Professor. One was a Harvard

-graduate, and the other came from good old

-Yale; and both were grafters. When I knew

-them they used to hang out in a joint on

-Seventh Street, waiting to be treated. They

-had been good grafters, but through hop and

-booze had come down from forging and queer-shoving

-to common shop-lifting and petty

-larceny business. General Brace was very

-reticent in regard to his family and his own

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_215' name='Page_215'>[215]</a></span>

-past, but as I often invited him to smoke opium

-with me, he sometimes gave me little confidences.

-I learned that he came from a well-known

-Southern family, and had held a good position

-in his native city; but he was a blood, and to

-satisfy his habits he began to forge checks.

-His relatives saved him from prison, but he

-left home and started on the downward career

-of graftdom. We called him General Brace

-because he looked like a soldier and was continually

-on the borrow; but a good story

-always accompanied his asking for a loan and

-he was seldom refused. I have often listened

-to this man after he had smoked a quantity of

-opium, and his conversational powers were

-something remarkable. Many a gun and

-politician would listen to him with wonder. I

-used to call him General Brace Coleridge.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The Professor was almost as good a talker.

-We used to treat them both, in order to get

-them to converse together. It was a liberal

-education to hear them hold forth in that low-down

-saloon, where some of the finest talks on

-literature and politics were listened to with

-interest by men born and bred on the East

-Side, with no more education than a turnip,

-but with keen wits. The graduates had good

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_216' name='Page_216'>[216]</a></span>

-manners, and we liked them and staked them

-regularly. They used to write letters for

-politicians and guns who could not read or

-write. They stuck together like brothers. If

-one of them had five cents, he would go into

-a morgue (gin-mill where rot-gut whiskey could

-be obtained for that sum) and pour out almost

-a full tumbler of booze. Just as he sipped

-a little of the rot-gut, his pal would come in,

-as though by accident. If it was the General

-who had made the purchase, he would say:

-"Hello, old pal, just taste this fine whiskey.

-It tastes like ten-cent stuff." The Professor

-would take a sip and become enthusiastic.

-They would sip and exclaim in turn, until the

-booze was all gone, and no further expense

-incurred. This little trick grew into a habit,

-and the bar-tender got on to it, but he liked

-Colonel Brace and the Professor so much that

-he used to wink at it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was in this rot-gut saloon one day when I

-met Jesse R&mdash;&mdash;, with whom I had spent several

-years in prison. I have often wondered how

-this man happened to join the under world;

-for he not only came of a good family and was

-well educated, but was also of a good, quiet

-disposition, a prime favorite in stir and out.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_217' name='Page_217'>[217]</a></span>

-He was tactful enough never to roast convicts,

-who are very sensitive, and was so sympathetic

-that many a heartache was poured into his ear.

-He never betrayed a friend's confidence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was glad to meet Jesse again, and we

-exchanged greetings in the little saloon.

-When he asked me what I was doing, I replied

-that I had a mortgage on the world and that

-I was trying to draw my interest from the

-same. I still had that old dream, that the

-world owed me a living. I confided in him

-that I regarded the world as my oyster more

-decidedly than I had done before I met him

-in stir. I found that Jesse, however, had

-squared it for good and was absolutely on the

-level. He had a good job as shipping clerk

-in a large mercantile house; when I asked him

-if he was not afraid of being tipped off by

-some Central Office man or by some stool-pigeon,

-he admitted that that was the terror

-of his life; but that he had been at work for

-eighteen months, and hoped that none of his

-enemies would turn up. I asked him who had

-recommended him for the job, and I smiled

-when he answered: "General Brace". That

-clever Harvard graduate often wrote letters

-which were of assistance to guns who had

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_218' name='Page_218'>[218]</a></span>

-squared it; though the poor fellow could not

-take care of himself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Jesse had a story to tell which seemed to

-me one of the saddest I have heard: and as I

-grew older I found that most all stories about

-people in the under world, no matter how

-cheerfully they began, ended sadly. It was

-about his brother, Harry, the story that Jesse

-told. Harry was married, and there is where

-the trouble often begins. When Jesse was in

-prison Harry, who was on the level and occupied

-a good position as a book-keeper, used to

-send him money, always against his wife's

-wishes. She also complained because Harry

-supported his old father. Harry toiled like a

-slave for this woman who scolded him and who

-spent his money recklessly. He made a good

-salary, but he could not keep up with her

-extravagance. One time, while in the country,

-she met a sporting man, Mr. O. B. In a

-few weeks it was the old, old story of a foolish

-woman and a pretty good fellow. While she

-was in the country, her young son was drowned,

-and she sent Harry a telegram announcing it.

-But she kept on living high and her name and

-that of O. B. were often coupled. Harry tried

-to stifle his sorrow and kept on sending money

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_219' name='Page_219'>[219]</a></span>

-to the bladder he called wife, who appeared in

-a fresh new dress whenever she went out with

-Mr. O. B. One day Harry received a letter,

-calling him to the office to explain his accounts.

-He replied that he had been sick, but would

-straighten everything out the next day. When

-his father went to awaken him in the morning,

-Harry was dead. A phial of morphine on the

-floor told the story. Jesse reached his brother's

-room in time to hear his old father's cry of

-anguish and to read a letter from Harry,

-explaining that he had robbed the firm of

-thousands, and asking his brother to be kind

-to Helene, his wife.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Then Jesse went to see the woman, to tell

-her about her husband's death. He found

-her at a summer hotel with Mr. O. B., and

-heard the servants talk about them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jim," said Jesse to me, at this point in

-the story, "here is wise council. Wherever

-thou goest, keep the portals of thy lugs open;

-as you wander on through life you are apt to

-hear slander about your women folks. What

-is more entertaining than a little scandal,

-especially when it doesn't hit home? But

-don't look into it too deep, for it generally

-turns out true, or worse. I laid a trap for my

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_220' name='Page_220'>[220]</a></span>

-poor brothers wife, and one of her letters,

-making clear her guilt, fell into my hands.

-A telegram in reply from Mr. O. B., likewise

-came to me, and in a murderous frame of

-mind, I read its contents, and then laughed

-like a hyena: 'I am sorry I cannot meet you,

-but I was married this morning, and am going

-on my wedding tour. <i>Au Revoir.</i>' You ask

-me what became of my sister-in-law? Jim,

-she is young and pretty, and will get along in

-this world. But, truly, the wages of sin is to

-her Living Ashes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was not very long after my return home

-that I was at work again, not only at safe dipping

-and swindling, but gradually at all my

-old grafts, including more or less house work.

-There was a difference, however. I grew far

-more reckless than I had been before I went

-to prison. I now smoked opium regularly,

-and had a lay-out in my furnished room and

-a girl to run it. The drug made me take

-chances I never used to take; and I became

-dead to almost everything that was good. I

-went home very seldom. I liked my family in

-a curious way, but I did not have enough

-vitality or much feeling about anything. I

-began to go out to graft always in a dazed

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_221' name='Page_221'>[221]</a></span>

-condition, so much so that on one occasion a

-pal tried to take advantage of my state of

-mind. It was while I was doing a bit of house-work

-with Sandy and Hacks, two clever grafters.

-We inserted into the lock the front door

-key which we had made, threw off the tumblers,

-and opened the door. Hacks and I

-stalled while Sandy went in and got six hundred

-dollars and many valuable jewels. He

-did not show us much of the money, however.

-The next day the newspapers described the

-"touch," and told the amount of money which

-had been stolen. Then I knew I had been

-"done" by Sandy and Hacks, who stood in

-with him, but Sandy said the papers were

-wrong. The mean thief, however, could not

-keep his mouth shut, and I got him. I am

-glad I was not arrested for murder. It was a

-close shave, for I cut him unmercifully with a

-knife. In this I had the approval of my

-friends, for they all believed the worst thing a

-grafter could do was to sink a pal. Sandy did

-not squeal, but he swore he would get even

-with me. Even if I had not been so reckless

-as I was then, I would not have feared him,

-for I knew there was no come-back in him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Another thing the dope did was to make

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_222' name='Page_222'>[222]</a></span>

-me laugh at everything. It was fun for me

-to graft, and I saw the humor of life. I

-remember I used to say that this world is the

-best possible; that the fine line of cranks and

-fools in it gives it variety. One day I had a

-good laugh in a Brooklyn car. Tim, George

-and I got next to a Dutchman who had a

-large prop in his tie. He stood for a newspaper

-under his chin, and his stone came

-as slick as grease. A minute afterwards he

-missed his property, and we did not dare to

-move. He told his wife, who was with him,

-that his stone was gone. She called him a

-fool, and said that he had left it at home, in

-the bureau drawer, that she remembered it

-well. Then he looked down and saw that his

-front was gone, too. He said to his wife: "I

-am sure I had my watch and chain with me,"

-but his wife was so superior that she easily

-convinced him he had left it at home. The

-wisdom of women is beyond finding out. But

-I enjoyed that incident. I shall never forget

-the look that came over the Dutchman's face

-when he missed his front.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was too sleepy those days to go out of

-town much on the graft; and was losing my

-ambition generally. I even cared very little

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_223' name='Page_223'>[223]</a></span>

-for the girls, and gave up many of my amusements.

-I used to stay most of the time in my

-furnished room, smoking hop. When I went

-out it was to get some dough quick, and to

-that end I embraced almost any means. At

-night I often drifted into some concert hall,

-but it was not like the old days when I was a

-kid. The Bowery is far more respectable now

-than it ever was before. Twenty years ago

-there was no worse place possible for ruining

-girls and making thieves than Billy McGlory's

-joint on Hester Street. About ten o'clock in

-the morning slumming parties would chuckle

-with glee when the doors at McGlory's would

-be closed and young girls in scanty clothing,

-would dance the can-can. These girls would

-often fight together, and frequently were

-beaten unmercifully by the men who lived on

-them and their trade. Often men were forcibly

-robbed in these joints. There was little

-danger of an arrest; for if the sucker squealed,

-the policeman on the beat would club him off

-to the beat of another copper, who would

-either continue the process, or arrest him for

-disorderly conduct.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At this time, which was just before the

-Lexow Committee began its work, there were

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_224' name='Page_224'>[224]</a></span>

-at least a few honest coppers. I knew one,

-however, that did not remain honest. It

-happened this way. The guns had been tearing

-open the cars so hard that the street car

-companies, as they had once before, got after

-the officials, who stirred up Headquarters.

-The riot act was read to the dips. This

-meant that, on the second offense, every thief

-would be settled for his full time and that

-there would be no squaring it. The guns lay

-low for a while, but two very venturesome

-grafters, Mack and Jerry, put their heads together

-and reasoned thus: "Now that the

-other guns are alarmed it is a good chance for

-us to get in our fine work."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Complaints continued to come in. The

-police grew hot and sent Mr. F&mdash;&mdash;, a flyman,

-to get the rascals. Mr. F&mdash;&mdash; had the reputation

-of being the most honest detective on the

-force. He often declared that he wanted promotion

-only on his merits. Whenever he was

-overheard in making this remark there was a

-quiet smile on the faces of the other coppers.

-F&mdash;&mdash; caught Mack dead to rights, and, not

-being a diplomat, did not understand when

-the gun tried to talk reason to him. Even a

-large piece of dough did not help his intellect,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_225' name='Page_225'>[225]</a></span>

-and Mack was taken to the station-house.

-When a high official heard about it he swore

-by all the gods that he would make an example

-of that notorious pickpocket, Mack; but human

-nature is weak, especially if it wears buttons.

-Mack sent for F&mdash;&mdash;'s superior, the captain,

-and the following dialogue took place:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Captain</i>: What do you want?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mack</i>: I'm copped.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Captain</i>: Yes, and you're dead to rights.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mack</i>: I tried to do business with F&mdash;&mdash;.

-What is the matter with him?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Captain</i>: He is a policeman. He wants

-his promotion by merit. (Even the Captain

-smiled.)

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mack</i>: I'd give five centuries (five hundred

-dollars) if I could get to my summer residence

-in Asbury Park.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Captain</i>: How long would it take you to

-get it?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mack</i>: (He, too, was laconic.) I got it on

-me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Captain</i>: Give it here.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mack</i>: It's a sure turn-out?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Captain</i>: Was I ever known to go back

-on my word?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mack handed the money over, and went

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_226' name='Page_226'>[226]</a></span>

-over to court in the afternoon with F&mdash;&mdash;.

-The Captain was there, and whispered to F&mdash;&mdash;:

-"Throw him out." That nearly knocked

-F&mdash;&mdash; down, but he and Mack took a car, and

-he said to the latter: "In the name of everything

-how did you hypnotize the old man?"

-Mack replied, with a laugh: "I tried to

-mesmerize you in the same way; but you are

-working on your merits."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mack was discharged, and F&mdash;&mdash; decided

-to be a diplomat henceforth. From an honest

-copper he became as clever a panther as ever

-shook coin from a gun. Isn't it likely that if

-a man had a large income he would never go

-to prison? Indeed, do you think that well-known

-guns could graft with impunity unless

-they had some one right? Nay! Nay!

-Hannah. They often hear the song of split

-half or no graft.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But at that time I was so careless that I did

-not even have enough sense to save fall-money,

-and after about nine months of freedom

-I fell again. One day three of us boarded

-a car in Brooklyn and I saw a mark whom I

-immediately nicked for his red super, which I

-passed quickly to one of my stalls, Eddy.

-We got off the car and walked about three

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_227' name='Page_227'>[227]</a></span>

-blocks, when Eddy flashed the super, to look

-at it. The sucker, who had been tailing, blew,

-and Eddy threw the watch to the ground, fearing

-that he would be nailed. A crowd gathered

-around the super, I among them, the other

-stall, Eddy having vamoosed, and the sucker.

-No man in his senses would have picked up

-that gold watch. But I did it and was nailed

-dead to rights. I felt that super belonged to

-me. I had nicked it cleverly, and I thought I

-had earned it! I was sentenced to four years

-in Sing Sing, but I did not hang my head with

-shame, this time, as I was taken to the station.

-It was the way of life and of those I associated

-with, and I was more a fatalist than ever. I

-hated all mankind and cared nothing for the

-consequences of my acts.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_228' name='Page_228'>[228]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER XI.<br />

-<i>Back to Prison.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-I was not recognized by the authorities at

-Sing Sing as having been there before. I

-gave a different name and pedigree, of course,

-but the reason I was not known as a second-timer

-was that I had spent only nine months

-at Sing Sing on my first term, the remainder

-having been passed at Auburn. There was a

-new warden at Sing Sing, too, and some of

-the other officials had changed; and, besides,

-I must have been lucky. Anyway, none of

-the keepers knew me, and this meant a great

-deal to me; for if I had been recognized as a

-second-timer I should have had a great deal of

-extra time to serve. On my first term I had

-received commutation time for good behavior

-amounting to over a year, and there is a rule

-that if a released convict is sent back to

-prison, he must serve, not only the time given

-him on his second sentence, but the commutation

-time on his first bit. Somebody must

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_229' name='Page_229'>[229]</a></span>

-have been very careless, for I beat the State

-out of more than a year.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Some of the convicts, indeed, knew that I

-had served before; but they did not squeal.

-Even some of those who did not know me

-had an inkling of it, but would not tell. It

-was still another instance of honor among

-thieves. If they had reported me to the authorities,

-they might have had an easier time

-in stir and had many privileges, such as better

-jobs and better things to eat. There were

-many stool-pigeons there, of course, but somehow

-these rats did not get wind of me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It did not take me long to get the Underground

-Tunnel in working order again, and I

-received contraband letters, booze, opium and

-morphine as regularly as on my first bit. One

-of the screws running the Tunnel at the time,

-Jack R&mdash;&mdash;, was a little heavier in his demands

-than I thought fair. He wanted a third instead

-of a fifth of the money sent the convicts

-from home. But he was a good fellow, and

-always brought in the hop as soon as it arrived.

-Like the New York police he was hot after

-the stuff, but who can blame him? He wanted

-to rise in the world, and was more ambitious

-than the other screws. I continued my pipe

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_230' name='Page_230'>[230]</a></span>

-dreams, and my reading; indeed, they were

-often connected. I frequently used to imagine

-that I was a character in one of the

-books; and often choked the detestable Tarquin

-into insensibility.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On one occasion I dreamed that I was

-arraigned before my Maker and charged with

-murder. I cried with fear and sorrow, for I

-felt that even before the just God there was

-no justice; but a voice silenced me and said

-that to be guilty of the crime of murder, it was

-not necessary to use weapons or poison. Suddenly

-I seemed to see the sad faces of my

-father and mother, and then I knew what the

-voice meant. Indeed, I was guilty. I heard

-the word, "Begone," and sank into the abyss.

-After many thousand years of misery I was

-led into the Chamber of Contentment where

-I saw some of the great men whose books I

-had read. Voltaire, Tom Paine and Galileo

-sat on a throne, but when I approached them

-with awe, the angel, who had the face of a

-keeper, told me to leave. I appealed to Voltaire,

-and begged him not to permit them to

-send me among the hymn-singers. He said

-he pitied me, but that I was not fit to be

-with the great elect. I asked him where Dr.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_231' name='Page_231'>[231]</a></span>

-Parkhurst was, and he answered that the doctor

-was hot stuff and had evaporated long

-ago. I was led away sorrowing, and awoke

-in misery and tears, in my dark and damp

-cell.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On this bit I was assigned to the clothing

-department, where I stayed six months, but

-did very little work. Warden Sage replaced

-Warden Darson and organized the system of

-stool-pigeons in stir more carefully than ever

-before; so it was more difficult than it was

-before to neglect our work. I said to Sage

-one day: "You're a cheap guy. You ought

-to be President of a Woman's Sewing Society.

-You can do nothing but make an aristocracy

-of stool-pigeons." I gave up work after six

-months because of my health, which had been

-bad for a long time, but now grew worse.

-My rapid life on the outside, my bad habits,

-and my experience in prison were beginning to

-tell on me badly. There was a general breaking-down

-of my system. I was so weak and

-coughed so badly that they thought I was

-dying. The doctors said I had consumption

-and transferred me to the prison hospital,

-where I had better air and food and was far

-more comfortable in body but terribly low in

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_232' name='Page_232'>[232]</a></span>

-my mind. I was so despondent that I did not

-even "fan my face" (turn my head away to

-avoid having the outside world become familiar

-with my features) when visitors went

-through the hospital. This was an unusual

-degree of carelessness for a professional gun.

-One reason I was so gloomy was that I was

-now unable to get hold of my darling hop.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was so despondent in the hospital that I

-really thought I should soon become an angel;

-and my environment was not very cheerful, for

-several convicts died on beds near me. Whenever

-anybody was going to die, every convict

-in the prison knew about it, for the attendants

-would put three screens around the dying

-man's bed. There were about twenty beds in

-the long room, and near me was an old boyhood

-pal, Tommy Ward, in the last stages of

-consumption. Tommy and I often talked

-together about death, and neither of us was

-afraid of it. I saw a dozen men die during my

-experience in state prisons and I never heard

-one of them clamor for a clergyman. Tommy

-was doing life for murder, and ought to have

-been afraid of death, if anyone was. But

-when he was about to die, he sent word to me

-to come to his bedside, and after a word or two

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_233' name='Page_233'>[233]</a></span>

-of good-bye he went into his agony. The last

-words he ever said were: "Ah, give me a big

-Peter (narcotic)." He did not receive the

-last rites of the Catholic Church, and his ignorant

-family refused to bury him. So Tommy's

-cell number was put on the tombstone, if it

-could be called such, which marked his grave

-in the little burying ground outside the prison

-walls.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Indeed, it is not easy to throw the religious

-con (confidence game) into a convict. Often,

-while we were in chapel, the dominie would

-tell us that life was short; but hardly one of

-the six or seven hundred criminals who were

-listening believed the assertion. They felt

-that the few years they were doing for the

-good of their country were as long as centuries.

-If there were a few "cons" who tried

-the cheerful dodge, they did not deceive anybody,

-for their brother guns knew that they

-were sore in their hearts because they had

-been caught without fall-money, and so had

-to serve a few million years in stir.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After I got temporarily better in health and

-had left the hospital, I began to read Lavater

-on physiognomy more industriously than

-ever. With his help I became a close student

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_234' name='Page_234'>[234]</a></span>

-of faces, and I learned to tell the thoughts

-and emotions of my fellow convicts. I

-watched them at work and when their faces

-flushed I knew they were thinking of Her.

-Sometimes I would ask a man how She was,

-and he would look confused, and perhaps

-angry because his day dream was disturbed.

-And how the men used to look at women visitors

-who went through the shops! It was

-against the rules to look at the inhabitants of

-the Upper World who visited stir, but I noticed

-that after women visitors had been there the

-convicts were generally more cheerful. Even

-a momentary glimpse of those who lived within

-the pale of civilization warmed their hearts.

-After the ladies had gone the convicts would

-talk about them for hours. Many of their

-remarks were vulgar and licentious, but some

-of the men were broken down with feeling and

-would say soft things. They would talk about

-their mothers and sweethearts and eventually

-drift back on their ill-spent lives. How often

-I thought of the life behind me! Then I

-would look at the men about me, some of

-whom had stolen millions and had international

-reputations&mdash;but all discouraged now,

-broken down in health, penniless and friendless.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_235' name='Page_235'>[235]</a></span>

-If a man died in stir he was just a cadaver

-for the dissecting table, nothing more.

-The end fitted in well with his misspent life.

-These reflections would bring us around again

-to good resolutions.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-People who have never broken the law&mdash;I

-beg pardon, who were never caught&mdash;can not

-understand how a man who has once served

-in stir will take another chance and go back

-and suffer the same tortures. A society lady

-I once met said she thought criminals who go

-on grafting, when they know what the result

-will be, must be lacking in imagination. I replied

-to her: "Madam, why do you lace

-tight and indulge in social dissipation even

-after you know it is bad for the health? You

-know it is a strain on your nerves, but you do

-it. Is it because you have no imagination?

-That which we all dread most&mdash;death&mdash;we all

-defy."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The good book says that all men shall earn

-their bread by the sweat of their brow, but we

-grafters make of ourselves an exception, with

-that overweening egotism and brash desire to

-do others with no return, which is natural to

-everybody. Only when the round-up comes,

-either in the sick bed or in the toils, we often

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_236' name='Page_236'>[236]</a></span>

-can not bear our burdens and look around to

-put the blame on someone else. If a man is

-religious, why should he not drop it on Jesus?

-Man! How despicable at times! How ungallant

-to his ancestor of the softer sex!

-From time immemorial he has exclaimed:

-"Only for her, the deceiving one, my better

-half, I should be perfect."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Convicts, particularly if they are broken in

-health, often become like little children. It

-is not unusual for them to grow dependent on

-dumb pets, which they smuggle into prison by

-means of the Underground Tunnel. The

-man in stir who has a white mouse or robin is

-envied by the other convicts, for he has something

-to love. If an artist could only witness

-the affection that is centered on a mouse or

-dog, if he could only depict the emotions in

-the hard face of the criminal, what a story! I

-had a white rat, which I had obtained with

-difficulty through the Underground. I used to

-put him up my sleeve, and he would run all

-over my body, he was so tame. He would

-stand on his hind legs or lie down at my command.

-Sometimes, when I was lonely and

-melancholy, I loved this rat like a human

-being.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_237' name='Page_237'>[237]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In May, 1896, when I still had about a year

-to serve on my second term, a rumor circulated

-through the prison that some of the Salvation

-Army were going to visit the stir. The men

-were greatly excited at the prospect of a break

-in the dreary routine. I imagined that a big

-burly Salvationist, beating a drum, with a

-few very thin Salvation lasses, would march

-through the prison yard. I was dumbfounded

-by the reality, for I saw enter the Protestant

-chapel, which was crowded with eager convicts,

-two delicate, pretty women. No actor or actress

-ever got a warmer welcome than that

-given to Mrs. Booth and her secretary, Captain

-Jennie Hughes. After the clapping of hands

-and cheering had ceased, Mrs. Booth arose

-and made a speech, which was listened to in

-deep silence. Certainly she was eloquent, and

-what she said impressed many an old gun.

-She was the first visitor who ever promised

-practical Christianity and eventually carried

-out the promise. She promised to build

-homes for us after our release; and in many

-cases, she did, and we respect her. She spoke

-for an hour, and afterwards granted private

-interviews, and many of the convicts told her

-all their troubles, and she promised to take

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_238' name='Page_238'>[238]</a></span>

-care of their old mothers, daughters and

-wives.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Before leaving the chapel, she sang: "O

-Lord, let the waves of thy crimson sea roll

-over me." I did not see how such a pretty,

-intelligent, refined and educated woman could

-say such a bloody thing, but she probably had

-forgotten what the words really meant. At

-any rate, she is a good woman, for she tried

-hard to have the Parole Bill passed. That

-bill has recently become a law, and it is a

-good one, in my opinion; but it has one fault.

-It only effects first-timers. The second and

-third timers, who went to Sing Sing years ago

-when there was contract labor and who worked

-harder than any laborer in New York City,

-ought to have a chance, too. Show a little

-confidence in any man, even though he be a

-third-timer, as I have been, and he will be a

-better man for it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After the singing, on that first morning of

-Mrs. Booth's visit, she asked those convicts

-who wanted to lead a better life to stand up.

-About seventy men out of the five or six hundred

-arose, and the others remained seated.

-I was not among those who stood up. I

-never met anybody who could touch me in

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_239' name='Page_239'>[239]</a></span>

-that way. I don't believe in instantaneous

-Christianity. I knew half a dozen of the men

-who stood up, and they were not very strong

-mentally. I often wondered what the motives

-were that moved the men in that manner.

-Man is a social animal, and Mrs. Booth was

-a magnetic woman. After I had heard her

-speak once, I knew that. She had a good

-personal appearance and one other requisite

-that appealed strongly to those who were in

-our predicament&mdash;her sex. Who could entirely

-resist the pleadings of a pretty woman

-with large black eyes?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Certainly I was moved by this sincere and

-attractive woman, but my own early religious

-training had made me suspicious of the whole

-business. Whenever anybody tried to reform

-me through Christianity I always thought of

-that powerful Celt who used to rush at me in

-Sunday school with a hickory stick and shout

-"Who made you?" And I don't think that

-most of the men who profess religion in prison

-are sincere. They usually want to curry favor

-with the authorities, or get "staked" after

-they leave stir. One convict, whom I used to

-call "The Great American Identifier," because

-he used to graft by claiming to be a relative

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_240' name='Page_240'>[240]</a></span>

-of everybody that died, from California to

-Maine and weeping over the dead body, was

-the worst hypocrite I ever saw&mdash;a regular

-Uriah Heep. He was one of Mrs. Booth's

-converts and stood up in chapel. After she

-went away he said to me: "What a blessing

-has been poured into my soul since I heard

-Mrs. Booth." Another hypocrite said to me

-on the same occasion: "I don't know what I

-would do only for Mrs. Booth. She has

-lightened my weary burdens." Now, I would

-not trust either of those men with a box of

-matches; and so I said to the Great American

-Identifier: "You are the meanest, most despicable

-thief in the whole stir. I'd respect

-you if you had the nerve to rob a live man,

-but you always stole from a cadaver." He

-was horrified at my language and began to

-talk of a favorite subject with him&mdash;his wealthy

-relatives.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Some of these converts were not hypocrites,

-but I don't think even they received any good

-from their conversion. Some people go to

-religion because they have nothing else to distract

-their thoughts, and the subject sometimes

-is a mania with them. The doctors

-say that there is only one incurable mental

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_241' name='Page_241'>[241]</a></span>

-disease&mdash;religious insanity. In the eyes of

-the reformers Mrs. Booth does a great thing

-by making some of us converts, but experts in

-mental diseases declare that it is very bad to

-excite convicts to such a pitch. Many of the

-weak-minded among them lose their balance

-and become insane through these violent religious

-emotions.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I did not meet so many of the big guns on

-my second term as on my first; but, of course,

-I came across many of my old pals and formed

-some new acquaintances. It was on this term

-that four of us used to have what I called a

-tenement house oratory talk whenever we

-worked together in the halls. Some of us

-were lucky enough at times to serve as barbers,

-hall-men and runners to and from the shops,

-and we used to gather together in the halls and

-amuse ourselves with conversation. Dickey,

-Mull, Mickey and I became great pals in this

-way. Dickey was a desperate river pirate

-who would not stand a roast from anybody,

-but was well liked. Mull was one of the best

-principled convicts I ever knew in my life.

-He was quiet, delicate and manly, and opposed

-to abusing young boys, yet if you did him an

-injury he would cut the liver out of you. He

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_242' name='Page_242'>[242]</a></span>

-was a good fellow. Mickey was what I called

-a tenement house philosopher. He'd stick his

-oar into every bit of talk that was started.

-One day the talk began on Tammany Hall

-and went something like this:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"All crooked officials," said Mull, "including

-all of them, ought to be railroaded to Sing

-Sing."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Dickey</i>: "Through their methods the

-county offices are rotten from the judge to the

-policeman."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mull</i>: "I agree with you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mickey</i>: "Ah, wat's the matter wid Tammany?

-My old man never voted any other

-ticket. Neither did yours. When you get

-into stir you act like college professors. Why

-don't you practice what you spout? I always

-voted the Tammany ticket&mdash;five or six times

-every election day. How is it I never got a

-long bit?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mull</i>: "How many times, Mickey, have

-you been in stir?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mickey</i>: "This is the fourth, but the highest

-I got was four years."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Dickey</i>: "You never done anything big

-enough to get four."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Mickey</i>: "I didn't, eh? You have been

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_243' name='Page_243'>[243]</a></span>

-hollering that you are innocent, and get

-twenty years for piracy. I only get four, but

-I am guilty every time. There is a big difference

-between that and twenty, aint it?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mull slapped Mickey on the back and said:

-"Never mind. You will get yours yet on the

-installment plan." Then, turning to me, Mull

-asked: "Jim, don't you think that if everything

-was square and on the level we'd stand

-a better chance?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No," I replied. "In the first place we have

-not reached the millennium. In the second

-place they would devise some legal scheme to

-keep a third timer the rest of his natural days.

-I know a moccasin who would move heaven

-and earth to have such a bill passed, and he is

-one of the crookedest philanthropists in America

-to-day. I am a grafter, and I believe that

-the present administration is all right. I

-know that I can stay out of prison as long as

-I save my fall-money. When I blow that in I

-ought to go to prison. Every gun who is capable

-of stealing, knows that if he puts by

-enough money he can not only keep out of

-stir but can beat his way into heaven. I'm

-arguing as a professional thief."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This was too much for Mickey, who said:

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_244' name='Page_244'>[244]</a></span>

-"Why don't you talk United States and not be

-springing whole leaves out of a dictionary?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Just then Big Jim came up. He had heard

-what I said and he joined in: "You know

-why I got the tenth of a century? I had

-thousands in my pocket and went to buy some

-silk underwear at a haberdasher's in New York.

-But it seemed to me a waste of good coin to

-buy them, so I stole a dozen pair of silk stockings.

-They tried to arrest me, I shot, and got

-ten years. I always did despise a petty thief,

-but I never felt like kicking him till then.

-Ten years for a few stockings! Can you

-blame the judge? I didn't. Even a judge

-admires a good thief. If I had robbed a bank

-I'd never have got such a long bit. The old

-saying is true: Kill one man and you will be

-hanged. Kill sixteen, and the United States

-Government is likely to pension you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The tenement-house philosopher began to

-object again, when the guard, as usual, came

-along to stop our pleasant conversation. He

-thought we were abusing our privileges.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was during this bit that I met the man

-with the white teeth, as he is now known

-among his friends. I will call him Patsy, and

-tell his story, for it is an unusual one. He

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_245' name='Page_245'>[245]</a></span>

-was a good deal older man than I and was

-one of the old-school burglars, and a good

-one. They were a systematic lot, and would

-shoot before they stood the collar; but they

-were gentlemanly grafters and never abused

-anybody. The first thing Patsy's mob did

-after entering a house was to round up all the

-inmates and put them into one room. There

-one burglar would stick them up with a revolver,

-while the others went through the house.

-On a fatal occasion Patsy took the daughter

-of the house, a young girl of eighteen or

-nineteen, in his arms and carried her down

-stairs into the room where the rest of the family

-had been put by the other grafters. As

-he carried the girl down stairs, she said: "Mr.

-Burglar, don't harm me." Patsy was masked,

-all but his mouth, and when he said: "You

-are as safe as if you were in your father's

-arms," she saw his teeth, which were remarkably

-fine and white. Patsy afterwards said

-that the girl was not a bit alarmed, and was

-such a perfect coquette that she noticed his

-good points. The next morning she told the

-police that one of the bad men had a beautiful

-set of teeth. The flymen rounded up half

-a dozen grafters on suspicion, among them

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_246' name='Page_246'>[246]</a></span>

-Patsy; and no sooner did he open his mouth,

-than he was recognized, and settled for a long

-bit. Poor Patsy has served altogether about

-nineteen years, but now he has squared it, and

-is a waiter in a Bowery saloon, more content

-with his twelve dollars a week than he used to

-be with his thousands. I often go around

-and have a glass with him. He is now a

-quiet, sober fellow, and his teeth are as fine

-as ever.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One day a man named "Muir," a mean,

-sure-thing grafter, came to the stir on a visit

-to some of his acquaintances. He had never

-done a bit himself, although he was a notorious

-thief. But he liked to look at the misfortunes

-of others, occasionally. On this visit

-he got more than he bargained for. He came

-to the clothing department where Mike, who

-had grafted with Muir in New York, and I,

-were at work. Muir went up to Mike and

-offered him a bill. Mike threw it in Muir's

-face and called him&mdash;well, the worst thing

-known in Graftdom. "If it wasn't for you,"

-he said, "I wouldn't be doing this bit."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There are several kinds of sure-thing grafters.

-Some are crooked gamblers, some are plain

-stool-pigeons, some are discouraged thieves

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_247' name='Page_247'>[247]</a></span>

-who continue to graft but take no risks.

-Muir was one of the meanest of the rats that I

-have known, yet in a way, he was handy

-to the professional gun. He had somebody

-"right" at headquarters and could generally

-get protection for his mob; but he would

-always throw the mob over if it was to his

-advantage. He and two other house-work

-men robbed a senator's home, and such a

-howl went up that the police offered all manner

-of protection to the grafter who would tip

-them off to who got the stuff. Grafters who

-work with the coppers don't want it known

-among those of their own kind, for they would

-be ostracized. If they do a dirty trick they

-try to throw it on someone else who would not

-stoop to such a thing. Muir was a diplomat,

-and tipped off the Central Office, and those

-who did the trick, all except Tom and Muir,

-were nailed. A few nights after that the

-whisper was passed among guns of both sexes,

-who had gathered at a resort up-town, that

-somebody had squealed. The muttered curses

-meant that some Central Office man had by

-wireless telegraphy put the under world next

-that somebody had tipped off the police. But

-it was not Muir that the hard names were

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_248' name='Page_248'>[248]</a></span>

-said against: the Central Office man took

-care of that. With low cunning Muir had

-had the rumor circulated that it was Tom who

-had thrown them down, and Tommy was

-ostracized.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I knew Muir and I knew Tommy, and I

-was sure that the latter was innocent. Some

-time after Tom had been cut by the rest of

-the gang I saw Muir drinking with two Central

-Office detectives, in a well-known resort, and I

-was convinced that he was the rat. His personal

-appearance bore out my suspicion. He

-had a weak face, with no fight in it. He was

-quiet of speech, always smiling, and as soft

-and noiseless as the animal called the snake.

-He had a narrow, hanging lip, small nose,

-large ears, and characterless, protruding eyes.

-The squint look from under the eye-brows,

-and the quick jerk of the hand to the chin,

-showed without doubt that he possessed the

-low cunning too of that animal called the rat.

-Partly through my influence, Muir gradually

-got the reputation of being a sure-thing

-grafter, but he was so sleek that he could

-always find some grafter to work with him.

-Pals with whom he fell out, always shortly

-afterwards came to harm. That was the case

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_249' name='Page_249'>[249]</a></span>

-with Big Mike, who spat in Muir's face, when

-the latter visited him in Sing Sing. When

-Muir did pickpocket work, he never dipped

-himself, but acted as a stall. This was another

-sure-thing dodge. Muir never did a bit in

-stir because he was of more value to headquarters

-than a dozen detectives. The fact

-that he never did time was another thing

-that gradually made the gang suspicious of

-him. Therefore, at the present time he is of

-comparatively little value to the police force,

-and may be settled before long. I hope so.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of the meanest things Muir ever did

-was to a poor old "dago" grafter, a queer-maker

-(counterfeiter). The Italian was putting

-out unusually good stuff, both paper and

-metal, and the avaricious Muir thought he

-saw a good chance to get a big bit of money

-from the dago. He put up a plan with two

-Central Office men to bleed the counterfeiter.

-Then he went to the dago and said he had

-got hold of some big buyers from the West

-who would buy five thousand dollars worth of

-the "queer." They met the supposed buyers,

-who were in reality the two Central Office men,

-at a little saloon. After a talk the detectives

-came out in their true colors, showed their

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_250' name='Page_250'>[250]</a></span>

-shields, and demanded one thousand dollars.

-The dago looked at Muir, who gave him the

-tip to pay the one thousand dollars. The

-Italian, however, thinking Muir was on the

-level, misunderstood the sign, and did not pay.

-The outraged detectives took the Italian to

-police headquarters, but did not show up the

-queer at first; they still wanted their one

-thousand dollars. So the dago was remanded

-and remanded, getting a hearing every twenty-four

-hours, but there was never enough evidence.

-Finally the poor fellow got a lawyer,

-and then the Central Office men gave up the

-game, and produced the queer as evidence.

-The United States authorities prosecuted the

-case, and the Italian was given three years

-and a half. After he was released he met

-Muir on the East Side, and tried to kill him

-with a knife. That is the only way Muir will

-ever get his deserts. A man like him very

-seldom dies in state's prison, or is buried in

-potter's field. He often becomes a gin-mill

-keeper and captain of his election district, for

-he understands how to control the repeaters

-who give Tammany Hall such large majorities

-on election day in Manhattan.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was on this second bit in prison, as I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_251' name='Page_251'>[251]</a></span>

-have said in another place, that the famous

-"fence" operated in stir. I knew him well.

-He was a clever fellow, and I often congratulated

-him on his success with the keepers; for

-he was no stool-pigeon and got his pull legitimately.

-He was an older grafter than I and

-remembered well Madame Mandelbaum, the

-Jewess, one of the best fences, before my

-time, in New York City. At the corner of

-Clinton and Rivington Streets there stood

-until a few years ago a small dry goods and

-notions store, which was the scene of transactions

-which many an old gun likes to talk

-about. What plannings of great robberies

-took place there, in Madame Mandelbaum's

-store! She would buy any kind of stolen

-property, from an ostrich feather to hundreds

-and thousands of dollars' worth of gems. The

-common shop-lifter and the great cracksman

-alike did business at this famous place. Some

-of the noted grafters who patronized her store

-were Jimmy Hope, Shang Draper, Billy Porter,

-Sheenie Mike, Red Leary, Johnnie Irving,

-Jack Walsh, alias John the Mick, and a

-brainy planner of big jobs, English George.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Madame Mandelbaum had two country residences

-in Brooklyn where she invited her

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_252' name='Page_252'>[252]</a></span>

-friends, the most famous thieves in two continents.

-English George, who used to send

-money to his son, who was being educated in

-England, was a frequent visitor, and used to

-deposit with her all his valuables. She had

-two beautiful daughters, one of whom became

-infatuated with George, who did not return

-her love. Later, she and her daughters, after

-they became wealthy, tried to rise in the

-world and shake their old companions. The

-daughters were finely dressed and well-educated,

-and the Madame hunted around for

-respectable husbands for them. Once a bright

-reporter wrote a play, in which the central

-character was Madame Mandelbaum. She

-read about it in the newspapers and went, with

-her two daughters, to see it. They occupied

-a private box, and were gorgeously dressed.

-The old lady was very indignant when she saw

-the woman who was supposed to be herself

-appear on the stage. The actress, badly

-dressed, and made up with a hooked nose, was

-jeered by the audience. After the play,

-Madame Mandelbaum insisted on seeing the

-manager of the theatre. She showed him her

-silks and her costly diamonds and then said:

-"Look at me. I am Madame Mandelbaum.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_253' name='Page_253'>[253]</a></span>

-Does that huzzy look anything like me?"

-Pointing to her daughters she continued:

-"What must my children think of such an

-impersonation? Both of them are better

-dressed and have more money and education

-than that strut, who is only a moment's plaything

-for bankers and brokers!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In most ways, of course, my life in prison

-during the second term was similar to what it

-was on my first term. Books and opium were

-my main pleasures. If it had not been for

-them and for the thoughts about life and

-about my fellow convicts which they led me to

-form, the monotony of the prison routine

-would have driven me mad. My health was

-by that time badly shattered. I was very

-nervous and could seldom sleep without a

-drug.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-My moral health was far worse, too, than it

-had been on my first term. Then I had made

-strong efforts to overcome the opium habit,

-and laid plans to give up grafting. Then I

-had some decent ambitions, and did not look

-upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas

-on the second term, I had grown to take a

-hopeless view of my case. I began to feel

-that I could not reform, no matter how hard I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_254' name='Page_254'>[254]</a></span>

-tried. It seemed to me, too, that it was hardly

-worth while now to make an effort, for I

-thought my health was worse than it really

-was and that I should die soon, with no

-opportunity to live the intelligent life I had

-learned to admire through my books. I still

-made good resolutions, and some effort to

-quit the hop, but they were weak in comparison

-with the efforts I had made during my

-first term. More and more it seemed to me

-that I belonged in the under world for good,

-and that I might as well go through it to the

-end. Stealing was my profession. It was all

-I knew how to do, and I didn't believe that

-anybody was interested enough in me to teach

-me anything else. On the other hand, what

-I had learned on the Rocky Path would never

-leave me. I was sure of my knowledge of the

-technique of graft, and I knew that a sucker

-was born every minute.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_255' name='Page_255'>[255]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER XII.<br />

-<i>On the Outside Again.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-My time on the second bit was drawing to a

-close. I was eager to get out, of course, but

-I knew way down in my mind, that it would be

-only to graft again. I made a resolution that

-I would regain my health and gather a little

-fall-money before I started in hard again on

-the Rocky Path.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On the day of my release, Warden Sage

-called me to his office and talked to me like a

-friend. He did not know that I was a second

-timer, or he might not have been so kind to

-me. He was a humane man, and in spite of

-his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced

-good things into Sing Sing. He

-improved the condition of the cells and we

-were not confined there so much as we had

-been before he came. On my first term many

-a man staid for days in his cell without ever

-going out; one man was confined twenty-eight

-days on bread and water. But under Mr.

-Sage punishments were not so severe. He

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_256' name='Page_256'>[256]</a></span>

-even used to send delicacies to men chained

-up in the Catholic Chapel.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I should like to say a good word for Head

-Keeper Connoughton, too. He was not generally

-liked, for he was a strict disciplinarian,

-but I think he was one of the best keepers in

-the country. He was stern, but not brutal,

-and when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton

-was very kind. He was not deceived by

-the fake lunatics, and used to say: "If you go

-to the mad-house, you are liable to become

-worse. If you are all right in the morning I

-will give you a job out in the air." Although

-Mr. Connoughton had had little schooling he

-was an intelligent man.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I believe the best thing the community can

-do to reform criminals is to have a more intelligent

-class of keepers. As a rule they are ignorant,

-brutal and stupid, under-paid and inefficient;

-yet what is more important for the

-State's welfare than an intelligent treatment of

-convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long

-ones, for when the criminal is broken down in

-health and made fearful, suspicious and revengeful,

-what can you expect from him? However,

-in the mood I was in at the end of my

-second term, I did not believe that anything

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_257' name='Page_257'>[257]</a></span>

-was any good as a preventive of crime. I

-knew that when I got on the outside I

-wouldn't think of what might happen to me.

-I knew that I couldn't or wouldn't carry a hod.

-What ambition I had left was to become a

-more successful crook than I had ever been

-before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Warden Sage gave me some good advice

-and then I left Sing Sing for New York. I

-did not get the pleasure from going out again

-that had been so keen after my first bit. My

-eye-sight was failing now, and I was sick and

-dull. My only thought was to get back to my

-old haunts, and I drank several large glasses

-of whiskey at Sing Sing town, to help me on

-my way. I intended to go straight home, as I

-felt very ill, to my father and mother, but I

-didn't see them for several days after my

-return to New York. The first thing I did in

-the city was to deliver some messages from

-my fellow convicts to their relatives. My

-third visit for that purpose was to the home

-of a fine young fellow I knew in stir. It was

-a large family and included a married sister

-and her children. They were glad to hear

-from Bobby, and I talked to them for some

-time about him, when the husband of the married

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_258' name='Page_258'>[258]</a></span>

-sister came home, and began to quarrel

-with his wife. He accused her of having

-strange men in the house, meaning me.

-The younger brother and the rest of the family

-got back at the brother-in-law and gave

-him better than they got. The little brother

-fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder".

-The police surrounded the house and took us

-all to the station-house in the patrol wagon.

-And so I spent the first night after my return

-in confinement. It seemed natural, however.

-In the morning we were taken before the

-magistrate, and the mother and sister testified

-that I had taken them a message from their

-boy, and had committed no offense. The

-brother-in-law blurted out that he had married

-into a family of thieves, and that I had just

-returned from Sing Sing. I was discharged,

-but fined five dollars. Blessed are the peacemakers,&mdash;but

-not in my case!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I passed the next day looking for old girls

-and pals, but I found few of them. Many

-were dead and others were in stir or had sunk

-so far down into the under world that even I

-could not find them. I was only about thirty-two

-years old, but I had already a long

-acquaintance with the past. Like all grafters

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_259' name='Page_259'>[259]</a></span>

-I had lived rapidly, crowding, while at liberty,

-several days into one. When I got back

-from my second bit the greater part of my life

-seemed to be made up of memories of other

-days. Some of the old pals I did meet again

-had squared it, others were "dead" (out of the

-game) and some had degenerated into mere

-bums.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There are several different classes of "dead

-ones":

-</p>

-

-<p>

-1. The man who has lost his nerve. He

-generally becomes a whiskey fiend. If he

-becomes hopelessly a soak the better class of

-guns shun him, for he is no good to work

-with. He will not keep an engagement, or

-will turn up at the place of meeting too late

-or too early. A grafter must be exactly on

-time. It is as bad to be too early as too late,

-for he must not be seen hanging around the

-place of meeting. Punctuality is more of a

-virtue in the under world than it is in respectable

-society. The slackest people I know

-to keep their appointments, are the honest

-ones; or grafters who have become whiskey

-fiends. These latter usually wind up with

-rot-gut booze and are sometimes seen selling

-songs on the Bowery.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_260' name='Page_260'>[260]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-2. The man who becomes a copper. He

-is known as a stool-pigeon, and is detested and

-feared by all grafters. Nobody will go with

-him. Sometimes he becomes a Pinkerton

-man, and is a useful member of society. When

-he loses his grip with the upper world, he

-belongs to neither, for the grafters won't look

-at him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-3. The man who knows a trade. This

-grafter often "squares" it, is apt to marry

-and remain honest. His former pals, who are

-still grafters, treat him kindly, for they know

-he is not a rat. They know, too, that he is a

-bright and intelligent man, and that it is well

-to keep on the right side of him. Such a man

-has often educated himself in stir, and, when

-he squares it, is apt to join a political club, and

-is called in by the leader to help out in an

-election, for he possesses some brains. The

-gun is apt to make him an occasional present,

-for he can help the grafter, in case of a fall,

-because of his connection with the politicians.

-This kind of "dead one" often keeps his

-friends the grafters, while in stir, next to the

-news in the city.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-4. The gun who is <i>supposed</i> to square it.

-This grafter has got a bunch of money together

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_261' name='Page_261'>[261]</a></span>

-and sees a good chance to open a gin-mill, or

-a Raines Law hotel, or a gambling joint. He

-knows how to take care of the repeaters, and

-is handy about election time. In return he

-gets protection for his illegal business. He is

-a go-between, and is on good terms with coppers

-and grafters. He supplies the grafter

-who has plenty of fall-money with bondsmen,

-makes his life in the Tombs easy, and gets him

-a good job while in stir. This man is supposed

-to be "dead," but he is really very much

-alive. Often a copper comes to him and asks

-for the whereabouts of some grafter or other.

-He will reply, perhaps: "I hear he is in Europe,

-or in the West." The copper looks wise

-and imagines he is clever. The "dead" one

-sneers, and, like a wise man, laughs in his

-sleeve; for he is generally in communication

-with the man looked for.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-5. The sure-thing grafter. He is a man

-who continues to steal, but wants above everything

-to keep out of stir, where he has spent

-many years. So he goes back to the petty

-pilfering he did as a boy. General Brace and

-the Professor belonged to this class of "dead

-ones." The second night I spent on the

-Bowery after my return from my second bit I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_262' name='Page_262'>[262]</a></span>

-met Laudanum Joe, who is another good

-example of this kind of "dead one." At one

-time he made thousands of dollars, but now

-he is discouraged and nervous. He looked

-bad (poorly dressed) but was glad to see

-me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How is graft?" he asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I have left the Rocky Path," I replied,

-thinking I would throw a few "cons" into him.

-"I am walking straight. Not in the religious

-line, either."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He smiled, which was tantamount to saying

-that I lied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What are you working at?" he asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am looking for a job," I replied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jimmy, is it true, that you are pipes

-(crazy)? I heard you got buggy (crazy) in

-your last bit."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Joe," I replied, "you know I was never

-bothered above the ears."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If you are going to carry the hod," he

-said, "you might as well go to the pipe-house,

-and let them cure you. Have you given up

-smoking, too?" he continued.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He meant the hop. I conned him again

-and said: "Yes." He showed the old peculiar,

-familiar grin, and said:

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_263' name='Page_263'>[263]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Say, I have no coin. Take me with you

-and give me a smoke."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I tried to convince him that there was nothing

-in it, but he was a doubter.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What are <i>you</i> doing, Joe?" I asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"O, just getting a few shillings," he replied,

-meaning that he was grafting.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why don't you give up the booze?" I asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I had made a break, for he said, quickly:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why? Because I don't wear a Piccadilly

-collar?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-All grafters of any original calibre are

-super-sensitive, to a point very near insanity.

-Laudanum Joe thought I had reference to his

-dress, which was very bum.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Joe," I said, "I never judge a man by his

-clothes, especially one that I know."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jimmy," he said, "the truth is I can't stand

-another long bit in stir. I do a little petty

-pilfering that satisfies my wants&mdash;a cup of tea,

-plenty of booze, and a little hop. If I fall I

-only go to the workhouse for a couple of

-months. The screws know I have seen better

-days and I can get a graft and my booze while

-there. If I aint as prosperous as I was once,

-why not dream I'm a millionaire?"

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_264' name='Page_264'>[264]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Some grafters who have been prosperous at

-one time fall even lower than Laudanum Joe.

-When they get fear knocked into them and

-can't do without whiskey they sink lower and

-lower. Hungry Bob is another example. I

-grafted with him as a boy, but when I met

-him on the Bowery after my second bit I hardly

-knew him, and at first he failed to recognize

-me entirely. I got him into a gin-mill, however,

-and he told how badly treated he had

-been just before we met. He had gone into

-a saloon kept by an old pal of his who had

-risen in the world, and asked him for fifteen

-cents to buy a bed in a lodging-house. "Go

-long, you pan-handler (beggar)," said his old

-friend. Poor Bob was badly cut up about it,

-and talked about ingratitude for a long time.

-But he had his lodging money, for a safe-cracker

-who knew Hungry Bob when he was

-one of the gayest grafters in town, happened

-to be in the saloon, and he gave the "bum"

-fifteen cents for old times sake.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How is it, Bob," I said to him, "that you

-are not so good as you were?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You want to know what put me on the

-bum?" he answered. "Well, it's this way.

-I can't trust nobody, and I have to graft alone.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_265' name='Page_265'>[265]</a></span>

-That's one thing. Then, too, I like the booze

-too much, and when I'm sitting down I can't

-get up and go out and hustle the way I used

-to."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort

-for sailors and hard-luck grafters in the lower

-Bowery, when a Sheenie I knew came in.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, Jim," he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How's graft, Mike?" I replied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't mention it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What makes you look so glum?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'm only after being turned out of police

-court this morning."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What was the rap, Mike?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'm looking too respectable. They asked

-me where I got the clothes. I told them I

-was working, which was true. I have been a

-waiter for three months. The flymen took me

-to headquarters. I was gathered in to make

-a reputation for those two shoo-flies. Whenever

-I square it and go to work I am nailed

-regularly, because my mug is in the Hall of

-Fame. When I am arrested, I lose my job

-every time. Nobody knows you now, Jim.

-You could tear the town open."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I made a mental resolution to follow Mike's

-advice very soon&mdash;as soon as my health was a

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_266' name='Page_266'>[266]</a></span>

-little better. Just then Jack, a boyhood pal of

-mine, who knew the old girls, Sheenie Annie

-and the rest, came in. I was mighty glad to see

-him, and said so to him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I guess you've got the advantage of me,

-bloke," was his reply.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't you remember Jimmy the Kid, ten

-years ago, in the sixth?" I jogged his memory

-with the names of a few pals of years ago,

-and when he got next, he said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I wouldn't have known you, Jim. I

-thought you were dead many years ago in

-stir. I heard it time and time again. I

-thought you were past and gone."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After a short talk, I said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Where's Sheenie Annie?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Dead," he replied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mamie?" I asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Dead," he replied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Lucy?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"In stir."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Swedish Emmy?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"She's married."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Any good Molls now? I'm only after

-getting back from stir and am not next," I said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"T'aint like old times, Jim," he said. "The

-Molls won't steal now. They aint got brains

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_267' name='Page_267'>[267]</a></span>

-enough. They are not innocent. They are

-ignorant. All they know how to do is the

-badger."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I went with Jack to his house, where he had

-an opium layout. There we found several

-girls and grafters, some smoking hop, some

-with the subtle cigarette between their lips.

-I was introduced to an English grafter, named

-Harry. He said he was bloomin' glad to see

-me. He was just back from the West, he

-said, but I thought it was the pen. He began

-to abuse the States, and I said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You duffer, did you ever see such pretty

-girls as here? Did you ever wear a collar and

-tie in the old country?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He grew indignant and shouted: "'Oly

-Cobblestones! In this &mdash;&mdash; country I have

-two hundred bucks (dollars) saved up every

-time, but I never spend a cent of it. 'Ow to

-'Ell am I better off here? I'm only stealin'

-for certain mugs (policemen) and fer those

-'igher up, so they can buy real estate. They

-enjoy their life in this country and Europe off

-my 'ard earned money and the likes of me.

-They die as respected citizens. I die in the

-work'us as an outcast. Don't be prating about

-your &mdash;&mdash; country!"

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_268' name='Page_268'>[268]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As soon as I had picked out a good mob to

-join I began to graft again. Two of my new

-pals were safe-blowers, and we did that graft,

-and day-work, as well as the old reliable dipping.

-But I wasn't much at the graft during

-the seven months I remained on the outside.

-My health continued bad, and I did not feel

-like "jumping out" so much as I had done

-formerly. I did not graft except when my

-funds were very low, and so, of course, contrary

-to my plans, I saved no fall-money. I

-had a girl, an opium lay-out and a furnished

-room, where I used to stay most of the time,

-smoking with pals, who, like myself, had had

-the keen edge of their ambition taken off. I

-had a strange longing for music at that time;

-I suppose because my nerves were weaker

-than they used to be. I kept a number of

-musical instruments in my room, and used to

-sing and dance to amuse my visitors.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-During these seven months that I spent

-mainly in my room, I used to reflect and philosophize

-a lot, partly under the influence of

-opium. I would moralize to my girl or to a

-friend, or commune with my own thoughts.

-I often got in a state of mind where everything

-seemed a joke to me. I often thought

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_269' name='Page_269'>[269]</a></span>

-of myself as a spectator watching the play of

-life. I observed my visitors and their characteristics

-and after they had left for the evening

-loved to size them up in words for Lizzie.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-My eyes were so bad that I did not read

-much, but I took it out in epigrams and wise

-sayings. I will give a few specimens of the

-kind of philosophy I indulged in.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You always ought to end a speech with a

-sneer or a laconic remark. It is food for

-thought. The listener will pause and reflect."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It is not what you make, but what you

-save, that counts. It isn't the big cracksman

-who gets along. It is the unknown dip who

-saves his earnings."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"To go to Germany to learn the language

-is as bad as being in stir for ten years."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jump out and be a man and don't join the

-Salvation Army."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Always say to the dip who says he wants

-to square it; Well, what's your other graft?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"When a con gets home he is apt to find

-his sweetheart married, and a 'Madonna of

-the wash tubs.'"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He made good money and was a swell

-grafter, but he got stuck on a Tommy that

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_270' name='Page_270'>[270]</a></span>

-absorbed his attention, and then he lost his

-punctuality and went down and out."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Do a criminal a bodily injury and he may

-forget. Wound his feelings and he will never

-forgive."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Most persons have seen a cow or a bull

-with a board put around its head in such a

-way that the animal can see nothing. It is a

-mode of punishment. Soon the poor beast

-will go mad, if the board is not removed.

-What chance has the convict, confined in a

-dark cell for years, to keep his senses? He

-suffers from astigmatism of the mind."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am as much entitled to an opinion as any

-other quack on the face of the earth."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"General Grant is one of my heroes. He

-was a boy at fifteen. He was a boy when he

-died. A boy is loyalty personified. General

-Grant had been given a task to do, and like a

-boy, he did it. He was one of our greatest

-men, and belongs with Tom Paine, Benjamin

-Franklin and Robert Ingersoll."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why don't we like the books we liked

-when we were boys? It is not because our

-judgment is better, but because we have a

-dream of our own now, and want authors to

-dream along the same lines."

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_271' name='Page_271'>[271]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The only gun with principles is the minor

-grafter."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The weakest man in the universe is he

-who falls from a good position and respectable

-society into the world of graft. Forgers

-and defaulters are generally of this class. A

-professional gun, who has been a thief all his

-life, is entitled to more respect."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"In writing a book on crime, one ought to

-have in mind to give the public a truthful

-account of a thief's life, his crimes, habits,

-thoughts, emotions, vices and virtues, and how

-he lives in prison and out. I believe this

-ought to be done, and the man who does it

-well must season his writings with pathos,

-humor, sarcasm, tragedy, and thus give the

-real life of the grafter."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Sympathy with a grafter who is trying to

-square it is a tonic to his better self."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The other day I was with a reporter and a

-society lady who were seeing the town. The

-lady asked me how I would get her diamond

-pin. It was fastened in such a way that to

-get it, strong arm work would be necessary. I

-explained how I would "put the mug on her"

-while my husky pal went through her. 'But,'

-she said, 'that would hurt me.' As if the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_272' name='Page_272'>[272]</a></span>

-grafters cared! What a selfish lady to be

-always thinking of herself!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Life is the basis of philosophy. Philosophy

-is an emanation from our daily routine.

-After a convict has paced his cell a few thousand

-times he sometimes has an idea. Philosophy

-results from life put through a mental

-process, just as opium, when subjected to a

-chemical experiment, produces laudanum.

-Why, therefore, is not life far stronger than a

-narcotic?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I believe in platonic love, for it has been

-in my own life. A woman always wants love,

-whether she is eighteen or eighty&mdash;real love.

-Many is the time I have seen the wistful look

-in some woman's eye when she saw that it was

-only good fellowship or desire on my part."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"In this age of commerce there is only one

-true friendship, the kind that comes through

-business."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"An old adage has it that all things come

-to him who waits. Yes: poverty, old age and

-death. The successful man is he who goes

-and gets it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If thy brother assaults you, do not weep,

-nor pray for him, nor turn the other cheek,

-but assail him with the full strength of your

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_273' name='Page_273'>[273]</a></span>

-muscles, for man at his best is not lovable,

-nor at his worst, detestable."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"There is more to be got in Germany, judging

-from what Dutch Lonzo used to say, than

-in England or America, only the Dutchmen

-are too thick-headed to find it out. A first

-class gun in Germany would be ranked as a

-ninth-rater here."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Grafters are like the rest of the world in

-this: they always attribute bad motives to a

-kind act."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"From flim-flam (returning short change)

-to burglary is but a step, provided one has

-the nerve."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why would a woman take to him (a sober,

-respectable man but lacking in temperament)

-unless she wanted a good home?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If there is anything detestable, it is a

-grafter who will steal an overcoat in the winter

-time."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"'Look for the woman.' A fly-cop gets

-many a tip from some tid-bit in whom a grafter

-has reposed confidence."

-</p>

-

-

-<p class="p2">

-I did not do, as I have said, any more grafting

-than was necessary during these seven

-months of liberty; but I observed continually,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_274' name='Page_274'>[274]</a></span>

-living in an opium dream, and my pals were

-more and more amusing to me. When I

-thought about myself and my superior intelligence,

-I was sad, but I thought about myself

-as little as possible. I preferred to let my

-thoughts dwell on others, who I saw were a

-a fine line of cranks and rogues.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Somewhere in the eighties, before I went

-to stir, there was a synagogue at what is now

-101 Hester Street. The synagogue was on

-the first floor, and on the ground floor was

-a gin-mill, run by an ex-Central Office man.

-Many pickpockets used to hang out there, and

-they wanted to drive the Jews out of the first

-floor, so that they could lay out a faro game

-there. So they swore and carried on most

-horribly on Saturdays, when the rabbi was

-preaching, and finally got possession of the

-premises. Only a block away from this old

-building was a famous place for dips to get

-"books", in the old days. Near by was Ridley's

-dry-goods store, in which there were some

-cash-girls who used to tip us off to who had

-the books, and were up to the graft themselves.

-They would yell "cash" and bump up against

-the sucker, while we went through him. The

-Jews were few in those days, and the Irish

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_275' name='Page_275'>[275]</a></span>

-were in the majority. On the corner of Allen

-and Hester Streets stood the saloon of a

-well-known politician. Now a Jew has a shop

-there. Who would think that an Isaacs

-would supersede a Finnigan?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At the gin-mill on Hester Street, I used to

-know a boy dip named Buck. When I got

-back from my second bit I found he had

-developed into a box-man, and had a peculiar

-disposition, which exists outside, as well as

-inside, Graftdom. He had one thousand eight

-hundred dollars in the bank, and a fine red

-front (gold watch and chain), but he was not

-a good fellow. He used to invite three or

-four guns to have a drink, and would order

-Hennessy's brandy, which cost twenty cents a

-glass. After we had had our drinks he would

-search himself and only find perhaps twenty

-cents in his clothes. He got into me several

-times before I "blew". One time, after he had

-ordered drinks, he began the old game, said

-he thought he had eighteen dollars with him,

-and must have been touched. Then he took

-out his gold watch and chain and threw it on

-the bar. But who would take it? I went

-down, of course, and paid for the drinks.

-When we went out together, he grinned, and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_276' name='Page_276'>[276]</a></span>

-said to me: "I pity you. You will never

-have a bank account, my boy."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The next time Buck threw down his watch

-and said he would pay in the morning, I

-thought it was dirt, for I knew he had fifty

-dollars on him. So I said to the bartender:

-"Take it and hock it, and get what he owes

-you. This chump has been working it all up

-and down the line. I won't be touched by the

-d&mdash;&mdash; grafter any more."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Buck was ready witted and turning to the

-bartender, said: "My friend here is learning

-how to play poker and has just lost eighteen

-dollars. He is a dead sore loser and is

-rattled."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-We went out with the watch, without paying

-for our drinks, and he said to me: "Jim,

-I don't believe in paying a gin-mill keeper.

-If the powers that be were for the people

-instead of for themselves they would have

-such drinkables free on every corner in old

-New York." The next time Buck asked me

-to have a drink I told him to go to a warm

-place in the next world. Buck was good to

-his family. He was married and had a couple

-of brats.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Many a man educates himself in stir, as was

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_277' name='Page_277'>[277]</a></span>

-my case. Jimmy, whom I ran up against one

-day on the street, is a good example. He

-had squared it and is still on the level. When

-I saw him, after my second bit, he was making

-forty dollars a week as an electrical engineer;

-and every bit of the necessary education he

-got in prison. At one time he was an unusually

-desperate grafter; and entirely ignorant

-of everything, except the technique of

-theft. Many years ago he robbed a jewelry

-store and was sent to Blackwell's Island for

-two years. The night of the day he was

-released he burglarized the same store and

-assaulted the proprietor. He was arrested

-with the goods on him and brought to General

-Sessions before Recorder Smythe, who had

-sentenced him before. He got ten years at

-Sing Sing and Auburn, and for a while he was

-one of the most dangerous and desperate of

-convicts, and made several attempts to escape.

-But one day a book on electricity fell into his

-hands, and from that time on he was a hard

-student. When he was released from stir he

-got a job in a large electrical plant up the

-State, and worked for a while, when he was

-tipped off by a country grafter who had known

-him in stir. He lost his job, and went to New

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_278' name='Page_278'>[278]</a></span>

-York, where he met me, who was home after

-my first term. I gave him the welcome hand,

-and, after he had told me his story, I said:

-"Well, there is plenty of money in town.

-Jump out with us." He grafted with me and

-my mob for a while, but got stuck on a

-Tommy, so that we could not depend on him

-to keep his appointments, and we dropped

-him. After that he did some strong arm work

-with a couple of gorillas and fell again for five

-years. When he returned from stir he got

-his present position as electrical engineer.

-He had it when I met him after my second

-bit and he has it to-day. I am sure he is on

-the level and will be so as long as he holds

-his job.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-About this time I was introduced to a peculiar

-character in the shape of a few yards of

-calico. It was at Carey's place on Bleecker

-Street that I first saw this good-looking youth

-of nineteen, dressed in the latest fashion.

-His graft was to masquerade as a young girl,

-and for a long time Short-Haired Liz, as we

-called him, was very successful. He sought

-employment as maid in well-to-do families and

-then made away with the valuables. One day

-he was nailed, with twenty charges against

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_279' name='Page_279'>[279]</a></span>

-him. He was convicted on the testimony of

-a chamber-maid, with whom, in his character

-of lady's maid, he had had a lark. Mr.

-R&mdash;&mdash;, who was still influential, did his

-best for him, for his fall-money was big, and

-he only got a light sentence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I heard one day that an old pal of mine,

-Dannie, had just been hanged. It gave me a

-shock, for I had often grafted with him when

-we were kids. As there were no orchards on

-the streets of the east side, Dannie and I used

-to go to the improvised gardens that lined the

-side-walks outside of the green grocers' shops,

-and make away with strawberries, apples, and

-other fruits. By nature I suppose boys are

-no more bothered with consciences than are

-police officials. Dannie rose rapidly in the

-world of graft and became very dangerous to

-society. As a grafter he had one great fault.

-He had a very quick temper. He was sensitive,

-and lacking in self-control, but he was

-one of the cleverest guns that ever came from

-the Sixth Ward, a place noted for good grafters

-of both sexes. He married a respectable

-girl and had a nice home, for he had enough

-money to keep the police from bothering him.

-If it had not been for his bad temper, he

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_280' name='Page_280'>[280]</a></span>

-might be grafting yet. He would shoot at a

-moment's notice, and the toughest of the hard

-element were afraid of him. One time he

-had it in for an old pal of his named Paddy.

-For a while Paddy kept away from the saloon

-on Pell Street where Dannie hung out, but

-Paddy, too, had nerve, and one day he turned

-up at his old resort, the Drum, as it was called.

-He saw Dannie and fired a cannister at him.

-Dannie hovered between life and death for

-months, and had four operations performed on

-him without anæsthetics. After he got well

-Dannie grafted on the Albany boats. One

-night he and his pals tried to get a Moll's

-leather, but some Western guns who were on

-the boat were looking for provender themselves

-and nicked the Moll. Dannie accused

-them of taking his property, and, as they

-would not give up, pulled his pistol. One of

-the Western guns jumped overboard, and the

-others gave up the stuff. Dannie was right,

-for that boat belonged to him and his mob.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A few months after that event Dannie shot

-a mug, who had called him a rat, and went to

-San Antonio, Texas, where he secured a position

-as bartender. One day a well-known

-gambler who had the reputation of being a

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_281' name='Page_281'>[281]</a></span>

-ten time killer began to shoot around in the

-saloon for fun. Dannie joined in the game,

-shot the gambler twice, and beat the latter's

-two pals into insensibility. A few months

-afterwards he came to New York with twenty-seven

-hundred dollars in his pocket; and he

-enjoyed himself, for it is only the New York

-City born who love the town. But he had

-better have stayed away, for in New York he

-met his mortal enemy, Splitty, who had more

-brains than Dannie, and was running a "short

-while house" in the famous gas house block

-in Hester Street. One night Dannie was on

-a drunk, spending his twenty-seven hundred

-dollars, and riding around in a carriage with

-two girls. Beeze, one of the Molls, proposed

-to go around to Splitty's. They went, and

-Beeze and the other girl were admitted, but

-Dannie was shut out. He fired three shots

-through the door. One took effect in Beeze's

-breast fatally, and Dannie was arrested.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While in Tombs waiting trial he was well

-treated by the warden, who was leader of the

-Sixth Ward, and who used to permit Dannie's

-wife to visit him every night. At the same

-time Dannie became the victim of one of the

-worst cases of treachery I ever heard of. An

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_282' name='Page_282'>[282]</a></span>

-old pal of his, George, released from Sing

-Sing, went to visit him in the Tombs. Dannie

-advised George not to graft again until he

-got his health back, suggesting that meanwhile

-he eat his meals at his (Dannie's)

-mother's house. The old lady had saved up

-about two hundred and fifty dollars, which she

-intended to use to secure a new trial for her

-son. George heard of the money and put up

-a scheme to get it. He told the old woman

-that Dannie was going to escape from the

-Tombs that night and that he had sent word

-to his mother to give him (George) the

-money. The villain then took the money and

-skipped the city, thus completing the dirtiest

-piece of work I ever heard of. "Good

-Heavens!" said Dannie, when he heard of it.

-"A study in black!" Dannie, poor fellow,

-was convicted, and, after a few months, hanged.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Another tragedy in Manhattan was the end

-of Johnny T&mdash;&mdash;. I had been out only a short

-time after my second bit, when I met him on

-the Bowery. He was just back, too, and complained

-that all his old pals had lost their

-nerve. Whenever he made a proposition they

-seemed to see twenty years staring them in

-the face. So he had to work alone. His

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_283' name='Page_283'>[283]</a></span>

-graft was burglary, outside of New York. He

-lived in the city, and the police gave him protection

-for outside work. He was married

-and had two fine boys. One day a copper,

-contrary to the agreement, tried to arrest him

-for a touch made in Mt. Vernon. Johnny was

-indignant, and wouldn't stand for a collar

-under the circumstances. He put four shots

-into the flyman's body. He was taken to the

-station-house, and afterwards tried for murder.

-The boys collected a lot of money and tried

-to save him, but he had the whole police force

-against him and in a few months he was

-hanged.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A friend of mine, L&mdash;&mdash;, had a similar fate.

-He was a prime favorite with the lasses of

-easy virtue, and was liked by the guns. One

-night when I met him in a joint where grafters

-hung out, he displayed a split lip, given him

-by the biggest bully in the ward. It was all

-about a girl named Mollie whom the bully was

-stuck on and on whose account he was jealous

-of L&mdash;&mdash;, whom all the women ran after. A

-few nights later, L&mdash;&mdash; met the bully who had

-beaten him and said he had a present for him.

-"Is it something good?" asked the gorilla.

-"Yes," said L&mdash;&mdash;, and shot him dead. L&mdash;&mdash;

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_284' name='Page_284'>[284]</a></span>

-tried to escape, but was caught in Pittsburg,

-and extradited to New York, where he was

-convicted partly on the testimony of the girl,

-whom I used to call Unlimited Mollie. She

-was lucky, for instead of drifting to the Bowery,

-she married a policeman, who was promoted.

-L&mdash;&mdash; was sentenced to be hanged, but he

-died game.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I think kleptomania is not a very common

-kind of insanity, at least in my experience.

-Most grafters steal for professional reasons,

-but Big Sammy was surely a kleptomaniac.

-He had no reason to graft, for he was well up in

-the world. When I first met he was standard

-bearer at a ball given in his honor, and had a

-club named after him. He had been gin-mill

-keeper, hotel proprietor, and theatrical manager,

-and had saved money. He had, too, a

-real romance in his life, for he loved one of

-the best choir singers in the city. She was

-beautiful and loved him, and they were married.

-She did not know that Sammy was a gun;

-indeed, he was not a gun, really, for he only

-used to graft for excitement, or at least, what

-business there was in it was only a side issue.

-After their honeymoon Sammy started a hotel

-at a sea-side resort, where the better class of

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_285' name='Page_285'>[285]</a></span>

-guns, gamblers and vaudeville artists spent

-their vacation. That fall he went on a tour

-with his wife who sang in many of the churches

-in the State. Sammy was a good box-man.

-He never used puff (nitro-glycerine), but with

-a few tools opened the safes artistically. His

-pal Mike went ahead of the touring couple,

-and when Sammy arrived at a town he was

-tipped off to where the goods lay. When he

-heard that the police were putting it on to the

-hoboes, he thought it was a good joke and

-kept it up. He wanted the police to gather

-in all the black sheep they could, for he was

-sorry they were so incompetent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The loving couple returned to New York,

-and were happy for a long time. But finally

-the wife fell ill, and under-went an operation,

-from the effects of which she never recovered.

-She became despondent and jealous of Sammy,

-though he was one of the best husbands I have

-known. One morning he had an engagement

-to meet an old pal who was coming home

-from stir. He was late, and starting off in a

-hurry, neglected to kiss his wife good-bye.

-She called after him that he had forgotten

-something. Sammy, feeling for his money

-and cannister, shouted back that everything

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_286' name='Page_286'>[286]</a></span>

-was all right, and rushed off. His wife must

-have been in an unusually gloomy state of

-mind, for she took poison, and when Sammy

-returned, she was dead. It drove Sammy

-almost insane, for he loved her always. A

-few days afterwards he jumped out for excitement

-and forgetfulness and was so reckless

-when he tried to make a touch that he was

-shot almost to pieces. He recovered, however,

-and was sent to prison for a long term

-of years. He is out again, and is now regularly

-on the turf. During his bit in stir all

-his legitimate enterprizes went wrong, and

-when he was released, there was nothing for it

-but to become a professional grafter.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-During the seven months which elapsed

-between the end of my second, and the beginning

-of my third term, I was not a very energetic

-grafter, as I have said. Graft was good

-at the time and a man with the least bit of

-nerve could make out fairly well. My nerve

-had not deserted me, but somehow I was less

-ambitious. Philosophy and opium and bad

-health do not incline a man to a hustling life.

-The excitement of stealing had left me, and

-now it was merely business. I therefore did a

-great deal of swindling, which does not stir

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_287' name='Page_287'>[287]</a></span>

-the imagination, but can be done more easily

-than other forms of graft. I was known at

-headquarters as a dip, and so I was not likely

-to be suspected for occasional swindling, just

-as I had been able to do house-work now and

-then without a fall.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I did some profitable swindling at this time,

-with an Italian named Velica for a pal. It

-was a kind of graft which brought quick

-returns without much of an outlay. For

-several weeks we fleeced Velica's country men

-brown. I impersonated a contractor and

-Velica was my foreman. We put advertisements

-in the newspapers for men to work on

-the railroads or for labor on new buildings.

-We hired desk room in a cheap office, where

-we awaited our suckers, who came in droves,

-though only one could see us at a time. Our

-tools for this graft were pen, paper, and ink;

-and one new shovel and pick-axe. Velica did

-the talking and I took down the man's name

-and address. Velica told his countryman that

-we could not afford to run the risk of disappointing

-the railroad, so that he would have to

-leave a deposit as a guarantee that he would

-turn up in the morning. If he left a deposit

-of a few dollars we put his name on the new

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_288' name='Page_288'>[288]</a></span>

-pick and shovel, which we told him he could

-come for in the morning. If we induced many

-to give us deposits, using the same pick and

-shovel as a bribe, we made a lot of money

-during the day. The next morning we would

-change our office and vary our form of advertisement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sometimes we met our victims at saloons.

-Velica would be talking to some Italian immigrant

-who had money, when I would turn up

-and be introduced. Treating all around and

-flashing a roll of bills I could soon win the

-sucker's respect and confidence, and make him

-ante up on any old con. One day in a saloon

-in Newark we got an Italian guy for one hundred

-and fifty dollars. Before he left the

-place, however, he suspected something. We

-had promised him the position of foreman of a

-gang of laborers, and after we got his dough

-we could not let well enough alone, and offered

-to give his wife the privilege of feeding the

-sixty Italians of whom he was to be the foreman.

-I suppose the dago thought that we

-were too good, for he blew and pulled his

-gun. I caught him around the waist, and the

-bartender, who was with us, struck him over

-the head with a bottle of beer. The dago

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_289' name='Page_289'>[289]</a></span>

-dropped the smoke-wagon and the bartender

-threatened to put him in prison for pulling a

-rod on respectable people. The dago left the

-saloon and never saw his money again.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-About this time, too, I had an opportunity to

-go into still another lucrative kind of swindling,

-but didn't. It was not conscience either that

-prevented me from swindling the fair sex, for

-in those days all touches,&mdash;except those made

-by others off myself&mdash;seemed legitimate. I did

-not go in for it because, at the time it was

-proposed to me, I had enough money for my

-needs, and as I have said, I was lazy. It was a

-good graft, however, and I was a fool for not

-ringing in on it. The scheme was to hire a

-floor in a private house situated in any good

-neighborhood. One of the mob had to know

-German, and then an advertisement would be

-inserted in the <i>Herald</i> to the effect that a

-young German doctor who had just come

-from the old country wanted to meet a German

-lady of some means with a view to matrimony.

-A pal of mine who put such an advertisement

-in a Chicago paper received no less

-than one hundred and forty five answers from

-women ranging in age from fifteen to fifty.

-The grafters would read the letters and decide

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_290' name='Page_290'>[290]</a></span>

-as to which ladies they thought had some

-money. When these arrived at the office, in

-answer to the grafters' letters, they would

-meet two or three men, impersonating the

-doctor and his friends, who had the gift of

-"con" to a remarkable degree. The doctor

-would suggest that if the lady would advance

-sufficient money to start him in business in

-the West it would be well. If he found she

-had plenty of money he married her immediately,

-one of his pals acting the clergyman.

-She then drew all her money from the bank,

-and they went to a hotel. There the doctor

-leaving her in their room, would go to see

-about the tickets for the West, and never

-return. The ladies always jumped at these

-offers, for all German women want to marry

-doctors or clergymen; and all women are soft,

-even if they are so apt to be natural pilferers

-themselves.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I was hard up, and if there was no

-good confidence game in sight, I didn't mind

-taking heavy chances in straight grafting; for

-I lived in a dream, and through opium, was

-not only lazy, but reckless. On one occasion

-a Jew fence had put up a plan to get a big

-touch, and picked me out to do the desperate

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_291' name='Page_291'>[291]</a></span>

-part of the job. The fence was an expert

-in jewels and worked for one of the biggest

-firms that dealt in precious stones. He kept

-an eye on all such stores, watching for an

-opening to put his friends the grafters "next."

-To the place in question he was tipped off by

-a couple of penny weighters, who claimed it

-was a snap. He agreed with them, but kept

-his opinion to himself, and came to see me

-about it. I and two other grafters watched

-the place for a week. One day the two clerks

-went out together for lunch, leaving the proprietor

-alone in the store. This was the

-opportunity. I stationed one of my pals at

-the window outside and the other up the

-street to watch. If I had much trouble with

-"the mark" the pal at the window was to

-come to my assistance. With red pepper (to

-throw, if necessary, in the sucker's eyes) and a

-good black jack I was to go into the store and

-buy a baby's ring for one dollar. While waiting

-for my change, I was to price a piece of

-costly jewelry, and while talking about the

-merits of the diamond, hit my man on the

-head with the black jack. Then all I had to

-do was to go behind the counter and take the

-entire contents of the window&mdash;only a minute's

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_292' name='Page_292'>[292]</a></span>

-work, for all the costly jewels were lying on an

-embroidered piece of velvet, and I had only to

-pick up the four corners of the velvet, bundle

-it into a green bag, and jump into the cab

-which was waiting for us a block away. Well,

-I had just about got the proprietor in a position

-to deal him the blow when the man at

-the window weakened, and came in and said,

-"Vix." I thought there was a copper outside,

-or that one of the clerks was returning, and

-told the jeweler I would send my wife for the

-ring. I went out and asked my pal what was

-the matter. He said he was afraid I would

-kill the old fellow, and that the come-back

-would be too strong. My other pal I found a

-block away. We all went back together to

-the fence, and then I opened on them, I

-tell you. I called them petty larceny barnacles,

-and came near clubbing them, I was so

-indignant. I have often had occasion to notice

-that most thieves who will steal a diamond or

-a "front" weaken when it comes to a large

-touch, even though there may be no more

-danger in it than in the smaller enterprises.

-I gave those two men a wide berth after that,

-and whenever I met them I sneered; for I

-could not get over being sore. The "touch"

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_293' name='Page_293'>[293]</a></span>

-was a beauty, with very little chance of a

-come-back, for the police don't look among

-the pickpockets for the men who make this

-kind of touches, and I and my two companions

-were known to the coppers as dips.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Just before I fell for my third and most terrible

-term, I met Lottie, and thought of marrying.

-I did not love her, but liked her

-pretty well, and I was beginning to feel that I

-ought to settle down and have a decent woman

-to look after me, for my health was bad and I

-had little ambition. Lottie seemed the right

-girl for the place. She was of German extraction,

-and used to shave me sometimes at her

-father's barber shop, where I first met her.

-She seemed to me a good, honest girl, and I

-thought I could not do better, especially as

-she was very fond of me. Women like the

-spruce dips, as I have said before, and even

-when my graft had broadened, I always retained

-the dress, manners and reputation of a

-pickpocket. Lottie promised to marry me,

-and said that she could raise a few hundred dollars

-from her father, with which I might start

-another barber shop, quit grafting, and settle

-down to my books, my hop and domestic life.

-One day she gave me a pin that cost nine dollars,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_294' name='Page_294'>[294]</a></span>

-she said, and she wouldn't let me make

-her a present. All in all, she seemed like a

-sensible girl, and I was getting interested in

-the marriage idea. One day, however, I discovered

-something. I was playing poker in

-the office of a hotel kept by a friend of mine,

-when a man and woman came down stairs

-together and passed through the office. They

-were my little German girl and the owner of a

-pawn-shop, a Sheenie of advanced years. Suddenly

-I realized where she had got the pin

-she gave me; and I began to believe stories

-I had heard about her. I thought I would

-test her character myself. I did, and found it

-weak. I did not marry her! What an escape!

-Every man, even a self-respecting gun, wants

-an honest woman, if it comes to hitching up

-for good.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Soon after I escaped Lottie, I got my third

-fall for the stir. The other times that I had

-been convicted, I was guilty, but on this

-occasion I was entirely innocent. Often a man

-who has done time and is well-known to the

-police is rounded up on suspicion and convicted

-when he is innocent, and I fell a victim to this

-easy way of the officials for covering up their

-failure to find the right person. I had gone

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_295' name='Page_295'>[295]</a></span>

-one night to an opium joint near Lovers Row,

-a section of Henry Street between Catherine

-and Oliver Streets, where some guns of both

-sexes were to have a social meeting. We

-smoked hop and drank heavily and told stories

-of our latest touches. While we were thus

-engaged I began to have severe pains in my

-chest, which had been bothering me occasionally

-for some time, and suddenly I had a hemorrhage.

-When I was able I left the joint to

-see a doctor, who stopped the flow of blood,

-but told me I would not live a month if I did

-not take good care of myself. I got aboard a

-car, went soberly home to my furnished room,

-and&mdash;was arrested.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I knew I had not committed any crime this

-time and thought I should of course be released

-in the morning. Instead however of being

-taken directly to the station house, I was conducted

-to a saloon, and confronted with the

-"sucker". I had never seen him before, but he

-identified me, just the same, as the man who had

-picked his pocket. I asked him how long ago

-he had missed his valuables, and when he answered,

-"Three hours," I drew a long sigh of

-relief, for I was at the joint at that time, and

-thought I could prove an alibi. But though

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_296' name='Page_296'>[296]</a></span>

-the rapper seemed to weaken, the copper was

-less trustful and read the riot act to him. I

-was so indignant I began to call the policeman

-down vigorously. I told him he had better

-try to make a reputation on me some other

-time, when I was really guilty, whereupon he

-lost his temper, and jabbed me in the chest

-with his club, which brought on another flow

-of blood from my lungs.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In this plight I was taken to the station

-house, still confident I should soon be set at

-liberty, although I had only about eighty

-dollars for fall-money. I hardly thought I

-needed it, but I used it just the same, to make

-sure, and employed a lawyer. For a while

-things looked favorable to me, for I was remanded

-back from court every morning for

-eight days, on account of lack of evidence,

-which is almost equivalent to a turn-out in a

-larceny case. Even the copper began to pig

-it (weaken), probably thinking he might as

-well get a share of my "dough," since it began

-to look as if I should beat the case. But

-on the ninth day luck turned against me. The

-Chief of detectives "identified" me as another

-man, whispering a few words to the justice,

-and I was committed under two thousand

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_297' name='Page_297'>[297]</a></span>

-dollars bail to stand trial in General Sessions.

-I was sent to the Tombs to await trial, and I

-knew at last that I was lost. My character

-alone would convict me; and my lawyer had

-told me that I could not prove an alibi on the

-oaths of the thieves and disorderly persons

-who had been with me in the opium joint.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-No matter how confirmed a thief a man may

-be, I repeat, he hates to be convicted for

-something he has not done. He objects indeed

-more than an honest man would do, for

-he believes in having the other side play fair;

-whereas the honest man simply thinks a mistake

-has been made. While in the Tombs a

-murderous idea formed in my mind. I felt

-that I had been horribly wronged, and was

-hot for revenge. I was desperate, too, for I

-did not think I should live my bit out. Determined

-to make half a dozen angels, including

-myself, I induced a friend, who came to

-see me in the Tombs, to get me a revolver.

-I told him I wanted to create a panic with a

-couple of shots, and escape, but in reality I

-had no thought of escape. I was offered a

-light sentence, if I would plead guilty, but I

-refused. I believed I was going to die anyway,

-and that things did not matter; only I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_298' name='Page_298'>[298]</a></span>

-would have as much company as possible on

-the road to the other world. I meant to shoot

-the copper who had beaten me with his club,

-District Attorney Olcott, the judge, the complainant

-and myself as well, as soon as I should

-be taken into the court room for trial. The

-pistol however was taken away from me before

-I entered the court: I was convicted and

-sentenced to five years at Sing Sing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Much of the time I spent in stir on my third

-bit I still harbored this thought of murder.

-That was one reason I did not kill myself.

-The determination to do the copper on my

-release was always in my mind. I planned

-even a more cunning revenge. I imagined

-many a scheme to get him, and gloat over his

-dire misfortunes. One of my plans was to

-hunt him out on his beat, invite him to drink,

-and put thirty grains of hydrate of chloral in

-his glass. When he had become unconscious

-I would put a bottle of morphine in his trousers

-pocket, and then telephone to a few newspapers

-telling them that if they would send

-reporters to the saloon they would have a

-good story against a dope copper who smoked

-too much. The result would be, I thought, a

-rap against the copper and his disgrace and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_299' name='Page_299'>[299]</a></span>

-dismissal from the force would follow. Sometimes

-this seemed to me better than murder;

-for every copper who is "broke" immediately

-becomes a bum. When my copper should

-have become a bum I imagined myself catching

-him dead drunk and cutting his hamstrings.

-Certainly I was a fiend when I reflected

-on my wrongs, real and imaginary.

-At other times I thought I merely killed him

-outright.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_300' name='Page_300'>[300]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER XIII.<br />

-<i>In the Mad-House.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-On the road to Sing Sing again! The

-public may say I was surely an incorrigible

-and ought to have been shut up anyway for safe

-keeping, but are they right if they say so? During

-my confinement I often heard the prison

-chaplain preach from the text "Though thou

-sinnest ninety and nine times thy sin shall be

-forgiven thee."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Probably Christ knew what He meant: His

-words do not apply to the police courts of

-Manhattan. These do not forgive, but send

-you up for the third term, which, if it is a

-long one, no man can pass through without

-impairment in body or in brain. It is better

-to make the convict's life as hard as hell for a

-short term, than to wear out his mind and

-body. People need not wonder why a man,

-knowing what is before him, steals and steals

-again. The painful experiences of his prison

-life, too often renewed, leave him as water

-leaves a rubber coat. Few men are really

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_301' name='Page_301'>[301]</a></span>

-impressionable after going through the deadening

-life in stir.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Five months of my third term I spent at

-Sing Sing, and then, as on my first bit, I was

-drafted to Auburn. At Sing Sing I was classified

-as a second term man. I have already

-explained that during my first term I earned

-over a year's commutation time; and that that

-time would have been legally forfeited when

-I was sent up again within nine months for

-my second bit if any one, except a few convicts,

-had remembered I had served before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When, on my third sentence, I now returned

-to Sing Sing, I found that the authorities

-were "next," and knew that I had "done"

-them on the second bit. They were sore,

-because it had been their own carelessness,

-and they were afraid of getting into trouble.

-To protect themselves they classified me as a

-second term man, but waited for a chance to

-do me. I suppose it was some d&mdash;&mdash; Dickey

-Bird (stool-pigeon) who got them next that I

-had done them; but I never heard who it was,

-though I tried to find out long and earnestly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I got back to my cell in Sing Sing this

-third time I was gloomy and desperate to an

-unusual degree, still eaten up with my desire for

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_302' name='Page_302'>[302]</a></span>

-vengeance on those who had sent me to stir for

-a crime I had not committed. My health was

-so bad that my friends told me I would never

-live my bit out, and advised me to get to

-Clinton prison, if possible, away from the

-damp cells at Sing Sing. But I took no

-interest in what they said, for I did not care

-whether I lived or died. I expected to die

-very soon, and in the meantime thought I

-was well enough where I was. I did not fear

-death, and I had my hop every day. All I

-wanted from the keepers was to be let alone

-in my cell and not annoyed with work. The

-authorities had an inkling that I was in a desperate

-state of mind, and probably believed it

-was healthier for them to let me alone a good

-deal of the time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Before long schemes began to form in my

-head to make my gets (escape). I knew I

-wouldn't stop at murder, if necessary in order

-to spring; for, as I have said, I cared not

-whether I lived or died. On the whole, however,

-I rather preferred to become an angel at

-the beginning of my bit than at the end. I

-kept my schemes for escape to myself, for I

-was afraid of a leak, but the authorities must

-somehow have suspected something, for they

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_303' name='Page_303'>[303]</a></span>

-kept me in my cell twenty-three hours out of

-the twenty-four. Perhaps it was just because

-they had it in for me for beating them on my

-second bit. As before, I consoled myself,

-while waiting a chance to escape, with some

-of my favorite authors; but my eye-sight was

-getting bad and I could not read as much as I

-used to.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was during these five months at Sing Sing

-that I first met Dr. Myers, of whom I saw

-much a year or two later in the mad-house.

-At Sing Sing he had some privileges, and

-used to work in the hall, where it was easy for

-me to talk to him through my cell door.

-This remarkable man, had been a splendid

-physician in Chicago. He had beaten some

-insurance companies out of one hundred and

-sixty-five thousand dollars, but was in Sing

-Sing because he had been wrongfully convicted

-on a charge of murder. He liked me,

-especially when later we were in the insane

-asylum together, because I would not stand

-for the abuse given to the poor lunatics, and

-would do no stool-pigeon or other dirty work

-for the keepers. He used to tell me that I

-was too bright a man to do any work with my

-hands. "Jim," he said once, "I would rather

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_304' name='Page_304'>[304]</a></span>

-see you marry my daughter than give her to

-an ignorant business man. I know you would

-treat her kindly and that she would learn

-something of the world. As my wife often

-said, I would rather die at thirty-eight after

-seeing the world and enjoying life than live in

-a humdrum way till ninety."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He explained the insurance graft to me,

-and I still think it the surest and most lucrative

-of all grafts. For a man with intelligence

-it is the very best kind of crooked work.

-About the only way the insurance companies

-can get back at the thieves is through a squeal.

-Here are a few of the schemes he told me for

-this graft:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A man and his female pal take a small

-house in town or on the outskirts of a large

-city. The man insures his life for five thousand

-dollars. After they have lived there a

-while, and passed perhaps as music teachers,

-they take the next step, which is to get a dead

-body. Nothing is easier. The man goes to

-any large hospital, represents himself as a

-doctor and for twenty-five dollars can generally

-get a stiff, which he takes away in a barrel

-or trunk. He goes to a furnished room,

-already secured, and there dresses the cadaver

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_305' name='Page_305'>[305]</a></span>

-in his own clothes, putting his watch, letters

-and money in the cadavers pockets. In the

-evening he takes the body to some river or

-stream and throws it in. He knows from the

-newspapers when the body has been found,

-and notifies his woman pal, who identifies it

-as her husband's body. There are only two

-snags that one must guard against in this plot.

-The cadaver must not differ much in height

-from the person that has been insured; and its

-lungs must not show that they were those of

-anybody dead before thrown into the water.

-The way to prepare against this danger is to

-inject some water with a small medical pump

-into the lungs of the stiff before it is thrown

-overboard. Then it is easy for the "widow"

-to get the money, and meet the alleged dead

-man in another country.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A more complicated method, in which more

-money is involved, is as follows. The grafter

-hires an office and represents himself as an

-artist, a bric-à-brac dealer, a promoter or an

-architect. Then he jumps to another city and

-takes out a policy under the tontien or endowment

-plan. When the game is for a very

-large amount three or four pals are necessary.

-If no one of the grafters is a doctor, a physician

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_306' name='Page_306'>[306]</a></span>

-must be impersonated, but this is easy.

-If there are, say, ten thousand physicians in

-Manhattan, not many of whom have an income

-of ten thousand a year, it is perhaps

-not difficult to get a diploma. After a sheepskin

-is secured, the grafter goes to another

-State, avoiding, unless he is a genuine physician,

-New York and Illinois, for they have

-boards of regents. The acting quack registers

-so that he can practice medicine and hangs

-out his shingle. The acting business man

-takes out a policy, and pays the first premium.

-Before the first premium is paid he is dead,

-for all the insurance company knows. Often

-a live substitute, instead of a dead one, is

-secured. The grafter goes to the charity

-hospital and looks over the wrecks waiting to

-die. Some of these poor dying devils jump

-at the chance to go West. It is necessary, of

-course, to make sure that the patient will soon

-become an angel, or everything will fall

-through. Then the grafter takes the sick

-man to his house and keeps him out of sight.

-When he is about to die he calls in the grafter

-who is posing as a physician. After the death

-of the substitute the doctor signs the death

-certificate, the undertaker prepares the body,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_307' name='Page_307'>[307]</a></span>

-which is buried. The woman grafter is at the

-funeral, and afterwards she sends in her claim

-to the companies. On one occasion in Dr.

-Myers's experience, he told me, the alleged

-insured man was found later with his head

-blown off, but when the wife identified the

-body, the claim had been paid.

-</p>

-

-

-<p class="p2">

-One afternoon, after I had been at Sing

-Sing five months, I was taken from my cell,

-shackled hand and foot, and sent, with fifty

-other convicts, to Auburn. When I had been

-at Auburn prison about six months I grew

-again exceedingly desperate, and made several

-wild and ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I

-would take no back talk from the keepers, and

-began to be feared by them. One day I had

-a fight with another convict. He struck me

-with an iron weapon, and I sent him to the

-hospital with knife thrusts through several

-parts of his body. Although I had been a

-thief all my life, and had done some strong

-arm work, by nature I was not quarrelsome,

-and I have never been so quick to fight as on

-my third term. I was locked up in the dungeon

-for a week and fed on bread and water in

-small quantities. After my release I was confined

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_308' name='Page_308'>[308]</a></span>

-to my cell for several days, and used to

-quarrel with whoever came near me. The

-keepers began to regard me as a desperate

-character, who would cause them a great deal

-of trouble; and feared that I might escape or

-commit murder at any time. One day, I remember,

-a keeper threatened to club me with

-a heavy stick he had. I laughed at him and

-told him to make a good job of it, for I had

-some years still to serve, and if he did not kill

-me outright, I would have plenty of time to

-get back at him. The cur pigged it (weakened).

-They really wanted to get rid of me,

-however, and one morning the opportunity

-came.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was feeling especially bad that morning

-and went to see the doctor, who told me I had

-consumption, and transferred me to the consumptive

-ward in the prison. There the doctor

-and four screws came to my bedside, and

-the doctor inserted a hyperdermic needle into

-my arm. When I awoke I found myself in

-the isolated dungeon, nicknamed the Keeley

-Cure by the convicts, where I was confined

-again for several weeks, and had a hyperdermic

-injection every day. At the end of that time

-I was taken before the doctors, who pronounced

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_309' name='Page_309'>[309]</a></span>

-me insane. With three other convicts

-who were said to be "pipes" (insane) I

-was shackled hand and foot, put on a train

-and taken to the asylum for the criminal insane

-at Matteawan. I had been in bad places

-before, but at Matteawan I first learned what

-it is to be in Hell.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Why was I put in the Pipe House? Was

-I insane?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In one way I have been insane all my life,

-until recently. There is a disease called astigmatism

-of the conscience, and I have been

-sorely afflicted with that. I have always had

-the delusion, until the last few months, that it

-is well to "do" others. In that way I certainly

-was "pipes." And in another way, too, I was

-insane. After a man has served many years

-in stir and has contracted all the vices, he is

-not normal, even if he is not violently insane.

-His brain loses its equilibrium, no matter how

-strong-minded he may be, and he acquires

-astigmatism of the mind, as well as of the conscience.

-The more astigmatic he becomes,

-the more frequently he returns to stir, where

-his disease grows worse, until he is prison-mad.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-To the best of my knowledge and belief I

-was not insane in any definite way&mdash;no more

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_310' name='Page_310'>[310]</a></span>

-so than are nine out of ten of the men who had

-served as much time in prison as I. I suppose

-I was not sent to the criminal insane asylum

-because of a perverted conscience. The stir,

-I believe, is supposed to cure that. Why did

-they send me to the mad-house? I don't

-know, any more than my reader, unless it was

-because I caused the keepers and doctors too

-much trouble, or because for some reason or

-other they wanted to do me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But whether I had a delusion or not&mdash;and I

-am convinced myself that I have always been

-right above the ears&mdash;there certainly are many

-perfectly sane men confined in our state

-asylums for the criminal insane. Indeed, if all

-the fake lunatics were sent back to prison, it

-would save the state the expense of building

-so many hospitals. But I suppose the politicians

-who want patronage to distribute would

-object.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Many men in prison fake insanity, as I have

-already explained. Many of them desire to

-be sent to Matteawan or Dannemora insane

-asylums, thinking they will not need to work

-there, will have better food and can more

-easily escape. They imagine that there are

-no stool-pigeons in the pipe-house, and that

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_311' name='Page_311'>[311]</a></span>

-they can therefore easily make their elegant

-(escape). When they get to the mad-house

-they find themselves sadly mistaken. They

-find many sane stool-pigeons there, and their

-plans for escape are piped off as well there as

-in stir. And in other ways, as I shall explain,

-they are disappointed. The reason the "cons"

-don't get on to the situation in the mad-house

-through friends who have been there is that

-they think those who have been in the insane

-asylum are really pipes. When I got out of

-the mad-house and told my friends about it,

-they were apt to remark, laconically, "He's in

-a terrible state." When they get there themselves,

-God help them. I will narrate what happened

-to me, and some of the horrible things

-I saw there.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After my pedigree was taken I was given

-the regulation clothes, which, in the mad-house,

-consist of a blue coat, a pair of grey trousers,

-a calico shirt, socks and a pair of slippers. I

-was then taken to the worst violent ward in

-the institution, where I had a good chance to

-observe the real and the fake lunatics. No

-man or woman, not even an habitual criminal,

-can conceive, unless he has been there himself,

-what our state asylums are. My very

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_312' name='Page_312'>[312]</a></span>

-first experience was a jar. A big lunatic, six

-feet high and a giant in physique, came up to

-me in the ward, and said: "I'll kick your

-head off, you ijit (idiot). What the &mdash;&mdash; did

-you come here for? Why didn't you stop off

-at Buffalo?" I thought that if all the loons

-were the size of this one I wasn't going to have

-much show in that violent ward; for I weighed

-only one hundred and fifteen pounds at the

-time. But the big lunatic changed his note,

-smiled and said: "Say, Charley, have you

-got any marbles?" I said, "No," and then,

-quick as a flash, he exclaimed: "Be Japes,

-you don't look as if you had enough brains to

-play them."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I had been in this ward, which was under

-the Head Attendant, nick-named "King"

-Kelly, for two days, when I was taken away to

-a dark room in which a demented, scrofulous

-negro had been kept. For me not even a

-change of bed-clothing was made. In rooms

-on each side of me were epileptics and I could

-hear, especially when I was in the ward, raving

-maniacs shouting all about me. I was taken

-back to the first ward, where I stayed for some

-time. I began to think that prison was heaven

-in comparison with the pipe house. The food

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_313' name='Page_313'>[313]</a></span>

-was poor, we were not supposed to do any

-work, and we were allowed only an hour in the

-yard. We stayed in our ward from half past

-five in the morning until six o'clock at night,

-when we went to bed. It was then I suffered

-most, for there was no light and I could not

-read. In stir I could lie on my cot and read,

-and soothe my nerves. But in the mad-house

-I was not allowed to read, and lay awake

-continually at night listening to the idiots

-bleating and the maniacs raving about me.

-The din was horrible, and I am convinced that

-in the course of time even a sane man kept in

-an insane asylum will be mad; those who are

-a little delusional will go violently insane. My

-three years in an insane asylum convinced me

-that, beyond doubt, a man contracts a mental

-ailment just as he contracts a physical disease

-on the outside. I believe in mental as well as

-physical contagion, for I have seen man after

-man, a short time after arriving at the hospital,

-become a raving maniac.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For weeks and months I had a terrible fight

-with myself to keep my sanity. As I had no

-books to take up my thoughts I got into the

-habit of solving an arithmetical problem every

-day. If it had not been for my persistence in

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_314' name='Page_314'>[314]</a></span>

-this mental occupation I have no doubt I should

-have gone violently insane.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It is only the sensitive and intelligent man

-who, when placed in such a predicament, really

-knows what torture is. The cries of the poor

-demented wretches about me were a terrible

-lesson. They showed me more than any other

-experience I ever passed through the error of

-a crooked life.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I met many a man in the violent ward who

-had been a friend of mine and good fellow on

-the outside. Now the brains of all of them were

-gone, they had the most horrible and the most

-grotesque delusions. But horrible or grotesque

-they were always piteous. If I were to point

-out the greatest achievement that man has

-accomplished to distinguish him from the

-brute, it would be the taking care of the insane.

-A child is so helpless that when alms is asked

-for his maintenance it is given willingly, for

-every man and woman pities and loves a child.

-A lunatic is as helpless as a child, and often

-not any more dangerous. The maniac is misrepresented,

-for in Matteawan and Dannemora

-taken together there are very few who

-are really violent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And now I come to the most terrible part of

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_315' name='Page_315'>[315]</a></span>

-my narrative, which many people will not believe&mdash;and

-that is the cruelty of the doctors

-and attendants, cruelty practiced upon these

-poor, deluded wretches.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-With my own eyes I saw scores of instances

-of abuse while I was at Matteawan and later

-at Dannemora. It is, I believe, against the

-law to strike an insane man, but any man who

-has ever been in these asylums knows how

-habitual the practice is. I have often seen

-idiots in the same ward with myself violently

-attacked and beaten by several keepers at

-once. Indeed, some of us used to regard a

-beating as our daily medicine. Patients are

-not supposed to do any work; but those who

-refused to clean up the wards and do other

-work for the attendants were the ones most

-likely to receive little mercy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I know how difficult it is for the public to

-believe that some of their institutions are as

-rotten as those of the Middle Ages; and when

-a man who has been both in prison and in the

-pipe house is the one who makes the accusation,

-who will believe him? Of course, his

-testimony on the witness stand is worthless.

-I will merely call attention, however, to the

-fact that the great majority of the insane are

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_316' name='Page_316'>[316]</a></span>

-so only in one way. They have some delusion,

-but are otherwise capable of observation

-and of telling the truth. I will also add that

-the editor of this book collected an immense

-number of instances of brutality from several

-men, besides myself, who had spent years

-there, and that those instances also pointed to

-the situation that I describe. Moreover, I can

-quote the opinion of the writer on criminology&mdash;Josiah

-Flynt&mdash;as corroborative of my statements.

-He has said in my presence and in

-that of the editor of this book, Mr. Hapgood,

-that his researches have led him to believe

-that the situation in our state asylums for the

-criminal insane is horrible in the extreme.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be

-brutal? In the first place, there is very little

-chance of a come-back, for who will believe

-men who have ever been shut up in an insane

-asylum? And very often these attendants

-themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin

-with, they are men of low intelligence, as is

-shown by the fact that they will work for

-eighteen dollars a month, and after they have

-associated with insane men for years they are

-apt to become delusional themselves. Taking

-care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_317' name='Page_317'>[317]</a></span>

-intelligence of the best men. Is it any wonder

-that the ordinary attendant often becomes

-nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor

-idiot who won't do dirty work or whose silly

-noises get on his nerves? I have noticed

-attendants who, after they had been in the

-asylum a few months, acquired certain insane

-characteristics, such as a jerking of the head

-from one side to the other, looking up at the

-sky, cursing some imaginary person, and walking

-with the body bent almost double.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something

-that made me realize I was up against a

-hard joint. An attendant in the isolation

-ward had an incurable patient under him,

-whom he was in the habit of compelling to

-do his work for him, such as caning chairs

-and cleaning cuspidors. The attendants had

-two birds in his room, and he used to make

-Mickey, the incurable idiot, clean out the cage

-for him. One day Mickey put the cages

-under the boiling water, to clean them as

-usual. The attendant had forgot to remove

-the birds, and they were killed by the hot

-water. Another crank, who was in the bath

-room with Mickey, spied the dead pets, and

-he and Mickey began to eat them. They

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_318' name='Page_318'>[318]</a></span>

-were picking the bones when the attendant

-and two others discovered them&mdash;and treated

-them as a golfer treats his golf-balls.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Another time I saw an insane epileptic

-patient try to prevent four attendants from

-playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He

-was delusional on religious subjects and

-thought the attendants were doing wrong.

-The reward he received for caring for the

-religious welfare of his keepers was a kick in

-the stomach by one of the attendants, while

-another hit him in the solar plexus, knocking

-him down, and a third jammed his head on the

-floor until the blood flowed. After he was

-unconscious a doctor gave him a hyperdermic

-injection and he was put to bed. How often,

-indeed, have I seen men knocked out by

-strong arm work, or strung up to the ceiling

-with a pair of suspenders! How often have

-I seen them knocked unconscious for a time

-or for eternity&mdash;yes&mdash;for eternity, for insane

-men sometimes do die, if they are treated too

-brutally. In that case, the doctor reports

-the patient as having died of consumption, or

-some other disease. I have seen insane men

-turned into incurable idiots by the beatings

-they have received from the attendants. I

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_319' name='Page_319'>[319]</a></span>

-saw an idiot boy knocked down with an iron

-pot because he insisted on chirping out his

-delusion. I heard a patient about to be

-beaten by four attendants cry out: "My God,

-you won't murder me?" and the answer was,

-"Why not? The Coroner would say you

-died of dysentery." The attendants tried

-often to force fear into me by making me

-look at the work they had done on some

-harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances

-of this kind. I could give scores of them,

-with names of attendants and patients, and

-sometimes even the dates on which these

-horrors occurred. But I must cut short this

-part of my narrative. Every word of it, as

-sure as I have a poor old mother, is true, but

-it is too terrible to dwell upon, and will

-probably not be believed. It will be put

-down as one of my delusions, or as a lie

-inspired by the desire of vengeance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the

-authorities in the insane asylum, for I objected

-vigorously to the treatment of men really

-insane. It is as dangerous to object to the

-curriculum of a mad-house in the State of New

-York as it is to find fault with the running of

-the government in Russia. In stir I never

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_320' name='Page_320'>[320]</a></span>

-saw such brutality as takes place almost every

-day in the pipe house. I reported what I saw,

-and though I was plainly told to mind my own

-business, I continued to object every time I

-saw a chance, until soon the petty spite of the

-attendants was turned against me. I was reported

-continually for things I had not done,

-I had no privileges, not even opium or books,

-and was so miserable that I repeatedly tried

-to be transferred back to prison. A doctor

-once wrote a book called <i>Ten Years in a Mad-House</i>,

-in which he says "God help the man

-who has the attendants against him; for these

-demented brutes will make his life a living

-hell." Try as I might, however, I was not

-transferred back to stir, partly because of the

-sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry

-favor with the attendants, invented lies about

-attempts on my part to escape. If I had not

-had such a poor opinion of the powers that be

-and had stopped finding fault I should no

-doubt have been transferred back to what was

-beginning to seem to me, by contrast, a

-delightful place&mdash;state's prison.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe

-house was paresis. I thought a great deal

-about it, and observed the cranks about me

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_321' name='Page_321'>[321]</a></span>

-continually. I noticed that almost all insane

-persons are musical, that they can hum a tune

-after hearing it only once. I suppose the

-meanest faculty in the human brain is that of

-memory, and that idiots, lunatics and madmen

-learn music so easily because that part of

-the brain which is the seat of memory is the

-only one that is active; the other intellectual

-qualities being dead, so that the memory is untroubled

-by thought.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I was often saddened at the sight of poor

-George, who had been a good dip and an old

-pal of mine. When he first saw me in the

-pipe house he asked me about his girl. I

-told him she was still waiting, and he said:

-"Why doesn't she visit me then?" When

-I replied: "Wait awhile," he smiled sadly,

-and said: "I know." He then put his finger

-to his head, and, hanging his head, his face

-suddenly became a blank. I was helpless to

-do anything for him. I was so sorry for him

-sometimes that I wanted to kill him and myself

-and end our misery.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Another friend of mine thought he had a

-number of white blackbirds and used to talk

-to them excitedly about gold. This man had

-a finely shaped head. I have read in a book

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_322' name='Page_322'>[322]</a></span>

-of phrenology that a man's intelligence can be

-estimated by the shape of his head. I don't

-think this theory amounts to anything, for

-most of the insane men I knew had good

-heads. I have formed a little theory of my

-own (I am as good a quack as anybody else)

-about insanity. I used to compare a well

-shaped lunatic's head to a lady's beautiful

-jewel box from which my lady's maid had

-stolen the precious stones. The crank's head

-contained both quantity and quality of brains,

-but the grey matter was lacking. The jewel

-box and the lunatic's head were both beautiful

-receptacles, but the value had flown.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Another lunatic, a man named Hogan,

-thought that girls were continually bothering

-him. "Now go away, Liz, and leave me

-alone," he would say. One day a lady about

-fifty years old visited the hospital with

-Superintendent Allison, and came to the violent

-ward where Hogan and I were. She was not

-a bit afraid, and went right up to Hogan and

-questioned him. He exclaimed, excitedly,

-"Go away, Meg. You're disfigured enough

-without my giving you another sockdolager."

-She stayed in the ward a long while and asked

-many questions. She had as much nerve as

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_323' name='Page_323'>[323]</a></span>

-any lady I ever saw. As she and Allison

-were leaving the ward, Hogan said: "Allison,

-chain her up. She is a bad egg." The next

-day I learned that this refined, delicate and

-courageous woman had once gone to war with

-her husband, a German prince, who had been

-with General Sherman on his memorable

-march to the sea. She was born an American,

-and belonged to the Jay family, but was now

-the Princess Salm-Salm.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The most amusing crank (if the word

-amusing can be used of an insane man) in the

-ward was an Englishman named Alec. He

-was incurably insane, but a good musician and

-mathematician. One of his delusions was that

-he was the sacred camel in the London Zoo.

-His mortal enemy was a lunatic named Jimmy

-White, who thought he was a mule. Jimmy

-often came to me and said: "You didn't give

-your mule any oats this morning." He would

-not be satisfied until I pretended to shoe him.

-Alec had great resentment for Jimmy because

-when Alec was a camel in the London Zoo

-Jimmy used to prevent the ladies and the kids

-from giving him sweets. When Jimmy said:

-"I never saw the man before," Alec replied

-indignantly, "I'm no man. I'm a sacred camel,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_324' name='Page_324'>[324]</a></span>

-and I won't be interfered with by an ordinary,

-common mule, like you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There are divers sorts of insanity. I had

-an interview with a doctor, a high officer in

-the institution, which convinced me, perhaps

-without reason, that insanity was not limited

-to the patients and attendants. One day an

-insane man was struck by an attendant in the

-solar plexus. He threw his hands up in the

-air, and cried: "My God, I'm killed." I said

-to another man in the ward: "There's murder."

-He said: "How do you know?" I

-replied: "I have seen death a few times."

-In an hour, sure enough, the report came that

-the insane man was dead. A few days later I

-was talking with the doctor referred to and I

-said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I was an eye-witness of the assault on

-D&mdash;&mdash;." And I described the affair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You have been reported to me repeatedly,"

-he replied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"By whom?" I asked, "attendants or

-patients?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"By patients," he replied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Surely," I remarked, "you don't believe

-half what insane men tell you, do you? Doctor,

-these same patients (in reality sane stool-pigeons)

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_325' name='Page_325'>[325]</a></span>

-that have been reporting me, have

-accused you of every crime in the calendar."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Oh, but," he said, "I am an old man and

-the father of a family."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Doctor," I continued, "do you believe

-that a man can be a respectable physician and

-still be insane?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What do you mean?" he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"In California lately," I replied, "A superintendent

-of an insane asylum has been accused

-of murder, arson, rape and peculation. This

-man, too, was more than fifty, had a mother,

-a wife and children, and belonged to a profession

-which ought to be more sympathetic with

-a patient than the church with its communicants.

-When a man will stoop to such crimes,

-is it not possible that there is a form of mental

-disease called partial, periodical paralysis of

-the faculty humane, and was not Robert Louis

-Stevenson right when he wrote <i>Dr. Jekyl and

-Mr. Hyde</i>?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and

-shouted: "Don't you dare to tell anybody

-about this interview." I looked into his eyes

-and smiled, for I am positive that at that

-moment I looked into the eyes of a madman.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-King Kelly, an attendant who had been on

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_326' name='Page_326'>[326]</a></span>

-duty in insane asylums for many years, was

-very energetic in trying to get information

-from the stool-pigeons. The patients used to

-pass notes around among themselves, and the

-attendants were always eager to get hold of

-those notes, expecting to find news of beats

-(escapes) about to be attempted. I knew

-that King Kelly was eager to discover "beats"

-and as I, not being a stool-pigeon, was in bad

-odor with him, I determined to give him a jar.

-So one day I wrote him the following note:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mr. Kelly; You have been in this hospital

-for years. The socks and suspenders

-which should go to the patients are divided

-impartially between you and the other attendants.

-Of the four razors, which lately arrived

-for patients, two are in your trunk, one you

-sent to your brother in Ireland, and the fourth

-you keep in the ward for show, in case the

-doctor should be coming around."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That night when I was going to bed I

-slipped the note into the Kings hand and

-whispered: "There's going to be a beat tonight."

-The King turned pale, and hurriedly

-ordered the men in the ward to bed, so that

-he could read the note. Before reading it he

-handed it to a doctor, to be sure to get the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_327' name='Page_327'>[327]</a></span>

-credit of stopping the beat as soon as possible.

-The doctor read it and gave the King the

-laugh. In the morning, when the doctor made

-his rounds, Mr. Kelly said to him: "We

-have one or two funny men in the ward who,

-instead of robbing decent people, could have

-made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's." The

-result was that the doctor put me down for

-three or four new delusions. Knowing the

-Celtic character thoroughly I used to crack

-many a joke on the King. I would say to

-another patient, as the King passed: "If it

-hadn't been for Kelly we should have escaped

-that time sure." That would make him wild.

-My gift of ridicule was more than once valuable

-to me in the mad-house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But I must say that the King was pretty

-kind when a patient was ill. When I was so

-ill and weak that I didn't care whether I died

-or not, the old King used to give me extras,&mdash;milk,

-eggs and puddings. And in his heart

-the old man hated stool-pigeons, for by nature

-he was a dynamiter and believed in physical

-force and not mental treachery.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The last few months I served in the insane

-asylum was at Dannemora, where I was transferred

-from Matteawan. The conditions at

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_328' name='Page_328'>[328]</a></span>

-the two asylums are much the same. While

-at Dannemora I continued my efforts to be

-sent back to stir to finish my sentence, and

-used to talk to the doctors about it as often as

-I had an opportunity. A few months before

-I was released I had an interview with a Commissioner&mdash;the

-first one in three years, although

-I had repeatedly demanded to talk to one.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How is it," I said, "that I am not sent

-back to stir?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He turned to the ward doctor and asked:

-"What is this mans condition?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Imaginary wrongs," replied the doctor.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That made me angry, and I remarked,

-sarcastically: "It is curious that when a man

-tries to make a success at little things he is a

-dead failure."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What do you mean?" asked the Superintendent,

-trying to feel me out for a new delusion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I pointed to the doctor and said: "Only

-a few years ago this man was interlocutor in

-an amateur minstrel troupe. As a barn-stormer

-he was a failure. Since he has risen to the

-height of being a mad-house doctor he is a

-success."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Then I turned to the Commissioner and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_329' name='Page_329'>[329]</a></span>

-said: "Do you know what constitutes a cure

-in this place and in Matteawan?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'd like to know," he replied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well," I said, "when a man stoops to

-carrying tales on other patients and starts in

-to work cleaning cuspidors, then, and not till

-then, he is cured. Everybody knows that, in

-the eyes of attendants and doctors, the worst

-delusions in the asylum are wanting to go

-home, demanding more food, and disliking to

-do dirty work and bear tales."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I don't know whether my talk with the

-Commissioner had any effect or not, but a

-little while after that, when my term expired,

-I was released. I had been afraid I should

-not be, for very often a man is kept in the

-asylum long after his term expires, even

-though he is no more insane than I was. When

-the stool-pigeons heard that I was to be released

-they thought I must have been a rat under

-cover, and applied every vile name to me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I had been in hell for several years; but

-even hell has its uses. When I was sent up

-for my third term, I thought I should not live

-my bit out, and that, as long as I did live, I

-should remain a grafter at heart. But the

-pipe house cured me, or helped to cure me, of

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_330' name='Page_330'>[330]</a></span>

-a vice which, if it had continued, would have

-made me incapable of reform, even if I had

-lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I

-went to the mad-house there had been periods

-when I had little opium, either because I could

-not obtain it, or because I was trying to

-knock it off. My sufferings in consequence

-had been violent, but the worst moral and

-physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot

-came to me after I had entered the pipe

-house; for I could practically get no opium.

-That deprivation, added to the horrors I saw

-every day, was enough to make any man

-crazy. At least, I thought so at the time. I

-must have had a good nervous system to have

-passed through it all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at

-all. During my first months in the madhouse,

-the doctor occasionally took pity on

-me and gave me a little of the drug, but taken

-in such small quantities it was worse than useless.

-He used to give me sedatives, however,

-which calmed me for a time. Occasionally,

-too, I would get a little hop from a trusty,

-who was a friend of mine, and I had smuggled

-in some tablets of morphine from stir; but the

-supply was soon exhausted, and I saw that the

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_331' name='Page_331'>[331]</a></span>

-only thing to do was to knock it off entirely.

-This I did, and made no more attempts to

-obtain the drug. For the last two years in

-the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can

-not describe the agonies I went through.

-Every nerve and muscle in my body was in

-pain most of the time, my stomach was constantly

-deranged, my eyes and mouth exuded

-water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of

-suicide were constant with me. Of course, I

-could never have given up this baleful habit

-through my own efforts alone. The pipe house

-forced me to make the attempt, and after I

-had held off for two years, I had enough

-strength to continue in the right path, although

-even now the longing for it returns to me. It

-does not seem possible that I can ever go

-back to it, for that terrible experience in the

-mad-house made an indelible impression. I

-shall never be able to wipe out those horrors

-entirely from my mind. When under the influence

-of opium I used frequently to imagine

-I smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I

-never smell certain sweet perfumes now without

-the whole horrible experience rushing

-before my mind. Life in a mad-house taught

-me a lesson I shall never forget.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_332' name='Page_332'>[332]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-CHAPTER XIV.<br />

-<i>Out of Hell.</i>

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-I left Dannemora asylum for the criminal

-insane on a cold winter morning. I had my

-tickets to New York, but not a cent of money.

-Relatives or friends are supposed to provide

-that. I was happy, however, and I made a

-resolution, which this time I shall keep, never

-to go to stir or the pipe house again. I knew

-very well that I could never repeat such an

-experience without going mad in reality; or

-dying. The first term I spent in stir I had

-my books and a new life of beauty and

-thought to think about. Once for all I had

-had that experience. The thought of going

-through prison routine again&mdash;the damp cells,

-the poor food, the habits contracted, with the

-mad-house at the end&mdash;no, that could never

-be for me again. I felt this, as I heard the

-loons yelling good-bye to me from the windows.

-I looked at the gloomy building and

-said to myself: "I have left Hell, and I'll

-shovel coal before I go back. All the ideas

-that brought me here I will leave behind. In

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_333' name='Page_333'>[333]</a></span>

-the future I will try to get all the good things

-out of life that I can&mdash;the really good things,

-a glimpse of which I got through my books.

-I think there is still sufficient grey matter in

-my brain for that."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I took the train for New York, but stopped

-off at Plattsburg and Albany to deliver some

-messages from the poor unfortunates to their

-relatives. I arrived in New York at twelve

-o'clock at night, having had nothing to eat all

-day. My relatives and friends had left the

-station, but were waiting up for me in my

-brother's house. This time I went straight to

-them. My father had died while I was in the

-pipe house, and now I determined that I

-would be at last a kind son to the mother who

-had never deserted me. I think she felt that

-I had changed and the tears that flowed from

-her eyes were not all from unhappiness. She

-told me about my father's last illness, and how

-cheerful he had been. "I bought him a pair

-of new shoes a month before he died," she

-said. "He laughed when he saw them and

-said: 'What extravagance! To buy shoes

-for a dying man!'"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Living right among them, I met again, of

-course, many of my old companions in crime,

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_334' name='Page_334'>[334]</a></span>

-and found that many of them had thought I

-was dead. It was only the other day that I

-met "Al", driving a peddlers wagon. He,

-like me, had squared it. "I thought you died

-in the pipe house, Jim," he said. This has

-happened to me a dozen times since my return.

-I had spent so much time in stir that the general

-impression among the guns at home

-seemed to be that I had "gone up the escape."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As a general thing I found that guns who

-had squared it and become prosperous had

-never been very successful grafters. Some of

-the best box-men and burglars in the business

-are now bar-tenders in saloons owned by

-former small fry among the dips. There are

-waiters now in saloons and concert halls on

-the bowery who were far cleverer thieves than

-the men who employ them, and who are worth

-thousands. Hungry Joe is an instance.

-Once he was King of confidence men, and on

-account of his great plausibility got in on a

-noted person, on one occasion, for several

-thousand dollars. And now he will beg many

-a favor of men he would not look at in the

-old days.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive.

-I had always known that, but never

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_335' name='Page_335'>[335]</a></span>

-realized it so keenly as I have since my return

-from the mad-house. Above everything else

-a grafter is suspicious, whether he has squared

-it or not&mdash;suspicious of his pals and of everybody

-else. When my old pals saw that I was

-not working with them, they wondered what

-my private graft was. When I told them I

-was on the level and was looking for a job,

-they either laughed or looked at me with

-suspicion in their eyes. They saw I was looking

-good (well-dressed) and they could not

-understand it. They put me down, some of

-them, as a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively

-that I am no longer with them, and

-most of them have given me the frosty mit.

-Only the bums who used to be grafters sail up

-to me in the Bowery. They have not got

-enough sense left even for suspicion. The

-dips who hang out in the thieves' resorts are

-beginning to hate me; not because I want to

-injure them, for I don't, but because they

-think I do. I told one of them, an old friend,

-that I was engaged in some literary work.

-He was angry in an instant and said: "You

-door mat thief. You couldn't get away with

-a coal-scuttle."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One day I was taking the editor of this book

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_336' name='Page_336'>[336]</a></span>

-through the Bowery, pointing out to him some

-of my old resorts, when I met an old pal of

-mine, who gave me the glad hand. We had a

-drink, and I, who was feeling good, started in

-to jolly him a little. He had told me about

-an old pal of ours who had just fallen for a

-book and was confined in a Brooklyn jail. I

-took out a piece of "copy" paper and took

-the address, intending to pay a visit to him, for

-everybody wants sympathy. What a look

-went over that grafter's face! I saw him

-glance quickly at the editor and then at me,

-and I knew then he had taken alarm, and

-probably thought we were Pinkerton men, or

-something as bad. I tried to carry it off with

-a laugh, for the place was full of thieves, and

-told him I would get him a job on a newspaper.

-He answered hastily that he had a

-good job in the pool-room and was on the

-level. He started in to try to square it with

-my companion by saying that he "adored a

-man who had a job." A little while afterwards

-he added that he hated anybody who would

-graft after he had got an honest job. Then,

-to wind up his little game of squaring himself,

-he ended by declaring that he had recently

-obtained a very good position.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_337' name='Page_337'>[337]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was one of the incidents that queered

-me with the more intelligent thieves. He

-spread the news, and whenever I meet one of

-that gang on the Bowery I get the cold

-shoulder, a gun is so mighty quick to grow

-suspicious. A grafter who follows the business

-for years is a study in psychology, and his

-two most prominent characteristics are fear

-and suspicion. If some stool-pigeon tips him

-off to the police, and he is sent to stir, he invariably

-suspects the wrong person. He tells

-his friends in stir that "Al done him," and

-pretty soon poor Al, who may be an honest

-thief, is put down as a rat. If Al goes to stir

-very often the result is a cutting match between

-the two.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There are many convicts in prison who lie

-awake at night concocting stories about other

-persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions.

-If the prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper

-he invariably reads the society news

-very carefully. He can tell more about the

-Four Hundred than the swells will ever know

-about themselves; and he tells very little good

-of them. Such stories are fabricated in prison

-and repeated out of it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When I was in Auburn stir I knew a young

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_338' name='Page_338'>[338]</a></span>

-fellow named Sterling, as straight a thief as

-ever did time. He had the courage of a

-grenadier and objected to everything that was

-mean and petty. He therefore had many

-enemies in prison, and they tried to make him

-unpopular by accusing him of a horrible crime.

-The story reached my ears and I tried to put

-a stop to it, but I only did him the more harm.

-When Sterling heard the tale he knocked one

-of his traducers senseless with an iron bar.

-Tongues wagged louder than ever and one

-day he came to me and talked about it and I

-saw a wild look in his eyes. His melancholia

-started in about that time, and he began to

-suspect everybody, including me. His enemies

-put the keepers against him and they made

-his life almost unbearable. Generally the men

-that tip off keepers to the alleged violent

-character of some convict are the worst stool-pigeons

-in the prison. Even the Messiah

-could not pass through this world without

-arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the

-name of common sense, then, could Sterling,

-or I, or any other grafter expect otherwise

-than to be traduced? It was the politicians

-who were the cause of Christ's trials; and the

-politicians are the same to-day as they were

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_339' name='Page_339'>[339]</a></span>

-then. They have very little brains, but they

-have the low cunning which is the first attribute

-of the human brute. They pretend to be

-the people's advisers, but pile up big bank

-accounts. Even the convict scum that come

-from the lower wards of the city have all the

-requisites of the successful politician. Nor

-can one say that these criminals are of low

-birth, for they trace their ancestors back for

-centuries. The fact that convicts slander one

-another with glee and hear with joy of the

-misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that they

-come from a very old family; from the wretched

-human stock that demanded the crucifixion of

-Christ.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something

-I should like to eliminate from my own character.

-Even now I am afflicted with it.

-Since my release I often have the old feeling

-come over me that I am being watched; and

-sometimes without any reason at all. Only

-recently I was riding on a Brooklyn car, when

-a man sitting opposite happened to glance at

-me two or three times. I gave him an irritated

-look. Then he stared at me, to see what

-was the matter, I suppose. That was too

-much, and I asked him, with my nerves on

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_340' name='Page_340'>[340]</a></span>

-edge, if he had ever seen me before. He said

-"No", with a surprised look, and I felt cheap,

-as I always do after such an incident. A

-neighbor of mine has a peculiar habit of

-watching me quietly whenever I visit his

-family. I know that he is ignorant of my

-past but when he stares at me, I am rattled.

-I begin to suspect that he is studying me,

-wondering who I am. The other day I said

-to him, irritably: "Mr. K&mdash;&mdash;, you have a

-bad habit of watching people." He laughed

-carelessly and I, getting hot, said: "Mr.

-K&mdash;&mdash; when I visit people it is not with the

-intention of stealing anything." I left the

-house in a huff and his sister, as I afterwards

-found, rebuked him for his bad manners.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being

-over suspicious. I am suspicious even of my

-family. Sometimes when I sit quietly at

-home with my mother in the evening, as has

-grown to be a habit with me, I see her look at

-me. I begin immediately to think that she is

-wondering whether I am grafting again. It

-makes me very nervous, and I sometimes put

-on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be

-alone. One day, when I was in stir, my

-mother visited me, as she always did when they

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_341' name='Page_341'>[341]</a></span>

-gave her a chance. In the course of our conversation

-she told me that on my release I

-had better leave the city and go to some place

-where I was not known. "For," she said,

-"your character, my boy, is bad." I

-grabbed her by the arm and exclaimed:

-"Who is it that is circulating these d&mdash;&mdash; stories

-about me?" My poor mother merely

-meant, of course, that I was known as a thief,

-but I thought some of the other convicts had

-slandered me to her. It was absurd, of

-course, but the outside world cannot understand

-how suspicious a grafter is. I have

-often seen a man, who afterwards became

-insane, begin being queer through suspiciousness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious

-of me, when I told them I had squared

-it, or when I refused to say anything about

-my doings. Of course I don't care, for I hate

-the Bowery now and everything in it. Whenever

-I went, as I did several times with my

-editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust

-passed over me. I pity my old pals, but they

-no longer interest me. I look upon them as

-failures. I have seen a new light and I shall

-follow it. Whatever the public may think of

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_342' name='Page_342'>[342]</a></span>

-this book, it has already been a blessing to

-me. For it has been honest work that I and

-my friend the editor have done together, and

-leads me to think that there may yet be a new

-life for me. I feel now that I should prefer to

-talk and associate with the meanest workingman

-in this city than with the swellest thief.

-For a long time I have really despised myself.

-When old friends and relatives look at me

-askance I say to myself: "How can I prove

-to them that I am not the same as I was in

-the past?" No wonder the authorities thought

-I was mad. I have spent the best years of

-my life behind the prison bars. I could have

-made out of myself almost anything I wanted,

-for I had the three requisites of success: personal

-appearance, health and, I think, some

-brains. But what have I done? After ruining

-my life, I have not even received the proverbial

-mess of pottage. As I look back upon

-my life both introspectively and retrospectively

-I do not wonder that society at large

-despises the criminal.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I am not trying to point a moral or pose as

-a reformer. I cannot say that I quit the old

-life because of any religious feeling. I am

-not one of those who have reformed by finding

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_343' name='Page_343'>[343]</a></span>

-Jesus at the end of a gas pipe which they

-were about to use as a black jack on a citizen,

-just in order to finger his long green. I only

-saw by painful experience that there is nothing

-in a life of crime. I ran up against society,

-and found that I had struck something

-stronger and harder than a stone wall. But it

-was not that alone that made me reform.

-What was it? Was it the terrible years I

-spent in prison? Was it the confinement in a

-mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine

-become drivelling idiots? Was it my reading

-of the great authors, and my becoming

-acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the

-great men of the world? Was it a combination

-of these things? Perhaps so, but even

-that does not entirely explain it, does not go

-deep enough. I have said that I am not religious,

-and I am not. And yet I have experienced

-something indefinable, which I suppose

-some people might call an awakening of the

-soul. What is that, after all, but the realization

-that your way of life is ruining you even

-to the very foundation of your nature?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking

-in religion; for certainly the character of

-Christ strongly appeals to me. I don't care

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_344' name='Page_344'>[344]</a></span>

-for creeds, but the personality of the Nazarene,

-when stripped of the aroma of divinity,

-appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether

-they are atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any

-man that has understanding reveres the life of

-Christ, for He practiced what He preached

-and died for humanity. He was a perfect

-specimen of manhood, and had developed to

-the highest degree that trait which is lacking

-in most all men&mdash;the faculty humane.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I believe that a time comes in the lives of

-many grafters when they desire to reform.

-Some do reform for good and all, and I shall

-show the world that I am one of them; but

-the difficulties in the way are great, and many

-fall again by the wayside.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They come out of prison marked men.

-Many observers can tell an ex-convict on sight.

-The lock-step is one of the causes. It gives a

-man a peculiar gait which he will retain all

-his life. The convicts march close together

-and cannot raise their chests. They have to

-keep their faces turned towards the screw.

-Breathing is difficult, and most convicts suffer

-in consequence from catarrh, and a good

-many from lung trouble. Walking in lock-step

-is not good exercise, and makes the men

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_345' name='Page_345'>[345]</a></span>

-nervous. When the convict is confined in his

-cell he paces up and down. The short turn

-is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his

-mind. That short walk will always have control

-of me. I cannot sit down now to eat or

-write, without jumping up every five minutes

-in order to take that short walk. I have

-become so used to it that I do not want to

-leave the house, for I can pace up and down

-in my room. I can take that small stretch all

-day long and not be tired, but if I walk a long

-straight distance I get very much fatigued.

-When I wait for a train I always begin that

-short walk on the platform. I have often

-caught myself walking just seven feet one way,

-and then turning around and walking seven

-feet in the opposite direction. Another physical

-mark, caused by a criminal life rather than

-by a long sojourn in stir, is an expressionless

-cast of countenance. The old grafter never

-expresses any emotions. He has schooled

-himself until his face is a mask, which betrays

-nothing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A much more serious difficulty in the way

-of reform is the ex-convict's health which is

-always bad if a long term of years has been

-served. Moreover, his brain has often lost its

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_346' name='Page_346'>[346]</a></span>

-equilibrium and powers of discernment. When

-he gets out of prison his chance of being able

-to do any useful work is slight. He knows

-no trade, and he is not strong enough to do

-hard day labor. He is given only ten dollars,

-when he leaves stir, with which to begin life

-afresh. A man who has served a long term

-is not steady above the ears until he has been

-at liberty several months; and what can such

-a man do with ten dollars? It would be

-cheaper for the state in the end to give an

-ex-convict money enough to keep him for several

-months; for then a smaller percentage

-would return to stir. It would give the man

-a chance to make friends, to look for a job,

-and to show the world that he is in earnest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A criminal who is trying to reform is generally

-a very helpless being. He was not, to

-begin with, the strongest man mentally, and

-after confinement is still less so. He is preoccupied,

-suspicious and a dreamer, and when

-he gets a glimpse of himself in all his naked

-realities, is apt to become depressed and discouraged.

-He is easily led, and certainly no

-man needs a good friend as much as the ex-convict.

-He is distrusted by everybody, is

-apt to be "piped off" wherever he goes, and

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_347' name='Page_347'>[347]</a></span>

-finds it hard to get work which he can do.

-There are hundreds of men in our prisons to-day

-who, if they could find somebody who

-would trust them and take a genuine interest

-in them, would reform and become respectable

-citizens. That is where the Tammany

-politician, whom I have called Senator Wet

-Coin is a better man than the majority of

-reformers. When a man goes to him and says

-he wants to square it he takes him by the

-hand, trusts and helps him. Wet Coin does

-not hand him a soup ticket and a tract nor

-does he hold on tight to his own watch chain

-fearing for his red super, hastily bidding the

-ex-gun to be with Jesus.

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_348' name='Page_348'>[348]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<h2>

-EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT.

-</h2>

-

-<p>

-The life of the thief is at an end; and the

-life of the man and good citizen has begun.

-For I am convinced that Jim is strictly on the

-level, and will remain so. The only thing yet

-lacking to make his reform sure is a job. I,

-and those of my friends who are interested,

-have as yet failed to find anything for him to

-do that is, under the circumstances, desirable.

-The story of my disappointments in this respect

-is a long one, and I shall not tell it. I

-have learned to think that patience is the

-greatest of the virtues; and of this virtue an

-ex-gun needs an enormous amount. If Jim

-and his friends prove good in this way, the job

-will come. But waiting is hard, for Jim is

-nervous, in bad health, with an old mother to

-look after, and with new ambitions which

-make keen his sense of time lost.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One word about his character: I sometimes

-think of my friend the ex-thief as "Light-fingered

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_349' name='Page_349'>[349]</a></span>

-Jim"; and in that name there lingers

-a note of vague apology. As he told his

-story to me, I saw everywhere the mark of

-the natural rogue, of the man grown with a

-roguish boy's brain. The humor of much of

-his tale seemed to me strong. I was never

-able to look upon him as a deliberate malefactor.

-He constantly impressed me as gentle

-and imaginative, impressionable and easily

-influenced, but not naturally vicious or vindictive.

-If I am right, his reform is nothing

-more or less than the coming to years of sober

-maturity. He is now thirty-five years old, and

-as he himself puts it: "Some men acquire wisdom

-at twenty-one, others at thirty-five, and

-some never."

-<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_350' name='Page_350'>[350]</a></span>

-</p>

-

-<div class="footnotes p6">

-<h2 class="fntitle">

-FOOTNOTES

-</h2>

-

-<p class='footnote' id='FN_A'>

-<span class='label'><a href='#FA_A'>[A]</a></span> Summer of 1902

-</p>

-

-<p class='footnote' id='FN_B'>

-<span class='label'><a href='#FA_B'>[B]</a></span> <i>Sic.</i> (Editor's Note.)

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class="widead p6">

-

-<p class="center b20">

-EVERYMAN

-</p>

-<hr class="l30" />

-

-<p class="b13">

-The XVth Century morality play, with

-reproductions of old wood cuts.

-$1.00, postage paid or at your bookseller's.

-The first book to bear the imprint of

-Fox, Duffield &amp; Company.

-</p>

-<hr class="l30" />

-

-<p>

-"In typography, in paper and in make-up the edition is admirable.

-It is a good beginning and sets a very high standard."

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-<i>The Sun, New York.</i>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The best of the old moralities, easy to read and fair to

-look upon."

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-<i>Evening Post, New York.</i>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The book is well done, and should find a place on the

-shelves and in the spirits of all who care for the best in life and

-art."

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">

-<span class='smcap'>John Corbin</span>, in

-</p>

-<p class="right"><i>The New York Times</i>.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Everyman" in book form will be welcomed by the large

-number of people whose attention has been called to this

-ancient morality play by its admirable presentation in different

-cities."

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-<i>The Outlook, New York.</i>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The first publication of (the new house) "Everyman," the

-fifteenth century morality play given in Boston this winter, is of

-artistic design and of handsome, agreeable type. The old woodcuts

-are reproduced from the first ancient edition of the play."

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-<i>Boston Journal.</i>

-</p>

-

-<hr class="l30" />

-

-<p class="center"><span class="b12">

-NEW YORK

-</span><br />

-

-<span class="b13">

-FOX, DUFFIELD &amp; COMPANY,

-</span><br />

-

-<span class="b12">

-36 East 21st Street.

-</span>

-</p>

-

-</div>

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

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+  </head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45169 ***</div>
+
+<div class="tnbox">
+<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original
+document have been preserved.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="386" height="600" alt="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>
+<i>The</i> Autobiography <i>of</i> a Thief.
+</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/title.jpg" width="339" height="550" alt="Title Page" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center b20 p6">
+<i>The</i> Autobiography <i>of</i><br />
+a Thief</p>
+
+<hr />
+<p class="center b12" >
+<i>Recorded by</i><br />
+<br />
+HUTCHINS HAPGOOD<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08"><i>Author of "The Spirit of the Ghetto," etc.</i></span></p>
+
+<hr />
+<p class="center b12">
+<i>NEW YORK</i><br />
+FOX, DUFFIELD &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1903
+</p>
+
+<p class="center b12 p6">
+Copyright, 1903, <span class='smcap'>By<br />
+Fox, Duffield &amp; Company</span>
+</p>
+<hr class="l15" />
+<p class="center">
+<i>Entered at the Library of Congress, Washington, U. S. A.</i>
+</p>
+<hr class="l15" />
+<p class="center">
+<i>Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.</i>
+</p>
+<hr class="l15" />
+<p class="center">
+
+<i>Published May, 1903.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p class="p6">
+"<i>Oh, happy he who can still hope to emerge from this
+sea of error!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class='smcap'>Faust.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+"<i>There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake,
+but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour,
+or the like; therefore why should I be angry with a
+man for loving himself better than me? And if any man
+should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but
+like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch because they
+can do no other.</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class='smcap'>Bacon.</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_7' name='Page_7'>[7]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CONTENTS.
+</h2>
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc"><span class='smcap s08'>Chapter</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class='smcap s08'>Page</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>Editor's Note</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>Boyhood and Early Crime</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>My First Fall</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>Mixed Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>When the Graft Was Good</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>What the Burglar Faces</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>In Stir</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>In Stir</span> (<span class='smcap'>Continued</span>)</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>In Stir and Out</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">X.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>At the Graft Again</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XI.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>Back to Prison</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XII.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>On the Outside Again</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XIII.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>In the Mad-House</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XIV.</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>Out of Hell</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_332">332</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span class='smcap'>Editor's Postscript</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_9' name='Page_9'>[9]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_8' name='Page_8'></a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+Editor's Note.
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+I met the ex-pickpocket and burglar whose
+autobiography follows soon after his release
+from a third term in the penitentiary. For
+several weeks I was not particularly interested
+in him. He was full of a desire to publish in
+the newspapers an exposé of conditions obtaining
+in two of our state institutions, his motive
+seeming partly revenge and partly a very genuine
+feeling that he had come in contact with
+a systematic crime against humanity. But as
+I continued to see more of him, and learned
+much about his life, my interest grew; for I
+soon perceived that he not only had led a
+typical thief's life, but was also a man of more
+than common natural intelligence, with a gift of
+vigorous expression. With little schooling he
+had yet educated himself, mainly by means of
+the prison libraries, until he had a good and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_10' name='Page_10'>[10]</a></span>
+individually expressed acquaintance with many
+of the English classics, and with some of the
+masterpieces of philosophy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That this ex-convict, when a boy on the
+East Side of New York City, should have
+taken to the "graft" seemed to me, as he
+talked about it, the most natural thing in the
+world. His parents were honest, but ignorant
+and poor. One of his brothers, a normal and
+honorable man, is a truck driver with a large
+family; and his relatives and honest friends in
+general belong to the most modest class of
+working people. The swell among them is
+another brother, who is a policeman; but Jim,
+the ex-convict, is by far the cleverest and most
+intelligent of the lot. I have often seen him
+and his family together, on Saturday nights,
+when the clan gathers in the truckman's house
+for a good time, and he is the life of the occasion,
+and admired by the others. Jim was an
+unusually energetic and ambitious boy, but
+the respectable people he knew did not appeal
+to his imagination. As he played on the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_11' name='Page_11'>[11]</a></span>
+street, other boys pointed out to him the swell
+thief at the corner saloon, and told him tales
+of big robberies and exciting adventures, and
+the prizes of life seemed to him to lie along
+the path of crime. There was no one to teach
+him what constitutes real success, and he went
+in for crime with energy and enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was only after he had become a professional
+thief and had done time in the prisons
+that he began to see that crime does not pay.
+He saw that all his friends came to ruin,
+that his own health was shattered, and that
+he stood on the verge of the mad-house. His
+self-education in prison helped him, too, to
+the perception that he had made a terrible
+mistake. He came to have intellectual ambitions
+and no longer took an interest in his old
+companions. After several weeks of constant
+association with him I became morally certain
+that his reform was as genuine as possible
+under the circumstances; and that, with fair
+success in the way of getting something to do,
+he would remain honest.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_12' name='Page_12'>[12]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I therefore proposed to him to write an
+autobiography. He took up the idea with
+eagerness, and through the entire period of
+our work together, has shown an unwavering
+interest in the book and very decided acumen
+and common sense. The method employed
+in composing the volume was that, practically,
+of the interview. From the middle of March
+to the first of July we met nearly every afternoon,
+and many evenings, at a little German
+café on the East Side. There, I took voluminous
+notes, often asking questions, but
+taking down as literally as possible his story
+in his own words; to such a degree is this
+true, that the following narrative is an authentic
+account of his life, with occasional descriptions
+and character-sketches of his friends of
+the Under World. Even without my explicit
+assurance, the autobiography bears sufficient
+internal evidence of the fact that, essentially,
+it is a thief's own story. Many hours of the
+day time, when I was busy with other things,
+my friend&mdash;for I have come to look upon him
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_13' name='Page_13'>[13]</a></span>
+as such&mdash;was occupied with putting down on
+paper character-sketches of his pals and their
+careers, or recording his impressions of the
+life they had followed. After I had left town
+for the summer, in order to prepare this volume,
+I wrote to Jim repeatedly, asking for
+more material on certain points. This he
+always furnished in a manner which showed
+his continued interest, and a literary sense,
+though fragmentary, of no common kind.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+H. H.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_14' name='Page_14'></a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_15' name='Page_15'>[15]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center b15 p6">
+<i>The</i> Autobiography <i>of</i> a Thief.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="l15" />
+
+<h2 class="chap1">
+CHAPTER I.<br />
+<i>Boyhood and Early Crime.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+I have been a professional thief for more
+than twenty years. Half of that time I have
+spent in state's prison, and the other half in
+"grafting" in one form or another. I was a
+good pickpocket and a fairly successful burglar;
+and I have known many of the best crooks in
+the country. I have left the business for good,
+and my reasons will appear in the course of
+this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire
+frankness. I shall not try to defend myself.
+I shall try merely to tell the truth. Perhaps
+in so doing I shall explain myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was born on the east side of New York
+City in 1868, of poor but honest parents. My
+father was an Englishman who had married an
+Irish girl and emigrated to America, where he
+had a large family, no one of whom, with the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_16' name='Page_16'>[16]</a></span>
+exception of myself, went wrong. For many
+years he was an employee of Brown Brothers
+and Company and was a sober, industrious
+man, and a good husband and kind father. To
+me, who was his favorite, he was perhaps too
+kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember
+that when I was five years old he
+bought me a twenty-five dollar suit of clothes.
+I was a vigorous, handsome boy, with red,
+rosy cheeks and was not only the pet of my
+family, but the life of the neighborhood as
+well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that time, which is as far back as I can
+remember, we were living on Munro Street, in
+the Seventh Ward. This was then a good
+residential neighborhood, and we were comfortable
+in our small, wooden house. The people
+about us were Irish and German, the large
+Jewish emigration not having begun yet. Consequently,
+lower New York did not have such
+a strong business look as it has now, but was
+cleanly and respectable. The gin-mills were
+fewer in number, and were comparatively
+decent. When the Jews came they started
+many basement saloons, or cafés, and for the
+first time, I believe, the social evil began to be
+connected with the drinking places.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_17' name='Page_17'>[17]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I committed my first theft at the age of six.
+Older heads put me up to steal money from
+the till of my brother's grocery store. It happened
+this way. There were several much
+older boys in the neighborhood who wanted
+money for row-boating and theatres. One was
+eighteen years old, a ship-caulker; and another
+was a roustabout of seventeen. I used to watch
+these boys practice singing and dancing in the
+big marble lots in the vicinity. How they fired
+my youthful imagination! They told me about
+the theatres then in vogue&mdash;Tony Pastor's,
+the old Globe, Wood's Museum and Josh
+Hart's Theatre Comique, afterwards owned by
+Harrigan and Hart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day, George, the roustabout, said to me:
+"Kid, do you want to go row-boating with us?"
+When I eagerly consented he said it was too
+bad, but the boat cost fifty cents and he only
+had a ten-cent stamp (a small paper bill: in
+those days there was very little silver in circulation).
+I did not bite at once, I was so young,
+and they treated me to one of those wooden
+balls fastened to a rubber string that you throw
+out and catch on the rebound. I was tickled
+to death. I shall never forget that day as
+long as I live. It was a Saturday, and all
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_18' name='Page_18'>[18]</a></span>
+day long those boys couldn't do too much for
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Towards evening they explained to me how
+to rob my brother's till. They arranged to be
+outside the store at a certain hour, and wait
+until I found an opportunity to pass the money
+to them. My mother watched in the store that
+evening, but when she turned her back I
+opened the till and gave the eight or ten dollars
+it contained to the waiting boys. We all
+went row-boating and had a jolly time. But
+they were not satisfied with that. What I had
+done once, I could do again, and they held out
+the theatre to me, and pretended to teach me
+how to dance the clog. Week in and week
+out I furnished them with money, and in recompense
+they would sometimes take me to a
+matinée. What a joy! How I grew to love
+the vaudeville artists with their songs and
+dances, and the wild Bowery melodramas! It
+was a great day for Indian plays, and the
+number of Indians I have scalped in imagination,
+after one of these shows, is legion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the small boys, however, who did not
+share in the booty grew jealous and told my
+father what was doing. The result was that
+a certain part of my body was sore for weeks
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_19' name='Page_19'>[19]</a></span>
+afterwards. My feelings were hurt, too, for I
+did not know at that time that I was doing
+anything very bad. My father, indeed, accompanied
+the beating with a sermon, telling
+me that I had not only broken God's law but
+had robbed those that loved me. One of my
+brothers, who is now a policeman in the city
+service, told me that I had taken my ticket for
+the gallows. The brother I had robbed, who
+afterwards became a truckman, patted me on
+the head and told me not to do it again. He
+was always a good fellow. And yet they all
+seemed to like to have me play about the
+streets with the other little boys, perhaps because
+the family was large, and there was not
+much room in the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I had to give up the till; but I hated to,
+for even at that age I had begun to think that
+the world owed me a living! To get revenge
+I used to hide in a charcoal shed and throw
+pebbles at my father as he passed. I was indeed
+the typical bad boy, and the apple of my
+mother's eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I couldn't steal from the till any more,
+I used to take clothes from my relatives and
+sell them for theatre money; or any other
+object I thought I could make away with. I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_20' name='Page_20'>[20]</a></span>
+did not steal merely for theatre money but
+partly for excitement too. I liked to run the
+risk of being discovered. So I was up to any
+scheme the older boys proposed. Perhaps if
+I had been raised in the wild West I should
+have made a good trapper or cow-boy, instead
+of a thief. Or perhaps even birds' nests and
+fish would have satisfied me, if they had been
+accessible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of my biggest exploits as a small boy
+was made when I was eight years old. Tom's
+mother had a friend visiting her, whom Tom
+and I thought we would rob. Tom, who was
+a big boy, and some of his friends, put me
+through a hall bed-room window, and I made
+away with a box of valuable jewelry. But
+it did me no good for the big boys sold it to a
+woman who kept a second-hand store on
+Division Street, and I received no part of the
+proceeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My greatest youthful disappointment came
+about four weeks later. A boy put me up to
+steal a box out of a wagon. I boldly made
+away with it and ran into a hall-way, where he
+was waiting. The two of us then went into
+his back-yard, opened the box and found a
+beautiful sword, the handle studded with little
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_21' name='Page_21'>[21]</a></span>
+stones. But the other boy had promised me
+money, and here was only a sword! I cried for
+theatre money, and then the other boy boxed
+my ears. He went to his father, who was a
+free mason, and got a fifty cent "stamp." He
+gave me two three-cent pieces and kept the rest.
+I shall never forget that injustice as long as I
+live. I remember it as plainly as if it happened
+yesterday. We put the sword under a mill in
+Cherry Street and it disappeared a few hours
+later. I thought the boy and his father had
+stolen it, and told them so. I got another
+beating, but I believe my suspicion was correct,
+for the free mason used to give me a ten cent
+stamp whenever he saw me&mdash;to square me, I
+suppose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When it came to contests with boys of my
+own size I was not so meek, however. One
+day I was playing in Jersey, in the back-yard
+of a boy friend's house. He displayed his
+pen-knife, and it took my fancy. I wanted to
+play with it, and asked him to lend it to me.
+He refused, and I grabbed his hand. He
+plunged the knife into my leg. I didn't like
+that, and told him so, not in words, but in
+action. I remember that I took his ear nearly
+off with a hatchet. I was then eight years old.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_22' name='Page_22'>[22]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About this time I began to go to Sunday
+School, with what effect on my character remains
+to be seen. One day I heard a noted
+priest preach. I had one dollar and eighty
+cents in my pocket which I had stolen from
+my brother. I thought that each coin in my
+pocket was turning red-hot because of my
+anxiety to spend it. While the good man was
+talking of the Blessed One I was inwardly
+praying for him to shut up. He had two
+beautiful pictures which he intended to give
+to the best listener among the boys. When
+he had finished his talk he called me to him,
+gave me the pictures and said: "It's such
+boys as you who, when they grow up, are a
+pride to our Holy Church."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A year later I went to the parochial school,
+but did not stay long, for they would not
+have me. I was a sceptic at seven and an
+agnostic at eight, and I objected to the prayers
+every five minutes. I had no respect for
+ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination
+in the slightest, partly because I learned
+at an early age to see the hypocrisy of many
+good people. One day half a dozen persons
+were killed in an explosion. One of them I
+had known. Neighbors said of him: "What
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_23' name='Page_23'>[23]</a></span>
+a good man has gone," and the priest and my
+mother said he was in heaven. But he was
+the same man who had often told me not to
+take money from the money-drawer, for that
+was dangerous, but to search my father's
+pockets when he was asleep. For this advice
+I had given the rascal many a dollar. Ever
+after that I was suspicious of those who were
+over-virtuous. I told my mother I did not
+believe her and the priest, and she slapped
+my face and told me to mind my catechism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything mischievous that happened at
+the parochial school was laid to my account,
+perhaps not entirely unjustly. If a large firecracker
+exploded, it was James&mdash;that was my
+name. If some one sat on a bent pin, the
+blame was due to James. If the class tittered
+teacher Nolan would rush at me with a
+hickory stick and yell: "It's you, you devil's
+imp!" and then he'd put the question he had
+asked a hundred times before: "Who med
+(made) you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was finally sent away from the parochial
+school because I insulted one of the teachers,
+a Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing
+him whenever he studied his catechism, which
+I believed he already knew by heart. This
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_24' name='Page_24'>[24]</a></span>
+brother's favorite, by the way, was a boy who
+used to say his prayers louder than anybody
+else. I met him fifteen years afterwards in
+state's prison. He had been settled for "vogel-grafting,"
+that is, taking little girls into
+hall-ways and robbing them of their gold ear-rings.
+He turned out pretty well, however,
+in one sense, for he became one of the best
+shoe-makers in Sing Sing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although, as one can see from the above
+incidents, I was not given to veneration, yet in
+some ways I was easily impressed. I always
+loved old buildings, for instance. I was
+baptized in the building which was until lately
+the Germania Theatre, and which was then a
+church; and that old structure always had a
+strange fascination for me. I used to hang
+about old churches and theatres, and preferred
+on such occasions to be alone. Sometimes I
+sang and danced, all by myself, in an old
+music hall, and used to pore over the names
+marked in lead pencil on the walls. Many is
+the time I have stood at night before some
+old building which has since been razed to the
+ground, and even now I like to go round
+to their sites. I like almost anything that is
+old, even old men and women. I never loved
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_25' name='Page_25'>[25]</a></span>
+my mother much until she was an old woman.
+All stories of the past interested me; and
+later, when I was in prison, I was specially
+fond of history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After I was dismissed from the parochial
+school, I entered the public school, where I
+stayed somewhat longer. There I studied
+reading, writing, arithmetic and later, grammar,
+and became acquainted with a few specimens
+of literature. I remember Longfellow's
+<i>Excelsior</i> was a favorite of mine. I was a
+bright, intelligent boy, and, if it had not been
+for conduct, in which my mark was low, I
+should always have had the gold medal, in a
+class of seventy. I used to play truant constantly,
+and often went home and told my
+mother that I knew more than the teacher.
+She believed me, for certainly I was the most
+intelligent member of my family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, I was more intelligent than my parents
+or any of my brothers and sisters. Much good
+it has done me! Now that I have "squared
+it" I see a good deal of my family, and they
+are all happy in comparison with me. On
+Saturday nights I often go around to see my
+brother the truckman. He has come home
+tired from his week's work, but happy with his
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_26' name='Page_26'>[26]</a></span>
+twelve dollar salary and the prospect of a
+holiday with his wife and children. They sit
+about in their humble home on Saturday night,
+with their pint of beer, their songs and their
+jovial stories. Whenever I am there, I am, in
+a way, the life of the party. My repartee is
+quicker than that of the others. I sing gayer
+songs and am jollier with the working girls who
+visit my brother's free home. But when I look
+at my stupid brother's quiet face and calm and
+strong bearing, and then realize my own
+shattered health and nerves and profound discontent,
+I know that my slow brother has been
+wiser than I. It has taken me many years on
+the rocky path to realize this truth. For by
+nature I am an Ishmælite, that is, a man of
+impulse, and it is only lately that wisdom has
+been knocked into me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly I did not realize my fate when I
+was a kid of ten, filled with contempt for my
+virtuous and obscure family! I was overflowing
+with spirits and arrogance, and began to
+play "hooky" so often that I practically quit
+school about this time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then, too, that we moved again, this
+time to Cherry Street, to the wreck of my life.
+At the end of the block on which we lived was
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_27' name='Page_27'>[27]</a></span>
+a corner saloon, the headquarters of a band of
+professional thieves. They were known as the
+Old Border Gang, and among them were
+several very well-known and successful crooks.
+They used to pass our way regularly, and boys
+older than I (my boy companions always had
+the advantage of me in years) used to point the
+famous "guns" out to me. When I saw one
+of these great men pass, my young imagination
+was fired with the ambition to be as he was!
+With what eagerness we used to talk about
+"Juggy," and the daring robbery he committed
+in Brooklyn! How we went over again and
+again in conversation, the trick by which
+Johnny the "grafter" had fooled the detective
+in the matter of the bonds!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We would tell stories like these by the hour,
+and then go round to the corner, to try to get
+a look at some of the celebrities in the saloon.
+A splendid sight one of these swell grafters
+was, as he stood before the bar or smoked his
+cigar on the corner! Well dressed, with clean
+linen collar and shirt, a diamond in his tie, an
+air of ease and leisure all about him, what a
+contrast he formed to the respectable hod-carrier
+or truckman or mechanic, with soiled
+clothes and no collar! And what a contrast
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_28' name='Page_28'>[28]</a></span>
+was his dangerous life to that of the virtuous
+laborer!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The result was that I grew to think the
+career of the grafter was the only one worth trying
+for. The real prizes of the world I knew
+nothing about. All that I saw of any interest
+to me was crooked, and so I began to pilfer
+right and left: there was nothing else for me
+to do. Besides I loved to treat those older
+than myself. The theatre was a growing
+passion with me and I began to be very much
+interested in the baseball games. I used to
+go to the Union grounds in Brooklyn, where
+after the third inning, I could usually get admitted
+for fifteen cents, to see the old Athletics
+or Mutuals play. I needed money for these
+amusements, for myself and other boys, and I
+knew of practically only one way to get it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If we could not get the money at home,
+either by begging or stealing, we would tap
+tills, if possible, in the store of some relative;
+or tear brass off the steps in the halls of flats
+and sell it at junk shops. A little later, we
+used to go to Grand Street and steal shoes
+and women's dresses from the racks in the
+open stores, and pawn them. In the old
+Seventh Ward there used to be a good many
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_29' name='Page_29'>[29]</a></span>
+silver plates on the doors of private houses.
+These we would take off with chisels and sell
+to metal dealers. We had great fun with a
+Dutchman who kept a grocery store on Cherry
+Street. We used to steal his strawberries,
+and did not care whether he saw us or not.
+If he grabbed one of us, the rest of the gang
+would pelt him with stones until he let go, and
+then all run around the corner before the
+"copper" came into sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this time I grew steadily bolder and
+more desperate, and the day soon came when
+I took consequences very little into consideration.
+My father and mother sometimes
+learned of some exploit of mine, and a beating
+would be the result. I still got the blame for
+everything, as in school, and was sometimes
+punished unjustly. I was very sensitive and
+this would rankle in my soul for weeks, so that
+I stole harder than ever. And yet I think
+that there was some good in me. I was never
+cruel to any animals, except cats; for cats, I
+used to tie their tails together and throw them
+over a clothesline to dry. I liked dogs,
+horses, children and women, and have always
+been gentle to them. What I really was was
+a healthy young animal, with a vivid imagination
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_30' name='Page_30'>[30]</a></span>
+and a strong body. I learned early to
+swim and fight and play base-ball. Dime and
+nickel novels always seemed very tame to me;
+I found it much more exciting to hear true
+stories about the grafters at the corner saloon!&mdash;big
+men, with whom as yet I did not dare
+to speak; I could only stare at them with
+awe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall never forget the first time I ever saw
+a pickpocket at work. It was when I was
+about thirteen years old. A boy of my own
+age, Zack, a great pal of mine, was with me.
+Zack and I understood one another thoroughly
+and well knew how to get theatre money by
+petty pilfering, but of real graft we were as
+yet ignorant, although we had heard many
+stories about the operations of actual, professional
+thieves. We used to steal rides in the
+cars which ran to and from the Grand Street
+ferries; and run off with overcoats and satchels
+when we had a chance. One day we were
+standing on the rear platform when a woman
+boarded the car, and immediately behind her
+a gentlemanly looking man with a high hat.
+He was well-dressed and looked about thirty-five
+years old. As the lady entered the car,
+the man, who stayed outside on the platform,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_31' name='Page_31'>[31]</a></span>
+pulled his hand away from her side and with
+it came something from her pocket&mdash;a silk
+handkerchief. I was on the point of asking
+the woman if she had dropped something,
+when Zack said to me, "Mind your own business."
+The man, who had taken the pocket-book
+along with the silk handkerchief, seeing
+that we were "next," gave us the handkerchief
+and four dollars in ten and fifteen cent
+paper money ("stamps").
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zack and I put our heads together. We
+were "wiser" than we had been half an hour
+before. We had learned our first practical
+lesson in the world of graft. We had seen a
+pickpocket at work, and there seemed to us no
+reason why we should not try the game ourselves.
+Accordingly a day or two afterwards
+we arranged to pick our first pocket. We
+had, indeed, often taken money from the
+pockets of our relatives, but that was when
+the trousers hung in the closet or over a chair,
+and the owner was absent. This was the first
+time we had hunted in the open, so to speak;
+the first time our prey was really alive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an exciting occasion. Zack and I,
+who were "wise," (that is, up to snuff) got
+several other boys to help us, though we did
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_32' name='Page_32'>[32]</a></span>
+not tell them what was doing, for they "were
+not buried" yet, that is, "dead," or ignorant.
+We induced five or six of them to jump on
+and off the rear platform of a car, making as
+much noise and confusion as possible, so as to
+distract the attention of any "sucker" that
+might board. Soon I saw a woman about to
+get on the car. My heart beat with excitement,
+and I signalled to Zack that I would
+make the "touch." In those days women
+wore big sacques with pockets in the back,
+open, so that one could look in and see what
+was there. I took the silk handkerchief on
+the run, and with Zack following, went up a
+side street and gloried under a lamp-post.
+In the corner of the handkerchief, tied up,
+were five two-dollar bills, and for weeks I was
+J. P. Morgan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a long time Zack and I felt we were
+the biggest boys on the block. We boasted
+about our great "touch" to the older boys of
+eighteen or nineteen years of age who had
+pointed out to us the grafters at the corner
+saloon. They were not "in it" now. They
+even condescended to be treated to a drink
+by us. We spent the money recklessly, for
+we knew where we could get more. In this
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_33' name='Page_33'>[33]</a></span>
+state of mind, soon after that, I met the
+"pick" whom we had seen at work. He had
+heard of our achievement and kindly "staked"
+us, and gave us a few private lessons in picking
+pockets. He saw that we were promising
+youngsters, and for the sake of the profession
+gave us a little of his valuable time. We
+were proud enough, to be taken notice of by
+this great man. We felt that we were rising
+in the world of graft, and began to wear collars
+and neckties.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_34' name='Page_34'>[34]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II.<br />
+<i>My First Fall.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+For the next two years, until I was fifteen,
+I made a great deal of money at picking
+pockets, without getting into difficulties with
+the police. We operated, at that time, entirely
+upon women, and were consequently
+known technically as Moll-buzzers&mdash;or "flies"
+that "buzz" about women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In those days, and for several years later,
+Moll-buzzing, as well as picking pockets in
+general, was an easy and lucrative graft.
+Women's dresses seemed to be arranged for
+our especial benefit; the back pocket, with its
+purse and silk handkerchief could be picked
+even by the rawest thief. It was in the days
+when every woman had to possess a fine silk
+handkerchief; even the Bowery "cruisers"
+(street-walkers) carried them; and to those
+women we boys used to sell the handkerchiefs
+we had stolen, receiving as much as a dollar,
+or even two dollars, in exchange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a time, too, before the great department
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_35' name='Page_35'>[35]</a></span>
+stores and delivery wagon systems, and
+shoppers were compelled to carry more money
+with them than they do now, and to take
+their purchases home themselves through the
+streets. Very often before they reached their
+destination they had unconsciously delivered
+some of the goods to us. At that time, too,
+the wearing of valuable pins and stones, both
+by men and women, was more general than
+it is now. Furthermore, the "graft" was
+younger. There were not so many in the
+business, and the system of police protection
+was not so good. Altogether those were halcyon
+days for us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fact that we were very young helped
+us particularly in this business, for a boy can
+get next to a woman in a car or on the street
+more easily than a man can. He is not so apt
+to arouse her suspicions; and if he is a handsome,
+innocent-looking boy, and clever, he can
+go far in this line of graft. He usually begins
+this business when he is about thirteen, and by
+the age of seventeen generally graduates into
+something higher. Living off women, in any
+form, does not appeal very long to the imagination
+of the genuine grafter. Yet I know
+thieves who continue to be Moll-buzzers all
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_36' name='Page_36'>[36]</a></span>
+their lives; and who are low enough to make
+their living entirely off poor working girls.
+The self-respecting grafter detests this kind;
+and, indeed, these buzzers never see prosperous
+days after their boyhood. The business
+grows more difficult as the thief grows older.
+He cannot approach his prey so readily, and
+grows shabbier with declining returns; and
+shabbiness makes it difficult for him to mix up
+in crowds where this kind of work is generally
+done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For several years we youngsters made a
+great deal of money at this line. We made a
+"touch" almost every day, and I suppose our
+"mob," composed of four or five lads who
+worked together, averaged three or four hundred
+dollars a week. We worked mainly on
+street cars at the Ferry, and the amount of
+"technique" required for robbing women was
+very slight. Two or three of us generally
+went together. One acted as the "dip," or
+"pick," and the other two as "stalls." The
+duty of the "stalls" was to distract the attention
+of the "sucker" or victim, or otherwise
+to hide the operations of the "dip". One
+stall would get directly in front of the woman
+to be robbed, the other directly behind her. If
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_37' name='Page_37'>[37]</a></span>
+she were in such a position in the crowd as to
+render it hard for the "dip," or "wire" to
+make a "touch," one of the stalls might bump
+against her, and beg her pardon, while the dip
+made away with her "leather," or pocket-book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly before I was fifteen years old I was
+"let in" to another kind of graft. One day
+Tim, Zack and I were boasting of our earnings
+to an older boy, twenty years of age, whose
+name was Pete. He grinned, and said he knew
+something better than Moll-buzzing. Then
+he told us about "shoving the queer" and got
+us next to a public truckman who supplied
+counterfeit bills. Our method was to carry
+only one bad bill among several good ones, so
+that if we were collared we could maintain our
+innocence. We worked this as a "side-graft,"
+for some time. Pete and I used to go to mass
+on Sunday morning, and put a bad five dollar
+bill in the collector's box, taking out four dollars
+and ninety cents in change, in good money.
+We irreverently called this proceeding "robbing
+the dago in Rome." We use to pick "leathers,"
+at the same time, from the women in the congregation.
+In those days I was very liberal in my
+religious views. I was not narrow, or bigoted.
+I attended Grace Church, in Tenth Street,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_38' name='Page_38'>[38]</a></span>
+regularly and was always well repaid. But
+after a while this lucrative graft came to an
+end, for the collector began to get "next".
+One day he said to me, "Why don't you get
+your change outside? This is the fourth time
+you have given me a big bill." So we got
+"leary" (suspicious) and quit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With my big rosy cheeks and bright eyes
+and complexion I suppose I looked, in those
+days, very holy and innocent, and used to work
+this graft for all it was worth. I remember
+how, in church, I used tracts or the Christian
+Advocate as "stalls"; I would hand them to
+a lady as she entered the church, and, while
+doing so, pick her pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even at the early age of fifteen I began
+to understand that it was necessary to save
+money. If a thief wants to keep out of the
+"pen" or "stir," (penitentiary) capital is a
+necessity. The capital of a grafter is called
+"spring-money," for he may have to use it at
+any time in paying the lawyer who gets him
+off in case of an arrest, or in bribing the
+policeman or some other official. To "spring,"
+is to escape from the clutches of the law.
+If a thief has not enough money to hire a
+"mouth-piece" (criminal lawyer) he is in a
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_39' name='Page_39'>[39]</a></span>
+bad way. He is greatly handicapped, and can
+not "jump out" (steal) with any boldness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I always had great difficulty in saving
+"fall-money," (the same as spring-money; that
+is money to be used in case of a "fall," or
+arrest). My temperament was at fault. When
+I had a few hundred dollars saved up I began
+to be troubled, not from a guilty conscience,
+but because I could not stand prosperity.
+The money burned a hole in my pocket.
+I was fond of all sorts of amusements, of
+"treating," and of clothes. Indeed, I was
+very much of a dude; and this for two reasons.
+In the first place I was naturally vain, and
+liked to make a good appearance. A still
+more substantial reason was that a good personal
+appearance is part of the capital of a
+grafter, particularly of a pickpocket. The
+world thinks that a thief is a dirty, disreputable
+looking object, next door to a tramp in
+appearance. But this idea is far from being
+true. Every grafter of any standing in the
+profession is very careful about his clothes.
+He is always neat, clean, and as fashionable as
+his income will permit. Otherwise he would
+not be permitted to attend large political
+gatherings, to sit on the platform, for instance,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_40' name='Page_40'>[40]</a></span>
+and would be handicapped generally in his
+crooked dealings with mankind. No advice
+to young men is more common in respectable
+society than to dress well. If you look prosperous
+the world will treat you with consideration.
+This applies with even greater force
+to the thief. Keep up a "front" is the universal
+law of success, applicable to all grades
+of society. The first thing a grafter is apt to
+say to a pal whom he has not seen for a long
+time is, "You are looking good," meaning that
+his friend is well-dressed. It is sure flattery,
+and if a grafter wants to make a borrow he is
+practically certain of opening the negotiations
+with the stereotyped phrase: "You are looking
+good;" for the only time you can get anything
+off a grafter is when you can make him
+think you are prosperous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the great reason why I never saved
+much "fall-money" was not "booze," or theatres,
+or clothes. "Look for the woman" is a
+phrase, I believe, in good society; and it certainly
+explains a great deal of a thief's misfortunes.
+Long before I did anything in
+Graftdom but petty pilfering, I had begun to
+go with the little girls in the neighborhood.
+At that time they had no attraction for me,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_41' name='Page_41'>[41]</a></span>
+but I heard older boys say that it was a manly
+thing to lead girls astray, and I was ambitious
+to be not only a good thief, but a hard case
+generally. When I was nine or ten years old
+I liked to boast of the conquests I had made
+among little working girls of fourteen or
+fifteen. We used to meet in the hall-ways of
+tenement houses, or at their homes, but there
+was no sentiment in the relations between us,
+at least on my part. My only pleasure in
+it was the delight of telling about it to my
+young companions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I was twelve years old I met a little
+girl for whom I had a somewhat different
+feeling. Nellie was a pretty, blue-eyed little
+creature, or "tid-bit," as we used to say, who
+lived near my home on Cherry Street. I
+used to take her over on the ferry for a ride,
+or treat her to ice-cream; and we were really
+chums; but when I began to make money I
+lost my interest in her; partly, too, because at
+that time I made the acquaintance of a married
+woman of about twenty-five years old.
+She discovered me one day in the hallway
+with Nellie, and threatened to tell the holy
+brother on us if I didn't fetch her a pint of
+beer. I took the beer to her room, and that
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_42' name='Page_42'>[42]</a></span>
+began a relationship of perhaps a year. She
+used to stake me to a part of the money her
+husband, a workingman, brought her every
+Saturday night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although the girls meant very little to me
+until several years later, I nevertheless began
+when I was about fifteen to spend a great deal
+of money on them. It was the thing to do,
+and I did it with a good grace. I used to take
+all kinds of working girls to the balls in Walhalla
+Hall in Orchard Street; or in Pythagoras,
+or Beethoven Halls, where many pretty little
+German girls of respectable families used
+to dance on Saturday nights. It was my
+pride to buy them things&mdash;clothes, pins, and
+to take them on excursions; for was I not
+a rising "gun," with money in my pocket?
+Money, however, that went as easily as it had
+come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps if I had been able to save money
+at that time I might not have fallen (that is,
+been arrested) so early. My first fall came,
+however, when I was fifteen years old; and if
+I was not a confirmed thief already, I certainly
+was one by the time I left the Tombs, where
+I stayed ten days. It happened this way.
+Zack and I were grafting, buzzing Molls, with
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_43' name='Page_43'>[43]</a></span>
+a pal named Jack, who afterwards became a
+famous burglar. He had just escaped from
+the Catholic Protectory, and told us his
+troubles. Instead of being alarmed, however,
+I grew bolder, for if Jack could "beat" the
+"Proteck" in three months, I argued I could
+do it in twenty-four hours. We three ripped
+things open for some time; but one day we
+were grafting on Sixth Avenue, just below
+Twentieth Street, when I fell for a "leather."
+The "sucker," a good-looking Moll was coming
+up the Avenue. Her "book," which
+looked fat, was sticking out of her skirt. I,
+who was the "wire," gave Jack and Zack the
+tip (thief's cough), and they stalled, one in
+front, one behind. The girl did not "blow"
+(take alarm) and I got hold of the leather
+easily. It looked like a get-away, for no one
+on the sidewalk saw us. But as bad luck would
+have it, a negro coachman, standing in the
+street by the pavement, got next, and said to
+me, "What are you doing there?" I replied,
+"Shut up, and I'll give you two dollars." But
+he caught hold of me and shouted for the
+police. I passed the leather to Jack, who
+"vamoosed." Zack hit the negro in the face
+and I ran up Seventh Avenue, but was caught
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_44' name='Page_44'>[44]</a></span>
+by a flyman (policeman), and taken to the
+station house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the way to the police station I cried
+bitterly, for, after all, I was only a boy. I
+realized for the first time that the way of the
+transgressor is hard. It was in the afternoon,
+and I spent the time until next morning at ten,
+when I was to appear before the magistrate, in
+a cell in the station-house, in the company of
+an old grafter. In the adjoining cells were
+drunkards, street-walkers and thieves who had
+been "lined up" for the night, and I spent the
+long hours in crying and in listening to their
+indecent songs and jokes. The old grafter
+called to one of the Tenderloin girls that he
+had a kid with him who was arrested for Moll-buzzing.
+At this they all expressed their
+sympathy with me by saying that I would
+either be imprisoned for life or be hanged.
+They got me to sing a song, and I convinced
+them that I was tough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning I was arraigned in the
+police court. As there was no stolen property
+on me, and as the sucker was not there to
+make a complaint, I was "settled" for assault
+only, and sent to the Tombs for ten days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My experience in the Tombs may fairly be
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_45' name='Page_45'>[45]</a></span>
+called, I think, the turning point of my life.
+It was there that I met "de mob". I learned
+new tricks in the Tombs; and more than that,
+I began definitely to look upon myself as a
+criminal. The Tombs of twenty years ago
+was even less cheerful than it is at present.
+The Boys' Prison faced the Women's Prison,
+and between these two was the place where
+those sentenced to death were hanged. The
+boys knew when an execution was to take
+place, and we used to talk it over among ourselves.
+One man was hanged while I was
+there; and if anybody thinks that knowledge
+of such things helps to make boys seek the
+path of virtue, let him go forth into the world
+and learn something about human nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On my arrival in the Tombs, Mrs. Hill, the
+matron, had me searched for tobacco, knives
+or matches, all of which were contraband;
+then I was given a bath and sent into the
+corridor of the cells where there were about
+twenty-five other boys, confined for various
+crimes, ranging from petty larceny to offenses
+of the gravest kind. On the second day I met
+two young "dips" and we exchanged our experiences
+in the world of graft. I received my
+first lesson in the art of "banging a super,"
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_46' name='Page_46'>[46]</a></span>
+that is, stealing a watch by breaking the ring
+with the thumb and forefinger, and thus
+detaching it from the chain. They were two
+of the best of the Sixth Ward pickpockets, and
+we made a date to meet "on the outside."
+Indeed, it was not many weeks after my release
+before I could "bang a super," or get a man's
+"front" (watch and chain) as easily as I could
+relieve a Moll of her "leather".
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I look back upon the food these young
+boys received in the tombs, it seems to me of
+the worst. Breakfast consisted of a chunk of
+poor bread and a cup of coffee made of burnt
+bread crust. At dinner we had soup (they
+said, at least, there was meat in it), bread and
+water; and supper was the same as breakfast.
+But we had one consolation. When we went
+to divine service we generally returned happy;
+not because of what the good priest said, but
+because we were almost sure of getting tobacco
+from the women inmates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly the Gerry Society has its faults;
+but since its organization young boys who
+have gone wrong but are not yet entirely
+hardened, have a much better show to become
+good citizens than they used to have. That
+Society did not exist in my day; but I know
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_47' name='Page_47'>[47]</a></span>
+a good deal about it, and I am convinced that
+it does a world of good; for, at least, when
+it takes children into its charge it does not
+surround them with an atmosphere of social
+crime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While in the Tombs I experienced my first
+disillusionment as to the honor of thieves. I
+was an impulsive, imaginative boy, and that a
+pal could go back on me never seemed possible.
+Many of my subsequent misfortunes were due
+to the treachery of my companions. I have
+learned to distrust everybody, but as a boy of
+fifteen I was green, and so the treachery I
+shall relate left a sore spot in my soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It happened this way. On a May day,
+about two months before I was arrested, two
+other boys and I had entered the basement of
+a house where the people were moving, had
+made away with some silverware, and sold it
+to a Christian woman in the neighborhood for
+one twentieth of its value. When I had nearly
+served my ten days' sentence for assault, my
+two pals were arrested and "squealed" on me.
+I was confronted with them in the Tombs.
+At first I was mighty glad to see them, but
+when I found they had "squealed," I set my
+teeth and denied all knowledge of the "touch."
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_48' name='Page_48'>[48]</a></span>
+I protested my innocence so violently that the
+police thought the other boys were merely
+seeking a scape-goat. They got twenty days
+and my term expired forty-eight hours afterwards.
+The silverware I stole that May
+morning is now an heirloom in the family of
+the Christian woman to whom I sold it so
+cheap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If I had always been as earnest a liar as I
+was on that occasion in the Tombs I might
+never have gone to "stir" (penitentiary); but
+I grew more indifferent and desperate as time
+went on; and, in a way, more honest, more
+sincerely a criminal: I hardly felt like denying
+it. I know some thieves who, although they
+have grafted for twenty-five years, have not
+yet "done time"; some of them escaped
+because they knew how to throw the innocent
+"con" so well. Take Tim, for instance.
+Tim and I grafted together as boys. He was
+not a very skilful pickpocket, and he often
+was on the point of arrest; but he had a talent
+for innocence, and the indignation act he
+would put up would melt a heart of stone.
+He has, consequently, never been in stir, while
+I, a much better thief, have spent half of my
+adult life there. That was partly because I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_49' name='Page_49'>[49]</a></span>
+felt, when I had once made a touch, that the
+property belonged to me. On one occasion I
+had robbed a "bloke" of his "red super"
+(gold watch), and made away with it all right,
+when I carelessly dropped it on the sidewalk.
+A crowd had gathered about, and no man
+really in his right mind, would have picked up
+that super. But I did it, and was nailed dead
+to rights by a "cop." Some time afterwards
+a pal asked me why the deuce I had been so
+foolish. "Didn't the super belong to me," I
+replied, indignantly. "Hadn't I earned it?"
+I was too honest a thief. That was one of
+my weaknesses.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_50' name='Page_50'>[50]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III.<br />
+<i>Mixed-Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+For a time&mdash;a short time&mdash;after I left the
+Tombs I was quiet. My relatives threw the
+gallows "con" into me hard, but at that time
+I was proof against any arguments they could
+muster. They were not able to show me anything
+that was worth while; they could not
+deliver the goods, so what was the use of
+talking?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although I was a disgrace at home, I was
+high cock-a-lorum among the boys in the
+neighborhood. They began to look up to me,
+as I had looked up to the grafters at the corner
+saloon. They admired me because I was
+a fighter and had "done time." I went up in
+their estimation because I had suffered in the
+good cause. And I began to get introductions
+to the older grafters in the seventh ward&mdash;grafters
+with diamond pins and silk hats. It
+was not long before I was at it harder than
+ever, uptown and downtown. I not only continued
+my trade as Moll-buzzer, but began to
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_51' name='Page_51'>[51]</a></span>
+spread myself, got to be quite an adept in
+touching men for vests and supers and fronts;
+and every now and then "shoved the queer"
+or worked a little game of swindling. Our
+stamping-ground for supers and vests at that
+time was Fulton, Nassau, Lower Broadway
+and Wall Streets, and we covered our territory
+well. I used to work alone considerably.
+I would board a car with a couple of newspapers,
+would say, "News, boss?" to some
+man sitting down, would shove the paper in
+front of his face as a stall, and then pick his
+super or even his entire "front" (watch and
+chain). If you will stand for a newspaper
+under your chin I can get even your socks.
+Many is the "gent" I have left in the car with
+his vest entirely unbuttoned and his "front"
+gone. When I couldn't get the chain, I would
+snap the ring of the watch with my thumb and
+fore-finger, giving the thief's cough to drown
+the slight noise made by the breaking ring,
+and get away with the watch, leaving the
+chain dangling. Instead of a newspaper, I
+would often use an overcoat as a stall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was only when I was on the "hurry-up,"
+however, that I worked alone. It is more
+dangerous than working with a mob, but if I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_52' name='Page_52'>[52]</a></span>
+needed a dollar quick I'd take any risk. I'd
+jump on a car, and tackle the first sucker I
+saw. If I thought it was not diplomatic to
+try for the "front," and if there was no stone
+in sight, I'd content myself with the "clock"
+(watch). But it was safer and more sociable
+to work with other guys. We usually went in
+mobs of three or four, and our methods were
+much more complicated than when we were
+simply moll-buzzing. Each thief had his
+special part to play, and his duty varied with
+the position of the sucker and the pocket the
+"leather" was in. If the sucker was standing
+in the car, my stall would frequently stand
+right in front, facing him, while I would put
+my hand under the stall's arm and pick the
+sucker's leather or super. The other stalls
+would be distracting the attention of the
+sucker, or looking out for possible interruptions.
+When I had got possession of the
+leather I would pass it quickly to the stall
+behind me, and he would "vamoose." Sometimes
+I would back up to the victim, put my
+hand behind me, break his ring and pick the
+super, or I would face his back, reach round,
+unbutton his vest while a pal stalled in front
+with a newspaper, a bunch of flowers, a fan,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_53' name='Page_53'>[53]</a></span>
+or an overcoat, and get away with his entire
+front.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dip, as I have said, pays special attention
+to his personal appearance; it is his stock in
+trade; but when I began to meet boys who
+had risen above the grade of Moll-buzzers, I
+found that the dip, as opposed to other grafters,
+had many other advantages, too. He
+combines pleasure and instruction with business,
+for he goes to the foot-ball games, the
+New London races, to swell theatres where
+the graft is good, and to lectures. I have
+often listened to Bob Ingersoll, the greatest
+orator, in my opinion, that ever lived. I
+enjoyed his talk so much that I sometimes
+forgot to graft. But as a general rule, I was
+able to combine instruction with business. I
+very seldom dropped a red super because of
+an oratorical flourish; but the supers did not
+come my way all the time, I had some waiting
+to do, and in the meantime I improved
+my mind. Then a dip travels, too, more than
+most grafters; he jumps out to fairs and large
+gatherings of all descriptions, and grows to be
+a man of the world. When in the city he
+visits the best dance halls, and is popular
+because of his good clothes, his dough, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_54' name='Page_54'>[54]</a></span>
+his general information, with men as well as
+women. He generally lives with a Moll who
+has seen the world, and who can add to his
+fund of information. I know a dip who could
+not read or write until he met a Moll, who
+gave him a general education and taught him
+to avoid things that interfered with his line
+of graft; she also took care of his personal
+appearance, and equipped him generally for an
+A No. 1 pickpocket. Women are much the
+same, I believe, in every rank of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at this time, when I was a kid of
+fifteen, that I first met Sheenie Annie, who
+was a famous shop-lifter. She was twenty-one
+years old, and used to give me good
+advice. "Keep away from heavy workers,"
+(burglars) she would say; "there is a big bit
+in that." She had lived in Graftdom ever
+since she was a tid-bit, and she knew what she
+was talking about. I did not work with her
+until several years later, but I might as well
+tell her sad story now. I may say, as a kind
+of preface, that I have always liked the girl
+grafter who could take care of herself instead
+of sucking the blood out of some man. When
+I find a little working girl who has no other
+ambition than to get a little home together,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_55' name='Page_55'>[55]</a></span>
+with a little knick-knack on the wall, a little
+husband and a little child, I don't care for her.
+She is a nonentity. But such was not Sheenie
+Annie, who was a bright, intelligent, ambitious,
+girl; when she liked a fellow she would do
+anything for him, but otherwise she wouldn't
+let a man come near her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little Jewish lassie, named Annie, was
+born in the toughest part of New York.
+Later on, as she advanced in years and became
+an expert pilferer, she was given the nickname
+of "Sheenie." She was brought up on the
+street, surrounded by thieves and prostitutes.
+Her only education was what she received
+during a year or two in the public school.
+She lived near Grand Street, then a popular
+shopping district. As a very little girl she and
+a friend used to visit the drygoods stores and
+steal any little notion they could. There was
+a crowd of young pickpockets in her street,
+and she soon got on to this graft, and became
+so skilful at it that older guns of both sexes
+were eager to take her under their tuition and
+finish her education. The first time I met
+her was in a well-known dance-hall&mdash;Billy
+McGlory's&mdash;and we became friends at once,
+for she was a good girl and full of mischief.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_56' name='Page_56'>[56]</a></span>
+She was not pretty, exactly, but she was passable.
+She was small, with thick lips, plump,
+had good teeth and eyes as fine and piercing
+as any I ever saw in man or woman. She
+dressed well and was a good talker, as nimble-witted
+and as good a judge of human nature
+as I ever met in her sex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheenie Annie's graft broadened, and from
+dipping and small shop-lifting she rose to a
+position where she doubled up with a mob of
+clever hotel workers, and made large amounts
+of money. Here was a girl from the lowest
+stratum of life, not pretty or well shaped, but
+whom men admired because of her wit and
+cleverness. A big contractor in Philadelphia
+was her friend for years. I have seen letters
+from him offering to marry her. But she had
+something better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For she was an artist at "penny-weighting"
+and "hoisting." The police admitted that she
+was unusually clever at these two grafts, and
+they treated her with every consideration.
+Penny-weighting is a very "slick" graft. It
+is generally worked in pairs, by either sex or
+both sexes. A man, for instance, enters a
+jewelry store and looks at some diamond rings
+on a tray. He prices them and notes the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_57' name='Page_57'>[57]</a></span>
+costly ones. Then he goes to a fauny shop
+(imitation jewelry) and buys a few diamonds
+which match the real ones he has noted. Then
+he and his pal, usually a woman, enter the
+jewelry store and ask to see the rings.
+Through some little "con" they distract the
+jeweler's attention, and then one of them (and
+at this Sheenie Annie was particularly good)
+substitutes the bogus diamonds for the good
+ones; and leaves the store without making a
+purchase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can give an example of how Sheenie Annie
+"hoisted," from my own experience with her.
+On one occasion, when I was about eighteen
+years old, Sheenie and I were on a racket together.
+We had been "going it" for several
+days and needed some dough. We went into
+a large tailoring establishment, where I tried
+on some clothes, as a stall. Nothing suited
+me.&mdash;I took good care of that&mdash;but in the
+meantime Annie had taken two costly overcoats,
+folded them into flat bundles, and, raising
+her skirt quickly, had hidden the overcoats
+between her legs. We left the store together.
+She walked so straight that I thought she had
+got nothing, but when we entered a saloon a
+block away, and the swag was produced, I was
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_58' name='Page_58'>[58]</a></span>
+forced to laugh. We "fenced" the overcoats
+and with the proceeds continued our spree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once Sheenie "fell" at this line of graft.
+She had stolen some costly sealskins from a
+well-known furrier, and had got away with
+them. But on her third visit to the place she
+came to grief. She was going out with a sealskin
+coat under her skirt when the office-boy,
+who was skylarking about, ran into her, and
+upset her. When the salesman, who had
+gone to her rescue, lifted her up, she lost her
+grip on the sealskin sacque, and it fell to the
+floor. It was a "blow," of course, and she
+got nailed, but as she had plenty of fall-money,
+and a well-known politician dead to rights, she
+only got nine months in the penitentiary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheenie Annie was such a good shop-lifter
+that, with only an umbrella as a stall, she
+could make more money in a week than a poor
+needle-woman could earn in months. But
+she did not care for the money. She was a
+good fellow, and was in for fun. She was
+"wise," too, and I liked to talk to her, for she
+understood what I said, and was up to snuff,
+which was very piquant to me. She had done
+most of the grafts that I had done myself, and
+her tips were always valuable.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_59' name='Page_59'>[59]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To show what a good fellow she was, her
+sweetheart, Jack, and another burglar named
+Jerry were doing night work once, when they
+were unlucky enough to be nailed. Sheenie
+Annie went on the stand and swore perjury
+in order to save Jack. He got a year, but
+Jerry, who had committed the same crime, got
+six. While he was in prison Annie visited
+him and put up a plan by which he escaped,
+but he would not leave New York with her,
+and was caught and returned to "stir." Annie
+herself fell in half a dozen cities, but never
+received more than a few months. After I
+was released from serving my second bit in
+the "pen," I heard Annie had died insane. An
+old girl pal of hers told me that she had died a
+horrible death, and that her last words were
+about her old friends and companions. Her
+disease was that which attacks only people
+with brains. She died of paresis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two other girls whom I knew when I was
+fifteen turned out to be famous shop-lifters&mdash;Big
+Lena and Blonde Mamie, who afterwards
+married Tommy, the famous cracksman. They
+began to graft when they were about fourteen,
+and Mamie and I used to work together. I
+was Mamie's first "fellow," and we had royal
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_60' name='Page_60'>[60]</a></span>
+good times together. Lena, poor girl, is now
+doing five years in London, but she was one
+of the most cheerful Molls I ever knew. I
+met her and Mamie for the first time one day
+as they were coming out of an oyster house
+on Grand Street. I thought they were good-looking
+tid-bits, and took them to a picnic.
+We were so late that instead of going home
+Mamie and I spent the night at the house of
+Lena's sister, whose husband was a receiver of
+stolen goods, or "fence," as it is popularly
+called. In the morning Lena, Mamie and I
+made our first "touch" together. We got a
+few "books" uptown, and Mamie banged a
+satchel at Sterns. After that we often jumped
+out together, and took in the excursions.
+Sometimes Mamie or Lena would dip and I
+would stall, but more frequently I was the
+pick. We used to turn our swag over to
+Lena's sister's husband, Max, who would give
+us about one-sixth of its value.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These three girls certainly were a crack-a-jack
+trio. You can't find their likes nowadays.
+Even in my time most of the girls I knew did
+not amount to anything. They generally married,
+or did worse. There were few legitimate
+grafters among them. Since I have been
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_61' name='Page_61'>[61]</a></span>
+back this time I have seen a great many of
+the old picks and night-workers I used to
+know. They tell the same story. There are
+no Molls now who can compare with Big
+Lena, Blonde Mamie, and Sheenie Annie.
+Times are bad, anyway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After my experience in the Tombs I rose
+very rapidly in the world of graft, and distanced
+my old companions. Zack, the lad
+with whom I had touched my first Moll, soon
+seemed very tame to me. I fell away from
+him because he continued to eat bolivers
+(cookies), patronize the free baths, and stole
+horse-blankets and other trivial things when
+he could not get "leathers." He was not fast
+enough for me. Zack "got there," nevertheless,
+and for little or nothing, for several
+years later I met him in State's prison. He
+told me he was going to Colorado on his
+release. I again met him in prison on my
+second bit. He was then going to Chicago.
+On my third hit I ran up against the same old
+jail-bird, but this time his destination was
+Boston. To-day he is still in prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I fell away from the softies I naturally
+joined hands with more ambitious grafters,
+and with those with brains and with good connections
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_62' name='Page_62'>[62]</a></span>
+in the upper world. As a lad of
+from fifteen to eighteen I associated with
+several boys who are now famous politicians
+in this city, and "on the level," as that phrase
+is usually meant. Jack Lawrence was a well-educated
+boy, and high up as far as his family
+was concerned. His father and brothers held
+good political positions, and it was only a
+taste for booze and for less genteel grafting
+that held Jack back. As a boy of sixteen or
+seventeen he was the trusted messenger of a
+well-known Republican politician, named J. I.
+D. One of Jacks pals became a Federal
+Judge, and another, Mr. D&mdash;&mdash;, who was
+never a grafter, is at present a city magistrate
+in New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Jack was working for J. I. D., the
+politician, he was arrested several times. Once
+he abstracted a large amount of money from
+the vest pocket of a broker as he was standing
+by the old <i>Herald</i> building. He was nailed,
+and sent word to his employer, the politician,
+who went to police headquarters, highly indignant
+at the arrest of his trusted messenger.
+He easily convinced the broker and the magistrate
+that Jack was innocent; and as far as
+the Republican politician's business was concerned,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_63' name='Page_63'>[63]</a></span>
+Jack was honest, for J. I. D. trusted
+him, and Jack never deceived him. There
+are some thieves who will not "touch" those
+who place confidence in them, and Jack was
+one of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After he was released, the following conversation,
+which Jack related to me, took
+place between him and the politician, in the
+latter's office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How was it?" the Big One said, "that
+you happened to get your fingers into that
+man's pocket?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jack gave the "innocent con."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"None of that," said J. I. D., who was a
+wise guy, "I know you have a habit of taking
+small change from strangers' pockets."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jack then came off his perch and gave his
+patron a lesson in the art of throwing the mit
+(dipping). At this the politician grinned, and
+remarked: "You will either become a reputable
+politician, for you have the requisite character,
+or you will die young."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jack was feared, hated and envied by the
+other young fellows in J. I. D.'s office, for as
+he was such a thorough rascal, he was a great
+favorite with those high up. But he never
+got J. I. D.'s full confidence until after he was
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_64' name='Page_64'>[64]</a></span>
+tested in the following way. One day the
+politician put his gold watch on a table in his
+office. Jack saw it, picked it up and put it in
+the Big One's drawer. The latter entered the
+room, saw that the watch was gone, and said:
+"I forgot my watch. I must have left it
+home."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Jack, "you left it on the table,
+and I put it in your desk." A smile spread
+over the patron's face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jack, I can trust you. I put it there
+just to test your honesty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy hesitated a moment, then, looking
+into the man's face, replied; "I know right
+well you did, for you are a wise guy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After that J. I. D. trusted Jack even with
+his love affairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Jack advanced in life he became an
+expert "gun," and was often nailed, and frequently
+brought before Magistrate D&mdash;&mdash;, his
+old friend. He always got the benefit of the
+doubt. One day he was arraigned before the
+magistrate, who asked the flyman the nature of
+the complaint. It was the same as usual&mdash;dipping.
+Jack, of course, was indignant at such
+an awful accusation, but the magistrate told
+him to keep still, and, turning to the policeman,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_65' name='Page_65'>[65]</a></span>
+asked the culprit's name. When the
+copper told him, the magistrate exclaimed:
+"Why, that is not his name. I knew him
+twenty years ago, and he was a d&mdash;&mdash; rascal
+then; but that was not his name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jack was shocked at such language from
+the bench, and swore with such vehemence
+that he was innocent, that he again got the
+benefit of the doubt, and was discharged, and
+this time justly, for he had not made this particular
+"touch." He was hounded by a copper
+looking for a reputation. Jack, when he
+was set free, turned to the magistrate, and
+said: "Your honor, I thank you, but you only
+did your duty to an innocent man." The
+magistrate had a good laugh, and remarked:
+"Jack, I wouldn't believe you if you swore on
+a stack of Bibles."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A curious trait in a professional grafter is
+that, if he is "pinched" for something he did
+not do, although he has done a hundred other
+things for which he has never been pinched,
+he will put up such a wail against the abominable
+injustice that an honest man accused of
+the same offense would seem guilty in comparison.
+The honest man, even if he had the
+ability of a Philadelphia lawyer, could not do
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_66' name='Page_66'>[66]</a></span>
+the strong indignation act that is characteristic
+of the unjustly accused grafter. Old thieves
+guilty of a thousand crimes will nourish
+revenge for years against the copper or judge
+who sends them up to "stir" on a false accusation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I was from fifteen to seventeen years
+old, I met the man who, some think, is now
+practically leader of Tammany Hall. I will
+call him Senator Wet Coin. At that time he
+was a boy eighteen or nineteen and strictly on
+the level. He knew all the grafters well, but
+kept off the Rocky Path himself. In those
+days he "hung out" in an oyster shanty and
+ran a paper stand. It is said he materially
+assisted Mr. Pulitzer in making a success of
+the <i>World</i>, when that paper was started. He
+never drank, in spite of the name I have given
+him. In fact, he derived his real nickname
+from his habit of abstinence. He was the
+friend of a Bowery girl who is now a well-known
+actress. She, too, was always on the
+level in every way; although her brother was
+a grafter; this case, and that of Senator Wet
+Coin prove that even in an environment of
+thieves it is possible to tread the path of virtue.
+Wet Coin would not even buy a stolen
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_67' name='Page_67'>[67]</a></span>
+article; and his reward was great. He became
+captain of his election district, ran for assemblyman,
+was elected, and got as high a position,
+with the exception of that of Governor,
+as is possible in the State; while in the city,
+probably no man is more powerful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Wet Coin made no pretensions to
+virtue; he never claimed to be better than
+others. But in spite of the accusations against
+him, he has done far more for the public good
+than all the professional reformers, religious
+and other. He took many noted and professional
+criminals in the prime of their success,
+gave them positions and by his influence kept
+them honest ever since. Some of them are
+high up, even run gin-mills to-day. I met one
+of them after my second bit, who used to make
+his thousands. Now he has a salary of eighteen
+dollars a week and is contented. I had
+known him in the old days, and he asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you doing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The same old thing," I admitted. "What
+are you up to?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have squared it, Jim," he replied earnestly.
+"There's nothing in the graft. Why
+don't you go to sea?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd as lief go to stir," I replied.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_68' name='Page_68'>[68]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had a couple of beers and a long talk,
+and this is the way he gave it to me:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never thought I could live on eighteen
+dollars a week. I have to work hard but I
+save more money than I did when I was making
+hundreds a week; for when it comes hard,
+it does not go easy. I look twice at my earnings
+before I part with them. I live quietly with my
+sister and am happy. There's nothing in the
+other thing, Jim. Look at Hope. Look at
+Dan Noble. Look at all the other noted grafters
+who stole millions and now are willing to
+throw the brotherly hand for a small borrow.
+If I had the chance to make thousands to-morrow
+in the under world, I would not chance
+it. I am happy. Better still, I am contented.
+Only for Mr. Wet Coin I'd be splitting matches
+in the stir these many years. Show me the
+reformer who has done as much for friends
+and the public as Wet Coin."
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">
+A "touch" that pleased me mightily as a
+kid was made just before my second fall.
+Superintendent Walling had returned from a
+summer resort, and found that a mob of
+"knucks" (another name for pick-pockets)
+had been "tearing open" the Third Avenue
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_69' name='Page_69'>[69]</a></span>
+cars outside of the Post Office. About fifty
+complaints had been coming in every day for
+several weeks; and the Superintendent thought
+he would make a personal investigation and
+get one of the thieves dead to rights. He
+made a front that he was easy and went down
+the line. He did not catch any dips, but when
+he reached police head-quarters he was minus
+his gold watch and two hundred and fifty dollars
+in money. The story leaked out, and Superintendent
+Walling was unhappy. There would
+never have been a come-back for this "touch"
+if an old gun, who had just been nailed, had
+not "squealed" as to who touched the boss.
+"Little Mick" had done it, and the result was
+that he got his first experience in the House of
+Refuge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was only a short time after Little Mick's
+fall that it came my turn to go to the House
+of Refuge. I had grown tougher and much
+stuck on myself and was taking bigger risks.
+I certainly had a swelled head in those days.
+I was seventeen years old at the time, and
+was grafting with Jack T&mdash;&mdash;, who is now in
+Byrnes's book, and one of the swellest "Peter"
+men (safe-blowers) in the profession. Jack and
+I, along with another pal, Joe Quigley, got a
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_70' name='Page_70'>[70]</a></span>
+duffer, an Englishman, for his "front," on
+Grand Street, near Broadway. It was a
+"blow," and I, who was the "wire," got
+nailed. If I had not given my age as fifteen
+I should have been sent to the penitentiary.
+As it was I went to the House of Refuge for
+a year. Joe Quigley slipped up on the same
+game. He was twenty, but gave his age as
+fifteen. He had had a good shave by the
+Tombs barber, there was a false date of birth
+written in his Aunt's Bible, which was produced
+in court by his lawyer, and he would
+probably have gone with me to the House of
+Refuge, had not a Central Office man who
+knew him, happened in; Joe was settled for
+four years in Sing Sing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I arrived at the House of Refuge,
+my pedigree was taken and my hair clipped.
+Then I went into the yard, looked down the
+line of boys on parade and saw about forty
+young grafters whom I knew. One of them
+is now a policeman in New York City, and,
+moreover, on the level. Some others, too,
+but not many, who were then in the House of
+Refuge, are now honest. Several are running
+big saloons and are captains of their election
+districts, or even higher up. These men are
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_71' name='Page_71'>[71]</a></span>
+exceptions, however, for certainly the House
+of Refuge was a school for crime. Unspeakably
+bad habits were contracted there. The
+older boys wrecked the younger ones, who,
+comparatively innocent, confined for the crime
+of being orphans, came in contact with others
+entirely hardened. The day time was spent
+in the school and the shop, but there was an
+hour or two for play, and the boys would
+arrange to meet for mischief in the basement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Severe punishments were given to lads of
+fifteen, and their tasks were harder than those
+inflicted in State's prison. We had to make
+twenty-four pairs of overalls every day; and if
+we did not do our work we were beaten on an
+unprotected and tender spot until we promised
+to do our task. One morning I was made to
+cross my hands, and was given fifteen blows
+on the palms with a heavy rattan stick. The
+crime I had committed was inattention. The
+principal had been preaching about the Prodigal
+Son. I, having heard it before, paid little
+heed; particularly as I was a Catholic, and his
+teachings did not count for me. They called
+me a "Papist," and beat me, as I described.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I say without hesitation that lads sent to
+an institution like the House of Refuge, the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_72' name='Page_72'>[72]</a></span>
+Catholic Protectory, or the Juvenile Asylum,
+might better be taken out and shot. They
+learn things there they could not learn even in
+the streets. The newsboy's life is pure in
+comparison. As for me, I grew far more desperate
+there than I had been before: and I
+was far from being one of the most innocent
+of boys. Many of the others had more to
+learn than I had, and they learned it. But
+even I, hard as I already was, acquired much
+fresh information about vice and crime; and
+gathered in more pointers about the technique
+of graft.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_73' name='Page_73'>[73]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV.<br />
+<i>When the Graft Was Good.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+I stayed in the House of Refuge until I
+was eighteen, and when released, went through
+a short period of reform. I "lasted," I think,
+nearly three weeks, and then started in to
+graft again harder than ever. The old itch
+for excitement, for theatres, balls and gambling,
+made reform impossible. I had already
+formed strong habits and desires which could
+not be satisfied in my environment without
+stealing. I was rapidly becoming a confirmed
+criminal. I began to do "house-work," which
+was mainly sneak work up town. We would
+catch a basement open in the day time, and
+rummage for silverware, money or jewels.
+There is only a step from this to the business
+of the genuine burglar, who operates in the
+night time, and whose occupation is far more
+dangerous than that of the sneak thief. However,
+at this intermediate kind of graft, our
+swag, for eighteen months, was considerable.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_74' name='Page_74'>[74]</a></span>
+One of our methods was to take servant girls
+to balls and picnics and get them to tip us off
+to where the goods were and the best way to
+get them. Sometimes they were guilty, more
+often merely suckers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the next three years, at the expiration
+of which I made my first trip to Sing
+Sing, I stole a great deal of money and lived
+very high. I contracted more bad habits,
+practically ceased to see my family at all, lived
+in a furnished room and "hung out" in the
+evening at some dance-hall, such as Billy
+McGlory's Old Armory, George Doe's or
+"The" Allen's. Sheenie Annie was my sweetheart
+at this period, and after we had made a
+good touch what times we would have at
+Coney Island or at Billy McGlory's! Saturday
+nights in the summer time a mob of three
+or four of us, grafters and girls, would go to
+the island and stop at a hotel run by an ex-gun.
+At two or three o'clock in the morning
+we'd all leave the hotel, with nothing on but
+a quilt, and go in swimming together. Sheenie
+Annie, Blonde Mamie and Big Lena often
+went with us. At other times we took respectable
+shop-girls, or even women who belonged
+to a still lower class. What boy with an
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_75' name='Page_75'>[75]</a></span>
+ounce of thick blood in his body could refuse
+to go with a girl to the Island?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Billy McGlory's! What times we had
+there, on dear old Saturday nights! At this
+place, which contained a bar-room, dance-room,
+pool-room and a piano, congregated downtown
+guns, house-men and thieves of both
+sexes. No rag-time was danced in those days,
+but early in the morning we had plenty of the
+cancan. The riots that took place there would
+put to shame anything that goes on now.<a name='FA_A' id='FA_A' href='#FN_A' class='fnanchor'>[A]</a> I
+never knew the town so tight-shut as it is at
+present. It is far better, from a moral point
+of view than it has ever been before; at least,
+in my recollection. "The" Allen's was in
+those days a grade more decent than McGlory's;
+for at "The's" nobody who did not wear
+a collar and coat was admitted. I remember
+a pal of mine who met a society lady on a
+slumming expedition with a reporter. It was
+at McGlory's. The lady looked upon the
+grafter she had met as a novelty. The grafter
+looked upon the lady in the same way, but
+consented to write her an article on the Bowery.
+He sent her the following composition,
+which he showed to me first, and allowed me
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_76' name='Page_76'>[76]</a></span>
+to copy it. I always did like freaks. I won't
+put in the bad grammar and spelling, but the
+rest is:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"While strolling, after the midnight hour,
+along the Lane, that historic thoroughfare
+sometimes called the Bowery, I dropped into
+a concert hall. At a glance, I saw men who
+worked hard during the week and needed a
+little recreation. Near them were their sisters
+(that is, if we all belong to the same human
+family), who had fallen by the wayside. A
+man was trying to play a popular song on a
+squeaky piano, while another gent tried to
+sing the first part of the song, when the whole
+place joined in the chorus with a zest. I
+think the song was most appropriate. It was
+a ditty of the slums entitled, 'Dear Old
+Saturday Night.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I was about nineteen I took another
+and important step in the world of graft.
+One night I met a couple of swell grafters,
+one of whom is at the present time a Pinkerton
+detective. They took me to the Haymarket,
+where I met a crowd of guns who
+were making barrels of money. Two of them,
+Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, became my
+friends, and introduced me to Mr. R&mdash;&mdash;, who
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_77' name='Page_77'>[77]</a></span>
+has often kept me out of prison. He was a
+go-between, a lawyer, and well-known to all
+good crooks. If we "fell" we had to notify
+him and he would set the underground wires
+working, with the result that our fall money
+would need replenishing badly, but that we'd
+escape the stir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That I was not convicted again for three
+years was entirely due to my fall money and to
+the cleverness of Mr. R&mdash;&mdash;. Besides these
+expenses, which I considered legitimate, I
+used to get "shaken down" regularly by the
+police and detectives. The following is a
+typical case:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was standing one day on the corner of
+Grand Street and the Bowery when a copper
+who knew me came up and said: "There's a
+lot of knocking (complaining) going on about
+the Grand Street cars being torn open. The
+old man (the chief) won't stand for it much
+longer."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It wasn't me," I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, it was one of the gang," he replied,
+"and I will have to make an arrest soon, or
+take some one to headquarters for his mug,"
+(that is, to have his picture taken for the
+rogues' gallery).
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_78' name='Page_78'>[78]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I knew what that meant, and so I gave him
+a twenty dollar bill. But I was young and
+often objected to these exorbitant demands.
+More than anybody else a thief hates to be
+"touched," for he despises the sucker on whom
+he lives. And we were certainly touched with
+great regularity by the coppers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, we really had nothing to complain of
+in those days, for we made plenty of money
+and had a good time. We even used to buy
+our collars, cuffs and gloves cheap from grafters
+who made it their business to steal those
+articles. They were cheap guns,&mdash;pipe fiends,
+petty larceny thieves and shop-lifters&mdash;but
+they helped to make our path smoother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After I met the Haymarket grafter I used
+to jump out to neighboring cities on very
+profitable business. A good graft was to
+work the fairs at Danbury, Waverly, Philadelphia
+and Pittsburg, and the foot-ball games
+at Princeton. I always travelled with three
+or four others, and went for gatherings where
+we knew we would find "roofers," or country
+gentlemen. On my very first jump-out I got
+a fall, but the copper was open to reason.
+Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, splendid
+pickpockets, (I always went with good thieves,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_79' name='Page_79'>[79]</a></span>
+for I had become a first-class dip and had a
+good personal appearance) were working with
+me in Newark, where Vice-President Hendricks
+was to speak. I picked a watch in the
+crowd, and was nailed. But Dutch Lonzo,
+who had the gift of gab better than any man I
+ever met, took the copper into a saloon. We
+all had a drink, and for twenty-five dollars I
+escaped even the station-house. Unfortunately,
+however, I was compelled to return the
+watch; for the copper had to "square" the
+sucker. Then the copper said to Dutch Lonzo,
+whom he knew: "Go back and graft, if you
+want, but be sure to look me up." In an hour
+or two we got enough touches to do us for
+two weeks. Senator Wet Coin was at this
+speech with about two hundred Tammany
+braves, and we picked so many pockets that a
+newspaper the next day said there must have
+been at least one hundred and ninety-nine
+pickpockets in the Tammany delegation. We
+fell quite often on these trips, but we were
+always willing to help the coppers pay for
+their lower flats. I sometimes objected because
+of their exorbitant demands, but I was
+still young. I knew that longshoremen did
+harder work for less pay than the coppers,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_80' name='Page_80'>[80]</a></span>
+and I thought, therefore, that the latter were
+too eager to make money on a sure-thing
+graft. And I always hated a sure-thing graft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But didn't we strike it rich in Connecticut!
+Whether the people of that State suffer from
+partial paralysis or not I don't know, but certainly
+if all States were as easy as Connecticut
+the guns would set up as Vanderbilts. I never
+even got a tumble in Connecticut. I ripped
+up the fairs in every direction, and took every
+chance. The inhabitants were so easy that
+we treated them with contempt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a long trip in Connecticut I nearly
+fell on my return, I was that raw. We were
+breech-getting (picking men's pockets) in the
+Brooklyn cars. I was stalling in front, Lonzo
+was behind and Charlie was the pick. Lonzo
+telephoned to me by gestures that Charlie had
+hold of the leather, but it wouldn't come. I
+was hanging on a strap, and, pretending to slip,
+brought my hand down heavily on the sucker's
+hat, which went over his ears. The leather
+came, was slipped to me, Lonzo apologized for
+spoiling the hat and offered the sucker a five
+dollar bill, which he politely refused. Now
+that was rough work, and we would not have
+done it, had we not been travelling so long
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_81' name='Page_81'>[81]</a></span>
+among the Reubs in Connecticut. We could
+have made our gets all right, but we were so confident
+and delayed so long that the sucker blew
+before we left the car, and Lonzo and Charlie
+were nailed, and the next morning arraigned.
+In the meantime, however, we had started the
+wires working, and notified Mr. R.&mdash;&mdash; and
+Lonzo's wife to "fix" things in Brooklyn.
+The reliable attorney got a bondsman, and
+two friends of his "fixed" the cops, who made
+no complaint. Lonzo's wife, an Irishwoman
+and a handsome grafter, had just finished a
+five year bit in London. It cost us six hundred
+dollars to "fix" that case, and there was
+only two hundred and fifty dollars in the
+leather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That made Lonzo's wife exceedingly angry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good Lord," she said. "There's panthers
+for you in New York! There's the blokes
+that shakes you down too heavy. I'd want an
+unlimited cheque on the Bank of England if
+you ever fell again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little philosophy on the same subject was
+given me one day by an English Moll, who
+had fallen up-State and had to "give up"
+heavily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've been in a good many cities and 'amlets
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_82' name='Page_82'>[82]</a></span>
+in this country," said she, "but gad! blind me if
+I ever want to fall in an 'amlet in this blooming
+State again. The New York police are at
+least a little sensible at times, but when these
+Rufus's up the State get a Yorker or a wise guy,
+they'll strip him down to his socks. One of these
+voracious country coppers who sing sweet
+hymns in jail is a more successful gun than
+them that hit the rocky path and take brash to
+get the long green. It is only the grafter that
+is supposed to protect the people who makes a
+success of it. The hypocritical mouthings of
+these people just suit the size of their Bibles."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lonzo and I, and Patsy, a grafter I had
+picked up about this time, made several fat
+trips to Philadelphia. At first we were leary
+of the department stores, there had been so
+many "hollers," and worked the "rattlers"
+(cars) only. We were told by some local guns
+that we could not "last" twenty-four hours in
+Philadelphia without protection, but that was
+not our experience. We went easy for a time,
+but the chances were too good, and we began
+voraciously to tear open the department stores,
+the churches and the theatres; and without a
+fall. Whenever anybody mentioned the fly-cops
+(detectives) of Philadelphia it reminded
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_83' name='Page_83'>[83]</a></span>
+us of the inhabitants of Connecticut. They
+were not "dead": such a word is sacred.
+Their proper place was not on the police force,
+but on a shelf in a Dutchman's grocery store
+labelled the canned article. Philadelphia was
+always my town, but I never stayed very long,
+partly because I did not want to become known
+in such a fat place, and partly because I could
+not bear to be away from New York very long;
+for, although there is better graft in other cities,
+there is no such place to live in as Manhattan.
+I had no fear of being known in Philadelphia
+to the police; but to local guns who would
+become jealous of our grafting and tip us off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On one of my trips to the City of Brotherly
+Love I had a poetical experience. The graft
+had been good, and one Sunday morning I
+left Dan and Patsy asleep, and went for a walk
+in the country, intending, for a change, to
+observe the day of rest. I walked for several
+hours through a beautiful, quiet country, and
+about ten o'clock passed a country church.
+They were singing inside, and for some reason,
+probably because I had had a good walk in
+the country, the music affected me strangely.
+I entered, and saw a blind evangelist and his
+sister. I bowed my head, and my whole past
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_84' name='Page_84'>[84]</a></span>
+life came over me. Although everything had
+been coming my way, I felt uneasy, and
+thought of home for the first time in many
+weeks. I went back to the hotel in Philadelphia,
+feeling very gloomy, and shut myself up
+in my room. I took up my pen and began a
+letter to a Tommy (girl) in New York. But
+I could not forget the country church, and
+instead of writing to the little Tommy, I
+wrote the following jingles:
+</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="o1">
+"When a child by mother's knee
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+I would watch, watch, watch
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+By the deep blue sea,
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+And the moon-beams played merrily
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+On our home beside the sea.
+</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>
+<span class='smcap'>Chorus.</span>
+</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="o1">
+"The Evening Star shines bright-i-ly
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+Above our home beside the sea,
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+And the moon-beams danced beamingly
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+On our home beside the sea.
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+But now I am old, infirm and grey
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+I shall never see those happy days;
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+I would give my life, all my wealth, and fame
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+To hear my mother gently call my name."
+</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>
+Towards evening Patsy and Dan returned
+from a good day's work. Patsy noticed I
+was quiet and unusually gloomy, and asked:
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_85' name='Page_85'>[85]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's the matter? Didn't you get anything?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," I replied, "I'm going back to New
+York."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where have you been?" asked Dan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To church," I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the city?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," I replied, "in the country."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I cautioned you," said Dan, "against taking
+such chances. There's no dough in these
+country churches. If you want to try lone
+ones on a Sunday take in some swell church
+in the city."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following Sunday I went to a fashionable
+church and got a few leathers, and afterwards
+went to all the swell churches in the
+city. I touched them, but they could not
+touch me. I heard all the ministers in Philadelphia,
+but they could not move me the way
+that country evangelist did. They were all
+artificial in comparison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly after my poetical experience in Philadelphia
+I made a trip up New York State
+with Patsy, Dan and Joe, and grafted in a
+dozen towns. One day when we were on the
+cars going from Albany to Amsterdam, we
+saw a fat, sleepy-looking Dutchman, and I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_86' name='Page_86'>[86]</a></span>
+nicked him for a clock as he was passing
+along the aisle to the end of the car. It took
+the Dutchman about ten minutes after he had
+returned to his seat to blow that his super was
+gone, and his chain hanging down. A look
+of stupid surprise spread over his innocent
+countenance. He looked all around, picked
+up the end of his chain, saw it was twisted, put
+his hand in his vest pocket, then looked again
+at the end of the chain, tried his pocket again,
+then went through all of his pockets, and
+repeated each of these actions a dozen times.
+The passengers all got "next," and began to
+grin. "Get on to the Hiker," (countryman)
+said Patsy to Joe, and they both laughed. I
+told the Dutchman that the clock must have
+fallen down the leg of his underwear; whereupon
+the Reuben retired to investigate,
+searched himself thoroughly and returned,
+only to go through the same motions, and
+then retire to investigate once more. It
+was as good as a comedy. But it was well
+there were no country coppers on that train.
+They would not have cared a rap about the
+Dutchman's loss of his property, but we four
+probably should have been compelled to divide
+with them.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_87' name='Page_87'>[87]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grafters are a superstitious lot. Before we
+reached Buffalo a feeling came over me that I
+had better not work in that town; so Joe, Dan
+and an English grafter we had picked up,
+named Scotty, stopped at Buffalo, and Patsy
+and I went on. Sure enough, in a couple of
+days Joe wired me that Scotty had fallen for
+a breech-kick and was held for trial. I wired to
+Mr. R&mdash;&mdash;, who got into communication with
+Mr. J&mdash;&mdash;, a Canadian Jew living in Buffalo,
+who set the wires going. The sucker proved
+a very hard man to square, but a politician
+who was a friend of Mr. J&mdash;&mdash; showed him
+the errors of his way, and before very long
+Scotty returned to New York. An English
+Moll-buzzer, a girl, got hold of him and took
+him back to London. It was just as well, for
+it was time for our bunch to break up. We
+were getting too well-known; and falls were
+coming too frequent. So we had a general
+split. Joe went to Washington, Patsy down
+East, Scotty to "stir" in London and I stayed
+in Manhattan, where I shortly afterwards met
+Big Jack and other burglars and started in on
+that dangerous graft. But before I tell about
+my work in that line, I will narrate the story
+of Mamie and Johnny, a famous cracksman,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_88' name='Page_88'>[88]</a></span>
+whom I met at this time. It is a true love
+story of the Under World. Johnny, and
+Mamie, who by the way is not the same as
+Blonde Mamie, are still living together in New
+York City, after many trials and tribulations,
+one of the greatest of which was Mamie's enforced
+relation with a New York detective.
+But I won't anticipate on the story, which
+follows in the next chapter.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_89' name='Page_89'>[89]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V.<br />
+<i>Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+Johnny met Mamie when he was sixteen.
+At that time he was looked up to in the
+neighborhood as one of the most promising of
+the younger thieves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was an intelligent, enterprising boy and
+had, moreover, received an excellent education
+in the school of crime. His parents had died
+before he was twelve years old, and after that
+the lad lived at the Newsboys' Lodging House,
+in Rivington Street, which at that time and
+until it ceased to exist was the home of boys
+some of whom afterwards became the swellest
+of crooks, and some very reputable citizens
+and prominent politicians. A meal and a bed
+there cost six cents apiece and even the
+youngest and stupidest waif could earn or steal
+enough for that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Johnny became an adept at "hooking"
+things from grocery stores and at tapping tills.
+When he was thirteen years old he was
+arrested for petty theft, passed a night in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_90' name='Page_90'>[90]</a></span>
+police station, and was sent to the Catholic
+Protectory, where he was the associate of
+boys much older and "wiser" in crime than
+he. At that place were all kinds of incurables,
+from those arrested for serious felonies to
+those who had merely committed the crime of
+being homeless. From them Johnny learned
+the ways of the under world very rapidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a year of confinement he was clever
+enough to make a key and escape. He safely
+passed old "Cop O'Hagen," whose duty it was
+to watch the Harlem bridge, and returned to
+the familiar streets in lower New York, where
+the boys and rising pickpockets hid him from
+the police, until they forgot about his escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From that time Johnny's rise in the world
+of graft was rapid. He was so successful in
+stealing rope and copper from the dry-docks
+that the older heads took him in hand and used
+to put him through the "fan-light" windows
+of some store, where his haul was sometimes
+considerable. He began to grow rich, purchased
+some shoes and stockings, and assumed
+a "tough" appearance, with great pride. He
+rose a step higher, boarded tug-boats and
+ships anchored at the docks, and constantly
+increased his income. The boys looked upon
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_91' name='Page_91'>[91]</a></span>
+him as a winner in his line of graft, and as he
+gave "hot'l" (lodging-house) money to those
+boys who had none, he was popular. So
+Johnny became "chesty", began to "spread"
+himself, to play pool, to wear good linen collars
+and to associate with the best young
+thieves in the ward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at this time that he met Mamie, who
+was a year or two younger than he. She was
+a small, dark, pale-faced little girl, and as neat
+and quick-witted as Johnny. She lived with
+her parents, near the Newsboys' Lodging
+House, where Johnny still "hung out". Mamie's
+father and mother were poor, respectable
+people, who were born and bred in the old
+thirteenth ward, a section famous for the many
+shop girls who were fine "spielers" (dancers).
+Mamie's mother was one of the most skillful
+of these dancers, and therefore Mamie came
+by her passion for the waltz very naturally;
+and the light-footed little girl was an early
+favorite with the mixed crowd of dancers who
+used to gather at the old Concordia Assembly
+Rooms, on the Bowery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at this place that Johnny and Mamie
+met for the first time. It was a case of mutual
+admiration, and the boy and girl started in to
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_92' name='Page_92'>[92]</a></span>
+"keep company." Johnny became more ambitious
+in his line of graft; he had a girl! He
+needed money to buy her presents, to take her
+to balls, theatres and picnics; and he began to
+"gun", which means to pickpockets, an occupation
+which he found far more lucrative than
+"swagging" copper from the docks or going
+through fan-light windows. He did not remain
+content, however, with "dipping" and, with
+several much older "grafters", he started in to
+do "drag" work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Drag" work is a rather complicated kind
+of stealing and success at it requires considerable
+skill. Usually a "mob" of four grafters
+work together. They get "tipped off" to
+some store where there is a line of valuable
+goods, perhaps a large silk or clothing-house.
+One of the four, called the "watcher", times
+the last employee that leaves the place to be
+"touched". The "watcher" is at his post
+again early in the morning, to find out at what
+time the first employee arrives. He may even
+hire a furnished room opposite the store, in
+order to secure himself against identification
+by some Central Office detective who might
+stroll by. When he has learned the hours of
+the employees he reports to his "pals". At
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_93' name='Page_93'>[93]</a></span>
+a late hour at night the four go to the store,
+put a spindle in the Yale lock, and break it
+with a blow from a hammer. They go inside,
+take another Yale lock, which they have
+brought with them, lock themselves in, go
+upstairs, carry the most valuable goods downstairs
+and pile them near the door. Then
+they go away, and, in the morning, before the
+employees are due, they drive up boldly to the
+store with a truck; representing a driver, two
+laborers, and a shipping clerk. They load the
+wagon with the goods, lock the door, and drive
+away. They have been known to do this work
+in full view of the unsuspecting policeman on
+the beat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Johnny had advanced to this distinguished
+work, Mamie, too, had become a
+bread-earner, of a more modest and a more
+respectable kind. She went to work in a factory,
+and made paper boxes for two and one-half
+dollars a week. So the two dressed very
+well, and had plenty of spending money.
+Unless Johnny had some work to do they
+always met in the evening, and soon were
+seriously in love with one another. Mamie
+knew what Johnny's line of business was, and
+admired his cleverness. The most progressive
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_94' name='Page_94'>[94]</a></span>
+people in her set believed in "getting
+on" in any way, and how could Mamie be
+expected to form a social morality for herself?
+She thought Johnny was the nicest boy in the
+world, and Johnny returned her love to the
+full. So Johnny finally asked her if she would
+"hitch up" with him for life, and she gladly
+consented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were married and set up a nice home
+in Allen Street. It was before the time
+when the Jews acquired an exclusive right to
+that part of the town, and in this neighborhood
+Mamie and Johnny had many friends
+who used to visit them in the evening; for
+the loving couple were exceedingly domestic,
+and, when Johnny had no business on hand,
+seldom went out in the evening. Johnny was
+a model husband. He had no bad habits,
+never drank or gambled, spent as much time
+as he could with his wife, and made a great
+deal of money. Mamie gave up her work in
+the shop, and devoted all her attention to
+making Johnny happy and his home pleasant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For about four years Johnny and Mamie
+lived very happily together. Things came
+their way; and Johnny and his pals laid by a
+considerable amount of money against a rainy
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_95' name='Page_95'>[95]</a></span>
+day. To be sure, they had their little troubles.
+Johnny "fell," that is to say, was arrested, a
+score of times, but succeeded in getting off.
+It was partly due to good luck, and partly to
+the large amount of fall-money he and his pals
+had gathered together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On one occasion it was only Mamie's cleverness
+and devotion that saved Johnny, for a
+time, from the penitentiary. One dark night
+Johnny and three pals, after a long conversation
+in the saloon of a ward politician, visited
+a large jewelry store on Fulton Street, Brooklyn,
+artistically opened the safe, and made
+away with fifteen thousand dollars. It was a
+bold and famous robbery, and the search for
+the thieves was long and earnest. Johnny
+and his friends were not suspected at first, but
+an old saying among thieves is, "wherever
+there are three or four there is always a leak,"
+a truth similar to that announced by Benjamin
+Franklin: "Three can keep a secret when two
+are dead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of Johnny's pals, Patsy, told his girl in
+confidence how the daring "touch" was made.
+That was the first link in the long chain of
+gossip which finally reached the ears of the
+watching detectives; and the result was that
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_96' name='Page_96'>[96]</a></span>
+Patsy and Johnny were arrested. It was impossible
+to "settle" this case, no matter how
+much "fall-money" they had at their disposal;
+for the jeweler belonged to the Jewelers' Protective
+Association, which will prosecute those
+who rob anyone belonging to their organization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As bribery was out of the question, Johnny
+and Patsy, who were what is called in the
+underworld "slick articles," put their heads
+together, and worked out a scheme. The day
+of their trial in the Brooklyn Court came
+around. They were waiting their turn in the
+prisoner's "pen," adjoining the Court, when
+Mamie came to see them. The meeting between
+her and Johnny was very affecting.
+After a few words Mamie noticed that her
+swell Johnny wore no neck-tie. Johnny,
+seemingly embarrassed, turned to a Court
+policeman, and asked him to lend him his tie
+for a short time. The policeman declined,
+but remarked that Mamie had a tie that
+would match Johnny's complexion very well.
+Mamie impulsively took off her tie, put it
+on Johnny, kissed him, and left the Court-house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Johnny was to be tried in ten minutes, but
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_97' name='Page_97'>[97]</a></span>
+he induced his lawyer to have the trial put
+off for half an hour; and another case was tried
+instead. Then he took off Mamie's neck-tie,
+tore the back out of it, and removed two fine
+steel saws. He gave one to Patsy, and in a
+few minutes they had penetrated a small iron
+bar which closed a little window leading to an
+alley. Patsy was too large to squeeze himself
+through the opening, but "stalled" for Johnny
+while the latter "made his gets". When they
+came to put these two on trial there was a
+sensation in Court. No Johnny! Patsy knew
+nothing about it, he said; and he received six
+years for his crime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Johnny's day for a time in the "stir"
+soon came around. He made a good "touch",
+and got away with the goods, but was betrayed
+by a pal, a professional thief who was
+in the pay of the police, technically called a
+"stool-pigeon". Mamie visited Johnny in the
+Tombs, and when she found the case was
+hopeless she wanted to go and steal something
+herself so that she might accompany her
+boy to prison. But when Johnny told her
+there were no women at Sing Sing she gave
+up the idea. Johnny went to prison for four
+years, and Mamie went to a tattooer, and, as a
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_98' name='Page_98'>[98]</a></span>
+proof of her devotion, had Johnny's name
+indelibly stamped upon her arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mamie, in consequence of her fidelity to
+Johnny, whom she regularly visited at Sing
+Sing, was a heroine and a martyr in the eyes
+of the grafters of both sexes. The money she
+and Johnny had saved began to dwindle, and
+soon she was compelled to work again at box-making.
+She remained faithful to Johnny,
+although many a good grafter tried to make
+up to the pretty girl. When Johnny was
+released from Sing Sing, Mamie was even
+happier than he. They had no money now,
+but some politicians and saloon-keepers who
+knew that Johnny was a good money-getter,
+set them up in a little house. And they resumed
+their quiet domestic life together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their happiness did not last long, however.
+Johnny needed money more than ever now and
+resumed his dangerous business. He got in
+with a quartette of the cleverest safe-crackers
+in the country, and made a tour of the
+Eastern cities. They made many important
+touches, but finally Johnny was again under
+suspicion for a daring robbery in Union
+Square, and was compelled to become a solitary
+fugitive. He sent word, through an old-time
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_99' name='Page_99'>[99]</a></span>
+burglar, to Mamie, exhorted her to keep
+up the home, and promised to send money
+regularly. He was forced, however, to stay
+away from New York for several years, and
+did not dare to communicate with Mamie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first, Mamie tried to resume her work at
+box-making. But she had had so much leisure
+and had lived so well that she found the
+work irksome and the pay inadequate. Mamie
+knew many women pickpockets and shop-lifters,
+friends of her husband. When some
+of these adventurous girls saw that Mamie was
+discontented with her lot, they induced her to
+go out and work with them. So Mamie became
+a very clever shop-lifter, and, for a time,
+made considerable money. Then many of the
+best "guns" in the city again tried to make
+up to Mamie, and marry her. Johnny was
+not on the spot, and that, in the eyes of a
+thief, constitutes a divorce. But Mamie still
+loved her wayward boy and held the others
+back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meantime Johnny had become a
+great traveller. He knew that the detectives
+were so hot on his track that he dared to stay
+nowhere very long; nor dared to trust anyone:
+so he worked alone. He made a number
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_100' name='Page_100'>[100]</a></span>
+of daring robberies, all along the line from
+Montreal to Detroit, but they all paled in comparison
+with a touch he made at Philadelphia,
+a robbery which is famous in criminal
+annals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had returned to Philadelphia, hoping
+to get a chance to send word to Mamie,
+whom he had not seen for years, and for
+whom he pined. While in the city of brotherly
+love he was "tipped off" to a good thing.
+He boldly entered a large mercantile house,
+and, in thirteen minutes, he opened a time-lock
+vault, and abstracted three hundred thousand
+dollars worth of negotiable bonds and
+escaped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bold deed made a sensation all over
+the country. The mercantile house and the
+safe manufacturers were so hot for the thief
+that the detectives everywhere worked hard
+and "on the level". Johnny was not suspected
+then, and never "did time" for this
+touch. For a while he hid in Philadelphia;
+boarded there with a poor, respectable family,
+representing himself as a laborer out of work.
+He spent the daytime in a little German beer
+saloon, playing pinocle with the proprietor;
+and was perfectly safe.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_101' name='Page_101'>[101]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his longing for Mamie had grown so
+strong that he could not bear it. He knew
+that the detectives were still looking for him
+because of the old crime, and that they were
+hot to discover the thief of the negotiable
+bonds. He sent word to Mamie, nevertheless,
+through an old pal he found at Philadelphia,
+and arranged to see her at Mount Vernon,
+near New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two met in the side room of a little
+saloon near the railway station; and the greeting
+was affectionate in the extreme. They
+had not seen one another for years! And
+hardly a message had been exchanged. After
+a little Johnny told Mamie, proudly, that
+it was he who had stolen the negotiable
+bonds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," he added, "we are rich. After a
+little I can sell these bonds for thirty cents
+on the dollar and then you and I will go away
+and give up this life. I am getting older
+and my nerve is not what it was once. We'll
+settle down quietly in London or some town
+where we are not known, and be happy.
+Won't we, dear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mamie said "Yes," but she appeared confused.
+When Johnny asked her what was
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_102' name='Page_102'>[102]</a></span>
+the matter, she burst into tears; and choked
+and sobbed for some time before she could
+say a word. She ordered a glass of whiskey,
+which she never used to drink in the old days,
+and when the bar-tender had left, she turned
+to the worried Johnny, embraced him tenderly
+and said, in a voice which still trembled:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Johnny, will you forgive me if I tell you
+something? It's pretty bad, but not so bad
+as it might be, for I love only you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Johnny encouraged her with a kiss and she
+continued, in a broken voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When you were gone again, Johnny, I
+tried to make my living at the old box-making
+work; but the pay wasn't big enough for me
+then. So I began to graft&mdash;dipping and shop-lifting&mdash;and
+made money. But a Central Office
+man you used to know&mdash;Jim Lennon&mdash;got
+on to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim Lennon?" said Johnny, "Sure, I
+knew him. He used to be sweet on you,
+Mamie. He treated you right, I hope."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mamie blushed and looked down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?" said Johnny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim came to me one day," she continued,
+"and told me he wouldn't stand for what I
+was doing. He said the drygoods people
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_103' name='Page_103'>[103]</a></span>
+were hollering like mad; and that he'd have to
+arrest me if I didn't quit. I tried to square
+him with a little dough, but I soon saw that
+wasn't what he was after."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Look here, Mamie,' he finally said. 'It's
+just this way. Johnny is a good fellow, but
+he's dead to you and dead to me. He's done
+time, and that breaks all marriage ties. Now,
+I want you to hitch up with me, and lead an
+honest life. I'll give you a good home, and
+you won't run any more risk of the pen!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Johnny grew very pale as Mamie said the
+last words; and when she stopped speaking,
+he said quietly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you did it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mamie again burst into tears. "Oh, Johnny,"
+she cried, "what else could I do. He wouldn't
+let me go on grafting, and I had to live."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And so you married him?" Johnny insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reply was in a whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the next thirty seconds Johnny thought
+very rapidly. This woman had his liberty in
+her hands. He had told her about the negotiable
+bonds. Besides, he loved Mamie and
+understood the difficulty of her position. His
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_104' name='Page_104'>[104]</a></span>
+life as a thief had made him very tolerant in
+some respects. He therefore swallowed his
+emotion, and turned a kind face to Mamie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You still love me?" he asked, "better
+than the copper?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure," said Mamie, warmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now listen," said Johnny, the old business-like
+expression coming back into his face.
+"I am hounded for the old trick; and the
+detectives are looking everywhere for these
+negotiable bonds, which I have here, in this
+satchel. Can I trust you with them? Will
+you mind them for me, until things quiet
+down?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, I will," said Mamie, gladly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they parted once more. Johnny went
+into hiding again, and Mamie went to the
+detective's house, with the negotiable bonds.
+She had no intention of betraying Johnny;
+for she might be arrested for receiving stolen
+goods; and, besides, she still loved her first
+husband. So she planted the bonds in the
+bottom of the detective's trunk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a pretty situation. Her husband,
+the detectives, and many other "fly-cops" all
+over the country, were looking for these negotiable
+bonds, at the very moment when they
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_105' name='Page_105'>[105]</a></span>
+were safely stowed away in the detective's
+trunk. Mamie and Johnny, who continued to
+meet occasionally, often smiled at the humor
+of the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon, however, suspicion for the Philadelphia
+touch began to attach to Johnny. Mamie's
+detective asked her one evening if she
+had heard anything about Johnny, of late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not for years," said Mamie, calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But one night, several Central Office men
+followed Mamie as she went to Mt. Vernon to
+meet Johnny; and when the two old lovers
+parted, Johnny was arrested on account of the
+fifteen thousand dollar robbery in Brooklyn,
+from the penalty of which he had escaped by
+means of Mamie's neck-tie many years before.
+The detectives suspected Johnny of having
+stolen the bonds, but of this they could get no
+evidence. So he was sent to Sing Sing for six
+years on the old charge. When he was safely
+in prison the detectives induced him to return
+the bonds, on the promise that he would
+not be prosecuted at his release, and would be
+paid a certain sum of money. The mercantile
+house agreed, and Johnny sent word to Mamie
+to give up the bonds. Then, of course, the
+detective knew about the trick that Mamie
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_106' name='Page_106'>[106]</a></span>
+had played him. But he, like Johnny, was a
+philosopher, and forgave the clever woman.
+When he first heard of it, however, he had
+said to her, indignantly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You cow, if you had given the bonds to
+me, I would have been made a police captain,
+and you my queen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as Johnny got out of stir, Mamie
+quit the detective, and the couple are now living
+again together in a quiet, domestic manner,
+in Manhattan.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_107' name='Page_107'>[107]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VI.<br />
+<i>What The Burglar Faces.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+For a long time I took Sheenie Annie's
+advice and did not do any night work. It is
+too dangerous, the come-back is too sure, you
+have to depend too much on the nerve of your
+pals, the "bits" are too long; and it is very
+difficult to square it. But as time went on I
+grew bolder. I wanted to do something new,
+and get more dough. My new departure was
+not, however, entirely due to ambition and
+the boldness acquired by habitual success.
+After a gun has grafted for a long time his
+nervous system becomes affected, for it is certainly
+an exciting life. He is then very apt to
+need a stimulant. He is usually addicted to
+either opium or chloral, morphine or whiskey.
+Even at this early period I began to take a
+little opium, which afterwards was one of the
+main causes of my constant residence in stir,
+and was really the wreck of my life, for when
+a grafter is doped he is inclined to be very
+reckless. Perhaps if I had never hit the hop
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_108' name='Page_108'>[108]</a></span>
+I would not have engaged in the dangerous
+occupation of a burglar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will say one thing for opium, however.
+That drug never makes a man careless of his
+personal appearance. He will go to prison
+frequently, but he will always have a good
+front, and will remain a self-respecting thief.
+The whiskey dip, on the other hand, is apt to
+dress carelessly, lose his ambition and, eventually
+to go down and out as a common "bum".
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began night-work when I was about twenty
+years old, and at first I did not go in for it
+very heavily. Big Jack, Jerry, Ed and I made
+several good touches in Mt. Vernon and in
+hotels at summer resorts and got sums ranging
+from two hundred to twenty-seven hundred
+dollars. We worked together for nearly a
+year with much success and only an occasional
+fall, and these we succeeded in squaring. Once
+we had a shooting-match which made me a
+little leary. I was getting out the window
+with my swag, when a shot just grazed my eye.
+I nearly decided to quit then, but, I suppose
+because it was about that time I was beginning
+to take opium, I continued with more
+boldness than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One night Ed, a close pal of mine, was operating
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_109' name='Page_109'>[109]</a></span>
+with me out in Jersey. We were working
+in the rear of a house and Ed was just
+shinning up the back porch to climb in the
+second story window, when a shutter above
+was thrown open and, without warning, a pistol
+shot rang out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down came Ed, falling like a log at my feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you hurt?" said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Done!" said he, and I saw it was so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now a man may be nervy enough, but self-preservation
+is the first rule of life. I turned
+and ran at the top of my speed across two
+back yards, then through a field, then over a
+fence into what seemed a ploughed field
+beyond. The ground was rough and covered
+with hummocks, and as I stumbled along I
+suddenly tripped and fell ten feet down into
+an open grave. The place was a cemetery,
+though I had not recognized it in the darkness.
+For hours I lay there trembling, but
+nobody came and I was safe. It was not long
+after that, however, that something did happen
+to shake my nerve, which was pretty good.
+It came about in the following way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A jeweler, who was a well-known "fence",
+put us on to a place where we could get thousands.
+He was one of the most successful
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_110' name='Page_110'>[110]</a></span>
+"feelers-out" in the business. The man who
+was my pal on this occasion, Dal, looked the
+place over with me and though we thought it
+a bit risky, the size of the graft attracted us.
+We had to climb up on the front porch, with
+an electric light streaming right down on us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had reached the porch when I got the
+well-known signal of danger. I hurriedly descended
+and asked Dal what was the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim," he said, "there's somebody off there,
+a block away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We investigated, and you can imagine how
+I felt when we found nothing but an old goat.
+It was a case of Dal's nerves, but the best of
+us get nervous at times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went to the porch again and opened the
+window with a putty knife (made of the rib of
+a woman's corset), when I got the "cluck"
+again, and hastily descended, but again found
+it was Dal's imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I grew hot, and said: "You have
+knocked all the nerve out of me, for sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim," he replied, "I ain't feeling good."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it a premonition? He wanted to quit
+the job, but I wouldn't let him. I opened up
+on him. "What!" I said. "You are willing
+to steal one piece of jewelry and take your
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_111' name='Page_111'>[111]</a></span>
+chance of going to stir, but when we get a
+good thing that would land us in Easy Street
+the rest of our lives, you weaken!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dal was quiet, and his face unusually pale.
+He was a good fellow, but his nerve was gone.
+I braced him up, however, and told him we'd
+get the "éclat" the third time, sure. Then
+climbing the porch the third time, I removed
+my shoes, raised the window again, and had
+just struck a light when a revolver was pressed
+on my head. I knocked the man's hand up,
+quick, and jumped. As I did so I heard a
+cry and then the beating of a policeman's
+stick on the sidewalk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I ran, with two men after me, and came to
+the gateway of a yard, where I saw a big
+bloodhound chained to his kennel. He
+growled savagely, but it was neck or nothing,
+so I patted his head just as though I were not
+shaking with fear, slipped down on my hands
+and knees and crept into his dog-house. Why
+didn't he bite me? Was it sympathy? When
+my pursuers came up, the owner of the house,
+who had been aroused by the cries, said: "He
+is not here. This dog would eat him up."
+When the police saw the animal they were
+convinced of it too.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_112' name='Page_112'>[112]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little while later I left my friend's kennel.
+It was four o'clock in the morning and I had
+no shoes on and only one dollar and sixty cents
+in my pocket. I sneaked through the back
+window of the first house I saw, stole a pair
+of shoes and eighty dollars from a room
+where a man and his wife were sleeping.
+Then I took a car. Knowing that I was still
+being looked for, I wanted to get rid of my
+hat, as a partial disguise. On the seat with
+me was a working man asleep. I took his
+old soft hat, leaving my new derby by his
+side, and also took his dinner pail. Then
+when I left the car I threw away my collar
+and necktie, and reached New York, disguised
+as a workingman. The next day the
+papers told how poor old Dal had been
+arrested. Everything that had happened for
+weeks was put on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A week later Dal was found dead in his
+cell, and I believe he did the Dutch act
+(suicide), for I remember one day, months
+before that fatal night, Dal and I were sitting
+in a politicians saloon, when he said to me:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim, do you believe in heaven?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you believe in hell?" he asked.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_113' name='Page_113'>[113]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've got a mind to find out," he said
+quickly, and pointed a big revolver at his
+teeth. One of the guns in the saloon said:
+"Let him try it," but I knocked the pistol
+away, for something in his manner made me
+think seriously he would shoot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You poor brute," I said to him. "I'll put
+your ashes in an urn some day and write
+"Dear Old Saturday Night" for an epitaph for
+you; but it isn't time yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It did not take many experiences like the
+above to make me very leary of night-work;
+and I went more slowly for some time. I
+continued to dip, however, more boldly than
+ever and to do a good deal of day work; in
+which comparatively humble graft the servant
+girls, as I have already said, used to help us
+out considerably. This class of women never
+interested me as much as the sporting characters,
+but we used to make good use of them;
+and sometimes they amused us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remember an entertaining episode which
+took place while Harry, a pal of mine at the time,
+and I, were going with a couple of these hard-working
+Molls. Harry was rather inclined to
+be a sure-thing grafter, of which class of thieves
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_114' name='Page_114'>[114]</a></span>
+I shall say more in another chapter; and after
+my recent dangerous adventures I tolerated
+that class more than was customary with me.
+Indeed, if Harry had been the real thing I
+would have cut him dead; as it was he came
+near enough to the genuine article to make me
+despise him in my ordinary mood. But, as I
+say, I was uncommonly leary just at that
+time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He and I were walking in Stuyvesant Square
+when we met a couple of these domestic slaves.
+With a "hello," we rang in on them, walked
+them down Second Avenue and had a few
+drinks all around. My girl told me whom
+she was working with. Thinking there might
+be something doing I felt her out further,
+with a view to finding where in the house the
+stuff lay. Knowing the Celtic character
+thoroughly, I easily got the desired information.
+We took the girls into Bonnell's Museum,
+at Eighth Street and Broadway, and saw a
+howling border melodrama, in which wild
+Indians were as thick as Moll-buzzers in 1884.
+Mary Anne, who was my girl, said she should
+tell her mistress about the beautiful play; and
+asked for a program. They were all out, and
+so I gave her an old one, of another play,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_115' name='Page_115'>[115]</a></span>
+which I had in my pocket. We had a good
+time, and made a date with them for another
+meeting, in two weeks from that night; but
+before the appointed hour we had beat Mary
+Anne's mistress out of two hundred dollars
+worth of silverware, easily obtained, thanks to
+the information I had received from Mary
+Anne. When we met the girls again, I found
+Mary Anne in a great state of indignation; I
+was afraid she was "next" to our being the
+burglars, and came near falling through the
+floor. But her rage, it seemed, was about the
+play. She had told her mistress about the wild
+Indian melodrama she had seen, and then had
+shown her the program of <i>The Banker's
+Daughter</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But there is no such thing as an Indian in
+<i>The Banker's Daughter</i>," her mistress had said.
+"I fear you are deceiving me, Mary Anne, and
+that you have been to some low place on the
+Bowery."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other servants in the house got next
+and kidded Mary Anne almost to death about
+Indians and <i>The Banker's Daughter</i>. After
+I had quieted her somewhat she told me about
+the burglary that had taken place at her house,
+and Harry and I were much interested. She
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_116' name='Page_116'>[116]</a></span>
+was sure the touch had been made by two
+"naygers" who lived in the vicinity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was shortly after this incident that I beat
+Blackwell's Island out of three months. A
+certain "heeler" put me on to a disorderly
+house where we could get some stones. I had
+everything "fixed." The "heeler" had arranged
+it with the copper on the beat, and it
+seemed like a sure thing; although the Madam,
+I understood, was a good shot and had plenty
+of nerve. My accomplice, the heeler, was a
+sure thing grafter, who had selected me because
+I had the requisite nerve and was no
+squealer. At two o'clock in the morning a
+trusted pal and I ascended from the back porch
+to the Madam's bed-room. I had just struck
+a match, when I heard a female voice say,
+"What are you doing there?" and a bottle,
+fired at my head, banged up against the wall
+with a crash. I did not like to alarm women,
+and so I made my "gets" out the window, over
+the fence, and into another street, where I was
+picked up by a copper, on general principles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Madam told him that the thief was
+over six feet tall and had a fierce black mustache.
+As I am only five feet seven inches
+and was smoothly shaven, it did not seem like
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_117' name='Page_117'>[117]</a></span>
+an identification; although when she saw me
+she changed her note, and swore I was the
+man. The copper, who knew I was a grafter,
+though he did not think I did that kind of
+work, nevertheless took me to the station-house,
+where I convinced two wardmen that
+I had been arrested unjustly. When I was
+led before the magistrate in the morning, the
+copper said the lady's description did not
+tally with the short, red-haired and freckled
+thief before his Honor. The policemen all
+agreed, however, that I was a notorious
+grafter, and the magistrate, who was not
+much of a lawyer, sent me to the Island for
+three months on general principles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was terribly sore, for I knew I had been
+illegally treated. I felt as much a martyr as
+if I had not been guilty in the least; and I
+determined to escape at all hazards; although
+my friends told me I would be released any
+day; for certainly the evidence against me
+had been insufficient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After I had been on the Island ten days I
+went to a friend, who had been confined there
+several months and said: "Eddy, I have
+been unjustly convicted for a crime I committed&mdash;such
+was my way of putting it&mdash;and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_118' name='Page_118'>[118]</a></span>
+I am determined to make my elegant, (escape)
+come what will. Do you know the weak
+spots of this dump?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put me "next", and I saw there was a
+chance, a slim one, if a man could swim and
+didn't mind drowning. I found another pal,
+Jack Donovan, who, like me, could swim like
+a fish; he was desperate too, and willing to
+take any chance to see New York. Five or
+six of us slept together in one large cell, and
+on the night selected for our attempt, Jack
+and I slipped into a compartment where about
+twenty short term prisoners were kept. Our
+departure from the other cell, from which it
+was very difficult to escape after once being
+locked in for the night, was not noticed by
+the night guard and his trusty because our
+pals in the cell answered to our names when
+they were called. It was comparatively easy
+to escape from the large room where the short
+term men were confined. Into this room, too,
+Jack and I had taken tools from the quarry
+during the daytime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was twelve o'clock on a November night
+when we made our escape. We took ropes
+from the canvas cot, tied them together, and
+lowered ourselves to the ground on the outside,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_119' name='Page_119'>[119]</a></span>
+where we found bad weather, rain and
+hail. We were unable to obtain a boat, but
+secured a telegraph pole, rolled it into the
+water, and set off with it for New York. The
+terrific tide at Hellgate soon carried us well
+into the middle of Long Island Sound, and
+when we had been in the water half an hour,
+we were very cold and numb, and began to think
+that all was over. But neither of us feared
+death. All I wanted was to save enough
+money to be cremated; and I was confident
+my friends would see to that. I don't think
+fear of death is a common trait among grafters.
+Perhaps it is lack of imagination; more likely,
+however, it is because they think they won't
+be any the worse off after death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, I was not sorry when a wrecking boat
+suddenly popped our way. The tug did not
+see us, and hit Jack's end of the pole a hard
+blow that must have shaken him off. I heard
+him holler "Save me," and I yelled too. I
+didn't think anything about capture just then.
+All my desire to live came back to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was pulled into the boat. The captain
+was a good fellow. He was "next" and only
+smiled at my lies. What was more to the
+purpose he gave me some good whiskey,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_120' name='Page_120'>[120]</a></span>
+and set me ashore in Jersey City. Jack was
+drowned. All through life I have been used
+to losing a friend suddenly by the wayside;
+but I have always felt sad when it happened.
+And yet it would have been far better for me
+if I had been picked out for an early death.
+I guess poor Jack was lucky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly there are worse things than death.
+Through these three years of continual and
+for the most part successful graft, I had known
+a man named Henry Fry whose story is one
+of the saddest. If he had been called off suddenly
+as Jack was, he would certainly have
+been deemed lucky by those who knew; for
+he was married to a bad woman. He was
+one of the most successful box-men (safe-blowers)
+in the city, and made thousands, but
+nothing was enough for his wife. She used
+to say, when he would put twelve hundred
+dollars in her lap, "This won't meet expenses.
+I need one thousand dollars more." She was
+unfaithful to him, too, and with his friends.
+When I go to a matinée and see a lot of
+sleek, fat, inane looking women, I wonder who
+the poor devils are who are having their life
+blood sucked out of them. Certainly it was so
+with Henry, or Henny, as we used to call him.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_121' name='Page_121'>[121]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day, I remember, we went down the
+Sound with a well-known politician's chowder
+party, and Henny was with us. Two weeks
+earlier New York had been startled by a daring
+burglary. A large silk-importer's place of
+business was entered and his safe, supposed
+to be burglar-proof, was opened. He was
+about to be married, and his valuable wedding
+presents, which were in the safe, and six thousand
+dollars worth of silk, were stolen. It was
+Henny and his pals who had made the touch,
+but on this beautiful night on the Sound,
+Henny was sad. We were sitting on deck,
+as it was a hot summer night, when Henny
+jumped off his camp-stool and asked me to
+sing a song. I sang a sentimental ditty, in
+my tenor voice, and then Henny took me to
+the side of the boat, away from the others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Kid," he said, "I feel trouble coming
+over me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cheer up," I replied. "You're a little
+down-hearted, that's all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish to God," he said, "I was like
+you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I pulled out a five dollar bill and a two dollar
+bill and remarked: "I've got just seven
+dollars to my name."
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_122' name='Page_122'>[122]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned to me and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you are happy. You don't let anything
+bother you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henny did not drink as a rule; that was
+one reason he was such a good box-man, but
+on this occasion we had a couple of drinks,
+and I sang "I love but one." Then Henny
+ordered champagne, grew confidential, and
+told me his troubles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Kid" he said, "I've got thirty five hundred
+dollars on me. I have been giving my
+wife a good deal of money, but don't know
+what she does with it. In sixty days I have
+given her three thousand dollars, and she
+complains about poverty all the time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henny had a nice flat of seven or eight
+rooms; he owed nothing and had no children.
+He said he was unable to find any
+bank books in his wife's trunk, and was confident
+she was not laying the money by. She
+did not give it to her people, but even borrowed
+money from her father, a well-to-do
+builder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two days after the night of the excursion,
+one of Henny's pals in the silk robbery, went
+into a gin mill, treated everybody, and threw
+a one thousand dollar bill down on the bar.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_123' name='Page_123'>[123]</a></span>
+Grafters, probably more than others, like this
+kind of display. It is the only way to rise in
+their society. A Central Office detective saw
+this little exhibition, got into the grafters confidence
+and weeded him out a bit. A night
+or two afterwards Henny was in bed at home,
+when the servant girl, who was in love with
+Henny, and detested his wife because she
+treated her husband so badly (she used to say
+to me, "She ain't worthy to tie his shoe string")
+came to the door and told Henny and his wife
+that a couple of men and a policeman in uniform
+were inquiring for him. Henny replied
+sleepily that they were friends of his who had
+come to buy some stones; but the girl was
+alarmed. She knew that Henny was crooked
+and feared that those below meant him no
+good. She took the canvas turn-about containing
+burglar's tools which hung on the wall
+near the bed, and pinned it around her waist,
+under her skirt, and then admitted the three
+visitors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sergeant said to Henny, who had dressed
+himself, "You are under suspicion for the silk
+robbery." Yet there was, as is not uncommon,
+a "but," which is as a rule a monetary consideration.
+Henny knew that the crime was old,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_124' name='Page_124'>[124]</a></span>
+and, as he thought his "fence" was safe, he did
+not see how there could be a come-back. So
+he did not take the hint to shell out, and
+worked the innocent con. But those whose
+business it is to watch the world of prey, put
+two and two together, and were "next" that
+Henny and his mob had pulled off the trick.
+So they searched the house, expecting to find,
+if not <i>éclat</i>, at least burglars tools; for they
+knew that Henny was at the top of the ladder,
+and that he must have something to work with.
+While the sergeant was going through Henny's
+trunk, one of the flymen fooled with the pretty
+servant girl. She jumped, and a pair of turners
+fell on the floor. It did not take the flyman
+long to find the whole kit of tools.
+Henny was arrested, convicted, and sent to
+Sing Sing for five years. While in prison he
+became insane, his delusion being that he was
+a funny man on the Detroit Free Press, which
+he thought was owned by his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never discovered what Henny's wife did
+with the money she had from him. When I
+last heard of her she was married to another
+successful grafter, whom she was making
+unhappy also. In a grafter's life a woman
+often takes the part of the avenger of society.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_125' name='Page_125'>[125]</a></span>
+She turns against the grafters their own weapons,
+and uses them with more skill, for no
+man can graft like a woman.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">
+I had now been grafting for three years in
+the full tide of success. Since the age of eighteen
+I had had no serious fall. I had made
+much money and lived high. I had risen in
+the world of graft, and I had become, not only
+a skillful pickpocket, but a good swindler and
+drag-worker and had done some good things
+as a burglar. I was approaching my twenty-first
+year, when, as you will see, I was to go to
+the penitentiary for the first time. This is a
+good place, perhaps, to describe my general
+manner of life, my daily menu, so to speak,
+during these three fat years: for after my first
+term in state's prison things went from bad to
+worse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lived in a furnished room; or at a hotel.
+If there was nothing doing in the line of graft,
+I'd lie abed late, and read the newspapers to
+see if any large gathering, where we might
+make some touches, was on hand. One of my
+girls, of whom there was a long succession, was
+usually with me. We would breakfast, if the
+day was an idle one, about one or two o'clock
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_126' name='Page_126'>[126]</a></span>
+in the afternoon. Then we'd send to the restaurant
+and have a beefsteak or chops in our
+rooms, and perhaps a whiskey sour. If it was
+another grafter's girl I'd won I'd be greatly
+pleased, for that kind of thing is a game with
+us. In the afternoon I'd take in some variety
+show; or buy the "Tommy" a present; if it
+was summer we might go to a picnic, or to the
+Island. If I was alone, I would meet a pal,
+play billiards or pool, bet on the races, baseball
+and prize fights, jump out to the Polo
+grounds, or go to Patsy's house and have a
+game of poker. Patsy's wife was a handsome
+grafter; and Patsy was jealous. Every gun
+is sensitive about his wife, for he doesn't know
+how long he will have her with him. In the
+evening I would go to a dance-hall; or to
+Coney Island if the weather was good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it was a busy day, that is, if there was a
+touch to be pulled off, we would get up in the
+morning or the afternoon, according to the
+best time for the particular job in hand. In
+the afternoon we would often graft at the
+Polo grounds, where we had a copper "right."
+We did not have the same privileges at the
+race track, because it was protected by the
+Pinkerton men. We'd console ourselves at
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_127' name='Page_127'>[127]</a></span>
+the Polo grounds, which we used to tear wide
+open, and where I never got even a hint of a
+fall; the coppers got their percentage of the
+touches. In the morning we would meet at
+one of the grafters homes or rooms and talk
+over our scheme for the day or night. If we
+were going outside the city we would have to
+rise very early. Sometimes we were sorry we
+had lost our sleep; particularly the time we
+tried to tear open the town of Sing Sing, near
+which the famous prison is. We found nothing
+to steal there but pig iron, and there were
+only two pretty girls in the whole village.
+We used to jump out to neighboring towns,
+not always to graft, but sometimes to see our
+girls, for like sailors, the well-dressed, dapper
+pickpocket has a girl in every port. If we
+made a good touch in the afternoon we'd go
+on a spree in the evening with Sheenie Annie,
+Blonde Mamie, Big Lena or some other good-natured
+lasses, or we'd go over and inspect
+the Jersey maidens. After a good touch we
+would put some of the dough away for fall-money,
+or for our sick relatives or guns in
+stir or in the hospital. We'd all chip in to
+help out a woman grafter in trouble, and pool
+a piece of jewelry sometimes, for the purpose.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_128' name='Page_128'>[128]</a></span>
+Then, our duty done, we would put on our
+best front, and visit our friends and sporting
+places. Among others we used to jump over
+to a hotel kept by an ex-gun, one of the best
+of the spud men (green goods men), who is
+now on the level and a bit of a politician.
+He owns six fast horses, is married and has
+two beautiful children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few months before I was sent to the penitentiary
+for the first time, I had my only true
+love affair. I have liked many girls, but sentiment
+of the kind I felt for Ethel has played
+little part in my life. For Ethel I felt the
+real thing, and she for me. She was a good,
+sensible girl, and came from a respectable
+family. She lived with her father, who was a
+drummer, and took care of the house for him.
+She was a good deal of a musician, and, like
+most other girls, she was fond of dancing. I
+first met her at Beethoven Hall, and was introduced
+to her by a man, an honest laborer,
+who was in love with her. I liked her at first
+sight, but did not love her until I had talked
+with her. In two weeks we were lovers, and
+went everywhere together. The workingman
+who loved her too was jealous and began to
+knock me. He told her I was a grafter, but
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_129' name='Page_129'>[129]</a></span>
+she would not believe him; and said nothing
+to me about it, but it came to my ears through
+an intimate girl pal of hers. Shortly after
+that I fell for a breech-kick (was arrested for
+picking a man's trouser's pocket), but I had a
+good lawyer and the copper was one of those
+who are open to reason. I lay a month in
+the Tombs, however, before I got off, and
+Ethel learned all about it. She came to the
+Tombs to see me, but, instead of reproaches,
+I got sympathy from her. After I was released
+I gave her some of my confidence.
+She asked me if I wouldn't be honest, and go
+to work; and said she would ask her father
+to get me a job. Her father came to me and
+painted what my life would be, if I kept on.
+I thought the matter over sincerely. I had
+formed expensive habits which I could not
+keep up on any salary I could honestly make.
+Away down in my mind (I suppose you would
+call it soul) I knew I was not ready for reform.
+I talked with Ethel, and told her that
+I loved her, but that I could not quit my life.
+She said she would marry me anyway. But I
+thought the world of her, and told her that
+though I had blasted my own life I would not
+blast hers. I would not marry her, she was
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_130' name='Page_130'>[130]</a></span>
+so good and affectionate. When we parted, I
+said to myself: Man proposes, habit disposes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was certainly lucky that I did not marry
+that sweet girl, for a month after I had split
+with her, I fell for a long term in state's
+prison. It was for a breech-kick, which I
+could not square. I had gone out of my hotel
+one morning for a bottle of whiskey when I
+met two grafters, Johnny and Alec, who were
+towing a "sucker" along with them. They
+gave me the tip that it was worth trying. Indeed,
+I gathered that the man must have his
+bank with him, and I nicked him in a car for
+his breech-leather. A spectator saw the deed
+and tipped off a copper. I was nailed, but
+had nothing on me, for I had passed the
+leather to Alec. I was not in the mood for
+the police station, and with Alec's help I
+"licked" the copper, who pulled his gun and
+fired at us as we ran up a side street. Alec
+blazed back, and escaped, but I was arrested.
+I could not square it, as I have said, for I had
+been wanted at Headquarters for some time
+past, because I did not like to give up, and
+was no stool-pigeon. I notified Mr. R&mdash;&mdash;,
+who was told to keep his hands off. I had
+been tearing the cars open for so long that
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_131' name='Page_131'>[131]</a></span>
+the company wanted to "do" me. They got
+brassy-mouthed and yelled murder. I saw I
+had a corporation against me and hadn't a
+living chance to beat it. So I pleaded guilty
+and received five years and seven months at
+Sing Sing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A boy of twenty-one, I was hand-cuffed
+with two old jail-birds, and as we rode up on
+a Fourth Avenue car to the Grand Central
+Station, I felt deeply humiliated for the first
+time in my life. When the passengers stared
+at me I hung my head with shame.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_132' name='Page_132'>[132]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VII.<br />
+<i>In Stir.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+I hung my head with shame, but not because
+of contrition. I was ashamed of being
+caught and made a spectacle of. All the way
+to Sing Sing station people stared at us as if
+we were wild animals. We walked from the
+town to the prison, in close company with two
+deputy sheriffs. I observed considerably,
+knowing that I should not see the outside
+world again for a number of years. I looked
+with envy at the people we passed who seemed
+honest, and thought of home and the chances
+I had thrown away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I reached the stir I was put through
+the usual ceremonies. My pedigree was taken,
+but I told the examiners nothing. I gave
+them a false name and a false pedigree. Then
+a bath was given to my clothes and I was
+taken to the tailor shop. When my hair had
+been cropped close and a suit of stripes given
+me I felt what it was to be the convicted
+criminal. It was not a pleasant feeling, I can
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_133' name='Page_133'>[133]</a></span>
+tell you, and when I was taken to my cell my
+heart sank indeed. A narrow room, seven
+feet, four inches long; dark, damp, with
+moisture on the walls, and an old iron cot with
+plenty of company, as I afterwards discovered&mdash;this
+was to be my home for years. And I
+as full of life as a young goat! How could I
+bear it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After I had been examined by the doctor
+and questioned about my religion by the chaplain,
+I was left to reflect in my cell. I was
+interrupted in my melancholy train of thought
+by two convicts who were at work in the hall
+just outside my cell. I had known them on
+the outside, and they, taking good care not to
+be seen by the screws (keepers) tipped me off
+through my prison door to everything in stir
+which was necessary for a first timer to know.
+They told me to keep my mouth shut, to take
+everything from the screws in silence, and if
+assigned to a shop to do my work. They
+told me who the stool-pigeons were, that is to
+say, the convicts who, in order to curry favor
+and have an easy time, put the keepers next
+to what other convicts are doing, and so help
+to prevent escapes. They tipped me off to
+those keepers who were hard to get along
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_134' name='Page_134'>[134]</a></span>
+with, and put me next to the Underground
+Tunnel, and who were running it. Sing Sing,
+they said, is the best of the three New York
+penitentiaries: for the grub is better than at
+the others, there are more privileges, and,
+above all, it is nearer New York, so that your
+friends can visit you more frequently. They
+gave me a good deal of prison gossip, and
+told me who among my friends were there,
+and what their condition of health was. So
+and so had died or gone home, they said, such
+and such had been drafted to Auburn or
+Clinton prisons. If I wanted to communicate
+with my friends in stir all that was necessary
+for me to do was to write a few stiffs (letters)
+and they would be sent by the Underground
+Tunnel. They asked me about their old pals,
+hang-outs and girls in New York, and I, in
+turn gave them a lot of New York gossip.
+Like all convicts they shed a part of the
+things they had received from home, gave me
+canned goods, tobacco and a pipe. It did not
+take me long to get on to the workings of the
+prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was particularly interested in the Underground
+Tunnel, for I saw at once its great
+usefulness. This is the secret system by
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_135' name='Page_135'>[135]</a></span>
+which contraband articles, such as whiskey,
+opium and morphine are brought into the
+prison. When a rogue is persuasive with the
+coin of the realm he can always find a keeper
+or two to bring him what he considers the
+necessaries of life, among which are opium,
+whiskey and tobacco. If you have a screw
+"right," you can be well supplied with these
+little things. To get him "right" it is often
+necessary to give him a share&mdash;about twenty
+per cent&mdash;of the money sent you from home.
+This system is worked in all the State prisons
+in New York, and during my first term, or
+any of the other terms for that matter, I had
+no difficulty in supplying my growing need for
+opium.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I do not want people to get the idea that it
+is always necessary to bribe a keeper, in order
+to obtain these little luxuries; for many a
+screw has brought me whiskey and hop, and
+contraband letters from other inmates, without
+demanding a penny. A keeper is a human
+being like the rest of us, and he is sometimes
+moved by considerations other than of pelf.
+No matter how good and conscientious he
+may be, a keeper is but a man after all, and,
+having very little to do, especially if he is in
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_136' name='Page_136'>[136]</a></span>
+charge of an idle gang of "cons" he is apt to
+enter into conversation with them, particularly
+if they are better educated or more interesting
+than he, which often is the case. They tell
+him about their escapades on the outside and
+often get his sympathy and friendship. It is
+only natural that those keepers who are good
+fellows should do small favors for certain convicts.
+They may begin by bringing the convicts
+newspapers to read, but they will end by
+providing them with almost everything. Some
+of them, however, are so lacking in human
+sympathy, that their kindness is aroused only
+by a glimpse of the coin of the realm; or by
+the prospect of getting some convict to do
+their dirty work for them, that is, to spy upon
+their fellow prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Auburn penitentiary, whither I was
+drafted after nine months at Sing Sing, a few
+of the convicts peddled opium and whiskey,
+with, of course, the connivance of the keepers.
+There are always some persons in prison as
+well as out who want to make capital out of
+the misfortunes of others. These peddlars,
+were despised by the rest of the convicts, for
+they were invariably stool-pigeons; and young
+convicts who never before knew the power of
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_137' name='Page_137'>[137]</a></span>
+the drug became opium fiends, all on account
+of the business propensities of these detestable
+rats (stool-pigeons) who, because they
+had money and kept the screws next to those
+cons who tried to escape, lived in Easy Street
+while in stir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While on this subject, I will tell about a
+certain famous "fence" (at one of these
+prisons) although he did not operate until my
+second term. At that time things were booming
+on the outside. The graft was so good
+that certain convicts in my clique were getting
+good dough sent them by their pals who
+were at liberty; and many luxuries came in,
+therefore, by the Underground Tunnel. Now
+those keepers who are next to the Underground
+develop, through their association with
+convicts, a propensity to graft, but usually
+have not the nerve to hustle for the goods.
+So they are willing to accept stolen property,
+not having the courage and skill to steal, from
+the inhabitants of the under world. A convict,
+whom I knew when at liberty, named
+Mike, thought he saw an opportunity to do
+a good "fencing" business in prison. He
+gave a "red-front" (gold watch and chain),
+which he had stolen in his good days, to a
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_138' name='Page_138'>[138]</a></span>
+certain keeper who was running the Underground,
+and thus got him "right." Then
+Mike made arrangements with two grafters on
+the outside to supply the keeper and his
+friends with what they wanted. If the keeper
+said his girl wanted a stone, Mike would send
+word to one of the thieves on the outside to
+supply a good diamond as quickly as possible.
+The keeper would give Mike a fair price for
+these valuable articles and then sell the stones
+or watches, or make his girl a present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Other keepers followed suit, for they couldn't
+see how there was any "come-back" possible,
+and soon Mike was doing a thriving business.
+It lasted for five or six months, when Mike
+stopped it as a regular graft because of the
+growing cupidity of the keepers. One of
+them ordered a woman's watch and chain and
+a pair of diamond ear-rings through the
+Underground Tunnel. Mike obtained the
+required articles, but the keeper paid only half
+of what he promised, and Mike thereupon
+shut up shop. Occasionally, however, he continued
+to sell goods stolen by his pals who
+were at liberty, but only for cash on the spot,
+and refused all credit. The keepers gradually
+got a great feeling of respect for this convict
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_139' name='Page_139'>[139]</a></span>
+"fence" who was so clever and who stood up
+for his rights; and the business went on
+smoothly again, for a while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But finally it was broken up for good. A
+grafter on the outside, Tommy, sent through
+the Underground a pawn ticket for some valuable
+goods, among them a sealskin sacque
+worth three hundred dollars, which he had
+stolen and hocked in Philadelphia. Mike
+sold the pawn-ticket to a screw. Soon after
+that Tommy, or one of his pals, got a fall and
+"squealed". The police got "next" to where
+the goods were, and when the keeper sent the
+ticket and the money to redeem the articles
+they allowed them to be forwarded to the
+prison, but arrested the keeper for receiving
+stolen goods. He was convicted and sentenced
+to ten years, but got off through influence.
+That, however, finished the "fence" at
+the institution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To resume the thread of my narrative, the day
+after I reached Sing Sing I was put through
+the routine that lasted all the time I was there.
+At six-thirty in the morning we were awakened
+by the bell and marched in lock-step (from
+which many of us were to acquire a peculiar
+gait that was to mark us through life and help
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_140' name='Page_140'>[140]</a></span>
+prevent us from leading decent lives) to the
+bucket-shop, where we washed, marched to
+the mess for breakfast at seven-thirty, then
+to the various shops to work until eleven-thirty,
+when at the whistle we would form
+again into squads and march, again in the
+lock-step, fraternally but silently, to our solemn
+dinner, which we ate in dead silence. Silence,
+indeed, except on the sly, was the general rule
+of our day, until work was over, when we
+could whisper together until five o'clock, the
+hour to return to our cells, into which we
+would carry bread for supper, coffee being
+conveyed to us through a spout in the wall.
+The food at Sing Sing was pretty good.
+Breakfast consisted of hash or molasses, black
+coffee and bread; and at dinner we had pork
+and beans, potatoes, hot coffee and bread.
+Pork and beans gave place to four eggs on
+Friday, and sometimes stews were given us.
+It was true what I'd heard, that Sing Sing has
+the best food of any institution I have known.
+After five o'clock I would read in my cell by
+an oil lamp (since my time electricity has been
+put in the prison) until nine o'clock, when I
+had to put out my light and go to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had a great deal more time for reading
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_141' name='Page_141'>[141]</a></span>
+and meditation in my lonely cell than one
+would think by the above routine. I was put
+to work in the shop making chairs. It was
+the first time I had ever worked in my life,
+and I took my time about it. I felt no strong
+desire to work for the State. I was expected
+to cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually
+caned about two. I did not believe in work.
+I felt at that time that New York State owed
+me a living. I was getting a living all right,
+but I was ungrateful. I did not thank them a
+wee bit. I must have been a bad example to
+other "cons," for they began to get as tired as
+myself. At any rate, I lost my job, and was
+sent back to my cell, where I stayed most of
+the time while at Sing Sing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I worked, indeed, very little at any time
+during my three bits in the penitentiary. The
+prison at Sing Sing, during the nine months I
+was there on my first term, was very crowded,
+and there was not enough work to go round;
+and I was absolutely idle most of the time.
+When I had been drafted to Auburn I found
+more work to do, but still very little, for it
+was just then that the legislature had shut
+down on contract labor in the prisons. The
+outside merchants squealed because they could
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_142' name='Page_142'>[142]</a></span>
+not compete with unpaid convict labor; and
+so the prison authorities had to shut down
+many of their shops, running only enough to
+supply the inside demand, which was slight.
+For eighteen months at Auburn I did not
+work a day. I think it was a very bad thing
+for the health of convicts when this law was
+passed; for certainly idleness is a very bad
+thing for most of them; and to be shut up
+nearly all the time in damp, unhealthy cells
+like those at Sing Sing, is a terrible strain on
+the human system.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Personally, however, I liked to be in my
+cell, especially during my first year of solitary
+confinement, before my health began to give
+way; for I had my books from the good
+prison libraries, my pipe or cigarettes, and
+last, but not least, I had a certain portion of
+opium that I used every day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For me, prison life had one great advantage.
+It broke down my health and confirmed me
+for many years in the opium habit, as we shall
+see; but I educated myself while in stir. Previous
+to going to Sing Sing my education had
+been almost entirely in the line of graft; but
+in stir, I read the English classics and became
+familiar with philosophy and the science of
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_143' name='Page_143'>[143]</a></span>
+medicine and learned something about chemistry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of my favorite authors was Voltaire,
+whom I read, of course, in a translation. His
+"Dictionary" was contraband in prison but I
+read it with profit. Voltaire was certainly one
+of the shrewdest of men, and as up to snuff as
+any cynical grafter I know, and yet he had a
+great love for humanity. He was the philosopher
+of humanity. Goethe said that Luther
+threw the world back two hundred years, but
+I deny it; for Luther, like Voltaire, pointed
+out the ignorance and wickedness of the
+priests of their day. These churchmen did
+not understand the teachings of Christ. Was
+Voltaire delusional? The priests must have
+thought so, but they were no judges, for they
+were far worse and less humane than the
+French revolutionists. The latter killed outright,
+but the priests tortured in the name of
+the Most Humane. I never approved of the
+methods of the French revolutionists, but certainly
+they were gentle in comparison with the
+priests of the Spanish Inquisition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think that, in variety of subjects, Voltaire
+has no equal among writers. Shrewd as he
+was, he had a soul, and his moral courage was
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_144' name='Page_144'>[144]</a></span>
+grand. His defense of young Barry, who was
+arrested for using language against the church,
+showed his kindness and breadth of mind. On
+his arrival in Paris, when he was only a stripling,
+he denounced the cowardly, fawning sycophants
+who surrounded Louis XIV,<a name='FA_B' id='FA_B' href='#FN_B' class='fnanchor'>[B]</a> and
+wrote a sarcastic poem on His Nibs, and was
+confined in the Bastille for two years. His
+courage, his wit, his sarcasms, his hatred of
+his persecutors, and his love and kindness,
+stamp him as one of the great, healthy intellects
+of mankind. What a clever book is
+<i>Candide</i>! What satire! What wit! As I
+lay on my cot how often I laughed at his
+caustic comments on humanity! And how he
+could hate! I never yet met a man of any
+account who was not a good hater. I own
+that Voltaire was ungallant toward the fair
+sex. But that was his only fault.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I enjoyed Victor Hugo because he could
+create a great character, and was capable of
+writing a story with a plot. I rank him as a
+master of fiction, although I preferred his
+experience as a traveller, to his novels, which
+are not real enough. Ernest Renan was a
+bracing and clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_145' name='Page_145'>[145]</a></span>
+in reading his <i>Life of Jesus</i>. I
+expected to get a true outline of Christ's time
+and a character sketch of the man himself,
+but I didn't. I went to the fountain for a
+glass of good wine, but got only red lemonade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I liked Dumas, and revelled in the series
+beginning with <i>The Three Musketeers</i>. I
+could not read Dumas now, however. I also
+enjoyed Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey, for they
+are very sensational; but that was during my
+first term in stir. I could not turn a page of
+their books now, for they would seem idiotic
+to me. Balzac is a bird of another feather.
+In my opinion he was one of the best dissectors
+of human nature that the world ever produced.
+Not even Shakespeare was his equal.
+His depth in searching for motives, his discernment
+in detecting a hypocrite, his skill in
+showing up women, with their follies, their
+loves, their little hypocrisies, their endearments,
+their malice and their envy is unrivalled.
+It is right that Balzac should show woman
+with all her faults and follies and virtues, for
+if she did not possess all these characteristics,
+how could man adore her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his line I think Thackeray is as great as
+Balzac. When I had read <i>Vanity Fair</i>, <i>Pendennis</i>,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_146' name='Page_146'>[146]</a></span>
+<i>The Newcomes</i> and <i>Barry Lyndon</i>, I was
+so much interested that I read anything of his
+I could lay my hands on, over and over again.
+With a novel of Thackeray's in my hand I
+would become oblivious to my surroundings,
+and long to know something of this writers
+personality. I think I formed his mental
+make-up correctly, for I imagined him to be
+gentle and humane. Any man with ability
+and brains equal to his could not be otherwise.
+What a character is Becky Sharp! In her
+way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie
+Annie. She did not love Rawdon as a good
+wife should. If she had she would not be the
+interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful
+to Rawdon for three reasons; first, he married
+her; second, he gave her a glimpse into
+a station in life her soul longed for; third, he
+came from a good family, and was a soldier
+and tall, and it is well-known that little women
+like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky.
+She often grinned at his lack of brains. She
+grinned at everything, and when we learn that
+Becky got religion at the end of the book,
+instead of saying, God bless her, we only
+grin, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Pendennis</i> is a healthy book. I always
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_147' name='Page_147'>[147]</a></span>
+sympathize with Pen and Laura in their struggles
+to get on, and when the baby was born I
+was willing to become Godpapa, just for its
+Mamma's sake. <i>The Newcomes</i> I call Thackeray's
+masterpiece. It is truer to life than
+any other book I ever read. Take the scene
+where young Clive throws the glass of wine in
+his cousin's face. The honest horror of the
+father, his indignation when old Captain Costigan
+uses bad language, his exit when he hears
+a song in the Music Hall&mdash;all this is true
+realism. But the scene that makes this book
+Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old
+Colonel is dying. The touching devotion of
+Madam and Ethel, the love for old Tom, his
+last word "<i>adsum</i>" the quiet weeping of his
+nurse, and the last duties to the dead; the
+beautiful tenderness of the two women, of a
+kind that makes the fair sex respected by all
+men&mdash;I can never forget this scene till my
+dying day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I was sick in stir a better tonic than
+the quack could prescribe was Thackeray's
+<i>Book of Snobs</i>. Many is the night I could
+not sleep until I had read this book with a
+relish. It acted on me like a bottle of good
+wine, leaving me peaceful after a time of
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_148' name='Page_148'>[148]</a></span>
+pleasure. In this book are shown up the
+little egotisms of the goslings and the foibles
+of the sucklings in a masterly manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I read every word Dickens ever wrote; and
+I often ruminated in my mind as to which of
+his works is the masterpiece. <i>Our Mutual
+Friend</i> is weak in the love scenes, but the
+book is made readable by two characters,
+Noddy Boffin and Silas Wegg. Where Wegg
+reads, as he thinks, <i>The Last of the Russians</i>,
+when the book was <i>The Decline and Fall Of
+the Roman Empire</i>, there is the quintessence
+of humor. Silas's wooden leg and his occupation
+of selling eggs would make anybody
+smile, even a dip who had fallen and had no
+money to square it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The greatest character in <i>David Copperfield</i>
+is Uriah Heep. The prison scene where this
+humble hypocrite showed he knew his Bible
+thoroughly, and knew the advantage of having
+some holy quotations pat, reminded me
+often of men I have known in Auburn and
+Sing Sing prisons. Some hypocritical jail-bird
+would dream that he could succeed on
+the outside by becoming a Sunday School
+superintendent; and four of the meanest
+thieves I ever knew got their start in that
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_149' name='Page_149'>[149]</a></span>
+way. Who has not enjoyed Micawber, with
+his frothy personality and straitened circumstances,
+and the unctuous Barkis.&mdash;Poor
+Emily! Who could blame her? What woman
+could help liking Steerforth? It is strange
+and true that good women are won by men
+they know to be rascals. Is it the contrast
+between Good and Evil, or is it because the
+ne'er-do-well has a stronger character and
+more magnetic force? Agnes was one of the
+best women in the world. Contrast her with
+David's first wife. Agnes was like a fine
+violin, while Dora was like a wailing hurdy-gurdy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Oliver Twist</i> is Dickens's strongest book.
+He goes deeper into human nature there than
+in any other of his writings. Fagin, the Jew,
+is a very strong character, but overdrawn.
+The picture of Fagin's dens and of the people
+in them, is true to life. I have seen similar
+gatherings many a time. The ramblings of
+the Artful Dodger are drawn from the real
+thing, but I never met in real life such a brutal
+character as Bill Sykes; and I have met
+some tough grafters, as the course of this
+book will show. Nancy Sykes, however, is
+true to life. In her degradation she was still
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_150' name='Page_150'>[150]</a></span>
+a woman. I contend that a woman is never
+so low but a man was the cause. One passage
+in the book has often touched me, as it
+showed that Nancy had not lost her sex.
+When she and Bill were passing the prison,
+she turned towards it and said: "Bill, they
+were fine fellows that died to-day." "Shut
+your mouth," said Bill. Now I don't think
+there is a thief in the United States who
+would have answered Nancy's remark that
+way. Strong arm workers who would beat
+your brains out for a few dollars would be
+moved by that touch of pity in Nancy's voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Oliver himself is the great character,
+and his story reminds me of my own. The
+touching incident in the work-house where his
+poor stomach is not full, and he asks for a
+second platter of mush to the horror of the
+teachers, is not overdrawn. When I was in
+one of our penal institutions, at a later time of
+my life, I was ill, and asked for extra food;
+but my request was looked upon as the audacity
+of a hardened villain. I had many such
+opportunities to think of Oliver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I always liked those authors who wrote as
+near life as decency would permit. Sterne's
+<i>Tristram Shandy</i> has often amused me, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_151' name='Page_151'>[151]</a></span>
+<i>Tom Jones</i>, <i>Roderick Random</i> and <i>Peregrine
+Pickle</i> I have read over and over again. I
+don't see why good people object to such
+books. Some people are forever looking after
+the affairs of others and neglecting their own;
+especially a man whom I will call Common
+Socks who has put himself up as a mentor for
+over seventy millions of people. Let me tell
+the busy ladies who are afraid that such books
+will harm the morals of young persons that
+the more they are cried down the more they
+will be read. For that matter they ought to
+be read. Why object to the girl of sixteen
+reading such books and not to the woman of
+thirty-five? I think their mental strength is
+about equal. Both are romantic and the
+woman of thirty-five will fall in love as quickly
+as the girl of sixteen. I think a woman is
+always a girl; at least, it has been so in my
+experience. One day I was grafting in Philadelphia.
+It was raining, and a woman was
+walking along on Walnut Street. She slipped
+on the wet sidewalk and fell. I ran to her
+assistance, and saw that her figure was slim
+and girlish and that she had a round, rosy face,
+but that her hair was pure white. When I
+asked her if she was hurt, she said "yes," but
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_152' name='Page_152'>[152]</a></span>
+when I said "Let me be your grandson and
+support you on my way," I put my foot into
+it, for, horrors! the look she gave me, as she
+said in an icy voice, "I was never married!"
+I wondered what manner of men there were
+in Philadelphia, and, to square myself, I said:
+"Never married! and with a pair of such
+pretty ankles!" Then she gave me a look,
+thanked me, and walked away as jauntily as
+she ever did in her life, though she must have
+been suffering agonies from her sprained
+ankle. Since that time I have been convinced
+that they of the gentle sex are girls from
+fifteen to eighty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I read much of Lever, too, while I was in
+stir. His pictures of Ireland and of the noisy
+strife in Parliament, the description of Dublin
+with its spendthrifts and excited populace, the
+gamblers and the ruined but gay young gentlemen,
+all mixed up with the grandeur of Ireland,
+are the work of a master. I could only
+compare this epoch of worn-out regalia with a
+St. Patrick's day parade twenty years ago in
+the fourth ward of Manhattan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Other books I read in stir were Gibbon's
+<i>Roman Empire</i>, Carlyle's <i>Frederick the Great</i>,
+and many of the English poets. I read
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_153' name='Page_153'>[153]</a></span>
+Wordsworth, Gray and Goldsmith, but I liked
+Tom Moore and Robert Burns better. The
+greatest of all the poets, however, in my estimation,
+is Byron. His loves were many, his
+adventures daring, and his language was as
+broad and independent as his mind.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_154' name='Page_154'>[154]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+In Stir (<i>continued</i>).
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+Sing Sing was overflowing with convicts,
+and after I had been there nine months, I and
+a number of others were transferred to Auburn
+penitentiary. There I found the cells drier,
+and better than at Sing Sing, but the food not
+so good. The warden was not liked by the
+majority of the men, but I admired him for
+two things. He believed in giving us good
+bread; and he did not give a continental what
+came into the prison, whether it was a needle
+or a cannister, as long as it was kept in the
+cell and not used.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in Auburn stir that opium grew to
+be a habit with me. I used to give the keepers
+who were running the Underground one
+dollar of every five that were sent me, and
+they appreciated my kindness and kept me supplied
+with the drug. What part the hop began
+to play in my life may be seen from the routine
+of my days at Auburn; particularly at those
+periods when there was no work to be done.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_155' name='Page_155'>[155]</a></span>
+After rising in the morning I would clean
+out my cell, and turn up my bed and blankets;
+then I went to breakfast, then if there
+was no work to do, back to my cell, where I
+ate a small portion of opium, and sometimes
+read the daily paper, which was also contraband.
+It is only the stool-pigeons, those convicts
+who have money, or the cleverest among
+the rascals, who get many of these privileges.
+After I had had my opium and the newspaper
+I would exercise with dumb-bells and think or
+read in my cell. Then I would have a plunge
+bath and a nap, which would take me up to
+dinner time. After dinner I would read in
+my cell again until three o'clock, when I would
+go to the bucket-shop or exercise for half an
+hour in the yard, in lock step, with the others;
+then back to the cell, taking with me bread
+and a cup of coffee made out of burnt bread
+crust, for my supper. In the evening I would
+read and smoke until my light went out, and
+would wind up the day with a large piece of
+opium, which grew larger, as time passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a long time I was fairly content with
+what was practically solitary confinement. I
+had my books, my pipe, cigarettes and my
+regular supply of hop. Whether I worked in
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_156' name='Page_156'>[156]</a></span>
+the daytime or not I would usually spend my
+evenings in the same way. I would lie on my
+cot and sometimes a thought like the following
+would come to me: "Yes, I have stripes
+on. When I am released perhaps some one
+will pity me, particularly the women. They
+may despise and avoid me, most likely they
+will. But I don't care. All I want is to get
+their wad of money. In the meantime I have
+my opium and my thoughts and am just as
+happy as the millionaire, unless he has a
+narcotic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the drug had begun to work I would
+frequently fall into a deep sleep and not wake
+until one or two o'clock the following morning;
+then I would turn on my light, peer
+through my cell door, and try to see through
+the little window out in the corridor. A peculiar
+nervousness often came over me at this
+hour, particularly if the weather had been
+rainy, and my imagination would run on a
+ship-wreck very often, or on some other painful
+subject; and I might tell the story to myself
+in jingles, or jot it down on a piece of
+paper. Then my whole being would be quiet.
+A gentle, soothing melancholy would steal
+upon me. Often my imagination was so powerfully
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_157' name='Page_157'>[157]</a></span>
+affected that I could really see the events
+of my dream. I could see the ship tossing
+about on waves mountain high. Then and
+only then I was positive I had a soul. I was
+in such a state of peace that I could not bear
+that any human being should suffer. At first
+the scenes before my imagination would be
+most harrowing, with great loss of life, but
+when one of the gentle sex appeared vividly
+before me a shudder passed over me, and I
+would seek consolation in jingles such as the
+following:
+</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="o1">
+A gallant bark set sail one day
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+For a port beyond the sea,
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+The Captain had taken his fair young bride
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+To bear him company.
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+This little brown lass
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+Was of Puritan stock.
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+Her eyes were the brightest e'er seen.
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+They never came back;
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+The ship it was wrecked
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+In a storm in the old Gulf Stream.
+</p>
+
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="o1">
+Two years had passed, then a letter came
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+To a maid in a New England town.
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+It began Darling Kate, it ended Your Jack,
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+I am alive in a foreign land.
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+The Captain, his gentle young wife and your own
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+Were saved by that hand unseen,
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_158' name='Page_158'>[158]</a></span>
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+But the rest&mdash;&mdash;they went down
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+In that terrible storm
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+That night in the old Gulf Stream.
+</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>
+But these pleasures would soon leave me,
+and I would grow very restless. My only
+resource was another piece of opium. Sometimes
+I awoke much excited, paced my cell
+rapidly and felt like tearing down the door.
+Sometimes a book would quiet me. The best
+soother I had was the most beautiful poem in
+the English language&mdash;Walt Whitman's <i>Ode
+To Death</i>. When I read this poem, I often
+imagined I was at the North Pole, and that
+strange shapes in the clouds beckoned me to
+come to them. I used to forget myself, and
+read aloud and was entirely oblivious to my
+surroundings, until I was brought to myself
+by the night guard shouting, "What in &mdash;&mdash; is
+the matter with you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After getting excited in this way I usually
+needed another dose of hop. I have noticed
+that the difference between opium and alcohol
+is that the latter is a disintegrator and tears
+apart, while the opium is a subtle underminer.
+Opium, for a long time anyway, stimulates the
+intelligence; while the reverse is true of alcohol.
+It was under the influence of opium
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_159' name='Page_159'>[159]</a></span>
+that I began to read philosophy. I read
+Hume and Locke, and partly understood them,
+I think, though I did not know that Locke is
+pronounced in only one syllable till many
+years after I had read and re-read parts of
+<i>The Human Understanding</i>. It was not only
+the opium, but my experience on the outside,
+that made me eager for philosophy and the
+deeper poetry; for a grafters wits, if they
+don't get away from him altogether, become
+keen through his business, since he lives by
+them. It was philosophy, and the spectacle of
+men going suddenly and violently insane all
+about me, that led me first to think of self-control,
+though I did not muster enough to
+throw off the opium habit till many years
+afterwards. I began to think of will-power
+about this time, and I knew it was an acquired
+virtue, like truth and honesty. I think, from
+a moral standpoint, that I lived as good a life
+in prison as anybody on the outside, for at
+least I tried to overcome myself. It was life
+or death, or, a thousand times worse, an insane
+asylum. Opium led me to books besides
+those on philosophy, which eventually helped
+to cure me. At this time I was reading Balzac,
+Shakespeare, Huxley, Tyndall and Lavater.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_160' name='Page_160'>[160]</a></span>
+One poem of Shakespeare's touched me
+more than any other poem I ever read&mdash;<i>The
+Rape of Lucrece</i>. It was reading such as this
+that gave me a broader view, and I began to
+think that this was a terrible life I was leading.
+But, as the reader will see, I did not
+know what hell was until several years later.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had been in stir about four years on my
+first bit when I began to appreciate how terrible
+a master I had come under. Of course, to
+a certain extent, the habit had been forced
+upon me. After a man has had for several
+years bad food, little air and exercise, no natural
+companionship, particularly with the other
+sex, from whom he is entirely cut off, he really
+needs a stimulant. Many men fall into the
+vilest of habits. I found, for my part, that
+only opium would calm me. It takes only a
+certain length of time for almost all convicts
+to become broken in health, addicted to one
+form or another of stimulant which in the long
+run pulls them down completely. Diseases of
+various kinds, insanity and death, are the result.
+But before the criminal is thus released,
+he grows desperate in the extreme; particularly
+if he resorts to opium, for that drug
+makes one reckless. The hop fiend never
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_161' name='Page_161'>[161]</a></span>
+takes consequences into consideration. Under
+its influence I became very irritable and
+unruly, and would take no back talk from the
+keepers. They and the stool-pigeons began
+to be afraid of me. I would not let them
+pound me in any way, and I often got into
+a violent fight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As long as I had my regular allowance of
+opium, which in the fourth year of my term
+was about twenty grains a day, I was peaceable
+enough. It was when I began to lessen
+the amount, with the desire to give it up, that
+I became so irritable and violent. The strain
+of reform, even in this early and unsuccessful
+attempt, was terrible. At times I used to go
+without the full amount for several days; but
+then I would relapse and go on a debauch
+until I was almost unconscious. After recovery,
+I would make another resolution, only to
+fall again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my life in stir was not all that of the
+solitary; there were means, even when I was
+in the shop, of communicating with my fellow
+convicts; generally by notes, as talking was
+forbidden. Notes, too, were contraband, but
+we found means of sending them through cons
+working in the hall. Sometimes good-natured
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_162' name='Page_162'>[162]</a></span>
+or avaricious keepers would carry them; but
+as a rule a convict did not like to trust a note
+to a keeper. He was afraid that the screw
+would read it, whereas it was a point of honor
+with a convict to deliver the note unread.
+The contents of these notes were usually
+news about our girls or pals, which we had
+received through visitors&mdash;rare, indeed!&mdash;or
+letters. By the same means there was much
+betting done on the races, baseball games and
+prize fights. We could send money, too, or
+opium, in the same way, to a friend in need;
+and we never required an I. O. U.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were allowed to receive visitors from
+the outside once every two months; also a
+box could be delivered to us at the same intervals
+of time. My friends, especially my
+mother and Ethel, sent me things regularly,
+and came to see me. They used to send me
+soap, tooth brushes and many other delicacies,
+for even a tooth brush is a delicacy in prison.
+Ethel stuck to me for three years and visited
+me regularly during that period. Then her
+visits ceased, and I heard that she had married.
+I couldn't blame her, but I felt bad about it
+all the same.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my mother came as often as the two
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_163' name='Page_163'>[163]</a></span>
+months rolled by; not only during this first
+term, but during all my bits in stir. Certainly
+she has stuck to me through thick and thin.
+She has been my only true friend. If she
+had fallen away from me, I couldn't have
+blamed her; she would only have gone with
+the rest of the world; but she didn't. She
+was good not only to me, but to my friends,
+and she had pity for everybody in stir. I remember
+how she used to talk about the rut
+worn in the stone pavement at Sing Sing,
+where the men paced up and down. "Talk
+about the Bridge of Sighs!" she used to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a man is in stir he begins to see
+what an ungrateful brute he has been; and
+he begins to separate true friends from false
+ones. He thinks of the mother he neglected
+for supposed friends of both sexes, who are
+perhaps friendly at the beginning of his sentence,
+but soon desert him if he have a number
+of years to serve. Long after all others
+have ceased coming to see him, his old mother,
+bowed and sad, will trudge up the walk from
+the station to visit her thoughtless and erring
+son! She carries on her arm a heavy basket
+of delicacies for the son who is detested by all
+good citizens, and in her heart there is still
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_164' name='Page_164'>[164]</a></span>
+hope for her boy. She has waited many years
+and she will continue to wait. What memories
+come to the mother as she sees the mansion
+of woes on the Hudson looming up
+before her! Her son is again a baby in her
+imagination; or a young fellow, before he
+began to tread the rocky path!&mdash;They soon
+part, for half an hour is all that is given, but
+they will remember forever the mothers kiss,
+the son's good-bye, the last choking words of
+love and familiar advice, as she says: "Trust
+in God, my lad."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After one of my mothers visits I used to
+have more sympathy for my fellow convicts.
+I was always a keen observer, and in the shops
+or at mess time, and when we were exercising
+together in lock step, or working about the
+yard or in the halls, I used to "feel out" my
+brother "cons," often with a kindly motive.
+I grew very expert in telling when a friend
+was becoming insane; for imprisonment leads
+to insanity, as everybody knows. Many a
+time a man I knew in stir would grow nervous
+or absent-minded, then suspicious, and finally
+would be sent to the madhouse at Dannemora
+or Matteawan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For instance, take a friend of mine named
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_165' name='Page_165'>[165]</a></span>
+Billy. He was doing a bit of ten years. In
+the fifth year of his sentence I noticed that he
+was brooding, and I asked him what was the
+matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid," he said, "that my wife is
+going outside of me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are not positive, are you?" I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he answered, "she visited me the
+other day, and she was looking good (prosperous).
+My son was with her, and he looked
+good, too. She gave me five dollars and
+some delicacies. But she never had five dollars
+when I was on the outside."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's working," said I, trying to calm him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; she has got a father and mother," he
+replied, "and she is living with them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Billy," I continued, "how long have you
+been in stir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Growing on six years," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Billy," I proceeded, "what would you do
+if you were on the outside and she was in
+prison for six years?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he replied, "I'd have to give myself
+some rope."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Philosophers claim that it is just as hard
+for a woman to live alone as for a man," I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_166' name='Page_166'>[166]</a></span>
+said. "You're unreasonable, Billy. Surely
+you can't blame her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Billy's case is an instance of how, when a
+convict has had bad food, bad air and an
+unnatural routine for some time, he begins to
+borrow trouble. He grows anæmic and then
+is on the road to insanity. If he has a wife
+he almost always grows suspicious of her,
+though he does not speak about it until he
+has been a certain number of years in prison.
+It was not long after the above conversation
+took place that Billy was sent to the insane
+asylum at Matteawan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes, after a man has begun to grow
+insane, he will show it by reticence, rather
+than by talkativeness, according to his disposition.
+One of my intimate friends, in stir
+much longer than I, was like a ray of sunshine,
+witty and a good story teller. His
+laugh was contagious and we all liked to see
+him. He was one of the best night prowlers
+(burglars) in the profession, and had many
+other gifts. After he had been in stir, however,
+for a few years, he grew reticent and
+suspicious, thought that everybody was a
+stool-pigeon, and died a raving maniac a few
+years later at Matteawan.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_167' name='Page_167'>[167]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes a convict will grow so nervous
+that he will attempt to escape, even when
+there is no chance, or will sham insanity. An
+acquaintance of mine, Louis, who had often
+grafted with me when we were on the outside,
+told me one day he did not expect to live his
+bit out. When confined a man generally
+thinks a lot about his condition, reads a book
+on medicine and imagines he has every disease
+the book describes. Louis was in this
+state, and he consulted me and two others as
+to whether he ought not to "shoot a bug"
+(sham insanity); and so get transferred to the
+hospital. One advised him to attack a keeper
+and demand his baby back. But as Billy had
+big, black eyes and a cadaverous face, I told
+him he'd better shoot the melancholy bug; for
+he could do that better. Accordingly in the
+morning when the men were to go to work in
+the stone yard, Billy appeared in the natural
+(naked). He had been stalled off by two
+friends until he had reached the yard. There
+the keepers saw him, and as they liked him,
+they gently took him to the hospital. He was
+pronounced incurably insane by two experts,
+and transferred to the madhouse. The change
+of air was so beneficial that Louis speedily recovered
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_168' name='Page_168'>[168]</a></span>
+his senses. At least, the doctors
+thought so when he was discovered trying to
+make his elegant (escape); and he was sent
+back to stir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a rule, however, those who attempted to
+sham insanity failed. They were usually lacking
+in originality. At any hour of the day or
+night the whole prison might be aroused by
+some convict breaking up house, as it was
+called when a man tried to shoot the bug. He
+might break everything in his cell, and yell so
+loud that the other convicts in the cells near
+by would join in and make a horrible din.
+Some would curse, and some laugh or howl.
+If it was at night and they had been awakened
+out of an opium sleep, they would damn him
+a thousand miles deep. His friends, however,
+who knew that he was acting, would plug his
+game along by talking about his insanity in
+the presence of stool-pigeons. These latter
+would tell the keepers that he was buggy (insane),
+and, if there was not a blow, he might
+be sent to the hospital. Before that happened,
+however, he had generally demolished all his
+furniture. The guards would go to his cell,
+and chain him up in the Catholic chapel until
+he could be examined by the doctor. Warden
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_169' name='Page_169'>[169]</a></span>
+Sage was a humane man, and used to go
+to the chapel himself and try to quiet the fake
+lunatic, and give him dainties from his own
+table. During the night the fake had historic
+company, for painted on the walls were, on
+one side of him, Jesus, and on the other, Judas
+and Mary Magdalene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A favorite method of shooting the bug, and
+a rather difficult one for the doctors to detect,
+was that of hearing voices in one's cell. This
+is more dangerous for the convict than for
+anybody else, for when a fake tries to imagine
+he hears voices, he usually begins to really
+believe he does, and then from a fake he becomes
+a genuine freak. Another common
+fake is to tell the keeper that you have a snake
+in your arm, and then take a knife and try to
+cut it out; but it requires nerve to carry this
+fake through. Sometimes the man who wants
+to make the prison hospital merely fakes ordinary
+illness. If he has a screw or a doctor
+"right" he may stay for months in the comparatively
+healthy hospital at Sing Sing,
+where he can loaf all day, and get better food
+than at the public mess. It is as a rule only
+the experienced guns who are clever enough
+to work these little games.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_170' name='Page_170'>[170]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For faking, conversing, loafing in the shop,
+and for many other forbidden things, we were
+often punished, though the screws as often
+winked at small misdemeanors. At Sing Sing
+they used to hang us up by the wrists sometimes
+until we fainted. Auburn had a jail,
+now used as the condemned cells, where there
+was no bed and no light. In this place the
+man to be punished would remain from four
+to ten days and live on ten ounces of bread
+and half a jug of water a day. In addition,
+the jail was very damp, worse even than the
+cells at Sing Sing, where I knew many convicts
+who contracted consumption of the lungs
+and various kidney complaints.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, a great deal of dying goes on in
+State's prison. During my first term it seemed
+as if three niggers died to every white man.
+A dozen of us working around the front would
+comment on the "stiffs" when they were carried
+out. One would ask, "Who's dead?"
+The reply might be, "Only a nigger." One
+day I was talking in the front with a hall-room
+man when a stiff was put in the wagon.
+"Who's dead?" I asked. The hall-man wanted
+to bet it was a nigger. I bet him a dollar it
+was a white man, and then asked the hospital
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_171' name='Page_171'>[171]</a></span>
+nurse, who said it was not a nigger, but an
+old pal of mine, named Jerry Donovan. I felt
+sore and would not accept the money I had
+won. Poor Jerry and I did house-work together
+for three months, some of which I have
+told of, and he was a good fellow, and a sure
+and reliable grafter. And now he had "gone
+up the escape," and was being carried to the
+little graveyard on the side of the hill where
+only an iron tag would mark his place of
+repose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My intelligence was naturally good, and
+when I began to get some education I felt
+myself superior to many of my companions in
+stir. I was not alone in this feeling, for in
+prison there are many social cliques; though
+fewer than on the outside. Men who have
+been high up and have held responsible positions
+when at liberty make friends in stir with
+men they formerly would not have trusted as
+their boot-blacks. The professional thieves
+usually keep together as much as possible in
+prison, or communicate together by means of
+notes; though sometimes they associate with
+men who, not professional grafters, have been
+sent up for committing some big forgery, or
+other big swindle. The reason for this is
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_172' name='Page_172'>[172]</a></span>
+business; for the gun generally has friends
+among the politicians, and he wants to associate
+while in stir only with others who have
+influence. It is the guns who are usually
+trusted by the screws in charge of the Underground
+Tunnel, for the professional thief is
+less likely to squeal than the novice. Therefore,
+the big forger who has stolen thousands,
+and may be a man of ability and education
+appreciates the friendship of the professional
+pickpocket who can do him little favors, such
+as railroading his mail through the Underground,
+and providing him with newspapers,
+or a bottle of booze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pull of the professional thief with outside
+politicians often procures him the respect
+and consideration of the keepers. One day a
+convict, named Ed White, was chinning with
+an Irish screw, an old man who had a family
+to support. Jokes in stir lead to friendship,
+and when the keeper told Ed that he was
+looking for a job for his daughter, who was a
+stenographer, Ed said he thought he could
+place her in a good position. The old screw
+laughed and said; "You loafer, if you were
+made to carry a hod you wouldn't be a splitting
+matches in stir." But Ed meant what he
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_173' name='Page_173'>[173]</a></span>
+had said, and wrote to the famous Tammany
+politician, Mr. Wet Coin, who gave the girl a
+position as stenographer at a salary of fourteen
+dollars a week. The old screw took his
+daughter to New York, and when he returned
+to Auburn he began to "Mister" Ed. "I
+'clare to God," he said, "I don't know what to
+make out of you. Here you are eating rotten
+hash, cooped up like a wild animal, with
+stripes, when you might be making twelve to
+fifteen dollars a week." Ed replied, sarcastically,
+"That would about keep me in cigar
+money."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the biggest men I knew in stir was
+Jim A. McBlank, at one time chief of police
+and Mayor of Coney Island. He was sent to
+Sing Sing for his repeating methods at election,
+at which game he was A No. 1. He got
+so many repeaters down to the island that
+they were compelled to register as living under
+fences, in dog kennels, tents, or any old
+place. There was much excitement in the
+prison when the Lord of Coney Island was
+shown around the stir by Principal Keeper
+Connoughton. He was a good mechanic, and
+soon had a gang of men working under him;
+though he was the hardest worker of them all.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_174' name='Page_174'>[174]</a></span>
+After he had been there awhile the riff-raff of
+of the prison, though they had never heard
+the saying that familiarity breeds contempt,
+dropped calling him Mr. McBlank, and saluted
+him as plain Jimmy. He was never in touch,
+however, with the majority of the convicts,
+for he was too close to the authorities; and
+the men believe that convicts can not be on
+friendly terms with the powers that be unless
+they are stool-pigeons. Another thing that
+made the "cons" dislike the Mayor was the
+fact, that, when he was chief of police, he had
+settled a popular dip named Feeley for ten
+years and a half. The very worst thing
+against him, however, was his private refrigerator
+in which he kept butter, condensed milk
+and other luxuries, which he did not share
+with the other convicts. One day a young
+convict named Sammy, tried to beat Sing
+Sing. He bricked himself up in the wall,
+leaving a movable opening at the bottom.
+While waiting a chance to escape Sammy used
+to sally forth from his hiding-place and steal
+something good from McBlank's box. One
+night, while helping himself to the Mayor's
+delicacies, he thought he heard a keeper, and
+hastily plunging his arm into the refrigerator
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_175' name='Page_175'>[175]</a></span>
+he made away with a large piece of butter.
+What did the ex-Chief of police do but report
+the loss of his butter to the screws which put
+them next to the fact that the convict they
+had been looking for for nine nights was still
+in the stir. The next night they would have
+rung the "all-right" bell, and given up the
+search, and indeed, they rang the bell, but
+watched; and when Sammy, thinking he could
+now go to New York, came out of his hiding
+place, he was caught. When the story circulated
+in the prison all kinds of vengeance
+were vowed against McBlank, who was much
+frightened. I heard him say that he would
+rather have lost his right arm than see the boy
+caught. What a come-down for a man who
+could throw his whole city for any state or
+national candidate at election time, to be compelled
+to apologize as McBlank was, to the
+lowest element in prison. Here indeed was
+the truth of that old saying: pride goeth before
+a fall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the best liked of the convicts I met
+during my first bit was Ferdinand Ward, who
+got two years for wrecking the firm in which
+General Grant and his son were partners.
+He did many a kindness in stir to those who
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_176' name='Page_176'>[176]</a></span>
+were tough and had few friends. Another
+great favorite was Johnny Hope, son of Jimmy
+Hope, who stole three millions from the
+Manhattan Bank. The father got away, and
+Johnny, who was innocent, was nailed by a
+copper looking for a reputation, and settled
+for twenty years in Sing Sing, because he was
+his father's son and had the misfortune to
+meet an ambitious copper. When Johnny
+had been in prison about ten years, the inspector,
+who was the former copper, went to
+the Governor, and said he was convinced that
+the boy was innocent. But how about young
+Hope's wrecked life? Johnny's father, indeed,
+was a well-known grafter whom I met in
+Auburn, where we worked together for a
+while in the broom-shop. He was much older
+than I, and used to give me advice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't ever do a day's work in your life,
+my boy," he would say, "unless you can't
+help it. You are too intelligent to be a
+drudge."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another common remark of his was: "Trust
+no convict," and a third was: "It is as easy
+to steal five thousand dollars as it is to steal
+five dollars."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old man Hope had stolen millions and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_177' name='Page_177'>[177]</a></span>
+ought to know what he was talking about. In
+personal appearance he was below the medium
+height, had light gray hair and as mild a pair
+of eyes as I ever saw in man or woman. I
+ranked him as a manly old fellow, and he was
+an idol among the small crooks, though he did
+not have much to do with them. He seemed
+to like to talk to me, partly because I never
+talked graft, and he detested such talk particularly
+among prison acquaintances. He referred
+one day to a pick pocket in stir who was
+always airing what he knew about the graft.
+"He's tiresome," said old Hope. "He is always
+talking shop."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the worst hated men at Auburn was
+Weeks, a well-known club man and banker,
+who once stole over a million dollars. He was
+despised by the other convicts, for he was a
+"squealer." One of the screws in charge of
+the Underground Tunnel was doing things for
+Weeks, who had a snap,&mdash;the position of book-keeper,
+in the clothing department. In his
+desk he kept whiskey, beer and cigars, and
+lived well. One day a big bug paid him a
+visit, and Weeks belched how he had to give
+up his watch and chain in order to secure luxuries.
+His friend, the big bug, reported to
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_178' name='Page_178'>[178]</a></span>
+the prison authorities, and the principal keeper
+went to Weeks and made the coward squeal
+on the keeper who had his "front." The
+screw lost his job, and when the convicts heard
+of it, they made Weeks' life miserable for
+years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the man who was hated worst of all
+those in prison was Biff Ellerson. I never
+understood why the other cons hated him,
+unless it was that he always wore a necktie;
+this is not etiquette in stir, which in the convicts'
+opinion ought to be a place of mourning.
+He had been a broker and a clubman, and was
+high up in the world. Ellerson was a conscientious
+man, and once, when a mere boy, who
+had stolen a ten dollar watch, was given fifteen
+years, had publicly criticized the judge and
+raised a storm in the newspapers. Ellerson
+compared this lad's punishment with that of a
+man like Weeks, who had robbed orphans out
+of their all and only received ten years for it.
+Many is the time that this man, Biff Ellerson,
+has been kind to men in stir who hated him.
+He had charge of the dungeon at Auburn
+where convicts who had broken the rules were
+confined. I have known him to open my door
+and give me water on the quiet, many a time,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_179' name='Page_179'>[179]</a></span>
+and he did it for others who were ungrateful,
+and at the risk, too, of never being trusted
+again by the screws and of getting a dose of
+the cuddy-hole himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By far the greater number of these swell
+grafters who steal millions die poor, for it is
+not what a man steals, but what he saves, that
+counts. I have often noticed that the bank
+burglar who is high up in his profession is not
+the one who has the most money when he gets
+to be forty-five or fifty years of age. The
+second or third class gun is more likely to lay
+by something. His general expenses are not
+so large and he does not need so much fall-money;
+and in a few years he can usually
+show more money than the big gun who has a
+dozen living on him. I knew a Big One who
+told me that every time he met a certain police
+official, his watch, a piece of jewelry, a diamond
+stud or even his cuff buttons were much
+admired. The policeman always had some
+relative or friend who desired just the kind
+of ornament the Big One happened to be wearing
+at the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I cannot help comparing those swell guys
+whom I knew at Sing Sing with a third class
+pickpocket I met on the same bit. The big ones
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_180' name='Page_180'>[180]</a></span>
+are dead or worse, but the other day I met, in
+New York, my old pickpocket friend in stir,
+Mr. Aut. I am positive that the hand-shake
+he gave me was only a muscular action, for
+Mr. Aut has "squared it", and the gun who
+has reformed and has become prosperous does
+not like to meet an old acquaintance, who
+knows too much about his past life. When I
+ran across him in the city I started in to talk
+about old times in stir and of pals we knew in
+the long ago, but he answered me by saying,
+"Nix", which meant "Drop It". To get
+him to talk I was forced to throw a few "Larrys"
+into him, such as: "Well, old man, only for
+your few mistakes of the past, you might be
+leader of Tammany Hall." Gradually he
+expanded and told me how much he had
+gained in weight since he left stir and what he
+had done for certain ungrateful grafters. He
+boasted that he could get bail for anyone to
+the sum of fifty thousand dollars, and he told
+the truth, for this man, who had been a third
+class dip, owns at the present time, three gin-mills
+and is something of a politician. He
+has three beautiful children and is well up in
+the world. His daughter was educated at a
+convent, and his son is at a well-known college.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet I remember the time when this ex gun,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_181' name='Page_181'>[181]</a></span>
+Mr. Aut, and I, locked near one another in
+Sing Sing and consoled one another with what
+little luxuries we could get together. Our letters,
+booze and troubles were shared between
+us, and many is the time I have felt for him;
+for he had married a little shop girl and had
+two children at that time. When he got out
+of stir he started in to square it, that is, not to
+go to prison any more. He was wise and no
+one can blame him. He is a good father and
+a successful man. If he had been a better
+grafter it would not have been so easy for him
+to reform. I wish him all kinds of prosperity,
+but I don't like him as well as I did when we
+wore the striped garb and whispered good
+luck to one another in that mansion of woes on
+the Hudson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of Mr. Aut's possessions makes me smile
+whenever I think of it. In his swell parlor,
+over a brand new piano, hangs an oil painting
+of himself, in which he takes great pride. I
+could not help thinking that that picture
+showed a far more prosperous man and one in
+better surroundings than a certain photograph
+of his which is quite as highly treasured as the
+more costly painting; although it is only a tintype,
+numbered two thousand and odd, in the
+Rogues' Gallery.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_182' name='Page_182'>[182]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IX.<br />
+<i>In Stir and Out.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+Some of the most disagreeable days I ever
+spent in prison were the holidays, only three
+of which during the year, however, were kept&mdash;Fourth
+of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
+In Sing Sing there was no work on
+those days, and we could lie abed longer in
+the morning. The food was somewhat better
+than usual. Breakfast consisted of boiled ham,
+mashed potatoes and gravy, and a cup of
+coffee with milk. After mess we went, as
+usual, to chapel, and then gave a kind of
+vaudeville show, all with local talent. We
+sang rag-time and sentimental songs, some of
+us played on an instrument, such as the violin,
+mandolin, or cornet, and the band gave the
+latest pieces from comic opera. After the
+show was over we went to the mess-room
+again where we received a pan containing a
+piece of pie, some cheese, a few apples, as
+much bread as we desired and&mdash;a real luxury
+in stir&mdash;two cigars. With our booty we then
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_183' name='Page_183'>[183]</a></span>
+returned to our cells, at about eleven o'clock
+in the morning, and after the guards had made
+the rounds to see that none of the birds had
+gone astray, we were locked up until the next
+morning, without anything more to eat. We
+were permitted to talk to one another from
+our cells until five o'clock, when the night
+guards went on duty. Such is&mdash;just imagine
+it&mdash;a great day in Sing Sing! The gun, no
+matter how big a guy he is, even if he has
+robbed a bank and stolen millions, is far
+worse off than the meanest laborer, be he
+ever so poor. He may have only a crust, but
+he has that priceless boon, his liberty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Auburn the routine on holidays is much
+the same as that of Sing Sing; but one is not
+compelled to go to chapel, which is a real
+kindness. I don't think a man ought to be
+forced to go to church, even in stir, against
+his will. On holidays in Auburn a man may
+stay in his cell instead of attending divine service,
+if he so desires, and not be punished for
+it. Many a con prefers not to go even to the
+vaudeville show, which at Auburn is given by
+outside talent, but remains quietly all day in
+his cell. There is one other great holiday
+privilege at Auburn, which some of the convicts
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_184' name='Page_184'>[184]</a></span>
+appreciate more than I did. When the
+clock strikes twelve o'clock the convicts, locked
+in their cells, start in to make the rest of the
+night hideous, by pounding on the doors,
+playing all sorts of instruments, blowing whistles,
+and doing everything else that would
+make a noise. There is no more sleep that
+night, for everything is given over to Bedlam,
+until five thirty in the morning, when discipline
+again reigns, and the nervous man who
+detests these holidays sighs with pleasure,
+and says to himself: "I am so glad that at
+last everything is quiet in this cursed stir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What with poor food, little air and exercise,
+no female society, bad habits and holidays, it
+is no wonder that there are many attempts,
+in spite of the danger, to escape from stir.
+Most of these attempts are unsuccessful, but a
+few succeed. One of the cleverest escapes I
+know of happened during my term at Auburn.
+B&mdash;&mdash; was the most feared convict in the
+prison. He was so intelligent, so reckless and
+so good a mechanic that the guards were
+afraid he would make his elegant any day.
+Indeed, if ever a man threw away gifts for not
+even the proverbial mess of pottage, it was
+this man B&mdash;&mdash;. He was the cleverest man I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_185' name='Page_185'>[185]</a></span>
+ever met in stir or out. It was after one
+of the delightful holidays in Auburn that
+B&mdash;&mdash;, who was a nervous man, decided
+to make his gets. He picked a quarrel with
+another convict and was so rough that the
+principal keeper almost decided to let him off;
+but when B&mdash;&mdash; spat in his face he changed
+his mind and put him in the dungeon. I have
+already mentioned this ram-shackle building
+at Auburn. It was the worst yet. All B&mdash;&mdash;'s
+clothing was taken off and an old coat, shirt,
+and trousers without buttons were given him.
+An old piece of bay rope was handed him to
+tie around his waist, and he was left in darkness.
+This was what he wanted, for, although
+they had stripped him naked and searched
+him, he managed to conceal a saw, which he
+used to such good purpose that on the second
+night he had sawed himself into the yard.
+Instead of trying to go over the wall, as most
+cons would have done, B&mdash;&mdash; placed a ladder,
+which he found in the repair shop, against the
+wall, and when the guards discovered next
+morning that B&mdash;&mdash; was not in the dungeon,
+and saw the ladder on the wall, they thought
+he had escaped, and did not search the stir
+but notified the towns to look after him. He
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_186' name='Page_186'>[186]</a></span>
+was not found, of course, for he was hiding in
+the cellar of the prison. A night or two afterwards
+he went to the tailor shop, selected the
+best suit of clothes in the place, opened the
+safe which contained the valuables of the convicts,
+with a piece of steel and a hammer, thus
+robbing his fellow sufferers, and escaped by
+the ladder. After several months of freedom
+he was caught, sent back to stir, and forfeited
+half of his commutation time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A more tragic attempt was made by the
+convicts, Big Benson and Little Kick. They
+got tools from friends in the machine shop
+and started in to saw around the locks of their
+doors. They worked quietly, and were not
+discovered. The reason is that there is sometimes
+honor among thieves. Two of their
+friends in their own gallery, two on the gallery
+above and two on that underneath, tipped
+them off, by a cough or some other noise,
+whenever the night guard was coming; and
+they would cease their work with the saws.
+Convicts grow very keen in detecting the
+screw by the creaking of his boots on the
+wooden gallery floor; if they are not quite
+sure it is he, they often put a small piece of
+looking-glass underneath the door, and can
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_187' name='Page_187'>[187]</a></span>
+thus see down the gallery in either direction a
+certain distance. Whenever Benson and
+Kick were at work, they would accompany the
+noise of the saw with some other noise, so as
+to drown the former, for they knew that,
+although they had some friends among the
+convicts, there were others who, if they got
+next, would tip off the keepers that an escape
+was to be made. In the morning they would
+putty up the cuts made in the door during the
+night. One night when everything was ready,
+they slipped from their cells, put the mug on
+the guard, took away his cannister, and tied
+him to the bottom of one of their cells. They
+did the same to another guard, who was on
+the watch in the gallery below, went to the
+outside window on the Hudson side of Sing
+Sing, and putting a Jack, which they had concealed
+in the cell, between the bars of the window,
+spread them far apart, so that they could
+make their exit. At this point however they
+were discovered by a third guard, who fired at
+them, hitting Little Kick in the leg. The
+shot aroused the sergeant of the guards and
+he gave the alarm. Big Benson was just getting
+through the window when the whole pack
+of guards fired at him, killing him as dead as
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_188' name='Page_188'>[188]</a></span>
+a door-nail. Little Kick lost his nerve and
+surrendered, and was taken to the dungeon.
+Big Benson, who had been serving a term for
+highway robbery, was one of the best liked
+men in stir, and when rumors reached the convicts
+that he had been shot, pandemonium
+broke loose in the cells. They yelled and
+beat their coffee cups against the iron doors,
+and the officials were powerless to quiet them.
+There was more noise even than on a holiday
+at Auburn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after I was transferred from Sing Sing
+to Auburn, a friend came to me and said:
+"Jimmy, are you on either of the shoe-shop
+galleries? No? Well, if you can get on
+Keeper Riley's gallery I think you can spring
+(escape)."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he let me in on one of the cleverest
+beats I ever knew; if I could have succeeded
+in being put on that gallery I should not have
+finished my first term in State's prison. At
+that time work was slack and the men were
+locked in their cells most of the time. Leahy
+started in to dig out the bricks from the ceiling
+of his cell. Each day, when taking his
+turn for an hour in the yard, he would give
+the cement, which he had done up in small
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_189' name='Page_189'>[189]</a></span>
+packages, to friends, who would dump it in
+their buckets, the contents of which they
+would then throw into the large cesspool.
+While exercising in the yard, the cons would
+throw the bricks Leahy had removed on an
+old brick pile under the archway. After he
+had removed sufficient stuff to make a hole
+big enough to crawl through, all he had left to
+do was to saw a few boards, and remove a few
+tiles, and then he was on the roof. It is the
+habit of the guard, when he goes the rounds,
+to rap the ceiling of every cell with his stick,
+to see if there is an excavation. Leahy had
+guarded against this by filling a small box
+with sand and placing it in the opening.
+Then he pasted a piece of linen over the box
+and whitewashed it. Even when the screw
+came around to glance in his cell Leahy
+would continue to work, for he had rigged up
+a dummy of himself in bed. When he reached
+the roof, he dropped to a lower building,
+reached the wall which surrounds the prison,
+and with a rope lowered himself to the ground.
+With a brand new suit of clothes which a
+friend had stolen from the shop, Leahy went
+forth into the open, and was never caught.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Sing Sing an old chum of mine named
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_190' name='Page_190'>[190]</a></span>
+Tom escaped, and would never have been
+caught if he had not been so sentimental.
+Indeed, he was improvident in every way.
+He had been a well-known house-worker, and
+made lots of money at this graft, but he lived
+well and blew what he stole, and consequently
+did many years in prison. He was nailed for
+a house that was touched of "éclat" worth
+thousands, and convicted, though of this particular
+crime he was, I am convinced, innocent;
+of course, he howled like a stuck pig
+about the injustice of it, all his life. While
+he was in Raymond Street jail he got wind of
+the men who really did the job. They were
+pals and he asked them to try to turn him
+out. His girl, Tessie, heard of it and wanted
+to go to Police Headquarters and squeal on
+the others, to save her sweetheart. But Tom
+was frantic, for there was no squeal in him.
+You find grafters like that sometimes, and
+Tom was always sentimental. He certainly
+preferred to go to stir rather than have the
+name of being a belcher. So he went to Sing
+Sing for seven and a half years. He was a
+good mechanic and was assigned to a brick-laying
+job on the wall. He had an easy time
+in stir, for he had a screw right, and got many
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_191' name='Page_191'>[191]</a></span>
+luxuries through the Underground; and was
+not watched very closely. One day he put a
+suit of clothes under his stripes, vamoosed
+into a wood near by, and removed his stripes.
+He kept on walking till he reached Connecticut,
+which, as I have said, is the softest state
+in the Union.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom would never have finished that bit in
+stir, if, as I have also said, he had not been so
+sentimental. When in prison a grafter continually
+thinks about his old pals and hang-outs,
+and the last scenes familiar to him before
+he went to stir. Tom was a well-known gun,
+with his picture in the Hall of Fame, and yet,
+after beating prison, and leaving years behind,
+and knowing that if caught he would have to
+do additional time, would have the authorities
+sore against him and be confined in the dark
+cell, he yet, in spite of all that, after a short
+time, made for his old haunts on the Bowery,
+where he was nailed by a fly-cop and sent
+back to Sing Sing. So much for the force of
+habit and of environment, especially when a
+grafter is a good fellow and loves his old
+pals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On one occasion Tom was well paid for
+being a good fellow. Jack was a well-known
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_192' name='Page_192'>[192]</a></span>
+pugilist who had become a grafter. His wife's
+sister had married a millionaire, and Jack stole
+the millions, which amounted, in this case, to
+only one hundred thousand dollars. For this
+he was put in prison for four years. While in
+stir, Tom, who had a screw right, did him
+many favors, which Jack remembered. Years
+afterwards they were both on the outside
+again. Tom was still a grafter, but Jack had
+gone to work for a police official as general
+utility man, and gained the confidence of his
+employer, who was chief of the detective
+force. The latter got Jack a position as private
+detective in one of the swellest hotels in
+Florida. Now, Tom happened to be grafting
+in that State, and met his old friend Jack at
+the hotel. Instead of tipping off the chief
+that Tom was a grafter, Jack staked his old
+pal, for he remembered the favors he had
+received in stir. Tom was at liberty for four
+years, and then was brought to police headquarters
+where the chief said to him: "I
+know that you met Jack in Florida, and I am
+sore because he did not tip me off." Tom
+replied indignantly: "He is not a hyena like
+your ilk. He is not capable of the basest of
+all crimes, ingratitude. I can forgive a man
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_193' name='Page_193'>[193]</a></span>
+who puts his hand in my pocket and steals my
+money. I can forgive him, for it may do him
+good. He may invest the money and become
+an honored member of the community. But
+the crime no man can forgive is ingratitude.
+It is the most inhuman of crimes and only
+your ilk is capable of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Chief smiled at Tom's sentiment&mdash;that
+was always his weak point&mdash;poor Tom!&mdash;and
+said: "Well, you are a clever thief, and
+I'm glad I was wise enough to catch you."
+Whereupon Tom sneered and remarked: "I
+could die of old age in this city for all of you
+and your detectives. I was tipped off to you
+by a Dicky Bird (stool pigeon) damn him!"
+I have known few grafters who had as much
+feeling as Tom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More than five years passed, and the time
+for my release from Auburn drew near. The
+last weeks dragged terribly; they seemed
+almost as long as the years that had gone
+before. Sometimes I thought the time would
+never come. The day before I was discharged
+I bade good-bye to my friends, who said to
+me, smiling: "She has come at last," or "It's
+near at hand," or "It was a long time a-coming."
+That night I built many castles in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_194' name='Page_194'>[194]</a></span>
+air, with the help of a large piece of opium:
+and continued to make the good resolutions I
+had begun some time before. I had permission
+from the night guard to keep my light
+burning after the usual hour, and the last
+book I read on my first term in stir was <i>Tristram
+Shandy</i>. Just before I went to bed I
+sang for the last time a popular prison song
+which had been running in my head for
+months:
+</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="o1">
+"Roll round, '89, '90, '91, sweet '92 roll around.
+</p>
+<p class="o1">
+How happy I shall be the morning I go free, sweet '92 roll around."
+</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>
+Before I fell asleep I resolved to be good,
+to quit opium and not to graft any more.
+The resolution was easily made and I went to
+bed happy. I was up at day-break and penned
+a few last words to my friends and acquaintances
+remaining in stir. I promised some of
+them that I would see their friends on the
+outside and send them delicacies and a little
+money. They knew that I would keep my
+promise, for I have always been a man of my
+word; as many of the most successful grafters
+are. It is only the vogel-grafter, the petty
+larceny thief or the "sure-thing" article, who
+habitually breaks his word. Many people
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_195' name='Page_195'>[195]</a></span>
+think that a thief can not be trusted; and it
+certainly is true that the profession does not
+help to make a man virtuous in his personal
+relations. But it is also true that a man may
+be, and sometimes is, honorable in his dealings
+with his own world, and at the same time a
+desperate criminal in the other. It is not of
+course common, to find a thief who is an
+honest man; but is there very often an honest
+man anywhere, in the world of graft or out of
+it? If it is often, so much the better, but that
+has not been my experience. Does not everyone
+know that the men who do society the
+greatest injury have never done time; in fact,
+may never have broken any laws? I am not
+trying to excuse myself or my companions in
+crime, but I think the world is a little twisted
+in its ideas as to right and wrong, and who are
+the greatest sinners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When six o'clock on the final day came
+round it was a great relief. I went through
+the regular routine, and at eight o'clock was
+called to the front office, received a new suit
+of clothes, as well as my fare home and ten dollars
+with which to begin life afresh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hold on," I said, to the Warden. "I
+worked eighteen months. Under the new
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_196' name='Page_196'>[196]</a></span>
+piece-price plan I ought to be allowed a certain
+percentage of my earnings."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Warden, who was a good fellow and
+permitted almost anything to come in by the
+Underground Tunnel, asked the clerk if there
+was any more money for me. The clerk consulted
+with the keepers and then reported to
+the Warden that I was the most tired man
+that ever entered the prison; adding that it
+was very nervy of me to want more money,
+after they had treated me far better than the
+parent of the Prodigal treated his son. The
+Warden, thereupon, remarked to me that if I
+went pilfering again and were not more energetic
+than I had been in prison, I would never
+eat. "Goodbye," he concluded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," I said, "I hope we'll never meet
+again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With my discharge papers in my hand, and in
+my mind a resolution never to go back to the
+stir where so many of my friends, strong fellows,
+too, had lost their lives or had become physical
+or mental wrecks, I left Auburn penitentiary
+and went forth into the free world. I had
+gone to stir a boy of twenty-one, and left it a
+man of twenty-six. I entered healthy, and left
+broken down in health, with the marks of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_197' name='Page_197'>[197]</a></span>
+jail-bird upon me; marks, mental and physical,
+that would never leave me, and habits that I
+knew would stick closer than a brother. I
+knew that there was nothing in a life of crime.
+I had tested that well enough. But there
+were times during the last months I spent in
+my cell, when, in spite of my good resolutions,
+I hated the outside world which had forced me
+into a place that took away from my manhood
+and strength. I knew I had sinned against
+my fellow men, but I knew, too, that there
+had been something good in me. I was half
+Irish, and about that race there is naturally
+something roguish; and that was part of my
+wickedness. When I left stir I knew I was
+not capable, after five years and some months
+of unnatural routine, of what I should have
+been by nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A man is like an electric plant. Use poor
+fuel and you will have poor electricity. The
+food is bad in prison. The cells at Sing Sing
+are a crime against the criminal; and in these
+damp and narrow cells he spends, on the average,
+eighteen hours out of the twenty-four.
+In the name of humanity and science what
+can society expect from a man who has spent
+a number of years in such surroundings? He
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_198' name='Page_198'>[198]</a></span>
+will come out of stir, as a rule, a burden on
+the tax-payers, unable to work, and confirmed
+in a life of crime; desperate, and willing to
+take any chance. The low-down, petty, canting
+thief, who works all the charitable societies
+and will rob only those who are his benefactors,
+or a door-mat, is utterly useless in
+prison or out. The healthy, intelligent, ambitious
+grafter is capable of reform and usefulness,
+if shown the error of his ways or taken
+hold of before his physical and mental health
+is ruined by prison life. You can appeal to
+his manhood at that early time. After he has
+spent a certain number of years in stir his teeth
+become decayed; he can not chew his food,
+which is coarse and ill-cooked; his stomach
+gets bad: and once his stomach becomes
+deranged it is only a short time before his
+head is in a like condition. Eventually, he
+may be transferred to the mad-house. I left
+Auburn stir a happy man, for the time, for I
+thought everything would be smooth sailing.
+As a matter of fact I could not know the actual
+realities I had to face, inside and outside
+of me, and so all my good resolutions were
+nothing but a dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a fine May morning that I left Auburn
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_199' name='Page_199'>[199]</a></span>
+and I was greatly excited and bewildered by
+the brightness and joy of everything about
+me. I took my hat off, gazed up at the clear
+sky, looked up and down the street and at the
+passers-by, with a feeling of pleasure and confusion.
+I turned to the man who had been
+released with me, and said, "Let's go and get
+something to eat." On the way to the restaurant,
+however, the jangling of the trolleys upset
+my nerves. I could not eat, and drank a
+couple of whiskies. They did not taste right.
+Everything seemed tame, compared with the
+air, which I breathed like a drunken man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bought a few pounds of tea, canned goods,
+cheese and fruit, which I sent by a keeper to
+my friends in stir. I also bought for my
+friends a few dollars' worth of morphine and
+some pulverized gum opium. How could I
+send it to them, for the keeper was not "next"
+to the Underground? Suddenly I had an
+idea. I bought ten cents worth of walnuts,
+split them, took the meat out, put the morphine
+and opium in, closed them with mucilage,
+put them in a bag and sent them to the convicts
+with the basket of other things I had left
+with the innocent keeper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I got aboard my train, and as I pulled out
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_200' name='Page_200'>[200]</a></span>
+of the town of Auburn gave a great sigh of
+relief. I longed to go directly to New York,
+for I always did like big cities, particularly
+Manhattan, and I was dying to see some of
+my old girls. But I stopped off at Syracuse,
+according to promises, to deliver some messages
+to the relatives of convicts, and so reached
+New York a few hours later than my family
+and friends had expected. They had gone
+to meet an earlier train, and had not waited,
+so that when I reached my native city after
+this long absence I found nobody at the station
+to welcome me back. It made me sad for a
+moment, but when I passed out into the streets
+of the big town I felt excited and joyous, and
+so confused that I thought I knew almost
+everybody on the street. I nearly spoke to a
+stranger, a woman, thinking she was Blonde
+Mamie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I soon reached the Bowery and there met
+some of my old pals; but was much surprised
+to find them changed and older. For years
+and years a convict lives in a dream. He is
+isolated from the realities of the outside world.
+In stir he is a machine, and his mind is continually
+dwelling on the last time he was at
+liberty; he thinks of his family and friends as
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_201' name='Page_201'>[201]</a></span>
+they were then. They may have become old,
+sickly and wrinkled, but he does not realize
+this. When, set free, he tries to find them,
+he expects that they will be unchanged, but if
+he finds them at all, what a shock! An old-timer
+I knew, a man named Packey, who had
+served fifteen years out of a life sentence, and
+had been twice declared insane, told me that
+he had reached a state of mind in which he
+imagined himself to be still a young fellow, of
+the age he was when he first went to stir.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_202' name='Page_202'>[202]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER X.<br />
+<i>At the Graft Again.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+I spent my first day in New York looking
+up my old pals and girls, especially the latter.
+How I longed to exchange friendly words
+with a woman! But the girls I knew were all
+gone, and I was forced to make new acquaintances
+on the spot. I spent all the afternoon
+and most of the evening with a girl I picked
+up on the Bowery; I thought she was the
+most beautiful creature in the world; but
+when I saw her again weeks afterwards, when
+women were not so novel to me, I found
+her almost hideous. I must have longed for
+a young woman's society, for I did not go to
+see my poor old mother until I had left my
+Bowery acquaintance. And yet my mother
+had often proved herself my only friend!
+But I had a long talk with her before I slept,
+and when I left her for a stroll in the wonderful
+city before going to bed my resolution to
+be good was keener than ever.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_203' name='Page_203'>[203]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I sauntered along the Bowery that night
+the desire to talk to an old pal was strong.
+But where was I to find a friend? Only in
+places where thieves hung out. "Well," I
+said to myself, "there is no harm in talking to
+my old pals. I will tell them there is nothing
+in the graft, and that I have squared it."
+I dropped into a music hall, a resort for pickpockets,
+kept by an old gun, and there I met
+Teddy, whom I had not seen for years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, Jim," he said, giving me the glad
+hand, "I thought you were dead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not quite so bad as that, Teddy," I replied,
+"I am still in evidence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had a couple of beers. I could not
+quite make up my mind to tell him I had
+squared it; and he put me next to things in
+town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Take my advice," he said, "and keep
+away from &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; (naming certain clubs
+and saloons where thieves congregated). The
+proprietors of these places and the guns that
+hang out there, many of them anyway, are
+not on the level. Some of the grafters who
+go there have the reputation of being clever
+dips, but they have protection from the Front
+Office men because they are rats and so can
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_204' name='Page_204'>[204]</a></span>
+tear things open without danger. By giving
+up a certain amount of stuff and dropping a
+stall or two occasionally to keep up the flyman's
+reputation, they are able to have a bank
+account and never go to stir. The flymen
+hang out in these joints, waiting for a tip, and
+they are bad places for a grafter who is on
+the level."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I listened with attention, and said, by force
+of habit:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Put me next to the stool-pigeons, Teddy.
+You know I am just back from stir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he answered, "outside of so and so
+(and he mentioned half-a-dozen men by name)
+none of them who hang out in those joints
+can be trusted. Come to my house, Jim, and
+we'll have a long talk about old times, and I
+will introduce you to some good people (meaning
+thieves)."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went with him to his home, which was in
+a tenement house in the lower part of the first
+ward. He introduced me to his wife and
+children and a number of dips, burglars and
+strong-armed men who made his place a kind
+of rendezvous. We talked old times and
+graft, and the wife and little boy of eight
+years old listened attentively. The boy had
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_205' name='Page_205'>[205]</a></span>
+a much better chance to learn the graft than I
+had when a kid, for my father was an honest
+man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The three strong-arm men (highwaymen)
+were a study to me, for they were Westerners,
+with any amount of nerve. One of them,
+Denver Red, a big powerful fellow, mentioned
+a few bits he had done in Western prisons,
+explained a few of his grafts and seemed to
+despise New York guns, whom he considered
+cowardly. He said the Easterners feared the
+police too much, and always wanted to fix things
+before they dared to graft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told them a little about New York State
+penitentiaries, and then Ted said to Denver
+Red: "What do you think of the big fellow?"
+Denver grinned, and the others followed suit,
+and I heard the latest story. A well-known
+politician, leader of his district, a cousin of
+Senator Wet Coin; a man of gigantic stature,
+with the pleasing name, I will say, of Flower,
+had had an adventure. He is even better
+developed physically than mentally, and virtually
+king of his district, and whenever he
+passes by, the girls bow to him, the petty thief
+calls him "Mister" and men and women alike
+call him "Big Flower." Well, one night not
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_206' name='Page_206'>[206]</a></span>
+long before the gathering took place in Teddy's
+house, Big Flower was passing through the
+toughest portion of his bailiwick, humming ragtime,
+when my new acquaintances, the three
+strong-arm workers from the West, stuck him
+up with cannisters, and relieved him of a five
+carat diamond stud, a gold watch and chain
+and a considerable amount of cash. The next
+day there was consternation among the clan
+of the Wet Coins, for Big Flower, who had
+been thus nipped, was their idol. We all
+laughed heartily at the story, and I went
+home and to sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day I found it a very easy thing
+to drift back to my old haunts. In the
+evening I went to a sporting house on Twenty-seventh
+Street, where a number of guns
+hung out. I got the glad hand and an invitation
+to join in some good graft. I said I was
+done with the Rocky Path. They smiled and
+gently said: "We have been there, too,
+Jim."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of them added: "By the way, I hear
+you are up against the hop, Jim." It was
+Billy, and he invited me home with him.
+There I met Ida, as pretty a little shop girl as
+one wants to see. Billy said there was always
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_207' name='Page_207'>[207]</a></span>
+an opening for me, that times were pretty
+good. He and Ida had an opium layout, and
+they asked me to take a smoke. I told them
+my nerves were not right, and that I had quit.
+"Poor fellow," said Billy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps it was the sight or smell of the
+hop, but anyway I got the yen-yen and shook
+as in an ague. My eyes watered and I grew
+as pale as a sheet. I thought my bones were
+unjointing and took a pint of whiskey; it had
+no effect. Then Billy acted as my physician
+and prepared a pill for me. So vanished one
+good resolution. My only excuse to myself
+was: Human nature is weak, ain't it? No
+sooner had I taken the first pill than a feeling
+of ecstasy came over me. I became talkative,
+and Billy, noticing the effect, said: "Jim,
+before you try to knock off the hop, you had
+better wait till you reach the next world."
+The opium brought peace to my nerves and
+dulled my conscience and I had a long talk
+with Billy and Ida about old pals. They told
+me who was dead, who were in stir and who
+were good (prosperous).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not many days after my opium fall I got a
+note from Ethel, who had heard that I had
+come home. In the letter she said that she
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_208' name='Page_208'>[208]</a></span>
+was not happy with her husband, that she had
+married to please her father and to get a comfortable
+home. She wanted to make an appointment
+to meet me, whom, she said, she
+had always loved. I knew what her letter
+meant, and I did not answer it, and did not keep
+the appointment. My relation to her was the
+only decent thing in my life, and I thought I
+might as well keep it right. I have never
+seen her since the last time she visited me at
+Auburn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For some time after getting back from stir
+I tried for a job, but the effort was only half-hearted
+on my part, and people did not fall
+over themselves in their eagerness to find
+something for the ex-convict to do. Even if
+I had had the best intentions in the world,
+the path of the ex-convict is a difficult one, as
+I have since found. I was run down physically,
+and could not carry a hod or do any
+heavy labor, even if I had desired to. I knew
+no trade and should have been forever distrusted
+by the upper world. The only thing
+I could do well was to graft; and the only
+society that would welcome me was that of
+the under world. My old pals knew I had
+the requisite nerve and was capable of taking
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_209' name='Page_209'>[209]</a></span>
+my place in any good mob. My resolutions
+began to ooze away, especially as at that time
+my father was alive and making enough money
+to support the rest of the family. So I had
+only myself to look out for&mdash;and that was a
+lot; for I had my old habits, and new ones I
+had formed in prison, to satisfy. When I
+stayed quietly at home I grew intensely nervous;
+and soon I felt that I was bound to slip
+back to the world of graft. I am convinced
+that I would never have returned to stir or to my
+old trade, however, if my environment had been
+different, on my release, from what it had been
+formerly; and if I could have found a job. I
+don't say this in the way of complaint. I now
+know that a man can reform even among his
+old associates. It is impossible, as the reader
+will see, I believe, before he finishes this book,
+for me ever to fall back again. Some men
+acquire wisdom at twenty-one, some not till
+they are thirty-five, and some never. Wisdom
+came to me when I was thirty-five. If I had
+had my present experience, I should not have
+fallen after my first bit; but I might not have
+fallen anyway, if I had been placed in a better
+environment after my first term in prison. A
+man can stand alone, if he is strong enough,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_210' name='Page_210'>[210]</a></span>
+and has sufficient reasons; but if he is tottering,
+he needs outside help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was tottering, and did not get the help,
+and so I speedily began to graft again. I
+started in on easy game, on picking pockets
+and simple swindling. I made my first touch,
+after my return, on Broadway. One day I
+met the Kid there, looking for a dollar as hard
+as a financier. He asked me if I was not
+about ready to begin again, and pointed out a
+swell Moll, big, breezy and blonde, coming
+down the street, with a large wallet sticking
+out of her pocket. It seemed easy, with no
+come-back in sight, and I agreed to stall for the
+Kid. Just as she went into Denning's which
+is now Wanamaker's, I went in ahead of her,
+turned and met her. She stopped; and at
+that moment the Kid nicked her. We got
+away all right and found in the wallet over
+one hundred dollars and a small knife. In
+the knife were three rivets, which we discovered
+on inspection to be magnifying glasses.
+We applied our eyes to the same and saw
+some pictures which would have made Mr.
+Anthony Comstock howl; if he had found this
+knife on this aristocratic lady he would surely
+have sent her to the penitentiary. It was a
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_211' name='Page_211'>[211]</a></span>
+beautiful pearl knife, gold tipped, and must
+have been a loss; and yet I felt I was justified
+in taking that wallet. I thought I had done
+the lady a good turn. She might have been
+fined, and why shouldn't I have the money,
+rather than the magistrate?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Kid was one of the cleverest dips I
+ever knew; he was delicate and cunning, and
+the best stone-getter in the city. But he had
+one weakness that made him almost a devil.
+He fell in love with every pretty face he saw,
+and cared no more for leading a girl astray
+than I minded kicking a cat. I felt sorry for
+many a little working girl he had shaken after
+a couple of weeks; and I used to jolly them to
+cheer them up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I once met Kate, one of them, and said,
+with a smile: "Did you hear about the Kid's
+latest? Why don't you have him arrested
+for bigamy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not smile at first, but said: "He'll
+never have any luck. My mother is a widow,
+and she prays to God to afflict him with a
+widow's curse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One of the Ten Commandments," I replied,
+"says, 'thou shalt not take the name of
+the Lord thy God in vain,' and between you
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_212' name='Page_212'>[212]</a></span>
+and me, Kate, the commandment does not
+say that widows have the monopoly on cursing.
+It is a sin, anyway, whether it is a man,
+a girl or a widow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was too deep for Kate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stop preaching, Jim," she said, "and give
+me a drink," and I did. After she had drunk
+half-a-dozen glasses of beer she felt better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Women are queer, anyway. No matter
+how bad they are, they are always good. All
+women are thieves, or rather petty pilferers,
+bless them! When I was just beginning to
+graft again, and was going it easy, I used to
+work a game which well showed the natural
+grafting propensities of women. I would buy
+a lot of Confederate bills for a few cents, and
+put them in a good leather. When I saw a
+swell-looking Moll, evidently out shopping,
+walking along the street, I would drop the
+purse in her path; and just as she saw it I
+would pick it up, as if I had just found it.
+Nine women out of ten would say, "It's mine,
+I dropped it." I would open the leather and
+let her get a peep of the bills, and that would
+set her pilfering propensities going. "It's
+mine," she would repeat. "What's in it?" I
+would hold the leather carefully away from
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_213' name='Page_213'>[213]</a></span>
+her, look into it cautiously and say: "I can
+see a twenty dollar bill, a thirty dollar bill, and
+a one hundred dollar bill, but how do I know
+you dropped it?" Then she'd get excited and
+exclaim, "If you don't give it to me quick I'll
+call a policeman." "Madam," I would reply,
+"I am an honest workingman, and if you will
+give me ten dollars for a reward, I will give
+you this valuable purse." Perhaps she would
+then say: "Give me the pocket-book and I'll
+give you the money out of it." To that I
+would reply: "No, Madam, I wish you to receive
+the pocket-book just as it was." I would
+then hand her the book and she would give
+me a good ten dollar bill. "There is a
+woman down the street," I would continue,
+"looking for something." That would alarm
+her and away she would go without even opening
+the leather to see if her money was all
+right. She wouldn't shop any more that day,
+but would hasten home to examine her treasure&mdash;worth,
+as she would discover to her sorrow,
+about thirty cents. Then, no doubt, her
+conscience would trouble her. At least, she
+would weep; I am sure of that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I got my hand in again, I began to
+go for stone-getting, which was a fat graft in
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_214' name='Page_214'>[214]</a></span>
+those days, when the Lexow committee was
+beginning their reform. Everybody wore a
+diamond. Even mechanics and farmers were
+not satisfied unless they had pins to stick in
+their ties. They bought them on the installment
+plan, and I suppose they do yet. I
+could always find a laborer or a hod-carrier
+that had a stone. They usually called attention
+to it by keeping their hands carefully on
+it; and very often it found its way into my
+pocket, for carelessness is bound to come as
+soon as a man thinks he is safe. They probably
+thought of their treasure for months afterwards;
+at least, whenever the collector came
+around for the weekly installments of pay for
+stones they no longer possessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was about this time that I met General
+Brace and the Professor. One was a Harvard
+graduate, and the other came from good old
+Yale; and both were grafters. When I knew
+them they used to hang out in a joint on
+Seventh Street, waiting to be treated. They
+had been good grafters, but through hop and
+booze had come down from forging and queer-shoving
+to common shop-lifting and petty
+larceny business. General Brace was very
+reticent in regard to his family and his own
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_215' name='Page_215'>[215]</a></span>
+past, but as I often invited him to smoke opium
+with me, he sometimes gave me little confidences.
+I learned that he came from a well-known
+Southern family, and had held a good position
+in his native city; but he was a blood, and to
+satisfy his habits he began to forge checks.
+His relatives saved him from prison, but he
+left home and started on the downward career
+of graftdom. We called him General Brace
+because he looked like a soldier and was continually
+on the borrow; but a good story
+always accompanied his asking for a loan and
+he was seldom refused. I have often listened
+to this man after he had smoked a quantity of
+opium, and his conversational powers were
+something remarkable. Many a gun and
+politician would listen to him with wonder. I
+used to call him General Brace Coleridge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Professor was almost as good a talker.
+We used to treat them both, in order to get
+them to converse together. It was a liberal
+education to hear them hold forth in that low-down
+saloon, where some of the finest talks on
+literature and politics were listened to with
+interest by men born and bred on the East
+Side, with no more education than a turnip,
+but with keen wits. The graduates had good
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_216' name='Page_216'>[216]</a></span>
+manners, and we liked them and staked them
+regularly. They used to write letters for
+politicians and guns who could not read or
+write. They stuck together like brothers. If
+one of them had five cents, he would go into
+a morgue (gin-mill where rot-gut whiskey could
+be obtained for that sum) and pour out almost
+a full tumbler of booze. Just as he sipped
+a little of the rot-gut, his pal would come in,
+as though by accident. If it was the General
+who had made the purchase, he would say:
+"Hello, old pal, just taste this fine whiskey.
+It tastes like ten-cent stuff." The Professor
+would take a sip and become enthusiastic.
+They would sip and exclaim in turn, until the
+booze was all gone, and no further expense
+incurred. This little trick grew into a habit,
+and the bar-tender got on to it, but he liked
+Colonel Brace and the Professor so much that
+he used to wink at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was in this rot-gut saloon one day when I
+met Jesse R&mdash;&mdash;, with whom I had spent several
+years in prison. I have often wondered how
+this man happened to join the under world;
+for he not only came of a good family and was
+well educated, but was also of a good, quiet
+disposition, a prime favorite in stir and out.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_217' name='Page_217'>[217]</a></span>
+He was tactful enough never to roast convicts,
+who are very sensitive, and was so sympathetic
+that many a heartache was poured into his ear.
+He never betrayed a friend's confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was glad to meet Jesse again, and we
+exchanged greetings in the little saloon.
+When he asked me what I was doing, I replied
+that I had a mortgage on the world and that
+I was trying to draw my interest from the
+same. I still had that old dream, that the
+world owed me a living. I confided in him
+that I regarded the world as my oyster more
+decidedly than I had done before I met him
+in stir. I found that Jesse, however, had
+squared it for good and was absolutely on the
+level. He had a good job as shipping clerk
+in a large mercantile house; when I asked him
+if he was not afraid of being tipped off by
+some Central Office man or by some stool-pigeon,
+he admitted that that was the terror
+of his life; but that he had been at work for
+eighteen months, and hoped that none of his
+enemies would turn up. I asked him who had
+recommended him for the job, and I smiled
+when he answered: "General Brace". That
+clever Harvard graduate often wrote letters
+which were of assistance to guns who had
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_218' name='Page_218'>[218]</a></span>
+squared it; though the poor fellow could not
+take care of himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jesse had a story to tell which seemed to
+me one of the saddest I have heard: and as I
+grew older I found that most all stories about
+people in the under world, no matter how
+cheerfully they began, ended sadly. It was
+about his brother, Harry, the story that Jesse
+told. Harry was married, and there is where
+the trouble often begins. When Jesse was in
+prison Harry, who was on the level and occupied
+a good position as a book-keeper, used to
+send him money, always against his wife's
+wishes. She also complained because Harry
+supported his old father. Harry toiled like a
+slave for this woman who scolded him and who
+spent his money recklessly. He made a good
+salary, but he could not keep up with her
+extravagance. One time, while in the country,
+she met a sporting man, Mr. O. B. In a
+few weeks it was the old, old story of a foolish
+woman and a pretty good fellow. While she
+was in the country, her young son was drowned,
+and she sent Harry a telegram announcing it.
+But she kept on living high and her name and
+that of O. B. were often coupled. Harry tried
+to stifle his sorrow and kept on sending money
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_219' name='Page_219'>[219]</a></span>
+to the bladder he called wife, who appeared in
+a fresh new dress whenever she went out with
+Mr. O. B. One day Harry received a letter,
+calling him to the office to explain his accounts.
+He replied that he had been sick, but would
+straighten everything out the next day. When
+his father went to awaken him in the morning,
+Harry was dead. A phial of morphine on the
+floor told the story. Jesse reached his brother's
+room in time to hear his old father's cry of
+anguish and to read a letter from Harry,
+explaining that he had robbed the firm of
+thousands, and asking his brother to be kind
+to Helene, his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Jesse went to see the woman, to tell
+her about her husband's death. He found
+her at a summer hotel with Mr. O. B., and
+heard the servants talk about them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim," said Jesse to me, at this point in
+the story, "here is wise council. Wherever
+thou goest, keep the portals of thy lugs open;
+as you wander on through life you are apt to
+hear slander about your women folks. What
+is more entertaining than a little scandal,
+especially when it doesn't hit home? But
+don't look into it too deep, for it generally
+turns out true, or worse. I laid a trap for my
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_220' name='Page_220'>[220]</a></span>
+poor brothers wife, and one of her letters,
+making clear her guilt, fell into my hands.
+A telegram in reply from Mr. O. B., likewise
+came to me, and in a murderous frame of
+mind, I read its contents, and then laughed
+like a hyena: 'I am sorry I cannot meet you,
+but I was married this morning, and am going
+on my wedding tour. <i>Au Revoir.</i>' You ask
+me what became of my sister-in-law? Jim,
+she is young and pretty, and will get along in
+this world. But, truly, the wages of sin is to
+her Living Ashes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not very long after my return home
+that I was at work again, not only at safe dipping
+and swindling, but gradually at all my
+old grafts, including more or less house work.
+There was a difference, however. I grew far
+more reckless than I had been before I went
+to prison. I now smoked opium regularly,
+and had a lay-out in my furnished room and
+a girl to run it. The drug made me take
+chances I never used to take; and I became
+dead to almost everything that was good. I
+went home very seldom. I liked my family in
+a curious way, but I did not have enough
+vitality or much feeling about anything. I
+began to go out to graft always in a dazed
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_221' name='Page_221'>[221]</a></span>
+condition, so much so that on one occasion a
+pal tried to take advantage of my state of
+mind. It was while I was doing a bit of house-work
+with Sandy and Hacks, two clever grafters.
+We inserted into the lock the front door
+key which we had made, threw off the tumblers,
+and opened the door. Hacks and I
+stalled while Sandy went in and got six hundred
+dollars and many valuable jewels. He
+did not show us much of the money, however.
+The next day the newspapers described the
+"touch," and told the amount of money which
+had been stolen. Then I knew I had been
+"done" by Sandy and Hacks, who stood in
+with him, but Sandy said the papers were
+wrong. The mean thief, however, could not
+keep his mouth shut, and I got him. I am
+glad I was not arrested for murder. It was a
+close shave, for I cut him unmercifully with a
+knife. In this I had the approval of my
+friends, for they all believed the worst thing a
+grafter could do was to sink a pal. Sandy did
+not squeal, but he swore he would get even
+with me. Even if I had not been so reckless
+as I was then, I would not have feared him,
+for I knew there was no come-back in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another thing the dope did was to make
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_222' name='Page_222'>[222]</a></span>
+me laugh at everything. It was fun for me
+to graft, and I saw the humor of life. I
+remember I used to say that this world is the
+best possible; that the fine line of cranks and
+fools in it gives it variety. One day I had a
+good laugh in a Brooklyn car. Tim, George
+and I got next to a Dutchman who had a
+large prop in his tie. He stood for a newspaper
+under his chin, and his stone came
+as slick as grease. A minute afterwards he
+missed his property, and we did not dare to
+move. He told his wife, who was with him,
+that his stone was gone. She called him a
+fool, and said that he had left it at home, in
+the bureau drawer, that she remembered it
+well. Then he looked down and saw that his
+front was gone, too. He said to his wife: "I
+am sure I had my watch and chain with me,"
+but his wife was so superior that she easily
+convinced him he had left it at home. The
+wisdom of women is beyond finding out. But
+I enjoyed that incident. I shall never forget
+the look that came over the Dutchman's face
+when he missed his front.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was too sleepy those days to go out of
+town much on the graft; and was losing my
+ambition generally. I even cared very little
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_223' name='Page_223'>[223]</a></span>
+for the girls, and gave up many of my amusements.
+I used to stay most of the time in my
+furnished room, smoking hop. When I went
+out it was to get some dough quick, and to
+that end I embraced almost any means. At
+night I often drifted into some concert hall,
+but it was not like the old days when I was a
+kid. The Bowery is far more respectable now
+than it ever was before. Twenty years ago
+there was no worse place possible for ruining
+girls and making thieves than Billy McGlory's
+joint on Hester Street. About ten o'clock in
+the morning slumming parties would chuckle
+with glee when the doors at McGlory's would
+be closed and young girls in scanty clothing,
+would dance the can-can. These girls would
+often fight together, and frequently were
+beaten unmercifully by the men who lived on
+them and their trade. Often men were forcibly
+robbed in these joints. There was little
+danger of an arrest; for if the sucker squealed,
+the policeman on the beat would club him off
+to the beat of another copper, who would
+either continue the process, or arrest him for
+disorderly conduct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this time, which was just before the
+Lexow Committee began its work, there were
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_224' name='Page_224'>[224]</a></span>
+at least a few honest coppers. I knew one,
+however, that did not remain honest. It
+happened this way. The guns had been tearing
+open the cars so hard that the street car
+companies, as they had once before, got after
+the officials, who stirred up Headquarters.
+The riot act was read to the dips. This
+meant that, on the second offense, every thief
+would be settled for his full time and that
+there would be no squaring it. The guns lay
+low for a while, but two very venturesome
+grafters, Mack and Jerry, put their heads together
+and reasoned thus: "Now that the
+other guns are alarmed it is a good chance for
+us to get in our fine work."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Complaints continued to come in. The
+police grew hot and sent Mr. F&mdash;&mdash;, a flyman,
+to get the rascals. Mr. F&mdash;&mdash; had the reputation
+of being the most honest detective on the
+force. He often declared that he wanted promotion
+only on his merits. Whenever he was
+overheard in making this remark there was a
+quiet smile on the faces of the other coppers.
+F&mdash;&mdash; caught Mack dead to rights, and, not
+being a diplomat, did not understand when
+the gun tried to talk reason to him. Even a
+large piece of dough did not help his intellect,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_225' name='Page_225'>[225]</a></span>
+and Mack was taken to the station-house.
+When a high official heard about it he swore
+by all the gods that he would make an example
+of that notorious pickpocket, Mack; but human
+nature is weak, especially if it wears buttons.
+Mack sent for F&mdash;&mdash;'s superior, the captain,
+and the following dialogue took place:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Captain</i>: What do you want?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mack</i>: I'm copped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Captain</i>: Yes, and you're dead to rights.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mack</i>: I tried to do business with F&mdash;&mdash;.
+What is the matter with him?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Captain</i>: He is a policeman. He wants
+his promotion by merit. (Even the Captain
+smiled.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mack</i>: I'd give five centuries (five hundred
+dollars) if I could get to my summer residence
+in Asbury Park.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Captain</i>: How long would it take you to
+get it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mack</i>: (He, too, was laconic.) I got it on
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Captain</i>: Give it here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mack</i>: It's a sure turn-out?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Captain</i>: Was I ever known to go back
+on my word?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mack handed the money over, and went
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_226' name='Page_226'>[226]</a></span>
+over to court in the afternoon with F&mdash;&mdash;.
+The Captain was there, and whispered to F&mdash;&mdash;:
+"Throw him out." That nearly knocked
+F&mdash;&mdash; down, but he and Mack took a car, and
+he said to the latter: "In the name of everything
+how did you hypnotize the old man?"
+Mack replied, with a laugh: "I tried to
+mesmerize you in the same way; but you are
+working on your merits."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mack was discharged, and F&mdash;&mdash; decided
+to be a diplomat henceforth. From an honest
+copper he became as clever a panther as ever
+shook coin from a gun. Isn't it likely that if
+a man had a large income he would never go
+to prison? Indeed, do you think that well-known
+guns could graft with impunity unless
+they had some one right? Nay! Nay!
+Hannah. They often hear the song of split
+half or no graft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at that time I was so careless that I did
+not even have enough sense to save fall-money,
+and after about nine months of freedom
+I fell again. One day three of us boarded
+a car in Brooklyn and I saw a mark whom I
+immediately nicked for his red super, which I
+passed quickly to one of my stalls, Eddy.
+We got off the car and walked about three
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_227' name='Page_227'>[227]</a></span>
+blocks, when Eddy flashed the super, to look
+at it. The sucker, who had been tailing, blew,
+and Eddy threw the watch to the ground, fearing
+that he would be nailed. A crowd gathered
+around the super, I among them, the other
+stall, Eddy having vamoosed, and the sucker.
+No man in his senses would have picked up
+that gold watch. But I did it and was nailed
+dead to rights. I felt that super belonged to
+me. I had nicked it cleverly, and I thought I
+had earned it! I was sentenced to four years
+in Sing Sing, but I did not hang my head with
+shame, this time, as I was taken to the station.
+It was the way of life and of those I associated
+with, and I was more a fatalist than ever. I
+hated all mankind and cared nothing for the
+consequences of my acts.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_228' name='Page_228'>[228]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XI.<br />
+<i>Back to Prison.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+I was not recognized by the authorities at
+Sing Sing as having been there before. I
+gave a different name and pedigree, of course,
+but the reason I was not known as a second-timer
+was that I had spent only nine months
+at Sing Sing on my first term, the remainder
+having been passed at Auburn. There was a
+new warden at Sing Sing, too, and some of
+the other officials had changed; and, besides,
+I must have been lucky. Anyway, none of
+the keepers knew me, and this meant a great
+deal to me; for if I had been recognized as a
+second-timer I should have had a great deal of
+extra time to serve. On my first term I had
+received commutation time for good behavior
+amounting to over a year, and there is a rule
+that if a released convict is sent back to
+prison, he must serve, not only the time given
+him on his second sentence, but the commutation
+time on his first bit. Somebody must
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_229' name='Page_229'>[229]</a></span>
+have been very careless, for I beat the State
+out of more than a year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the convicts, indeed, knew that I
+had served before; but they did not squeal.
+Even some of those who did not know me
+had an inkling of it, but would not tell. It
+was still another instance of honor among
+thieves. If they had reported me to the authorities,
+they might have had an easier time
+in stir and had many privileges, such as better
+jobs and better things to eat. There were
+many stool-pigeons there, of course, but somehow
+these rats did not get wind of me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It did not take me long to get the Underground
+Tunnel in working order again, and I
+received contraband letters, booze, opium and
+morphine as regularly as on my first bit. One
+of the screws running the Tunnel at the time,
+Jack R&mdash;&mdash;, was a little heavier in his demands
+than I thought fair. He wanted a third instead
+of a fifth of the money sent the convicts
+from home. But he was a good fellow, and
+always brought in the hop as soon as it arrived.
+Like the New York police he was hot after
+the stuff, but who can blame him? He wanted
+to rise in the world, and was more ambitious
+than the other screws. I continued my pipe
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_230' name='Page_230'>[230]</a></span>
+dreams, and my reading; indeed, they were
+often connected. I frequently used to imagine
+that I was a character in one of the
+books; and often choked the detestable Tarquin
+into insensibility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On one occasion I dreamed that I was
+arraigned before my Maker and charged with
+murder. I cried with fear and sorrow, for I
+felt that even before the just God there was
+no justice; but a voice silenced me and said
+that to be guilty of the crime of murder, it was
+not necessary to use weapons or poison. Suddenly
+I seemed to see the sad faces of my
+father and mother, and then I knew what the
+voice meant. Indeed, I was guilty. I heard
+the word, "Begone," and sank into the abyss.
+After many thousand years of misery I was
+led into the Chamber of Contentment where
+I saw some of the great men whose books I
+had read. Voltaire, Tom Paine and Galileo
+sat on a throne, but when I approached them
+with awe, the angel, who had the face of a
+keeper, told me to leave. I appealed to Voltaire,
+and begged him not to permit them to
+send me among the hymn-singers. He said
+he pitied me, but that I was not fit to be
+with the great elect. I asked him where Dr.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_231' name='Page_231'>[231]</a></span>
+Parkhurst was, and he answered that the doctor
+was hot stuff and had evaporated long
+ago. I was led away sorrowing, and awoke
+in misery and tears, in my dark and damp
+cell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this bit I was assigned to the clothing
+department, where I stayed six months, but
+did very little work. Warden Sage replaced
+Warden Darson and organized the system of
+stool-pigeons in stir more carefully than ever
+before; so it was more difficult than it was
+before to neglect our work. I said to Sage
+one day: "You're a cheap guy. You ought
+to be President of a Woman's Sewing Society.
+You can do nothing but make an aristocracy
+of stool-pigeons." I gave up work after six
+months because of my health, which had been
+bad for a long time, but now grew worse.
+My rapid life on the outside, my bad habits,
+and my experience in prison were beginning to
+tell on me badly. There was a general breaking-down
+of my system. I was so weak and
+coughed so badly that they thought I was
+dying. The doctors said I had consumption
+and transferred me to the prison hospital,
+where I had better air and food and was far
+more comfortable in body but terribly low in
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_232' name='Page_232'>[232]</a></span>
+my mind. I was so despondent that I did not
+even "fan my face" (turn my head away to
+avoid having the outside world become familiar
+with my features) when visitors went
+through the hospital. This was an unusual
+degree of carelessness for a professional gun.
+One reason I was so gloomy was that I was
+now unable to get hold of my darling hop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was so despondent in the hospital that I
+really thought I should soon become an angel;
+and my environment was not very cheerful, for
+several convicts died on beds near me. Whenever
+anybody was going to die, every convict
+in the prison knew about it, for the attendants
+would put three screens around the dying
+man's bed. There were about twenty beds in
+the long room, and near me was an old boyhood
+pal, Tommy Ward, in the last stages of
+consumption. Tommy and I often talked
+together about death, and neither of us was
+afraid of it. I saw a dozen men die during my
+experience in state prisons and I never heard
+one of them clamor for a clergyman. Tommy
+was doing life for murder, and ought to have
+been afraid of death, if anyone was. But
+when he was about to die, he sent word to me
+to come to his bedside, and after a word or two
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_233' name='Page_233'>[233]</a></span>
+of good-bye he went into his agony. The last
+words he ever said were: "Ah, give me a big
+Peter (narcotic)." He did not receive the
+last rites of the Catholic Church, and his ignorant
+family refused to bury him. So Tommy's
+cell number was put on the tombstone, if it
+could be called such, which marked his grave
+in the little burying ground outside the prison
+walls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, it is not easy to throw the religious
+con (confidence game) into a convict. Often,
+while we were in chapel, the dominie would
+tell us that life was short; but hardly one of
+the six or seven hundred criminals who were
+listening believed the assertion. They felt
+that the few years they were doing for the
+good of their country were as long as centuries.
+If there were a few "cons" who tried
+the cheerful dodge, they did not deceive anybody,
+for their brother guns knew that they
+were sore in their hearts because they had
+been caught without fall-money, and so had
+to serve a few million years in stir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After I got temporarily better in health and
+had left the hospital, I began to read Lavater
+on physiognomy more industriously than
+ever. With his help I became a close student
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_234' name='Page_234'>[234]</a></span>
+of faces, and I learned to tell the thoughts
+and emotions of my fellow convicts. I
+watched them at work and when their faces
+flushed I knew they were thinking of Her.
+Sometimes I would ask a man how She was,
+and he would look confused, and perhaps
+angry because his day dream was disturbed.
+And how the men used to look at women visitors
+who went through the shops! It was
+against the rules to look at the inhabitants of
+the Upper World who visited stir, but I noticed
+that after women visitors had been there the
+convicts were generally more cheerful. Even
+a momentary glimpse of those who lived within
+the pale of civilization warmed their hearts.
+After the ladies had gone the convicts would
+talk about them for hours. Many of their
+remarks were vulgar and licentious, but some
+of the men were broken down with feeling and
+would say soft things. They would talk about
+their mothers and sweethearts and eventually
+drift back on their ill-spent lives. How often
+I thought of the life behind me! Then I
+would look at the men about me, some of
+whom had stolen millions and had international
+reputations&mdash;but all discouraged now,
+broken down in health, penniless and friendless.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_235' name='Page_235'>[235]</a></span>
+If a man died in stir he was just a cadaver
+for the dissecting table, nothing more.
+The end fitted in well with his misspent life.
+These reflections would bring us around again
+to good resolutions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+People who have never broken the law&mdash;I
+beg pardon, who were never caught&mdash;can not
+understand how a man who has once served
+in stir will take another chance and go back
+and suffer the same tortures. A society lady
+I once met said she thought criminals who go
+on grafting, when they know what the result
+will be, must be lacking in imagination. I replied
+to her: "Madam, why do you lace
+tight and indulge in social dissipation even
+after you know it is bad for the health? You
+know it is a strain on your nerves, but you do
+it. Is it because you have no imagination?
+That which we all dread most&mdash;death&mdash;we all
+defy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The good book says that all men shall earn
+their bread by the sweat of their brow, but we
+grafters make of ourselves an exception, with
+that overweening egotism and brash desire to
+do others with no return, which is natural to
+everybody. Only when the round-up comes,
+either in the sick bed or in the toils, we often
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_236' name='Page_236'>[236]</a></span>
+can not bear our burdens and look around to
+put the blame on someone else. If a man is
+religious, why should he not drop it on Jesus?
+Man! How despicable at times! How ungallant
+to his ancestor of the softer sex!
+From time immemorial he has exclaimed:
+"Only for her, the deceiving one, my better
+half, I should be perfect."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Convicts, particularly if they are broken in
+health, often become like little children. It
+is not unusual for them to grow dependent on
+dumb pets, which they smuggle into prison by
+means of the Underground Tunnel. The
+man in stir who has a white mouse or robin is
+envied by the other convicts, for he has something
+to love. If an artist could only witness
+the affection that is centered on a mouse or
+dog, if he could only depict the emotions in
+the hard face of the criminal, what a story! I
+had a white rat, which I had obtained with
+difficulty through the Underground. I used to
+put him up my sleeve, and he would run all
+over my body, he was so tame. He would
+stand on his hind legs or lie down at my command.
+Sometimes, when I was lonely and
+melancholy, I loved this rat like a human
+being.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_237' name='Page_237'>[237]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In May, 1896, when I still had about a year
+to serve on my second term, a rumor circulated
+through the prison that some of the Salvation
+Army were going to visit the stir. The men
+were greatly excited at the prospect of a break
+in the dreary routine. I imagined that a big
+burly Salvationist, beating a drum, with a
+few very thin Salvation lasses, would march
+through the prison yard. I was dumbfounded
+by the reality, for I saw enter the Protestant
+chapel, which was crowded with eager convicts,
+two delicate, pretty women. No actor or actress
+ever got a warmer welcome than that
+given to Mrs. Booth and her secretary, Captain
+Jennie Hughes. After the clapping of hands
+and cheering had ceased, Mrs. Booth arose
+and made a speech, which was listened to in
+deep silence. Certainly she was eloquent, and
+what she said impressed many an old gun.
+She was the first visitor who ever promised
+practical Christianity and eventually carried
+out the promise. She promised to build
+homes for us after our release; and in many
+cases, she did, and we respect her. She spoke
+for an hour, and afterwards granted private
+interviews, and many of the convicts told her
+all their troubles, and she promised to take
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_238' name='Page_238'>[238]</a></span>
+care of their old mothers, daughters and
+wives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before leaving the chapel, she sang: "O
+Lord, let the waves of thy crimson sea roll
+over me." I did not see how such a pretty,
+intelligent, refined and educated woman could
+say such a bloody thing, but she probably had
+forgotten what the words really meant. At
+any rate, she is a good woman, for she tried
+hard to have the Parole Bill passed. That
+bill has recently become a law, and it is a
+good one, in my opinion; but it has one fault.
+It only effects first-timers. The second and
+third timers, who went to Sing Sing years ago
+when there was contract labor and who worked
+harder than any laborer in New York City,
+ought to have a chance, too. Show a little
+confidence in any man, even though he be a
+third-timer, as I have been, and he will be a
+better man for it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the singing, on that first morning of
+Mrs. Booth's visit, she asked those convicts
+who wanted to lead a better life to stand up.
+About seventy men out of the five or six hundred
+arose, and the others remained seated.
+I was not among those who stood up. I
+never met anybody who could touch me in
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_239' name='Page_239'>[239]</a></span>
+that way. I don't believe in instantaneous
+Christianity. I knew half a dozen of the men
+who stood up, and they were not very strong
+mentally. I often wondered what the motives
+were that moved the men in that manner.
+Man is a social animal, and Mrs. Booth was
+a magnetic woman. After I had heard her
+speak once, I knew that. She had a good
+personal appearance and one other requisite
+that appealed strongly to those who were in
+our predicament&mdash;her sex. Who could entirely
+resist the pleadings of a pretty woman
+with large black eyes?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly I was moved by this sincere and
+attractive woman, but my own early religious
+training had made me suspicious of the whole
+business. Whenever anybody tried to reform
+me through Christianity I always thought of
+that powerful Celt who used to rush at me in
+Sunday school with a hickory stick and shout
+"Who made you?" And I don't think that
+most of the men who profess religion in prison
+are sincere. They usually want to curry favor
+with the authorities, or get "staked" after
+they leave stir. One convict, whom I used to
+call "The Great American Identifier," because
+he used to graft by claiming to be a relative
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_240' name='Page_240'>[240]</a></span>
+of everybody that died, from California to
+Maine and weeping over the dead body, was
+the worst hypocrite I ever saw&mdash;a regular
+Uriah Heep. He was one of Mrs. Booth's
+converts and stood up in chapel. After she
+went away he said to me: "What a blessing
+has been poured into my soul since I heard
+Mrs. Booth." Another hypocrite said to me
+on the same occasion: "I don't know what I
+would do only for Mrs. Booth. She has
+lightened my weary burdens." Now, I would
+not trust either of those men with a box of
+matches; and so I said to the Great American
+Identifier: "You are the meanest, most despicable
+thief in the whole stir. I'd respect
+you if you had the nerve to rob a live man,
+but you always stole from a cadaver." He
+was horrified at my language and began to
+talk of a favorite subject with him&mdash;his wealthy
+relatives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of these converts were not hypocrites,
+but I don't think even they received any good
+from their conversion. Some people go to
+religion because they have nothing else to distract
+their thoughts, and the subject sometimes
+is a mania with them. The doctors
+say that there is only one incurable mental
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_241' name='Page_241'>[241]</a></span>
+disease&mdash;religious insanity. In the eyes of
+the reformers Mrs. Booth does a great thing
+by making some of us converts, but experts in
+mental diseases declare that it is very bad to
+excite convicts to such a pitch. Many of the
+weak-minded among them lose their balance
+and become insane through these violent religious
+emotions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not meet so many of the big guns on
+my second term as on my first; but, of course,
+I came across many of my old pals and formed
+some new acquaintances. It was on this term
+that four of us used to have what I called a
+tenement house oratory talk whenever we
+worked together in the halls. Some of us
+were lucky enough at times to serve as barbers,
+hall-men and runners to and from the shops,
+and we used to gather together in the halls and
+amuse ourselves with conversation. Dickey,
+Mull, Mickey and I became great pals in this
+way. Dickey was a desperate river pirate
+who would not stand a roast from anybody,
+but was well liked. Mull was one of the best
+principled convicts I ever knew in my life.
+He was quiet, delicate and manly, and opposed
+to abusing young boys, yet if you did him an
+injury he would cut the liver out of you. He
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_242' name='Page_242'>[242]</a></span>
+was a good fellow. Mickey was what I called
+a tenement house philosopher. He'd stick his
+oar into every bit of talk that was started.
+One day the talk began on Tammany Hall
+and went something like this:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All crooked officials," said Mull, "including
+all of them, ought to be railroaded to Sing
+Sing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Dickey</i>: "Through their methods the
+county offices are rotten from the judge to the
+policeman."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mull</i>: "I agree with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mickey</i>: "Ah, wat's the matter wid Tammany?
+My old man never voted any other
+ticket. Neither did yours. When you get
+into stir you act like college professors. Why
+don't you practice what you spout? I always
+voted the Tammany ticket&mdash;five or six times
+every election day. How is it I never got a
+long bit?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mull</i>: "How many times, Mickey, have
+you been in stir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mickey</i>: "This is the fourth, but the highest
+I got was four years."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Dickey</i>: "You never done anything big
+enough to get four."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mickey</i>: "I didn't, eh? You have been
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_243' name='Page_243'>[243]</a></span>
+hollering that you are innocent, and get
+twenty years for piracy. I only get four, but
+I am guilty every time. There is a big difference
+between that and twenty, aint it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mull slapped Mickey on the back and said:
+"Never mind. You will get yours yet on the
+installment plan." Then, turning to me, Mull
+asked: "Jim, don't you think that if everything
+was square and on the level we'd stand
+a better chance?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," I replied. "In the first place we have
+not reached the millennium. In the second
+place they would devise some legal scheme to
+keep a third timer the rest of his natural days.
+I know a moccasin who would move heaven
+and earth to have such a bill passed, and he is
+one of the crookedest philanthropists in America
+to-day. I am a grafter, and I believe that
+the present administration is all right. I
+know that I can stay out of prison as long as
+I save my fall-money. When I blow that in I
+ought to go to prison. Every gun who is capable
+of stealing, knows that if he puts by
+enough money he can not only keep out of
+stir but can beat his way into heaven. I'm
+arguing as a professional thief."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was too much for Mickey, who said:
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_244' name='Page_244'>[244]</a></span>
+"Why don't you talk United States and not be
+springing whole leaves out of a dictionary?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then Big Jim came up. He had heard
+what I said and he joined in: "You know
+why I got the tenth of a century? I had
+thousands in my pocket and went to buy some
+silk underwear at a haberdasher's in New York.
+But it seemed to me a waste of good coin to
+buy them, so I stole a dozen pair of silk stockings.
+They tried to arrest me, I shot, and got
+ten years. I always did despise a petty thief,
+but I never felt like kicking him till then.
+Ten years for a few stockings! Can you
+blame the judge? I didn't. Even a judge
+admires a good thief. If I had robbed a bank
+I'd never have got such a long bit. The old
+saying is true: Kill one man and you will be
+hanged. Kill sixteen, and the United States
+Government is likely to pension you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tenement-house philosopher began to
+object again, when the guard, as usual, came
+along to stop our pleasant conversation. He
+thought we were abusing our privileges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was during this bit that I met the man
+with the white teeth, as he is now known
+among his friends. I will call him Patsy, and
+tell his story, for it is an unusual one. He
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_245' name='Page_245'>[245]</a></span>
+was a good deal older man than I and was
+one of the old-school burglars, and a good
+one. They were a systematic lot, and would
+shoot before they stood the collar; but they
+were gentlemanly grafters and never abused
+anybody. The first thing Patsy's mob did
+after entering a house was to round up all the
+inmates and put them into one room. There
+one burglar would stick them up with a revolver,
+while the others went through the house.
+On a fatal occasion Patsy took the daughter
+of the house, a young girl of eighteen or
+nineteen, in his arms and carried her down
+stairs into the room where the rest of the family
+had been put by the other grafters. As
+he carried the girl down stairs, she said: "Mr.
+Burglar, don't harm me." Patsy was masked,
+all but his mouth, and when he said: "You
+are as safe as if you were in your father's
+arms," she saw his teeth, which were remarkably
+fine and white. Patsy afterwards said
+that the girl was not a bit alarmed, and was
+such a perfect coquette that she noticed his
+good points. The next morning she told the
+police that one of the bad men had a beautiful
+set of teeth. The flymen rounded up half
+a dozen grafters on suspicion, among them
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_246' name='Page_246'>[246]</a></span>
+Patsy; and no sooner did he open his mouth,
+than he was recognized, and settled for a long
+bit. Poor Patsy has served altogether about
+nineteen years, but now he has squared it, and
+is a waiter in a Bowery saloon, more content
+with his twelve dollars a week than he used to
+be with his thousands. I often go around
+and have a glass with him. He is now a
+quiet, sober fellow, and his teeth are as fine
+as ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day a man named "Muir," a mean,
+sure-thing grafter, came to the stir on a visit
+to some of his acquaintances. He had never
+done a bit himself, although he was a notorious
+thief. But he liked to look at the misfortunes
+of others, occasionally. On this visit
+he got more than he bargained for. He came
+to the clothing department where Mike, who
+had grafted with Muir in New York, and I,
+were at work. Muir went up to Mike and
+offered him a bill. Mike threw it in Muir's
+face and called him&mdash;well, the worst thing
+known in Graftdom. "If it wasn't for you,"
+he said, "I wouldn't be doing this bit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are several kinds of sure-thing grafters.
+Some are crooked gamblers, some are plain
+stool-pigeons, some are discouraged thieves
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_247' name='Page_247'>[247]</a></span>
+who continue to graft but take no risks.
+Muir was one of the meanest of the rats that I
+have known, yet in a way, he was handy
+to the professional gun. He had somebody
+"right" at headquarters and could generally
+get protection for his mob; but he would
+always throw the mob over if it was to his
+advantage. He and two other house-work
+men robbed a senator's home, and such a
+howl went up that the police offered all manner
+of protection to the grafter who would tip
+them off to who got the stuff. Grafters who
+work with the coppers don't want it known
+among those of their own kind, for they would
+be ostracized. If they do a dirty trick they
+try to throw it on someone else who would not
+stoop to such a thing. Muir was a diplomat,
+and tipped off the Central Office, and those
+who did the trick, all except Tom and Muir,
+were nailed. A few nights after that the
+whisper was passed among guns of both sexes,
+who had gathered at a resort up-town, that
+somebody had squealed. The muttered curses
+meant that some Central Office man had by
+wireless telegraphy put the under world next
+that somebody had tipped off the police. But
+it was not Muir that the hard names were
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_248' name='Page_248'>[248]</a></span>
+said against: the Central Office man took
+care of that. With low cunning Muir had
+had the rumor circulated that it was Tom who
+had thrown them down, and Tommy was
+ostracized.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I knew Muir and I knew Tommy, and I
+was sure that the latter was innocent. Some
+time after Tom had been cut by the rest of
+the gang I saw Muir drinking with two Central
+Office detectives, in a well-known resort, and I
+was convinced that he was the rat. His personal
+appearance bore out my suspicion. He
+had a weak face, with no fight in it. He was
+quiet of speech, always smiling, and as soft
+and noiseless as the animal called the snake.
+He had a narrow, hanging lip, small nose,
+large ears, and characterless, protruding eyes.
+The squint look from under the eye-brows,
+and the quick jerk of the hand to the chin,
+showed without doubt that he possessed the
+low cunning too of that animal called the rat.
+Partly through my influence, Muir gradually
+got the reputation of being a sure-thing
+grafter, but he was so sleek that he could
+always find some grafter to work with him.
+Pals with whom he fell out, always shortly
+afterwards came to harm. That was the case
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_249' name='Page_249'>[249]</a></span>
+with Big Mike, who spat in Muir's face, when
+the latter visited him in Sing Sing. When
+Muir did pickpocket work, he never dipped
+himself, but acted as a stall. This was another
+sure-thing dodge. Muir never did a bit in
+stir because he was of more value to headquarters
+than a dozen detectives. The fact
+that he never did time was another thing
+that gradually made the gang suspicious of
+him. Therefore, at the present time he is of
+comparatively little value to the police force,
+and may be settled before long. I hope so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the meanest things Muir ever did
+was to a poor old "dago" grafter, a queer-maker
+(counterfeiter). The Italian was putting
+out unusually good stuff, both paper and
+metal, and the avaricious Muir thought he
+saw a good chance to get a big bit of money
+from the dago. He put up a plan with two
+Central Office men to bleed the counterfeiter.
+Then he went to the dago and said he had
+got hold of some big buyers from the West
+who would buy five thousand dollars worth of
+the "queer." They met the supposed buyers,
+who were in reality the two Central Office men,
+at a little saloon. After a talk the detectives
+came out in their true colors, showed their
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_250' name='Page_250'>[250]</a></span>
+shields, and demanded one thousand dollars.
+The dago looked at Muir, who gave him the
+tip to pay the one thousand dollars. The
+Italian, however, thinking Muir was on the
+level, misunderstood the sign, and did not pay.
+The outraged detectives took the Italian to
+police headquarters, but did not show up the
+queer at first; they still wanted their one
+thousand dollars. So the dago was remanded
+and remanded, getting a hearing every twenty-four
+hours, but there was never enough evidence.
+Finally the poor fellow got a lawyer,
+and then the Central Office men gave up the
+game, and produced the queer as evidence.
+The United States authorities prosecuted the
+case, and the Italian was given three years
+and a half. After he was released he met
+Muir on the East Side, and tried to kill him
+with a knife. That is the only way Muir will
+ever get his deserts. A man like him very
+seldom dies in state's prison, or is buried in
+potter's field. He often becomes a gin-mill
+keeper and captain of his election district, for
+he understands how to control the repeaters
+who give Tammany Hall such large majorities
+on election day in Manhattan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was on this second bit in prison, as I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_251' name='Page_251'>[251]</a></span>
+have said in another place, that the famous
+"fence" operated in stir. I knew him well.
+He was a clever fellow, and I often congratulated
+him on his success with the keepers; for
+he was no stool-pigeon and got his pull legitimately.
+He was an older grafter than I and
+remembered well Madame Mandelbaum, the
+Jewess, one of the best fences, before my
+time, in New York City. At the corner of
+Clinton and Rivington Streets there stood
+until a few years ago a small dry goods and
+notions store, which was the scene of transactions
+which many an old gun likes to talk
+about. What plannings of great robberies
+took place there, in Madame Mandelbaum's
+store! She would buy any kind of stolen
+property, from an ostrich feather to hundreds
+and thousands of dollars' worth of gems. The
+common shop-lifter and the great cracksman
+alike did business at this famous place. Some
+of the noted grafters who patronized her store
+were Jimmy Hope, Shang Draper, Billy Porter,
+Sheenie Mike, Red Leary, Johnnie Irving,
+Jack Walsh, alias John the Mick, and a
+brainy planner of big jobs, English George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame Mandelbaum had two country residences
+in Brooklyn where she invited her
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_252' name='Page_252'>[252]</a></span>
+friends, the most famous thieves in two continents.
+English George, who used to send
+money to his son, who was being educated in
+England, was a frequent visitor, and used to
+deposit with her all his valuables. She had
+two beautiful daughters, one of whom became
+infatuated with George, who did not return
+her love. Later, she and her daughters, after
+they became wealthy, tried to rise in the
+world and shake their old companions. The
+daughters were finely dressed and well-educated,
+and the Madame hunted around for
+respectable husbands for them. Once a bright
+reporter wrote a play, in which the central
+character was Madame Mandelbaum. She
+read about it in the newspapers and went, with
+her two daughters, to see it. They occupied
+a private box, and were gorgeously dressed.
+The old lady was very indignant when she saw
+the woman who was supposed to be herself
+appear on the stage. The actress, badly
+dressed, and made up with a hooked nose, was
+jeered by the audience. After the play,
+Madame Mandelbaum insisted on seeing the
+manager of the theatre. She showed him her
+silks and her costly diamonds and then said:
+"Look at me. I am Madame Mandelbaum.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_253' name='Page_253'>[253]</a></span>
+Does that huzzy look anything like me?"
+Pointing to her daughters she continued:
+"What must my children think of such an
+impersonation? Both of them are better
+dressed and have more money and education
+than that strut, who is only a moment's plaything
+for bankers and brokers!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In most ways, of course, my life in prison
+during the second term was similar to what it
+was on my first term. Books and opium were
+my main pleasures. If it had not been for
+them and for the thoughts about life and
+about my fellow convicts which they led me to
+form, the monotony of the prison routine
+would have driven me mad. My health was
+by that time badly shattered. I was very
+nervous and could seldom sleep without a
+drug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My moral health was far worse, too, than it
+had been on my first term. Then I had made
+strong efforts to overcome the opium habit,
+and laid plans to give up grafting. Then I
+had some decent ambitions, and did not look
+upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas
+on the second term, I had grown to take a
+hopeless view of my case. I began to feel
+that I could not reform, no matter how hard I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_254' name='Page_254'>[254]</a></span>
+tried. It seemed to me, too, that it was hardly
+worth while now to make an effort, for I
+thought my health was worse than it really
+was and that I should die soon, with no
+opportunity to live the intelligent life I had
+learned to admire through my books. I still
+made good resolutions, and some effort to
+quit the hop, but they were weak in comparison
+with the efforts I had made during my
+first term. More and more it seemed to me
+that I belonged in the under world for good,
+and that I might as well go through it to the
+end. Stealing was my profession. It was all
+I knew how to do, and I didn't believe that
+anybody was interested enough in me to teach
+me anything else. On the other hand, what
+I had learned on the Rocky Path would never
+leave me. I was sure of my knowledge of the
+technique of graft, and I knew that a sucker
+was born every minute.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_255' name='Page_255'>[255]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XII.<br />
+<i>On the Outside Again.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+My time on the second bit was drawing to a
+close. I was eager to get out, of course, but
+I knew way down in my mind, that it would be
+only to graft again. I made a resolution that
+I would regain my health and gather a little
+fall-money before I started in hard again on
+the Rocky Path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the day of my release, Warden Sage
+called me to his office and talked to me like a
+friend. He did not know that I was a second
+timer, or he might not have been so kind to
+me. He was a humane man, and in spite of
+his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced
+good things into Sing Sing. He
+improved the condition of the cells and we
+were not confined there so much as we had
+been before he came. On my first term many
+a man staid for days in his cell without ever
+going out; one man was confined twenty-eight
+days on bread and water. But under Mr.
+Sage punishments were not so severe. He
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_256' name='Page_256'>[256]</a></span>
+even used to send delicacies to men chained
+up in the Catholic Chapel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I should like to say a good word for Head
+Keeper Connoughton, too. He was not generally
+liked, for he was a strict disciplinarian,
+but I think he was one of the best keepers in
+the country. He was stern, but not brutal,
+and when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton
+was very kind. He was not deceived by
+the fake lunatics, and used to say: "If you go
+to the mad-house, you are liable to become
+worse. If you are all right in the morning I
+will give you a job out in the air." Although
+Mr. Connoughton had had little schooling he
+was an intelligent man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I believe the best thing the community can
+do to reform criminals is to have a more intelligent
+class of keepers. As a rule they are ignorant,
+brutal and stupid, under-paid and inefficient;
+yet what is more important for the
+State's welfare than an intelligent treatment of
+convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long
+ones, for when the criminal is broken down in
+health and made fearful, suspicious and revengeful,
+what can you expect from him? However,
+in the mood I was in at the end of my
+second term, I did not believe that anything
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_257' name='Page_257'>[257]</a></span>
+was any good as a preventive of crime. I
+knew that when I got on the outside I
+wouldn't think of what might happen to me.
+I knew that I couldn't or wouldn't carry a hod.
+What ambition I had left was to become a
+more successful crook than I had ever been
+before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Warden Sage gave me some good advice
+and then I left Sing Sing for New York. I
+did not get the pleasure from going out again
+that had been so keen after my first bit. My
+eye-sight was failing now, and I was sick and
+dull. My only thought was to get back to my
+old haunts, and I drank several large glasses
+of whiskey at Sing Sing town, to help me on
+my way. I intended to go straight home, as I
+felt very ill, to my father and mother, but I
+didn't see them for several days after my
+return to New York. The first thing I did in
+the city was to deliver some messages from
+my fellow convicts to their relatives. My
+third visit for that purpose was to the home
+of a fine young fellow I knew in stir. It was
+a large family and included a married sister
+and her children. They were glad to hear
+from Bobby, and I talked to them for some
+time about him, when the husband of the married
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_258' name='Page_258'>[258]</a></span>
+sister came home, and began to quarrel
+with his wife. He accused her of having
+strange men in the house, meaning me.
+The younger brother and the rest of the family
+got back at the brother-in-law and gave
+him better than they got. The little brother
+fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder".
+The police surrounded the house and took us
+all to the station-house in the patrol wagon.
+And so I spent the first night after my return
+in confinement. It seemed natural, however.
+In the morning we were taken before the
+magistrate, and the mother and sister testified
+that I had taken them a message from their
+boy, and had committed no offense. The
+brother-in-law blurted out that he had married
+into a family of thieves, and that I had just
+returned from Sing Sing. I was discharged,
+but fined five dollars. Blessed are the peacemakers,&mdash;but
+not in my case!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I passed the next day looking for old girls
+and pals, but I found few of them. Many
+were dead and others were in stir or had sunk
+so far down into the under world that even I
+could not find them. I was only about thirty-two
+years old, but I had already a long
+acquaintance with the past. Like all grafters
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_259' name='Page_259'>[259]</a></span>
+I had lived rapidly, crowding, while at liberty,
+several days into one. When I got back
+from my second bit the greater part of my life
+seemed to be made up of memories of other
+days. Some of the old pals I did meet again
+had squared it, others were "dead" (out of the
+game) and some had degenerated into mere
+bums.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are several different classes of "dead
+ones":
+</p>
+
+<p>
+1. The man who has lost his nerve. He
+generally becomes a whiskey fiend. If he
+becomes hopelessly a soak the better class of
+guns shun him, for he is no good to work
+with. He will not keep an engagement, or
+will turn up at the place of meeting too late
+or too early. A grafter must be exactly on
+time. It is as bad to be too early as too late,
+for he must not be seen hanging around the
+place of meeting. Punctuality is more of a
+virtue in the under world than it is in respectable
+society. The slackest people I know
+to keep their appointments, are the honest
+ones; or grafters who have become whiskey
+fiends. These latter usually wind up with
+rot-gut booze and are sometimes seen selling
+songs on the Bowery.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_260' name='Page_260'>[260]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+2. The man who becomes a copper. He
+is known as a stool-pigeon, and is detested and
+feared by all grafters. Nobody will go with
+him. Sometimes he becomes a Pinkerton
+man, and is a useful member of society. When
+he loses his grip with the upper world, he
+belongs to neither, for the grafters won't look
+at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+3. The man who knows a trade. This
+grafter often "squares" it, is apt to marry
+and remain honest. His former pals, who are
+still grafters, treat him kindly, for they know
+he is not a rat. They know, too, that he is a
+bright and intelligent man, and that it is well
+to keep on the right side of him. Such a man
+has often educated himself in stir, and, when
+he squares it, is apt to join a political club, and
+is called in by the leader to help out in an
+election, for he possesses some brains. The
+gun is apt to make him an occasional present,
+for he can help the grafter, in case of a fall,
+because of his connection with the politicians.
+This kind of "dead one" often keeps his
+friends the grafters, while in stir, next to the
+news in the city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+4. The gun who is <i>supposed</i> to square it.
+This grafter has got a bunch of money together
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_261' name='Page_261'>[261]</a></span>
+and sees a good chance to open a gin-mill, or
+a Raines Law hotel, or a gambling joint. He
+knows how to take care of the repeaters, and
+is handy about election time. In return he
+gets protection for his illegal business. He is
+a go-between, and is on good terms with coppers
+and grafters. He supplies the grafter
+who has plenty of fall-money with bondsmen,
+makes his life in the Tombs easy, and gets him
+a good job while in stir. This man is supposed
+to be "dead," but he is really very much
+alive. Often a copper comes to him and asks
+for the whereabouts of some grafter or other.
+He will reply, perhaps: "I hear he is in Europe,
+or in the West." The copper looks wise
+and imagines he is clever. The "dead" one
+sneers, and, like a wise man, laughs in his
+sleeve; for he is generally in communication
+with the man looked for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+5. The sure-thing grafter. He is a man
+who continues to steal, but wants above everything
+to keep out of stir, where he has spent
+many years. So he goes back to the petty
+pilfering he did as a boy. General Brace and
+the Professor belonged to this class of "dead
+ones." The second night I spent on the
+Bowery after my return from my second bit I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_262' name='Page_262'>[262]</a></span>
+met Laudanum Joe, who is another good
+example of this kind of "dead one." At one
+time he made thousands of dollars, but now
+he is discouraged and nervous. He looked
+bad (poorly dressed) but was glad to see
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How is graft?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have left the Rocky Path," I replied,
+thinking I would throw a few "cons" into him.
+"I am walking straight. Not in the religious
+line, either."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled, which was tantamount to saying
+that I lied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you working at?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am looking for a job," I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jimmy, is it true, that you are pipes
+(crazy)? I heard you got buggy (crazy) in
+your last bit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Joe," I replied, "you know I was never
+bothered above the ears."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you are going to carry the hod," he
+said, "you might as well go to the pipe-house,
+and let them cure you. Have you given up
+smoking, too?" he continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He meant the hop. I conned him again
+and said: "Yes." He showed the old peculiar,
+familiar grin, and said:
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_263' name='Page_263'>[263]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say, I have no coin. Take me with you
+and give me a smoke."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to convince him that there was nothing
+in it, but he was a doubter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are <i>you</i> doing, Joe?" I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, just getting a few shillings," he replied,
+meaning that he was grafting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why don't you give up the booze?" I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had made a break, for he said, quickly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why? Because I don't wear a Piccadilly
+collar?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All grafters of any original calibre are
+super-sensitive, to a point very near insanity.
+Laudanum Joe thought I had reference to his
+dress, which was very bum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Joe," I said, "I never judge a man by his
+clothes, especially one that I know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jimmy," he said, "the truth is I can't stand
+another long bit in stir. I do a little petty
+pilfering that satisfies my wants&mdash;a cup of tea,
+plenty of booze, and a little hop. If I fall I
+only go to the workhouse for a couple of
+months. The screws know I have seen better
+days and I can get a graft and my booze while
+there. If I aint as prosperous as I was once,
+why not dream I'm a millionaire?"
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_264' name='Page_264'>[264]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some grafters who have been prosperous at
+one time fall even lower than Laudanum Joe.
+When they get fear knocked into them and
+can't do without whiskey they sink lower and
+lower. Hungry Bob is another example. I
+grafted with him as a boy, but when I met
+him on the Bowery after my second bit I hardly
+knew him, and at first he failed to recognize
+me entirely. I got him into a gin-mill, however,
+and he told how badly treated he had
+been just before we met. He had gone into
+a saloon kept by an old pal of his who had
+risen in the world, and asked him for fifteen
+cents to buy a bed in a lodging-house. "Go
+long, you pan-handler (beggar)," said his old
+friend. Poor Bob was badly cut up about it,
+and talked about ingratitude for a long time.
+But he had his lodging money, for a safe-cracker
+who knew Hungry Bob when he was
+one of the gayest grafters in town, happened
+to be in the saloon, and he gave the "bum"
+fifteen cents for old times sake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How is it, Bob," I said to him, "that you
+are not so good as you were?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You want to know what put me on the
+bum?" he answered. "Well, it's this way.
+I can't trust nobody, and I have to graft alone.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_265' name='Page_265'>[265]</a></span>
+That's one thing. Then, too, I like the booze
+too much, and when I'm sitting down I can't
+get up and go out and hustle the way I used
+to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort
+for sailors and hard-luck grafters in the lower
+Bowery, when a Sheenie I knew came in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, Jim," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How's graft, Mike?" I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't mention it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What makes you look so glum?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm only after being turned out of police
+court this morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What was the rap, Mike?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm looking too respectable. They asked
+me where I got the clothes. I told them I
+was working, which was true. I have been a
+waiter for three months. The flymen took me
+to headquarters. I was gathered in to make
+a reputation for those two shoo-flies. Whenever
+I square it and go to work I am nailed
+regularly, because my mug is in the Hall of
+Fame. When I am arrested, I lose my job
+every time. Nobody knows you now, Jim.
+You could tear the town open."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I made a mental resolution to follow Mike's
+advice very soon&mdash;as soon as my health was a
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_266' name='Page_266'>[266]</a></span>
+little better. Just then Jack, a boyhood pal of
+mine, who knew the old girls, Sheenie Annie
+and the rest, came in. I was mighty glad to see
+him, and said so to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I guess you've got the advantage of me,
+bloke," was his reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't you remember Jimmy the Kid, ten
+years ago, in the sixth?" I jogged his memory
+with the names of a few pals of years ago,
+and when he got next, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wouldn't have known you, Jim. I
+thought you were dead many years ago in
+stir. I heard it time and time again. I
+thought you were past and gone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a short talk, I said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where's Sheenie Annie?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dead," he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mamie?" I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dead," he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lucy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In stir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Swedish Emmy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's married."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any good Molls now? I'm only after
+getting back from stir and am not next," I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"T'aint like old times, Jim," he said. "The
+Molls won't steal now. They aint got brains
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_267' name='Page_267'>[267]</a></span>
+enough. They are not innocent. They are
+ignorant. All they know how to do is the
+badger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went with Jack to his house, where he had
+an opium layout. There we found several
+girls and grafters, some smoking hop, some
+with the subtle cigarette between their lips.
+I was introduced to an English grafter, named
+Harry. He said he was bloomin' glad to see
+me. He was just back from the West, he
+said, but I thought it was the pen. He began
+to abuse the States, and I said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You duffer, did you ever see such pretty
+girls as here? Did you ever wear a collar and
+tie in the old country?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grew indignant and shouted: "'Oly
+Cobblestones! In this &mdash;&mdash; country I have
+two hundred bucks (dollars) saved up every
+time, but I never spend a cent of it. 'Ow to
+'Ell am I better off here? I'm only stealin'
+for certain mugs (policemen) and fer those
+'igher up, so they can buy real estate. They
+enjoy their life in this country and Europe off
+my 'ard earned money and the likes of me.
+They die as respected citizens. I die in the
+work'us as an outcast. Don't be prating about
+your &mdash;&mdash; country!"
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_268' name='Page_268'>[268]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as I had picked out a good mob to
+join I began to graft again. Two of my new
+pals were safe-blowers, and we did that graft,
+and day-work, as well as the old reliable dipping.
+But I wasn't much at the graft during
+the seven months I remained on the outside.
+My health continued bad, and I did not feel
+like "jumping out" so much as I had done
+formerly. I did not graft except when my
+funds were very low, and so, of course, contrary
+to my plans, I saved no fall-money. I
+had a girl, an opium lay-out and a furnished
+room, where I used to stay most of the time,
+smoking with pals, who, like myself, had had
+the keen edge of their ambition taken off. I
+had a strange longing for music at that time;
+I suppose because my nerves were weaker
+than they used to be. I kept a number of
+musical instruments in my room, and used to
+sing and dance to amuse my visitors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During these seven months that I spent
+mainly in my room, I used to reflect and philosophize
+a lot, partly under the influence of
+opium. I would moralize to my girl or to a
+friend, or commune with my own thoughts.
+I often got in a state of mind where everything
+seemed a joke to me. I often thought
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_269' name='Page_269'>[269]</a></span>
+of myself as a spectator watching the play of
+life. I observed my visitors and their characteristics
+and after they had left for the evening
+loved to size them up in words for Lizzie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My eyes were so bad that I did not read
+much, but I took it out in epigrams and wise
+sayings. I will give a few specimens of the
+kind of philosophy I indulged in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You always ought to end a speech with a
+sneer or a laconic remark. It is food for
+thought. The listener will pause and reflect."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is not what you make, but what you
+save, that counts. It isn't the big cracksman
+who gets along. It is the unknown dip who
+saves his earnings."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To go to Germany to learn the language
+is as bad as being in stir for ten years."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jump out and be a man and don't join the
+Salvation Army."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Always say to the dip who says he wants
+to square it; Well, what's your other graft?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When a con gets home he is apt to find
+his sweetheart married, and a 'Madonna of
+the wash tubs.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He made good money and was a swell
+grafter, but he got stuck on a Tommy that
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_270' name='Page_270'>[270]</a></span>
+absorbed his attention, and then he lost his
+punctuality and went down and out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do a criminal a bodily injury and he may
+forget. Wound his feelings and he will never
+forgive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Most persons have seen a cow or a bull
+with a board put around its head in such a
+way that the animal can see nothing. It is a
+mode of punishment. Soon the poor beast
+will go mad, if the board is not removed.
+What chance has the convict, confined in a
+dark cell for years, to keep his senses? He
+suffers from astigmatism of the mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am as much entitled to an opinion as any
+other quack on the face of the earth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"General Grant is one of my heroes. He
+was a boy at fifteen. He was a boy when he
+died. A boy is loyalty personified. General
+Grant had been given a task to do, and like a
+boy, he did it. He was one of our greatest
+men, and belongs with Tom Paine, Benjamin
+Franklin and Robert Ingersoll."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why don't we like the books we liked
+when we were boys? It is not because our
+judgment is better, but because we have a
+dream of our own now, and want authors to
+dream along the same lines."
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_271' name='Page_271'>[271]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The only gun with principles is the minor
+grafter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The weakest man in the universe is he
+who falls from a good position and respectable
+society into the world of graft. Forgers
+and defaulters are generally of this class. A
+professional gun, who has been a thief all his
+life, is entitled to more respect."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In writing a book on crime, one ought to
+have in mind to give the public a truthful
+account of a thief's life, his crimes, habits,
+thoughts, emotions, vices and virtues, and how
+he lives in prison and out. I believe this
+ought to be done, and the man who does it
+well must season his writings with pathos,
+humor, sarcasm, tragedy, and thus give the
+real life of the grafter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sympathy with a grafter who is trying to
+square it is a tonic to his better self."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The other day I was with a reporter and a
+society lady who were seeing the town. The
+lady asked me how I would get her diamond
+pin. It was fastened in such a way that to
+get it, strong arm work would be necessary. I
+explained how I would "put the mug on her"
+while my husky pal went through her. 'But,'
+she said, 'that would hurt me.' As if the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_272' name='Page_272'>[272]</a></span>
+grafters cared! What a selfish lady to be
+always thinking of herself!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life is the basis of philosophy. Philosophy
+is an emanation from our daily routine.
+After a convict has paced his cell a few thousand
+times he sometimes has an idea. Philosophy
+results from life put through a mental
+process, just as opium, when subjected to a
+chemical experiment, produces laudanum.
+Why, therefore, is not life far stronger than a
+narcotic?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe in platonic love, for it has been
+in my own life. A woman always wants love,
+whether she is eighteen or eighty&mdash;real love.
+Many is the time I have seen the wistful look
+in some woman's eye when she saw that it was
+only good fellowship or desire on my part."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In this age of commerce there is only one
+true friendship, the kind that comes through
+business."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"An old adage has it that all things come
+to him who waits. Yes: poverty, old age and
+death. The successful man is he who goes
+and gets it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If thy brother assaults you, do not weep,
+nor pray for him, nor turn the other cheek,
+but assail him with the full strength of your
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_273' name='Page_273'>[273]</a></span>
+muscles, for man at his best is not lovable,
+nor at his worst, detestable."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is more to be got in Germany, judging
+from what Dutch Lonzo used to say, than
+in England or America, only the Dutchmen
+are too thick-headed to find it out. A first
+class gun in Germany would be ranked as a
+ninth-rater here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Grafters are like the rest of the world in
+this: they always attribute bad motives to a
+kind act."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From flim-flam (returning short change)
+to burglary is but a step, provided one has
+the nerve."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why would a woman take to him (a sober,
+respectable man but lacking in temperament)
+unless she wanted a good home?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If there is anything detestable, it is a
+grafter who will steal an overcoat in the winter
+time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Look for the woman.' A fly-cop gets
+many a tip from some tid-bit in whom a grafter
+has reposed confidence."
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">
+I did not do, as I have said, any more grafting
+than was necessary during these seven
+months of liberty; but I observed continually,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_274' name='Page_274'>[274]</a></span>
+living in an opium dream, and my pals were
+more and more amusing to me. When I
+thought about myself and my superior intelligence,
+I was sad, but I thought about myself
+as little as possible. I preferred to let my
+thoughts dwell on others, who I saw were a
+a fine line of cranks and rogues.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somewhere in the eighties, before I went
+to stir, there was a synagogue at what is now
+101 Hester Street. The synagogue was on
+the first floor, and on the ground floor was
+a gin-mill, run by an ex-Central Office man.
+Many pickpockets used to hang out there, and
+they wanted to drive the Jews out of the first
+floor, so that they could lay out a faro game
+there. So they swore and carried on most
+horribly on Saturdays, when the rabbi was
+preaching, and finally got possession of the
+premises. Only a block away from this old
+building was a famous place for dips to get
+"books", in the old days. Near by was Ridley's
+dry-goods store, in which there were some
+cash-girls who used to tip us off to who had
+the books, and were up to the graft themselves.
+They would yell "cash" and bump up against
+the sucker, while we went through him. The
+Jews were few in those days, and the Irish
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_275' name='Page_275'>[275]</a></span>
+were in the majority. On the corner of Allen
+and Hester Streets stood the saloon of a
+well-known politician. Now a Jew has a shop
+there. Who would think that an Isaacs
+would supersede a Finnigan?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the gin-mill on Hester Street, I used to
+know a boy dip named Buck. When I got
+back from my second bit I found he had
+developed into a box-man, and had a peculiar
+disposition, which exists outside, as well as
+inside, Graftdom. He had one thousand eight
+hundred dollars in the bank, and a fine red
+front (gold watch and chain), but he was not
+a good fellow. He used to invite three or
+four guns to have a drink, and would order
+Hennessy's brandy, which cost twenty cents a
+glass. After we had had our drinks he would
+search himself and only find perhaps twenty
+cents in his clothes. He got into me several
+times before I "blew". One time, after he had
+ordered drinks, he began the old game, said
+he thought he had eighteen dollars with him,
+and must have been touched. Then he took
+out his gold watch and chain and threw it on
+the bar. But who would take it? I went
+down, of course, and paid for the drinks.
+When we went out together, he grinned, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_276' name='Page_276'>[276]</a></span>
+said to me: "I pity you. You will never
+have a bank account, my boy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next time Buck threw down his watch
+and said he would pay in the morning, I
+thought it was dirt, for I knew he had fifty
+dollars on him. So I said to the bartender:
+"Take it and hock it, and get what he owes
+you. This chump has been working it all up
+and down the line. I won't be touched by the
+d&mdash;&mdash; grafter any more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Buck was ready witted and turning to the
+bartender, said: "My friend here is learning
+how to play poker and has just lost eighteen
+dollars. He is a dead sore loser and is
+rattled."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went out with the watch, without paying
+for our drinks, and he said to me: "Jim,
+I don't believe in paying a gin-mill keeper.
+If the powers that be were for the people
+instead of for themselves they would have
+such drinkables free on every corner in old
+New York." The next time Buck asked me
+to have a drink I told him to go to a warm
+place in the next world. Buck was good to
+his family. He was married and had a couple
+of brats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many a man educates himself in stir, as was
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_277' name='Page_277'>[277]</a></span>
+my case. Jimmy, whom I ran up against one
+day on the street, is a good example. He
+had squared it and is still on the level. When
+I saw him, after my second bit, he was making
+forty dollars a week as an electrical engineer;
+and every bit of the necessary education he
+got in prison. At one time he was an unusually
+desperate grafter; and entirely ignorant
+of everything, except the technique of
+theft. Many years ago he robbed a jewelry
+store and was sent to Blackwell's Island for
+two years. The night of the day he was
+released he burglarized the same store and
+assaulted the proprietor. He was arrested
+with the goods on him and brought to General
+Sessions before Recorder Smythe, who had
+sentenced him before. He got ten years at
+Sing Sing and Auburn, and for a while he was
+one of the most dangerous and desperate of
+convicts, and made several attempts to escape.
+But one day a book on electricity fell into his
+hands, and from that time on he was a hard
+student. When he was released from stir he
+got a job in a large electrical plant up the
+State, and worked for a while, when he was
+tipped off by a country grafter who had known
+him in stir. He lost his job, and went to New
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_278' name='Page_278'>[278]</a></span>
+York, where he met me, who was home after
+my first term. I gave him the welcome hand,
+and, after he had told me his story, I said:
+"Well, there is plenty of money in town.
+Jump out with us." He grafted with me and
+my mob for a while, but got stuck on a
+Tommy, so that we could not depend on him
+to keep his appointments, and we dropped
+him. After that he did some strong arm work
+with a couple of gorillas and fell again for five
+years. When he returned from stir he got
+his present position as electrical engineer.
+He had it when I met him after my second
+bit and he has it to-day. I am sure he is on
+the level and will be so as long as he holds
+his job.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About this time I was introduced to a peculiar
+character in the shape of a few yards of
+calico. It was at Carey's place on Bleecker
+Street that I first saw this good-looking youth
+of nineteen, dressed in the latest fashion.
+His graft was to masquerade as a young girl,
+and for a long time Short-Haired Liz, as we
+called him, was very successful. He sought
+employment as maid in well-to-do families and
+then made away with the valuables. One day
+he was nailed, with twenty charges against
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_279' name='Page_279'>[279]</a></span>
+him. He was convicted on the testimony of
+a chamber-maid, with whom, in his character
+of lady's maid, he had had a lark. Mr.
+R&mdash;&mdash;, who was still influential, did his
+best for him, for his fall-money was big, and
+he only got a light sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I heard one day that an old pal of mine,
+Dannie, had just been hanged. It gave me a
+shock, for I had often grafted with him when
+we were kids. As there were no orchards on
+the streets of the east side, Dannie and I used
+to go to the improvised gardens that lined the
+side-walks outside of the green grocers' shops,
+and make away with strawberries, apples, and
+other fruits. By nature I suppose boys are
+no more bothered with consciences than are
+police officials. Dannie rose rapidly in the
+world of graft and became very dangerous to
+society. As a grafter he had one great fault.
+He had a very quick temper. He was sensitive,
+and lacking in self-control, but he was
+one of the cleverest guns that ever came from
+the Sixth Ward, a place noted for good grafters
+of both sexes. He married a respectable
+girl and had a nice home, for he had enough
+money to keep the police from bothering him.
+If it had not been for his bad temper, he
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_280' name='Page_280'>[280]</a></span>
+might be grafting yet. He would shoot at a
+moment's notice, and the toughest of the hard
+element were afraid of him. One time he
+had it in for an old pal of his named Paddy.
+For a while Paddy kept away from the saloon
+on Pell Street where Dannie hung out, but
+Paddy, too, had nerve, and one day he turned
+up at his old resort, the Drum, as it was called.
+He saw Dannie and fired a cannister at him.
+Dannie hovered between life and death for
+months, and had four operations performed on
+him without anæsthetics. After he got well
+Dannie grafted on the Albany boats. One
+night he and his pals tried to get a Moll's
+leather, but some Western guns who were on
+the boat were looking for provender themselves
+and nicked the Moll. Dannie accused
+them of taking his property, and, as they
+would not give up, pulled his pistol. One of
+the Western guns jumped overboard, and the
+others gave up the stuff. Dannie was right,
+for that boat belonged to him and his mob.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few months after that event Dannie shot
+a mug, who had called him a rat, and went to
+San Antonio, Texas, where he secured a position
+as bartender. One day a well-known
+gambler who had the reputation of being a
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_281' name='Page_281'>[281]</a></span>
+ten time killer began to shoot around in the
+saloon for fun. Dannie joined in the game,
+shot the gambler twice, and beat the latter's
+two pals into insensibility. A few months
+afterwards he came to New York with twenty-seven
+hundred dollars in his pocket; and he
+enjoyed himself, for it is only the New York
+City born who love the town. But he had
+better have stayed away, for in New York he
+met his mortal enemy, Splitty, who had more
+brains than Dannie, and was running a "short
+while house" in the famous gas house block
+in Hester Street. One night Dannie was on
+a drunk, spending his twenty-seven hundred
+dollars, and riding around in a carriage with
+two girls. Beeze, one of the Molls, proposed
+to go around to Splitty's. They went, and
+Beeze and the other girl were admitted, but
+Dannie was shut out. He fired three shots
+through the door. One took effect in Beeze's
+breast fatally, and Dannie was arrested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While in Tombs waiting trial he was well
+treated by the warden, who was leader of the
+Sixth Ward, and who used to permit Dannie's
+wife to visit him every night. At the same
+time Dannie became the victim of one of the
+worst cases of treachery I ever heard of. An
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_282' name='Page_282'>[282]</a></span>
+old pal of his, George, released from Sing
+Sing, went to visit him in the Tombs. Dannie
+advised George not to graft again until he
+got his health back, suggesting that meanwhile
+he eat his meals at his (Dannie's)
+mother's house. The old lady had saved up
+about two hundred and fifty dollars, which she
+intended to use to secure a new trial for her
+son. George heard of the money and put up
+a scheme to get it. He told the old woman
+that Dannie was going to escape from the
+Tombs that night and that he had sent word
+to his mother to give him (George) the
+money. The villain then took the money and
+skipped the city, thus completing the dirtiest
+piece of work I ever heard of. "Good
+Heavens!" said Dannie, when he heard of it.
+"A study in black!" Dannie, poor fellow,
+was convicted, and, after a few months, hanged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another tragedy in Manhattan was the end
+of Johnny T&mdash;&mdash;. I had been out only a short
+time after my second bit, when I met him on
+the Bowery. He was just back, too, and complained
+that all his old pals had lost their
+nerve. Whenever he made a proposition they
+seemed to see twenty years staring them in
+the face. So he had to work alone. His
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_283' name='Page_283'>[283]</a></span>
+graft was burglary, outside of New York. He
+lived in the city, and the police gave him protection
+for outside work. He was married
+and had two fine boys. One day a copper,
+contrary to the agreement, tried to arrest him
+for a touch made in Mt. Vernon. Johnny was
+indignant, and wouldn't stand for a collar
+under the circumstances. He put four shots
+into the flyman's body. He was taken to the
+station-house, and afterwards tried for murder.
+The boys collected a lot of money and tried
+to save him, but he had the whole police force
+against him and in a few months he was
+hanged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A friend of mine, L&mdash;&mdash;, had a similar fate.
+He was a prime favorite with the lasses of
+easy virtue, and was liked by the guns. One
+night when I met him in a joint where grafters
+hung out, he displayed a split lip, given him
+by the biggest bully in the ward. It was all
+about a girl named Mollie whom the bully was
+stuck on and on whose account he was jealous
+of L&mdash;&mdash;, whom all the women ran after. A
+few nights later, L&mdash;&mdash; met the bully who had
+beaten him and said he had a present for him.
+"Is it something good?" asked the gorilla.
+"Yes," said L&mdash;&mdash;, and shot him dead. L&mdash;&mdash;
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_284' name='Page_284'>[284]</a></span>
+tried to escape, but was caught in Pittsburg,
+and extradited to New York, where he was
+convicted partly on the testimony of the girl,
+whom I used to call Unlimited Mollie. She
+was lucky, for instead of drifting to the Bowery,
+she married a policeman, who was promoted.
+L&mdash;&mdash; was sentenced to be hanged, but he
+died game.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think kleptomania is not a very common
+kind of insanity, at least in my experience.
+Most grafters steal for professional reasons,
+but Big Sammy was surely a kleptomaniac.
+He had no reason to graft, for he was well up in
+the world. When I first met he was standard
+bearer at a ball given in his honor, and had a
+club named after him. He had been gin-mill
+keeper, hotel proprietor, and theatrical manager,
+and had saved money. He had, too, a
+real romance in his life, for he loved one of
+the best choir singers in the city. She was
+beautiful and loved him, and they were married.
+She did not know that Sammy was a gun;
+indeed, he was not a gun, really, for he only
+used to graft for excitement, or at least, what
+business there was in it was only a side issue.
+After their honeymoon Sammy started a hotel
+at a sea-side resort, where the better class of
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_285' name='Page_285'>[285]</a></span>
+guns, gamblers and vaudeville artists spent
+their vacation. That fall he went on a tour
+with his wife who sang in many of the churches
+in the State. Sammy was a good box-man.
+He never used puff (nitro-glycerine), but with
+a few tools opened the safes artistically. His
+pal Mike went ahead of the touring couple,
+and when Sammy arrived at a town he was
+tipped off to where the goods lay. When he
+heard that the police were putting it on to the
+hoboes, he thought it was a good joke and
+kept it up. He wanted the police to gather
+in all the black sheep they could, for he was
+sorry they were so incompetent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The loving couple returned to New York,
+and were happy for a long time. But finally
+the wife fell ill, and under-went an operation,
+from the effects of which she never recovered.
+She became despondent and jealous of Sammy,
+though he was one of the best husbands I have
+known. One morning he had an engagement
+to meet an old pal who was coming home
+from stir. He was late, and starting off in a
+hurry, neglected to kiss his wife good-bye.
+She called after him that he had forgotten
+something. Sammy, feeling for his money
+and cannister, shouted back that everything
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_286' name='Page_286'>[286]</a></span>
+was all right, and rushed off. His wife must
+have been in an unusually gloomy state of
+mind, for she took poison, and when Sammy
+returned, she was dead. It drove Sammy
+almost insane, for he loved her always. A
+few days afterwards he jumped out for excitement
+and forgetfulness and was so reckless
+when he tried to make a touch that he was
+shot almost to pieces. He recovered, however,
+and was sent to prison for a long term
+of years. He is out again, and is now regularly
+on the turf. During his bit in stir all
+his legitimate enterprizes went wrong, and
+when he was released, there was nothing for it
+but to become a professional grafter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the seven months which elapsed
+between the end of my second, and the beginning
+of my third term, I was not a very energetic
+grafter, as I have said. Graft was good
+at the time and a man with the least bit of
+nerve could make out fairly well. My nerve
+had not deserted me, but somehow I was less
+ambitious. Philosophy and opium and bad
+health do not incline a man to a hustling life.
+The excitement of stealing had left me, and
+now it was merely business. I therefore did a
+great deal of swindling, which does not stir
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_287' name='Page_287'>[287]</a></span>
+the imagination, but can be done more easily
+than other forms of graft. I was known at
+headquarters as a dip, and so I was not likely
+to be suspected for occasional swindling, just
+as I had been able to do house-work now and
+then without a fall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did some profitable swindling at this time,
+with an Italian named Velica for a pal. It
+was a kind of graft which brought quick
+returns without much of an outlay. For
+several weeks we fleeced Velica's country men
+brown. I impersonated a contractor and
+Velica was my foreman. We put advertisements
+in the newspapers for men to work on
+the railroads or for labor on new buildings.
+We hired desk room in a cheap office, where
+we awaited our suckers, who came in droves,
+though only one could see us at a time. Our
+tools for this graft were pen, paper, and ink;
+and one new shovel and pick-axe. Velica did
+the talking and I took down the man's name
+and address. Velica told his countryman that
+we could not afford to run the risk of disappointing
+the railroad, so that he would have to
+leave a deposit as a guarantee that he would
+turn up in the morning. If he left a deposit
+of a few dollars we put his name on the new
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_288' name='Page_288'>[288]</a></span>
+pick and shovel, which we told him he could
+come for in the morning. If we induced many
+to give us deposits, using the same pick and
+shovel as a bribe, we made a lot of money
+during the day. The next morning we would
+change our office and vary our form of advertisement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes we met our victims at saloons.
+Velica would be talking to some Italian immigrant
+who had money, when I would turn up
+and be introduced. Treating all around and
+flashing a roll of bills I could soon win the
+sucker's respect and confidence, and make him
+ante up on any old con. One day in a saloon
+in Newark we got an Italian guy for one hundred
+and fifty dollars. Before he left the
+place, however, he suspected something. We
+had promised him the position of foreman of a
+gang of laborers, and after we got his dough
+we could not let well enough alone, and offered
+to give his wife the privilege of feeding the
+sixty Italians of whom he was to be the foreman.
+I suppose the dago thought that we
+were too good, for he blew and pulled his
+gun. I caught him around the waist, and the
+bartender, who was with us, struck him over
+the head with a bottle of beer. The dago
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_289' name='Page_289'>[289]</a></span>
+dropped the smoke-wagon and the bartender
+threatened to put him in prison for pulling a
+rod on respectable people. The dago left the
+saloon and never saw his money again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About this time, too, I had an opportunity to
+go into still another lucrative kind of swindling,
+but didn't. It was not conscience either that
+prevented me from swindling the fair sex, for
+in those days all touches,&mdash;except those made
+by others off myself&mdash;seemed legitimate. I did
+not go in for it because, at the time it was
+proposed to me, I had enough money for my
+needs, and as I have said, I was lazy. It was a
+good graft, however, and I was a fool for not
+ringing in on it. The scheme was to hire a
+floor in a private house situated in any good
+neighborhood. One of the mob had to know
+German, and then an advertisement would be
+inserted in the <i>Herald</i> to the effect that a
+young German doctor who had just come
+from the old country wanted to meet a German
+lady of some means with a view to matrimony.
+A pal of mine who put such an advertisement
+in a Chicago paper received no less
+than one hundred and forty five answers from
+women ranging in age from fifteen to fifty.
+The grafters would read the letters and decide
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_290' name='Page_290'>[290]</a></span>
+as to which ladies they thought had some
+money. When these arrived at the office, in
+answer to the grafters' letters, they would
+meet two or three men, impersonating the
+doctor and his friends, who had the gift of
+"con" to a remarkable degree. The doctor
+would suggest that if the lady would advance
+sufficient money to start him in business in
+the West it would be well. If he found she
+had plenty of money he married her immediately,
+one of his pals acting the clergyman.
+She then drew all her money from the bank,
+and they went to a hotel. There the doctor
+leaving her in their room, would go to see
+about the tickets for the West, and never
+return. The ladies always jumped at these
+offers, for all German women want to marry
+doctors or clergymen; and all women are soft,
+even if they are so apt to be natural pilferers
+themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I was hard up, and if there was no
+good confidence game in sight, I didn't mind
+taking heavy chances in straight grafting; for
+I lived in a dream, and through opium, was
+not only lazy, but reckless. On one occasion
+a Jew fence had put up a plan to get a big
+touch, and picked me out to do the desperate
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_291' name='Page_291'>[291]</a></span>
+part of the job. The fence was an expert
+in jewels and worked for one of the biggest
+firms that dealt in precious stones. He kept
+an eye on all such stores, watching for an
+opening to put his friends the grafters "next."
+To the place in question he was tipped off by
+a couple of penny weighters, who claimed it
+was a snap. He agreed with them, but kept
+his opinion to himself, and came to see me
+about it. I and two other grafters watched
+the place for a week. One day the two clerks
+went out together for lunch, leaving the proprietor
+alone in the store. This was the
+opportunity. I stationed one of my pals at
+the window outside and the other up the
+street to watch. If I had much trouble with
+"the mark" the pal at the window was to
+come to my assistance. With red pepper (to
+throw, if necessary, in the sucker's eyes) and a
+good black jack I was to go into the store and
+buy a baby's ring for one dollar. While waiting
+for my change, I was to price a piece of
+costly jewelry, and while talking about the
+merits of the diamond, hit my man on the
+head with the black jack. Then all I had to
+do was to go behind the counter and take the
+entire contents of the window&mdash;only a minute's
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_292' name='Page_292'>[292]</a></span>
+work, for all the costly jewels were lying on an
+embroidered piece of velvet, and I had only to
+pick up the four corners of the velvet, bundle
+it into a green bag, and jump into the cab
+which was waiting for us a block away. Well,
+I had just about got the proprietor in a position
+to deal him the blow when the man at
+the window weakened, and came in and said,
+"Vix." I thought there was a copper outside,
+or that one of the clerks was returning, and
+told the jeweler I would send my wife for the
+ring. I went out and asked my pal what was
+the matter. He said he was afraid I would
+kill the old fellow, and that the come-back
+would be too strong. My other pal I found a
+block away. We all went back together to
+the fence, and then I opened on them, I
+tell you. I called them petty larceny barnacles,
+and came near clubbing them, I was so
+indignant. I have often had occasion to notice
+that most thieves who will steal a diamond or
+a "front" weaken when it comes to a large
+touch, even though there may be no more
+danger in it than in the smaller enterprises.
+I gave those two men a wide berth after that,
+and whenever I met them I sneered; for I
+could not get over being sore. The "touch"
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_293' name='Page_293'>[293]</a></span>
+was a beauty, with very little chance of a
+come-back, for the police don't look among
+the pickpockets for the men who make this
+kind of touches, and I and my two companions
+were known to the coppers as dips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just before I fell for my third and most terrible
+term, I met Lottie, and thought of marrying.
+I did not love her, but liked her
+pretty well, and I was beginning to feel that I
+ought to settle down and have a decent woman
+to look after me, for my health was bad and I
+had little ambition. Lottie seemed the right
+girl for the place. She was of German extraction,
+and used to shave me sometimes at her
+father's barber shop, where I first met her.
+She seemed to me a good, honest girl, and I
+thought I could not do better, especially as
+she was very fond of me. Women like the
+spruce dips, as I have said before, and even
+when my graft had broadened, I always retained
+the dress, manners and reputation of a
+pickpocket. Lottie promised to marry me,
+and said that she could raise a few hundred dollars
+from her father, with which I might start
+another barber shop, quit grafting, and settle
+down to my books, my hop and domestic life.
+One day she gave me a pin that cost nine dollars,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_294' name='Page_294'>[294]</a></span>
+she said, and she wouldn't let me make
+her a present. All in all, she seemed like a
+sensible girl, and I was getting interested in
+the marriage idea. One day, however, I discovered
+something. I was playing poker in
+the office of a hotel kept by a friend of mine,
+when a man and woman came down stairs
+together and passed through the office. They
+were my little German girl and the owner of a
+pawn-shop, a Sheenie of advanced years. Suddenly
+I realized where she had got the pin
+she gave me; and I began to believe stories
+I had heard about her. I thought I would
+test her character myself. I did, and found it
+weak. I did not marry her! What an escape!
+Every man, even a self-respecting gun, wants
+an honest woman, if it comes to hitching up
+for good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after I escaped Lottie, I got my third
+fall for the stir. The other times that I had
+been convicted, I was guilty, but on this
+occasion I was entirely innocent. Often a man
+who has done time and is well-known to the
+police is rounded up on suspicion and convicted
+when he is innocent, and I fell a victim to this
+easy way of the officials for covering up their
+failure to find the right person. I had gone
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_295' name='Page_295'>[295]</a></span>
+one night to an opium joint near Lovers Row,
+a section of Henry Street between Catherine
+and Oliver Streets, where some guns of both
+sexes were to have a social meeting. We
+smoked hop and drank heavily and told stories
+of our latest touches. While we were thus
+engaged I began to have severe pains in my
+chest, which had been bothering me occasionally
+for some time, and suddenly I had a hemorrhage.
+When I was able I left the joint to
+see a doctor, who stopped the flow of blood,
+but told me I would not live a month if I did
+not take good care of myself. I got aboard a
+car, went soberly home to my furnished room,
+and&mdash;was arrested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I knew I had not committed any crime this
+time and thought I should of course be released
+in the morning. Instead however of being
+taken directly to the station house, I was conducted
+to a saloon, and confronted with the
+"sucker". I had never seen him before, but he
+identified me, just the same, as the man who had
+picked his pocket. I asked him how long ago
+he had missed his valuables, and when he answered,
+"Three hours," I drew a long sigh of
+relief, for I was at the joint at that time, and
+thought I could prove an alibi. But though
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_296' name='Page_296'>[296]</a></span>
+the rapper seemed to weaken, the copper was
+less trustful and read the riot act to him. I
+was so indignant I began to call the policeman
+down vigorously. I told him he had better
+try to make a reputation on me some other
+time, when I was really guilty, whereupon he
+lost his temper, and jabbed me in the chest
+with his club, which brought on another flow
+of blood from my lungs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this plight I was taken to the station
+house, still confident I should soon be set at
+liberty, although I had only about eighty
+dollars for fall-money. I hardly thought I
+needed it, but I used it just the same, to make
+sure, and employed a lawyer. For a while
+things looked favorable to me, for I was remanded
+back from court every morning for
+eight days, on account of lack of evidence,
+which is almost equivalent to a turn-out in a
+larceny case. Even the copper began to pig
+it (weaken), probably thinking he might as
+well get a share of my "dough," since it began
+to look as if I should beat the case. But
+on the ninth day luck turned against me. The
+Chief of detectives "identified" me as another
+man, whispering a few words to the justice,
+and I was committed under two thousand
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_297' name='Page_297'>[297]</a></span>
+dollars bail to stand trial in General Sessions.
+I was sent to the Tombs to await trial, and I
+knew at last that I was lost. My character
+alone would convict me; and my lawyer had
+told me that I could not prove an alibi on the
+oaths of the thieves and disorderly persons
+who had been with me in the opium joint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No matter how confirmed a thief a man may
+be, I repeat, he hates to be convicted for
+something he has not done. He objects indeed
+more than an honest man would do, for
+he believes in having the other side play fair;
+whereas the honest man simply thinks a mistake
+has been made. While in the Tombs a
+murderous idea formed in my mind. I felt
+that I had been horribly wronged, and was
+hot for revenge. I was desperate, too, for I
+did not think I should live my bit out. Determined
+to make half a dozen angels, including
+myself, I induced a friend, who came to
+see me in the Tombs, to get me a revolver.
+I told him I wanted to create a panic with a
+couple of shots, and escape, but in reality I
+had no thought of escape. I was offered a
+light sentence, if I would plead guilty, but I
+refused. I believed I was going to die anyway,
+and that things did not matter; only I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_298' name='Page_298'>[298]</a></span>
+would have as much company as possible on
+the road to the other world. I meant to shoot
+the copper who had beaten me with his club,
+District Attorney Olcott, the judge, the complainant
+and myself as well, as soon as I should
+be taken into the court room for trial. The
+pistol however was taken away from me before
+I entered the court: I was convicted and
+sentenced to five years at Sing Sing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Much of the time I spent in stir on my third
+bit I still harbored this thought of murder.
+That was one reason I did not kill myself.
+The determination to do the copper on my
+release was always in my mind. I planned
+even a more cunning revenge. I imagined
+many a scheme to get him, and gloat over his
+dire misfortunes. One of my plans was to
+hunt him out on his beat, invite him to drink,
+and put thirty grains of hydrate of chloral in
+his glass. When he had become unconscious
+I would put a bottle of morphine in his trousers
+pocket, and then telephone to a few newspapers
+telling them that if they would send
+reporters to the saloon they would have a
+good story against a dope copper who smoked
+too much. The result would be, I thought, a
+rap against the copper and his disgrace and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_299' name='Page_299'>[299]</a></span>
+dismissal from the force would follow. Sometimes
+this seemed to me better than murder;
+for every copper who is "broke" immediately
+becomes a bum. When my copper should
+have become a bum I imagined myself catching
+him dead drunk and cutting his hamstrings.
+Certainly I was a fiend when I reflected
+on my wrongs, real and imaginary.
+At other times I thought I merely killed him
+outright.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_300' name='Page_300'>[300]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+<i>In the Mad-House.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+On the road to Sing Sing again! The
+public may say I was surely an incorrigible
+and ought to have been shut up anyway for safe
+keeping, but are they right if they say so? During
+my confinement I often heard the prison
+chaplain preach from the text "Though thou
+sinnest ninety and nine times thy sin shall be
+forgiven thee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Probably Christ knew what He meant: His
+words do not apply to the police courts of
+Manhattan. These do not forgive, but send
+you up for the third term, which, if it is a
+long one, no man can pass through without
+impairment in body or in brain. It is better
+to make the convict's life as hard as hell for a
+short term, than to wear out his mind and
+body. People need not wonder why a man,
+knowing what is before him, steals and steals
+again. The painful experiences of his prison
+life, too often renewed, leave him as water
+leaves a rubber coat. Few men are really
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_301' name='Page_301'>[301]</a></span>
+impressionable after going through the deadening
+life in stir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five months of my third term I spent at
+Sing Sing, and then, as on my first bit, I was
+drafted to Auburn. At Sing Sing I was classified
+as a second term man. I have already
+explained that during my first term I earned
+over a year's commutation time; and that that
+time would have been legally forfeited when
+I was sent up again within nine months for
+my second bit if any one, except a few convicts,
+had remembered I had served before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, on my third sentence, I now returned
+to Sing Sing, I found that the authorities
+were "next," and knew that I had "done"
+them on the second bit. They were sore,
+because it had been their own carelessness,
+and they were afraid of getting into trouble.
+To protect themselves they classified me as a
+second term man, but waited for a chance to
+do me. I suppose it was some d&mdash;&mdash; Dickey
+Bird (stool-pigeon) who got them next that I
+had done them; but I never heard who it was,
+though I tried to find out long and earnestly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I got back to my cell in Sing Sing this
+third time I was gloomy and desperate to an
+unusual degree, still eaten up with my desire for
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_302' name='Page_302'>[302]</a></span>
+vengeance on those who had sent me to stir for
+a crime I had not committed. My health was
+so bad that my friends told me I would never
+live my bit out, and advised me to get to
+Clinton prison, if possible, away from the
+damp cells at Sing Sing. But I took no
+interest in what they said, for I did not care
+whether I lived or died. I expected to die
+very soon, and in the meantime thought I
+was well enough where I was. I did not fear
+death, and I had my hop every day. All I
+wanted from the keepers was to be let alone
+in my cell and not annoyed with work. The
+authorities had an inkling that I was in a desperate
+state of mind, and probably believed it
+was healthier for them to let me alone a good
+deal of the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before long schemes began to form in my
+head to make my gets (escape). I knew I
+wouldn't stop at murder, if necessary in order
+to spring; for, as I have said, I cared not
+whether I lived or died. On the whole, however,
+I rather preferred to become an angel at
+the beginning of my bit than at the end. I
+kept my schemes for escape to myself, for I
+was afraid of a leak, but the authorities must
+somehow have suspected something, for they
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_303' name='Page_303'>[303]</a></span>
+kept me in my cell twenty-three hours out of
+the twenty-four. Perhaps it was just because
+they had it in for me for beating them on my
+second bit. As before, I consoled myself,
+while waiting a chance to escape, with some
+of my favorite authors; but my eye-sight was
+getting bad and I could not read as much as I
+used to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was during these five months at Sing Sing
+that I first met Dr. Myers, of whom I saw
+much a year or two later in the mad-house.
+At Sing Sing he had some privileges, and
+used to work in the hall, where it was easy for
+me to talk to him through my cell door.
+This remarkable man, had been a splendid
+physician in Chicago. He had beaten some
+insurance companies out of one hundred and
+sixty-five thousand dollars, but was in Sing
+Sing because he had been wrongfully convicted
+on a charge of murder. He liked me,
+especially when later we were in the insane
+asylum together, because I would not stand
+for the abuse given to the poor lunatics, and
+would do no stool-pigeon or other dirty work
+for the keepers. He used to tell me that I
+was too bright a man to do any work with my
+hands. "Jim," he said once, "I would rather
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_304' name='Page_304'>[304]</a></span>
+see you marry my daughter than give her to
+an ignorant business man. I know you would
+treat her kindly and that she would learn
+something of the world. As my wife often
+said, I would rather die at thirty-eight after
+seeing the world and enjoying life than live in
+a humdrum way till ninety."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He explained the insurance graft to me,
+and I still think it the surest and most lucrative
+of all grafts. For a man with intelligence
+it is the very best kind of crooked work.
+About the only way the insurance companies
+can get back at the thieves is through a squeal.
+Here are a few of the schemes he told me for
+this graft:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A man and his female pal take a small
+house in town or on the outskirts of a large
+city. The man insures his life for five thousand
+dollars. After they have lived there a
+while, and passed perhaps as music teachers,
+they take the next step, which is to get a dead
+body. Nothing is easier. The man goes to
+any large hospital, represents himself as a
+doctor and for twenty-five dollars can generally
+get a stiff, which he takes away in a barrel
+or trunk. He goes to a furnished room,
+already secured, and there dresses the cadaver
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_305' name='Page_305'>[305]</a></span>
+in his own clothes, putting his watch, letters
+and money in the cadavers pockets. In the
+evening he takes the body to some river or
+stream and throws it in. He knows from the
+newspapers when the body has been found,
+and notifies his woman pal, who identifies it
+as her husband's body. There are only two
+snags that one must guard against in this plot.
+The cadaver must not differ much in height
+from the person that has been insured; and its
+lungs must not show that they were those of
+anybody dead before thrown into the water.
+The way to prepare against this danger is to
+inject some water with a small medical pump
+into the lungs of the stiff before it is thrown
+overboard. Then it is easy for the "widow"
+to get the money, and meet the alleged dead
+man in another country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A more complicated method, in which more
+money is involved, is as follows. The grafter
+hires an office and represents himself as an
+artist, a bric-à-brac dealer, a promoter or an
+architect. Then he jumps to another city and
+takes out a policy under the tontien or endowment
+plan. When the game is for a very
+large amount three or four pals are necessary.
+If no one of the grafters is a doctor, a physician
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_306' name='Page_306'>[306]</a></span>
+must be impersonated, but this is easy.
+If there are, say, ten thousand physicians in
+Manhattan, not many of whom have an income
+of ten thousand a year, it is perhaps
+not difficult to get a diploma. After a sheepskin
+is secured, the grafter goes to another
+State, avoiding, unless he is a genuine physician,
+New York and Illinois, for they have
+boards of regents. The acting quack registers
+so that he can practice medicine and hangs
+out his shingle. The acting business man
+takes out a policy, and pays the first premium.
+Before the first premium is paid he is dead,
+for all the insurance company knows. Often
+a live substitute, instead of a dead one, is
+secured. The grafter goes to the charity
+hospital and looks over the wrecks waiting to
+die. Some of these poor dying devils jump
+at the chance to go West. It is necessary, of
+course, to make sure that the patient will soon
+become an angel, or everything will fall
+through. Then the grafter takes the sick
+man to his house and keeps him out of sight.
+When he is about to die he calls in the grafter
+who is posing as a physician. After the death
+of the substitute the doctor signs the death
+certificate, the undertaker prepares the body,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_307' name='Page_307'>[307]</a></span>
+which is buried. The woman grafter is at the
+funeral, and afterwards she sends in her claim
+to the companies. On one occasion in Dr.
+Myers's experience, he told me, the alleged
+insured man was found later with his head
+blown off, but when the wife identified the
+body, the claim had been paid.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">
+One afternoon, after I had been at Sing
+Sing five months, I was taken from my cell,
+shackled hand and foot, and sent, with fifty
+other convicts, to Auburn. When I had been
+at Auburn prison about six months I grew
+again exceedingly desperate, and made several
+wild and ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I
+would take no back talk from the keepers, and
+began to be feared by them. One day I had
+a fight with another convict. He struck me
+with an iron weapon, and I sent him to the
+hospital with knife thrusts through several
+parts of his body. Although I had been a
+thief all my life, and had done some strong
+arm work, by nature I was not quarrelsome,
+and I have never been so quick to fight as on
+my third term. I was locked up in the dungeon
+for a week and fed on bread and water in
+small quantities. After my release I was confined
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_308' name='Page_308'>[308]</a></span>
+to my cell for several days, and used to
+quarrel with whoever came near me. The
+keepers began to regard me as a desperate
+character, who would cause them a great deal
+of trouble; and feared that I might escape or
+commit murder at any time. One day, I remember,
+a keeper threatened to club me with
+a heavy stick he had. I laughed at him and
+told him to make a good job of it, for I had
+some years still to serve, and if he did not kill
+me outright, I would have plenty of time to
+get back at him. The cur pigged it (weakened).
+They really wanted to get rid of me,
+however, and one morning the opportunity
+came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was feeling especially bad that morning
+and went to see the doctor, who told me I had
+consumption, and transferred me to the consumptive
+ward in the prison. There the doctor
+and four screws came to my bedside, and
+the doctor inserted a hyperdermic needle into
+my arm. When I awoke I found myself in
+the isolated dungeon, nicknamed the Keeley
+Cure by the convicts, where I was confined
+again for several weeks, and had a hyperdermic
+injection every day. At the end of that time
+I was taken before the doctors, who pronounced
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_309' name='Page_309'>[309]</a></span>
+me insane. With three other convicts
+who were said to be "pipes" (insane) I
+was shackled hand and foot, put on a train
+and taken to the asylum for the criminal insane
+at Matteawan. I had been in bad places
+before, but at Matteawan I first learned what
+it is to be in Hell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why was I put in the Pipe House? Was
+I insane?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In one way I have been insane all my life,
+until recently. There is a disease called astigmatism
+of the conscience, and I have been
+sorely afflicted with that. I have always had
+the delusion, until the last few months, that it
+is well to "do" others. In that way I certainly
+was "pipes." And in another way, too, I was
+insane. After a man has served many years
+in stir and has contracted all the vices, he is
+not normal, even if he is not violently insane.
+His brain loses its equilibrium, no matter how
+strong-minded he may be, and he acquires
+astigmatism of the mind, as well as of the conscience.
+The more astigmatic he becomes,
+the more frequently he returns to stir, where
+his disease grows worse, until he is prison-mad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the best of my knowledge and belief I
+was not insane in any definite way&mdash;no more
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_310' name='Page_310'>[310]</a></span>
+so than are nine out of ten of the men who had
+served as much time in prison as I. I suppose
+I was not sent to the criminal insane asylum
+because of a perverted conscience. The stir,
+I believe, is supposed to cure that. Why did
+they send me to the mad-house? I don't
+know, any more than my reader, unless it was
+because I caused the keepers and doctors too
+much trouble, or because for some reason or
+other they wanted to do me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But whether I had a delusion or not&mdash;and I
+am convinced myself that I have always been
+right above the ears&mdash;there certainly are many
+perfectly sane men confined in our state
+asylums for the criminal insane. Indeed, if all
+the fake lunatics were sent back to prison, it
+would save the state the expense of building
+so many hospitals. But I suppose the politicians
+who want patronage to distribute would
+object.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many men in prison fake insanity, as I have
+already explained. Many of them desire to
+be sent to Matteawan or Dannemora insane
+asylums, thinking they will not need to work
+there, will have better food and can more
+easily escape. They imagine that there are
+no stool-pigeons in the pipe-house, and that
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_311' name='Page_311'>[311]</a></span>
+they can therefore easily make their elegant
+(escape). When they get to the mad-house
+they find themselves sadly mistaken. They
+find many sane stool-pigeons there, and their
+plans for escape are piped off as well there as
+in stir. And in other ways, as I shall explain,
+they are disappointed. The reason the "cons"
+don't get on to the situation in the mad-house
+through friends who have been there is that
+they think those who have been in the insane
+asylum are really pipes. When I got out of
+the mad-house and told my friends about it,
+they were apt to remark, laconically, "He's in
+a terrible state." When they get there themselves,
+God help them. I will narrate what happened
+to me, and some of the horrible things
+I saw there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After my pedigree was taken I was given
+the regulation clothes, which, in the mad-house,
+consist of a blue coat, a pair of grey trousers,
+a calico shirt, socks and a pair of slippers. I
+was then taken to the worst violent ward in
+the institution, where I had a good chance to
+observe the real and the fake lunatics. No
+man or woman, not even an habitual criminal,
+can conceive, unless he has been there himself,
+what our state asylums are. My very
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_312' name='Page_312'>[312]</a></span>
+first experience was a jar. A big lunatic, six
+feet high and a giant in physique, came up to
+me in the ward, and said: "I'll kick your
+head off, you ijit (idiot). What the &mdash;&mdash; did
+you come here for? Why didn't you stop off
+at Buffalo?" I thought that if all the loons
+were the size of this one I wasn't going to have
+much show in that violent ward; for I weighed
+only one hundred and fifteen pounds at the
+time. But the big lunatic changed his note,
+smiled and said: "Say, Charley, have you
+got any marbles?" I said, "No," and then,
+quick as a flash, he exclaimed: "Be Japes,
+you don't look as if you had enough brains to
+play them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had been in this ward, which was under
+the Head Attendant, nick-named "King"
+Kelly, for two days, when I was taken away to
+a dark room in which a demented, scrofulous
+negro had been kept. For me not even a
+change of bed-clothing was made. In rooms
+on each side of me were epileptics and I could
+hear, especially when I was in the ward, raving
+maniacs shouting all about me. I was taken
+back to the first ward, where I stayed for some
+time. I began to think that prison was heaven
+in comparison with the pipe house. The food
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_313' name='Page_313'>[313]</a></span>
+was poor, we were not supposed to do any
+work, and we were allowed only an hour in the
+yard. We stayed in our ward from half past
+five in the morning until six o'clock at night,
+when we went to bed. It was then I suffered
+most, for there was no light and I could not
+read. In stir I could lie on my cot and read,
+and soothe my nerves. But in the mad-house
+I was not allowed to read, and lay awake
+continually at night listening to the idiots
+bleating and the maniacs raving about me.
+The din was horrible, and I am convinced that
+in the course of time even a sane man kept in
+an insane asylum will be mad; those who are
+a little delusional will go violently insane. My
+three years in an insane asylum convinced me
+that, beyond doubt, a man contracts a mental
+ailment just as he contracts a physical disease
+on the outside. I believe in mental as well as
+physical contagion, for I have seen man after
+man, a short time after arriving at the hospital,
+become a raving maniac.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For weeks and months I had a terrible fight
+with myself to keep my sanity. As I had no
+books to take up my thoughts I got into the
+habit of solving an arithmetical problem every
+day. If it had not been for my persistence in
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_314' name='Page_314'>[314]</a></span>
+this mental occupation I have no doubt I should
+have gone violently insane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is only the sensitive and intelligent man
+who, when placed in such a predicament, really
+knows what torture is. The cries of the poor
+demented wretches about me were a terrible
+lesson. They showed me more than any other
+experience I ever passed through the error of
+a crooked life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I met many a man in the violent ward who
+had been a friend of mine and good fellow on
+the outside. Now the brains of all of them were
+gone, they had the most horrible and the most
+grotesque delusions. But horrible or grotesque
+they were always piteous. If I were to point
+out the greatest achievement that man has
+accomplished to distinguish him from the
+brute, it would be the taking care of the insane.
+A child is so helpless that when alms is asked
+for his maintenance it is given willingly, for
+every man and woman pities and loves a child.
+A lunatic is as helpless as a child, and often
+not any more dangerous. The maniac is misrepresented,
+for in Matteawan and Dannemora
+taken together there are very few who
+are really violent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now I come to the most terrible part of
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_315' name='Page_315'>[315]</a></span>
+my narrative, which many people will not believe&mdash;and
+that is the cruelty of the doctors
+and attendants, cruelty practiced upon these
+poor, deluded wretches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With my own eyes I saw scores of instances
+of abuse while I was at Matteawan and later
+at Dannemora. It is, I believe, against the
+law to strike an insane man, but any man who
+has ever been in these asylums knows how
+habitual the practice is. I have often seen
+idiots in the same ward with myself violently
+attacked and beaten by several keepers at
+once. Indeed, some of us used to regard a
+beating as our daily medicine. Patients are
+not supposed to do any work; but those who
+refused to clean up the wards and do other
+work for the attendants were the ones most
+likely to receive little mercy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I know how difficult it is for the public to
+believe that some of their institutions are as
+rotten as those of the Middle Ages; and when
+a man who has been both in prison and in the
+pipe house is the one who makes the accusation,
+who will believe him? Of course, his
+testimony on the witness stand is worthless.
+I will merely call attention, however, to the
+fact that the great majority of the insane are
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_316' name='Page_316'>[316]</a></span>
+so only in one way. They have some delusion,
+but are otherwise capable of observation
+and of telling the truth. I will also add that
+the editor of this book collected an immense
+number of instances of brutality from several
+men, besides myself, who had spent years
+there, and that those instances also pointed to
+the situation that I describe. Moreover, I can
+quote the opinion of the writer on criminology&mdash;Josiah
+Flynt&mdash;as corroborative of my statements.
+He has said in my presence and in
+that of the editor of this book, Mr. Hapgood,
+that his researches have led him to believe
+that the situation in our state asylums for the
+criminal insane is horrible in the extreme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be
+brutal? In the first place, there is very little
+chance of a come-back, for who will believe
+men who have ever been shut up in an insane
+asylum? And very often these attendants
+themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin
+with, they are men of low intelligence, as is
+shown by the fact that they will work for
+eighteen dollars a month, and after they have
+associated with insane men for years they are
+apt to become delusional themselves. Taking
+care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_317' name='Page_317'>[317]</a></span>
+intelligence of the best men. Is it any wonder
+that the ordinary attendant often becomes
+nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor
+idiot who won't do dirty work or whose silly
+noises get on his nerves? I have noticed
+attendants who, after they had been in the
+asylum a few months, acquired certain insane
+characteristics, such as a jerking of the head
+from one side to the other, looking up at the
+sky, cursing some imaginary person, and walking
+with the body bent almost double.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something
+that made me realize I was up against a
+hard joint. An attendant in the isolation
+ward had an incurable patient under him,
+whom he was in the habit of compelling to
+do his work for him, such as caning chairs
+and cleaning cuspidors. The attendants had
+two birds in his room, and he used to make
+Mickey, the incurable idiot, clean out the cage
+for him. One day Mickey put the cages
+under the boiling water, to clean them as
+usual. The attendant had forgot to remove
+the birds, and they were killed by the hot
+water. Another crank, who was in the bath
+room with Mickey, spied the dead pets, and
+he and Mickey began to eat them. They
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_318' name='Page_318'>[318]</a></span>
+were picking the bones when the attendant
+and two others discovered them&mdash;and treated
+them as a golfer treats his golf-balls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another time I saw an insane epileptic
+patient try to prevent four attendants from
+playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He
+was delusional on religious subjects and
+thought the attendants were doing wrong.
+The reward he received for caring for the
+religious welfare of his keepers was a kick in
+the stomach by one of the attendants, while
+another hit him in the solar plexus, knocking
+him down, and a third jammed his head on the
+floor until the blood flowed. After he was
+unconscious a doctor gave him a hyperdermic
+injection and he was put to bed. How often,
+indeed, have I seen men knocked out by
+strong arm work, or strung up to the ceiling
+with a pair of suspenders! How often have
+I seen them knocked unconscious for a time
+or for eternity&mdash;yes&mdash;for eternity, for insane
+men sometimes do die, if they are treated too
+brutally. In that case, the doctor reports
+the patient as having died of consumption, or
+some other disease. I have seen insane men
+turned into incurable idiots by the beatings
+they have received from the attendants. I
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_319' name='Page_319'>[319]</a></span>
+saw an idiot boy knocked down with an iron
+pot because he insisted on chirping out his
+delusion. I heard a patient about to be
+beaten by four attendants cry out: "My God,
+you won't murder me?" and the answer was,
+"Why not? The Coroner would say you
+died of dysentery." The attendants tried
+often to force fear into me by making me
+look at the work they had done on some
+harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances
+of this kind. I could give scores of them,
+with names of attendants and patients, and
+sometimes even the dates on which these
+horrors occurred. But I must cut short this
+part of my narrative. Every word of it, as
+sure as I have a poor old mother, is true, but
+it is too terrible to dwell upon, and will
+probably not be believed. It will be put
+down as one of my delusions, or as a lie
+inspired by the desire of vengeance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the
+authorities in the insane asylum, for I objected
+vigorously to the treatment of men really
+insane. It is as dangerous to object to the
+curriculum of a mad-house in the State of New
+York as it is to find fault with the running of
+the government in Russia. In stir I never
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_320' name='Page_320'>[320]</a></span>
+saw such brutality as takes place almost every
+day in the pipe house. I reported what I saw,
+and though I was plainly told to mind my own
+business, I continued to object every time I
+saw a chance, until soon the petty spite of the
+attendants was turned against me. I was reported
+continually for things I had not done,
+I had no privileges, not even opium or books,
+and was so miserable that I repeatedly tried
+to be transferred back to prison. A doctor
+once wrote a book called <i>Ten Years in a Mad-House</i>,
+in which he says "God help the man
+who has the attendants against him; for these
+demented brutes will make his life a living
+hell." Try as I might, however, I was not
+transferred back to stir, partly because of the
+sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry
+favor with the attendants, invented lies about
+attempts on my part to escape. If I had not
+had such a poor opinion of the powers that be
+and had stopped finding fault I should no
+doubt have been transferred back to what was
+beginning to seem to me, by contrast, a
+delightful place&mdash;state's prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe
+house was paresis. I thought a great deal
+about it, and observed the cranks about me
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_321' name='Page_321'>[321]</a></span>
+continually. I noticed that almost all insane
+persons are musical, that they can hum a tune
+after hearing it only once. I suppose the
+meanest faculty in the human brain is that of
+memory, and that idiots, lunatics and madmen
+learn music so easily because that part of
+the brain which is the seat of memory is the
+only one that is active; the other intellectual
+qualities being dead, so that the memory is untroubled
+by thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was often saddened at the sight of poor
+George, who had been a good dip and an old
+pal of mine. When he first saw me in the
+pipe house he asked me about his girl. I
+told him she was still waiting, and he said:
+"Why doesn't she visit me then?" When
+I replied: "Wait awhile," he smiled sadly,
+and said: "I know." He then put his finger
+to his head, and, hanging his head, his face
+suddenly became a blank. I was helpless to
+do anything for him. I was so sorry for him
+sometimes that I wanted to kill him and myself
+and end our misery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another friend of mine thought he had a
+number of white blackbirds and used to talk
+to them excitedly about gold. This man had
+a finely shaped head. I have read in a book
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_322' name='Page_322'>[322]</a></span>
+of phrenology that a man's intelligence can be
+estimated by the shape of his head. I don't
+think this theory amounts to anything, for
+most of the insane men I knew had good
+heads. I have formed a little theory of my
+own (I am as good a quack as anybody else)
+about insanity. I used to compare a well
+shaped lunatic's head to a lady's beautiful
+jewel box from which my lady's maid had
+stolen the precious stones. The crank's head
+contained both quantity and quality of brains,
+but the grey matter was lacking. The jewel
+box and the lunatic's head were both beautiful
+receptacles, but the value had flown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another lunatic, a man named Hogan,
+thought that girls were continually bothering
+him. "Now go away, Liz, and leave me
+alone," he would say. One day a lady about
+fifty years old visited the hospital with
+Superintendent Allison, and came to the violent
+ward where Hogan and I were. She was not
+a bit afraid, and went right up to Hogan and
+questioned him. He exclaimed, excitedly,
+"Go away, Meg. You're disfigured enough
+without my giving you another sockdolager."
+She stayed in the ward a long while and asked
+many questions. She had as much nerve as
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_323' name='Page_323'>[323]</a></span>
+any lady I ever saw. As she and Allison
+were leaving the ward, Hogan said: "Allison,
+chain her up. She is a bad egg." The next
+day I learned that this refined, delicate and
+courageous woman had once gone to war with
+her husband, a German prince, who had been
+with General Sherman on his memorable
+march to the sea. She was born an American,
+and belonged to the Jay family, but was now
+the Princess Salm-Salm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most amusing crank (if the word
+amusing can be used of an insane man) in the
+ward was an Englishman named Alec. He
+was incurably insane, but a good musician and
+mathematician. One of his delusions was that
+he was the sacred camel in the London Zoo.
+His mortal enemy was a lunatic named Jimmy
+White, who thought he was a mule. Jimmy
+often came to me and said: "You didn't give
+your mule any oats this morning." He would
+not be satisfied until I pretended to shoe him.
+Alec had great resentment for Jimmy because
+when Alec was a camel in the London Zoo
+Jimmy used to prevent the ladies and the kids
+from giving him sweets. When Jimmy said:
+"I never saw the man before," Alec replied
+indignantly, "I'm no man. I'm a sacred camel,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_324' name='Page_324'>[324]</a></span>
+and I won't be interfered with by an ordinary,
+common mule, like you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are divers sorts of insanity. I had
+an interview with a doctor, a high officer in
+the institution, which convinced me, perhaps
+without reason, that insanity was not limited
+to the patients and attendants. One day an
+insane man was struck by an attendant in the
+solar plexus. He threw his hands up in the
+air, and cried: "My God, I'm killed." I said
+to another man in the ward: "There's murder."
+He said: "How do you know?" I
+replied: "I have seen death a few times."
+In an hour, sure enough, the report came that
+the insane man was dead. A few days later I
+was talking with the doctor referred to and I
+said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was an eye-witness of the assault on
+D&mdash;&mdash;." And I described the affair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have been reported to me repeatedly,"
+he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By whom?" I asked, "attendants or
+patients?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By patients," he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely," I remarked, "you don't believe
+half what insane men tell you, do you? Doctor,
+these same patients (in reality sane stool-pigeons)
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_325' name='Page_325'>[325]</a></span>
+that have been reporting me, have
+accused you of every crime in the calendar."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but," he said, "I am an old man and
+the father of a family."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Doctor," I continued, "do you believe
+that a man can be a respectable physician and
+still be insane?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you mean?" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In California lately," I replied, "A superintendent
+of an insane asylum has been accused
+of murder, arson, rape and peculation. This
+man, too, was more than fifty, had a mother,
+a wife and children, and belonged to a profession
+which ought to be more sympathetic with
+a patient than the church with its communicants.
+When a man will stoop to such crimes,
+is it not possible that there is a form of mental
+disease called partial, periodical paralysis of
+the faculty humane, and was not Robert Louis
+Stevenson right when he wrote <i>Dr. Jekyl and
+Mr. Hyde</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and
+shouted: "Don't you dare to tell anybody
+about this interview." I looked into his eyes
+and smiled, for I am positive that at that
+moment I looked into the eyes of a madman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+King Kelly, an attendant who had been on
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_326' name='Page_326'>[326]</a></span>
+duty in insane asylums for many years, was
+very energetic in trying to get information
+from the stool-pigeons. The patients used to
+pass notes around among themselves, and the
+attendants were always eager to get hold of
+those notes, expecting to find news of beats
+(escapes) about to be attempted. I knew
+that King Kelly was eager to discover "beats"
+and as I, not being a stool-pigeon, was in bad
+odor with him, I determined to give him a jar.
+So one day I wrote him the following note:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Kelly; You have been in this hospital
+for years. The socks and suspenders
+which should go to the patients are divided
+impartially between you and the other attendants.
+Of the four razors, which lately arrived
+for patients, two are in your trunk, one you
+sent to your brother in Ireland, and the fourth
+you keep in the ward for show, in case the
+doctor should be coming around."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night when I was going to bed I
+slipped the note into the Kings hand and
+whispered: "There's going to be a beat tonight."
+The King turned pale, and hurriedly
+ordered the men in the ward to bed, so that
+he could read the note. Before reading it he
+handed it to a doctor, to be sure to get the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_327' name='Page_327'>[327]</a></span>
+credit of stopping the beat as soon as possible.
+The doctor read it and gave the King the
+laugh. In the morning, when the doctor made
+his rounds, Mr. Kelly said to him: "We
+have one or two funny men in the ward who,
+instead of robbing decent people, could have
+made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's." The
+result was that the doctor put me down for
+three or four new delusions. Knowing the
+Celtic character thoroughly I used to crack
+many a joke on the King. I would say to
+another patient, as the King passed: "If it
+hadn't been for Kelly we should have escaped
+that time sure." That would make him wild.
+My gift of ridicule was more than once valuable
+to me in the mad-house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I must say that the King was pretty
+kind when a patient was ill. When I was so
+ill and weak that I didn't care whether I died
+or not, the old King used to give me extras,&mdash;milk,
+eggs and puddings. And in his heart
+the old man hated stool-pigeons, for by nature
+he was a dynamiter and believed in physical
+force and not mental treachery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last few months I served in the insane
+asylum was at Dannemora, where I was transferred
+from Matteawan. The conditions at
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_328' name='Page_328'>[328]</a></span>
+the two asylums are much the same. While
+at Dannemora I continued my efforts to be
+sent back to stir to finish my sentence, and
+used to talk to the doctors about it as often as
+I had an opportunity. A few months before
+I was released I had an interview with a Commissioner&mdash;the
+first one in three years, although
+I had repeatedly demanded to talk to one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How is it," I said, "that I am not sent
+back to stir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned to the ward doctor and asked:
+"What is this mans condition?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Imaginary wrongs," replied the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That made me angry, and I remarked,
+sarcastically: "It is curious that when a man
+tries to make a success at little things he is a
+dead failure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you mean?" asked the Superintendent,
+trying to feel me out for a new delusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I pointed to the doctor and said: "Only
+a few years ago this man was interlocutor in
+an amateur minstrel troupe. As a barn-stormer
+he was a failure. Since he has risen to the
+height of being a mad-house doctor he is a
+success."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I turned to the Commissioner and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_329' name='Page_329'>[329]</a></span>
+said: "Do you know what constitutes a cure
+in this place and in Matteawan?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd like to know," he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," I said, "when a man stoops to
+carrying tales on other patients and starts in
+to work cleaning cuspidors, then, and not till
+then, he is cured. Everybody knows that, in
+the eyes of attendants and doctors, the worst
+delusions in the asylum are wanting to go
+home, demanding more food, and disliking to
+do dirty work and bear tales."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don't know whether my talk with the
+Commissioner had any effect or not, but a
+little while after that, when my term expired,
+I was released. I had been afraid I should
+not be, for very often a man is kept in the
+asylum long after his term expires, even
+though he is no more insane than I was. When
+the stool-pigeons heard that I was to be released
+they thought I must have been a rat under
+cover, and applied every vile name to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had been in hell for several years; but
+even hell has its uses. When I was sent up
+for my third term, I thought I should not live
+my bit out, and that, as long as I did live, I
+should remain a grafter at heart. But the
+pipe house cured me, or helped to cure me, of
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_330' name='Page_330'>[330]</a></span>
+a vice which, if it had continued, would have
+made me incapable of reform, even if I had
+lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I
+went to the mad-house there had been periods
+when I had little opium, either because I could
+not obtain it, or because I was trying to
+knock it off. My sufferings in consequence
+had been violent, but the worst moral and
+physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot
+came to me after I had entered the pipe
+house; for I could practically get no opium.
+That deprivation, added to the horrors I saw
+every day, was enough to make any man
+crazy. At least, I thought so at the time. I
+must have had a good nervous system to have
+passed through it all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at
+all. During my first months in the madhouse,
+the doctor occasionally took pity on
+me and gave me a little of the drug, but taken
+in such small quantities it was worse than useless.
+He used to give me sedatives, however,
+which calmed me for a time. Occasionally,
+too, I would get a little hop from a trusty,
+who was a friend of mine, and I had smuggled
+in some tablets of morphine from stir; but the
+supply was soon exhausted, and I saw that the
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_331' name='Page_331'>[331]</a></span>
+only thing to do was to knock it off entirely.
+This I did, and made no more attempts to
+obtain the drug. For the last two years in
+the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can
+not describe the agonies I went through.
+Every nerve and muscle in my body was in
+pain most of the time, my stomach was constantly
+deranged, my eyes and mouth exuded
+water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of
+suicide were constant with me. Of course, I
+could never have given up this baleful habit
+through my own efforts alone. The pipe house
+forced me to make the attempt, and after I
+had held off for two years, I had enough
+strength to continue in the right path, although
+even now the longing for it returns to me. It
+does not seem possible that I can ever go
+back to it, for that terrible experience in the
+mad-house made an indelible impression. I
+shall never be able to wipe out those horrors
+entirely from my mind. When under the influence
+of opium I used frequently to imagine
+I smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I
+never smell certain sweet perfumes now without
+the whole horrible experience rushing
+before my mind. Life in a mad-house taught
+me a lesson I shall never forget.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_332' name='Page_332'>[332]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XIV.<br />
+<i>Out of Hell.</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+I left Dannemora asylum for the criminal
+insane on a cold winter morning. I had my
+tickets to New York, but not a cent of money.
+Relatives or friends are supposed to provide
+that. I was happy, however, and I made a
+resolution, which this time I shall keep, never
+to go to stir or the pipe house again. I knew
+very well that I could never repeat such an
+experience without going mad in reality; or
+dying. The first term I spent in stir I had
+my books and a new life of beauty and
+thought to think about. Once for all I had
+had that experience. The thought of going
+through prison routine again&mdash;the damp cells,
+the poor food, the habits contracted, with the
+mad-house at the end&mdash;no, that could never
+be for me again. I felt this, as I heard the
+loons yelling good-bye to me from the windows.
+I looked at the gloomy building and
+said to myself: "I have left Hell, and I'll
+shovel coal before I go back. All the ideas
+that brought me here I will leave behind. In
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_333' name='Page_333'>[333]</a></span>
+the future I will try to get all the good things
+out of life that I can&mdash;the really good things,
+a glimpse of which I got through my books.
+I think there is still sufficient grey matter in
+my brain for that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took the train for New York, but stopped
+off at Plattsburg and Albany to deliver some
+messages from the poor unfortunates to their
+relatives. I arrived in New York at twelve
+o'clock at night, having had nothing to eat all
+day. My relatives and friends had left the
+station, but were waiting up for me in my
+brother's house. This time I went straight to
+them. My father had died while I was in the
+pipe house, and now I determined that I
+would be at last a kind son to the mother who
+had never deserted me. I think she felt that
+I had changed and the tears that flowed from
+her eyes were not all from unhappiness. She
+told me about my father's last illness, and how
+cheerful he had been. "I bought him a pair
+of new shoes a month before he died," she
+said. "He laughed when he saw them and
+said: 'What extravagance! To buy shoes
+for a dying man!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Living right among them, I met again, of
+course, many of my old companions in crime,
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_334' name='Page_334'>[334]</a></span>
+and found that many of them had thought I
+was dead. It was only the other day that I
+met "Al", driving a peddlers wagon. He,
+like me, had squared it. "I thought you died
+in the pipe house, Jim," he said. This has
+happened to me a dozen times since my return.
+I had spent so much time in stir that the general
+impression among the guns at home
+seemed to be that I had "gone up the escape."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a general thing I found that guns who
+had squared it and become prosperous had
+never been very successful grafters. Some of
+the best box-men and burglars in the business
+are now bar-tenders in saloons owned by
+former small fry among the dips. There are
+waiters now in saloons and concert halls on
+the bowery who were far cleverer thieves than
+the men who employ them, and who are worth
+thousands. Hungry Joe is an instance.
+Once he was King of confidence men, and on
+account of his great plausibility got in on a
+noted person, on one occasion, for several
+thousand dollars. And now he will beg many
+a favor of men he would not look at in the
+old days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive.
+I had always known that, but never
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_335' name='Page_335'>[335]</a></span>
+realized it so keenly as I have since my return
+from the mad-house. Above everything else
+a grafter is suspicious, whether he has squared
+it or not&mdash;suspicious of his pals and of everybody
+else. When my old pals saw that I was
+not working with them, they wondered what
+my private graft was. When I told them I
+was on the level and was looking for a job,
+they either laughed or looked at me with
+suspicion in their eyes. They saw I was looking
+good (well-dressed) and they could not
+understand it. They put me down, some of
+them, as a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively
+that I am no longer with them, and
+most of them have given me the frosty mit.
+Only the bums who used to be grafters sail up
+to me in the Bowery. They have not got
+enough sense left even for suspicion. The
+dips who hang out in the thieves' resorts are
+beginning to hate me; not because I want to
+injure them, for I don't, but because they
+think I do. I told one of them, an old friend,
+that I was engaged in some literary work.
+He was angry in an instant and said: "You
+door mat thief. You couldn't get away with
+a coal-scuttle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day I was taking the editor of this book
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_336' name='Page_336'>[336]</a></span>
+through the Bowery, pointing out to him some
+of my old resorts, when I met an old pal of
+mine, who gave me the glad hand. We had a
+drink, and I, who was feeling good, started in
+to jolly him a little. He had told me about
+an old pal of ours who had just fallen for a
+book and was confined in a Brooklyn jail. I
+took out a piece of "copy" paper and took
+the address, intending to pay a visit to him, for
+everybody wants sympathy. What a look
+went over that grafter's face! I saw him
+glance quickly at the editor and then at me,
+and I knew then he had taken alarm, and
+probably thought we were Pinkerton men, or
+something as bad. I tried to carry it off with
+a laugh, for the place was full of thieves, and
+told him I would get him a job on a newspaper.
+He answered hastily that he had a
+good job in the pool-room and was on the
+level. He started in to try to square it with
+my companion by saying that he "adored a
+man who had a job." A little while afterwards
+he added that he hated anybody who would
+graft after he had got an honest job. Then,
+to wind up his little game of squaring himself,
+he ended by declaring that he had recently
+obtained a very good position.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_337' name='Page_337'>[337]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was one of the incidents that queered
+me with the more intelligent thieves. He
+spread the news, and whenever I meet one of
+that gang on the Bowery I get the cold
+shoulder, a gun is so mighty quick to grow
+suspicious. A grafter who follows the business
+for years is a study in psychology, and his
+two most prominent characteristics are fear
+and suspicion. If some stool-pigeon tips him
+off to the police, and he is sent to stir, he invariably
+suspects the wrong person. He tells
+his friends in stir that "Al done him," and
+pretty soon poor Al, who may be an honest
+thief, is put down as a rat. If Al goes to stir
+very often the result is a cutting match between
+the two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are many convicts in prison who lie
+awake at night concocting stories about other
+persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions.
+If the prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper
+he invariably reads the society news
+very carefully. He can tell more about the
+Four Hundred than the swells will ever know
+about themselves; and he tells very little good
+of them. Such stories are fabricated in prison
+and repeated out of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I was in Auburn stir I knew a young
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_338' name='Page_338'>[338]</a></span>
+fellow named Sterling, as straight a thief as
+ever did time. He had the courage of a
+grenadier and objected to everything that was
+mean and petty. He therefore had many
+enemies in prison, and they tried to make him
+unpopular by accusing him of a horrible crime.
+The story reached my ears and I tried to put
+a stop to it, but I only did him the more harm.
+When Sterling heard the tale he knocked one
+of his traducers senseless with an iron bar.
+Tongues wagged louder than ever and one
+day he came to me and talked about it and I
+saw a wild look in his eyes. His melancholia
+started in about that time, and he began to
+suspect everybody, including me. His enemies
+put the keepers against him and they made
+his life almost unbearable. Generally the men
+that tip off keepers to the alleged violent
+character of some convict are the worst stool-pigeons
+in the prison. Even the Messiah
+could not pass through this world without
+arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the
+name of common sense, then, could Sterling,
+or I, or any other grafter expect otherwise
+than to be traduced? It was the politicians
+who were the cause of Christ's trials; and the
+politicians are the same to-day as they were
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_339' name='Page_339'>[339]</a></span>
+then. They have very little brains, but they
+have the low cunning which is the first attribute
+of the human brute. They pretend to be
+the people's advisers, but pile up big bank
+accounts. Even the convict scum that come
+from the lower wards of the city have all the
+requisites of the successful politician. Nor
+can one say that these criminals are of low
+birth, for they trace their ancestors back for
+centuries. The fact that convicts slander one
+another with glee and hear with joy of the
+misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that they
+come from a very old family; from the wretched
+human stock that demanded the crucifixion of
+Christ.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something
+I should like to eliminate from my own character.
+Even now I am afflicted with it.
+Since my release I often have the old feeling
+come over me that I am being watched; and
+sometimes without any reason at all. Only
+recently I was riding on a Brooklyn car, when
+a man sitting opposite happened to glance at
+me two or three times. I gave him an irritated
+look. Then he stared at me, to see what
+was the matter, I suppose. That was too
+much, and I asked him, with my nerves on
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_340' name='Page_340'>[340]</a></span>
+edge, if he had ever seen me before. He said
+"No", with a surprised look, and I felt cheap,
+as I always do after such an incident. A
+neighbor of mine has a peculiar habit of
+watching me quietly whenever I visit his
+family. I know that he is ignorant of my
+past but when he stares at me, I am rattled.
+I begin to suspect that he is studying me,
+wondering who I am. The other day I said
+to him, irritably: "Mr. K&mdash;&mdash;, you have a
+bad habit of watching people." He laughed
+carelessly and I, getting hot, said: "Mr.
+K&mdash;&mdash; when I visit people it is not with the
+intention of stealing anything." I left the
+house in a huff and his sister, as I afterwards
+found, rebuked him for his bad manners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being
+over suspicious. I am suspicious even of my
+family. Sometimes when I sit quietly at
+home with my mother in the evening, as has
+grown to be a habit with me, I see her look at
+me. I begin immediately to think that she is
+wondering whether I am grafting again. It
+makes me very nervous, and I sometimes put
+on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be
+alone. One day, when I was in stir, my
+mother visited me, as she always did when they
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_341' name='Page_341'>[341]</a></span>
+gave her a chance. In the course of our conversation
+she told me that on my release I
+had better leave the city and go to some place
+where I was not known. "For," she said,
+"your character, my boy, is bad." I
+grabbed her by the arm and exclaimed:
+"Who is it that is circulating these d&mdash;&mdash; stories
+about me?" My poor mother merely
+meant, of course, that I was known as a thief,
+but I thought some of the other convicts had
+slandered me to her. It was absurd, of
+course, but the outside world cannot understand
+how suspicious a grafter is. I have
+often seen a man, who afterwards became
+insane, begin being queer through suspiciousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious
+of me, when I told them I had squared
+it, or when I refused to say anything about
+my doings. Of course I don't care, for I hate
+the Bowery now and everything in it. Whenever
+I went, as I did several times with my
+editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust
+passed over me. I pity my old pals, but they
+no longer interest me. I look upon them as
+failures. I have seen a new light and I shall
+follow it. Whatever the public may think of
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_342' name='Page_342'>[342]</a></span>
+this book, it has already been a blessing to
+me. For it has been honest work that I and
+my friend the editor have done together, and
+leads me to think that there may yet be a new
+life for me. I feel now that I should prefer to
+talk and associate with the meanest workingman
+in this city than with the swellest thief.
+For a long time I have really despised myself.
+When old friends and relatives look at me
+askance I say to myself: "How can I prove
+to them that I am not the same as I was in
+the past?" No wonder the authorities thought
+I was mad. I have spent the best years of
+my life behind the prison bars. I could have
+made out of myself almost anything I wanted,
+for I had the three requisites of success: personal
+appearance, health and, I think, some
+brains. But what have I done? After ruining
+my life, I have not even received the proverbial
+mess of pottage. As I look back upon
+my life both introspectively and retrospectively
+I do not wonder that society at large
+despises the criminal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am not trying to point a moral or pose as
+a reformer. I cannot say that I quit the old
+life because of any religious feeling. I am
+not one of those who have reformed by finding
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_343' name='Page_343'>[343]</a></span>
+Jesus at the end of a gas pipe which they
+were about to use as a black jack on a citizen,
+just in order to finger his long green. I only
+saw by painful experience that there is nothing
+in a life of crime. I ran up against society,
+and found that I had struck something
+stronger and harder than a stone wall. But it
+was not that alone that made me reform.
+What was it? Was it the terrible years I
+spent in prison? Was it the confinement in a
+mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine
+become drivelling idiots? Was it my reading
+of the great authors, and my becoming
+acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the
+great men of the world? Was it a combination
+of these things? Perhaps so, but even
+that does not entirely explain it, does not go
+deep enough. I have said that I am not religious,
+and I am not. And yet I have experienced
+something indefinable, which I suppose
+some people might call an awakening of the
+soul. What is that, after all, but the realization
+that your way of life is ruining you even
+to the very foundation of your nature?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking
+in religion; for certainly the character of
+Christ strongly appeals to me. I don't care
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_344' name='Page_344'>[344]</a></span>
+for creeds, but the personality of the Nazarene,
+when stripped of the aroma of divinity,
+appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether
+they are atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any
+man that has understanding reveres the life of
+Christ, for He practiced what He preached
+and died for humanity. He was a perfect
+specimen of manhood, and had developed to
+the highest degree that trait which is lacking
+in most all men&mdash;the faculty humane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I believe that a time comes in the lives of
+many grafters when they desire to reform.
+Some do reform for good and all, and I shall
+show the world that I am one of them; but
+the difficulties in the way are great, and many
+fall again by the wayside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They come out of prison marked men.
+Many observers can tell an ex-convict on sight.
+The lock-step is one of the causes. It gives a
+man a peculiar gait which he will retain all
+his life. The convicts march close together
+and cannot raise their chests. They have to
+keep their faces turned towards the screw.
+Breathing is difficult, and most convicts suffer
+in consequence from catarrh, and a good
+many from lung trouble. Walking in lock-step
+is not good exercise, and makes the men
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_345' name='Page_345'>[345]</a></span>
+nervous. When the convict is confined in his
+cell he paces up and down. The short turn
+is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his
+mind. That short walk will always have control
+of me. I cannot sit down now to eat or
+write, without jumping up every five minutes
+in order to take that short walk. I have
+become so used to it that I do not want to
+leave the house, for I can pace up and down
+in my room. I can take that small stretch all
+day long and not be tired, but if I walk a long
+straight distance I get very much fatigued.
+When I wait for a train I always begin that
+short walk on the platform. I have often
+caught myself walking just seven feet one way,
+and then turning around and walking seven
+feet in the opposite direction. Another physical
+mark, caused by a criminal life rather than
+by a long sojourn in stir, is an expressionless
+cast of countenance. The old grafter never
+expresses any emotions. He has schooled
+himself until his face is a mask, which betrays
+nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A much more serious difficulty in the way
+of reform is the ex-convict's health which is
+always bad if a long term of years has been
+served. Moreover, his brain has often lost its
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_346' name='Page_346'>[346]</a></span>
+equilibrium and powers of discernment. When
+he gets out of prison his chance of being able
+to do any useful work is slight. He knows
+no trade, and he is not strong enough to do
+hard day labor. He is given only ten dollars,
+when he leaves stir, with which to begin life
+afresh. A man who has served a long term
+is not steady above the ears until he has been
+at liberty several months; and what can such
+a man do with ten dollars? It would be
+cheaper for the state in the end to give an
+ex-convict money enough to keep him for several
+months; for then a smaller percentage
+would return to stir. It would give the man
+a chance to make friends, to look for a job,
+and to show the world that he is in earnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A criminal who is trying to reform is generally
+a very helpless being. He was not, to
+begin with, the strongest man mentally, and
+after confinement is still less so. He is preoccupied,
+suspicious and a dreamer, and when
+he gets a glimpse of himself in all his naked
+realities, is apt to become depressed and discouraged.
+He is easily led, and certainly no
+man needs a good friend as much as the ex-convict.
+He is distrusted by everybody, is
+apt to be "piped off" wherever he goes, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_347' name='Page_347'>[347]</a></span>
+finds it hard to get work which he can do.
+There are hundreds of men in our prisons to-day
+who, if they could find somebody who
+would trust them and take a genuine interest
+in them, would reform and become respectable
+citizens. That is where the Tammany
+politician, whom I have called Senator Wet
+Coin is a better man than the majority of
+reformers. When a man goes to him and says
+he wants to square it he takes him by the
+hand, trusts and helps him. Wet Coin does
+not hand him a soup ticket and a tract nor
+does he hold on tight to his own watch chain
+fearing for his red super, hastily bidding the
+ex-gun to be with Jesus.
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_348' name='Page_348'>[348]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<h2>
+EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT.
+</h2>
+
+<p>
+The life of the thief is at an end; and the
+life of the man and good citizen has begun.
+For I am convinced that Jim is strictly on the
+level, and will remain so. The only thing yet
+lacking to make his reform sure is a job. I,
+and those of my friends who are interested,
+have as yet failed to find anything for him to
+do that is, under the circumstances, desirable.
+The story of my disappointments in this respect
+is a long one, and I shall not tell it. I
+have learned to think that patience is the
+greatest of the virtues; and of this virtue an
+ex-gun needs an enormous amount. If Jim
+and his friends prove good in this way, the job
+will come. But waiting is hard, for Jim is
+nervous, in bad health, with an old mother to
+look after, and with new ambitions which
+make keen his sense of time lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One word about his character: I sometimes
+think of my friend the ex-thief as "Light-fingered
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_349' name='Page_349'>[349]</a></span>
+Jim"; and in that name there lingers
+a note of vague apology. As he told his
+story to me, I saw everywhere the mark of
+the natural rogue, of the man grown with a
+roguish boy's brain. The humor of much of
+his tale seemed to me strong. I was never
+able to look upon him as a deliberate malefactor.
+He constantly impressed me as gentle
+and imaginative, impressionable and easily
+influenced, but not naturally vicious or vindictive.
+If I am right, his reform is nothing
+more or less than the coming to years of sober
+maturity. He is now thirty-five years old, and
+as he himself puts it: "Some men acquire wisdom
+at twenty-one, others at thirty-five, and
+some never."
+<span class='pagenum'><a id='Page_350' name='Page_350'>[350]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes p6">
+<h2 class="fntitle">
+FOOTNOTES
+</h2>
+
+<p class='footnote' id='FN_A'>
+<span class='label'><a href='#FA_A'>[A]</a></span> Summer of 1902
+</p>
+
+<p class='footnote' id='FN_B'>
+<span class='label'><a href='#FA_B'>[B]</a></span> <i>Sic.</i> (Editor's Note.)
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="widead p6">
+
+<p class="center b20">
+EVERYMAN
+</p>
+<hr class="l30" />
+
+<p class="b13">
+The XVth Century morality play, with
+reproductions of old wood cuts.
+$1.00, postage paid or at your bookseller's.
+The first book to bear the imprint of
+Fox, Duffield &amp; Company.
+</p>
+<hr class="l30" />
+
+<p>
+"In typography, in paper and in make-up the edition is admirable.
+It is a good beginning and sets a very high standard."
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<i>The Sun, New York.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The best of the old moralities, easy to read and fair to
+look upon."
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<i>Evening Post, New York.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The book is well done, and should find a place on the
+shelves and in the spirits of all who care for the best in life and
+art."
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<span class='smcap'>John Corbin</span>, in
+</p>
+<p class="right"><i>The New York Times</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Everyman" in book form will be welcomed by the large
+number of people whose attention has been called to this
+ancient morality play by its admirable presentation in different
+cities."
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<i>The Outlook, New York.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The first publication of (the new house) "Everyman," the
+fifteenth century morality play given in Boston this winter, is of
+artistic design and of handsome, agreeable type. The old woodcuts
+are reproduced from the first ancient edition of the play."
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<i>Boston Journal.</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="l30" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="b12">
+NEW YORK
+</span><br />
+
+<span class="b13">
+FOX, DUFFIELD &amp; COMPANY,
+</span><br />
+
+<span class="b12">
+36 East 21st Street.
+</span>
+</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45169 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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-Project Gutenberg's The Autobiography of a Thief, by Hutchins Hapgood

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: The Autobiography of a Thief

-

-Author: Hutchins Hapgood

-

-Release Date: March 18, 2014 [EBook #45169]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A THIEF ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed

-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

-produced from images generously made available by The

-Internet Archive)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-Transcriber's Note:

-

-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have

-  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

-

-  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

-

-

-

-

-The Autobiography of a Thief.

-

-

-

-

-     The Autobiography of

-     a Thief

-

-     Recorded by

-     HUTCHINS HAPGOOD

-     Author of "The Spirit of the Ghetto," etc.

-

-

-     NEW YORK

-     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY

-     1903

-

-

-

-

-     Copyright, 1903, BY

-     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY

-

-     Entered at the Library of Congress, Washington, U. S. A.

-

-     Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.

-

-     Published May, 1903.

-

-

-

-

-"_Oh, happy he who can still hope to emerge from this sea of error!_"

-

-                                                               FAUST.

-

-"_There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to

-purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like; therefore

-why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And

-if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but

-like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch because they can do no

-other._"

-

-                                                                 BACON.

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS.

-

-

-  CHAPTER                                                       PAGE

-              Editor's Note                                        9

-  I.          Boyhood and Early Crime                             15

-  II.         My First Fall                                       34

-  III.        Mixed Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards      50

-  IV.         When the Graft Was Good                             73

-  V.          Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds                      89

-  VI.         What the Burglar Faces                             107

-  VII.        In Stir                                            132

-  VIII.       In Stir (Continued)                                154

-  IX.         In Stir and Out                                    182

-  X.          At the Graft Again                                 202

-  XI.         Back to Prison                                     228

-  XII.        On the Outside Again                               255

-  XIII.       In the Mad-House                                   300

-  XIV.        Out of Hell                                        332

-              Editor's Postscript                                348

-

-

-

-

-Editor's Note.

-

-

-I met the ex-pickpocket and burglar whose autobiography follows soon

-after his release from a third term in the penitentiary. For several

-weeks I was not particularly interested in him. He was full of a desire

-to publish in the newspapers an exposé of conditions obtaining in two

-of our state institutions, his motive seeming partly revenge and partly

-a very genuine feeling that he had come in contact with a systematic

-crime against humanity. But as I continued to see more of him, and

-learned much about his life, my interest grew; for I soon perceived

-that he not only had led a typical thief's life, but was also a man

-of more than common natural intelligence, with a gift of vigorous

-expression. With little schooling he had yet educated himself, mainly

-by means of the prison libraries, until he had a good and individually

-expressed acquaintance with many of the English classics, and with some

-of the masterpieces of philosophy.

-

-That this ex-convict, when a boy on the East Side of New York City,

-should have taken to the "graft" seemed to me, as he talked about

-it, the most natural thing in the world. His parents were honest, but

-ignorant and poor. One of his brothers, a normal and honorable man,

-is a truck driver with a large family; and his relatives and honest

-friends in general belong to the most modest class of working people.

-The swell among them is another brother, who is a policeman; but Jim,

-the ex-convict, is by far the cleverest and most intelligent of the

-lot. I have often seen him and his family together, on Saturday nights,

-when the clan gathers in the truckman's house for a good time, and

-he is the life of the occasion, and admired by the others. Jim was an

-unusually energetic and ambitious boy, but the respectable people he

-knew did not appeal to his imagination. As he played on the street,

-other boys pointed out to him the swell thief at the corner saloon, and

-told him tales of big robberies and exciting adventures, and the prizes

-of life seemed to him to lie along the path of crime. There was no one

-to teach him what constitutes real success, and he went in for crime

-with energy and enthusiasm.

-

-It was only after he had become a professional thief and had done time

-in the prisons that he began to see that crime does not pay. He saw

-that all his friends came to ruin, that his own health was shattered,

-and that he stood on the verge of the mad-house. His self-education in

-prison helped him, too, to the perception that he had made a terrible

-mistake. He came to have intellectual ambitions and no longer took

-an interest in his old companions. After several weeks of constant

-association with him I became morally certain that his reform was

-as genuine as possible under the circumstances; and that, with fair

-success in the way of getting something to do, he would remain honest.

-

-I therefore proposed to him to write an autobiography. He took up

-the idea with eagerness, and through the entire period of our work

-together, has shown an unwavering interest in the book and very decided

-acumen and common sense. The method employed in composing the volume

-was that, practically, of the interview. From the middle of March to

-the first of July we met nearly every afternoon, and many evenings,

-at a little German café on the East Side. There, I took voluminous

-notes, often asking questions, but taking down as literally as

-possible his story in his own words; to such a degree is this true,

-that the following narrative is an authentic account of his life, with

-occasional descriptions and character-sketches of his friends of the

-Under World. Even without my explicit assurance, the autobiography

-bears sufficient internal evidence of the fact that, essentially, it is

-a thief's own story. Many hours of the day time, when I was busy with

-other things, my friend--for I have come to look upon him as such--was

-occupied with putting down on paper character-sketches of his pals

-and their careers, or recording his impressions of the life they had

-followed. After I had left town for the summer, in order to prepare

-this volume, I wrote to Jim repeatedly, asking for more material on

-certain points. This he always furnished in a manner which showed his

-continued interest, and a literary sense, though fragmentary, of no

-common kind.

-

-     H. H.

-

-

-

-

-The Autobiography of a Thief.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER I.

-

-_Boyhood and Early Crime._

-

-

-I have been a professional thief for more than twenty years. Half

-of that time I have spent in state's prison, and the other half in

-"grafting" in one form or another. I was a good pickpocket and a fairly

-successful burglar; and I have known many of the best crooks in the

-country. I have left the business for good, and my reasons will appear

-in the course of this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire

-frankness. I shall not try to defend myself. I shall try merely to tell

-the truth. Perhaps in so doing I shall explain myself.

-

-I was born on the east side of New York City in 1868, of poor but

-honest parents. My father was an Englishman who had married an Irish

-girl and emigrated to America, where he had a large family, no one of

-whom, with the exception of myself, went wrong. For many years he was

-an employee of Brown Brothers and Company and was a sober, industrious

-man, and a good husband and kind father. To me, who was his favorite,

-he was perhaps too kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember

-that when I was five years old he bought me a twenty-five dollar suit

-of clothes. I was a vigorous, handsome boy, with red, rosy cheeks and

-was not only the pet of my family, but the life of the neighborhood as

-well.

-

-At that time, which is as far back as I can remember, we were living

-on Munro Street, in the Seventh Ward. This was then a good residential

-neighborhood, and we were comfortable in our small, wooden house. The

-people about us were Irish and German, the large Jewish emigration

-not having begun yet. Consequently, lower New York did not have such

-a strong business look as it has now, but was cleanly and respectable.

-The gin-mills were fewer in number, and were comparatively decent. When

-the Jews came they started many basement saloons, or cafés, and for the

-first time, I believe, the social evil began to be connected with the

-drinking places.

-

-I committed my first theft at the age of six. Older heads put me up to

-steal money from the till of my brother's grocery store. It happened

-this way. There were several much older boys in the neighborhood who

-wanted money for row-boating and theatres. One was eighteen years old,

-a ship-caulker; and another was a roustabout of seventeen. I used to

-watch these boys practice singing and dancing in the big marble lots

-in the vicinity. How they fired my youthful imagination! They told me

-about the theatres then in vogue--Tony Pastor's, the old Globe, Wood's

-Museum and Josh Hart's Theatre Comique, afterwards owned by Harrigan

-and Hart.

-

-One day, George, the roustabout, said to me: "Kid, do you want to go

-row-boating with us?" When I eagerly consented he said it was too bad,

-but the boat cost fifty cents and he only had a ten-cent stamp (a small

-paper bill: in those days there was very little silver in circulation).

-I did not bite at once, I was so young, and they treated me to one of

-those wooden balls fastened to a rubber string that you throw out and

-catch on the rebound. I was tickled to death. I shall never forget that

-day as long as I live. It was a Saturday, and all day long those boys

-couldn't do too much for me.

-

-Towards evening they explained to me how to rob my brother's till. They

-arranged to be outside the store at a certain hour, and wait until I

-found an opportunity to pass the money to them. My mother watched in

-the store that evening, but when she turned her back I opened the till

-and gave the eight or ten dollars it contained to the waiting boys. We

-all went row-boating and had a jolly time. But they were not satisfied

-with that. What I had done once, I could do again, and they held out

-the theatre to me, and pretended to teach me how to dance the clog.

-Week in and week out I furnished them with money, and in recompense

-they would sometimes take me to a matinée. What a joy! How I grew to

-love the vaudeville artists with their songs and dances, and the wild

-Bowery melodramas! It was a great day for Indian plays, and the number

-of Indians I have scalped in imagination, after one of these shows, is

-legion.

-

-Some of the small boys, however, who did not share in the booty grew

-jealous and told my father what was doing. The result was that a

-certain part of my body was sore for weeks afterwards. My feelings were

-hurt, too, for I did not know at that time that I was doing anything

-very bad. My father, indeed, accompanied the beating with a sermon,

-telling me that I had not only broken God's law but had robbed those

-that loved me. One of my brothers, who is now a policeman in the

-city service, told me that I had taken my ticket for the gallows. The

-brother I had robbed, who afterwards became a truckman, patted me on

-the head and told me not to do it again. He was always a good fellow.

-And yet they all seemed to like to have me play about the streets with

-the other little boys, perhaps because the family was large, and there

-was not much room in the house.

-

-So I had to give up the till; but I hated to, for even at that age I

-had begun to think that the world owed me a living! To get revenge I

-used to hide in a charcoal shed and throw pebbles at my father as he

-passed. I was indeed the typical bad boy, and the apple of my mother's

-eye.

-

-When I couldn't steal from the till any more, I used to take clothes

-from my relatives and sell them for theatre money; or any other object

-I thought I could make away with. I did not steal merely for theatre

-money but partly for excitement too. I liked to run the risk of being

-discovered. So I was up to any scheme the older boys proposed. Perhaps

-if I had been raised in the wild West I should have made a good trapper

-or cow-boy, instead of a thief. Or perhaps even birds' nests and fish

-would have satisfied me, if they had been accessible.

-

-One of my biggest exploits as a small boy was made when I was eight

-years old. Tom's mother had a friend visiting her, whom Tom and I

-thought we would rob. Tom, who was a big boy, and some of his friends,

-put me through a hall bed-room window, and I made away with a box of

-valuable jewelry. But it did me no good for the big boys sold it to a

-woman who kept a second-hand store on Division Street, and I received

-no part of the proceeds.

-

-My greatest youthful disappointment came about four weeks later. A boy

-put me up to steal a box out of a wagon. I boldly made away with it and

-ran into a hall-way, where he was waiting. The two of us then went into

-his back-yard, opened the box and found a beautiful sword, the handle

-studded with little stones. But the other boy had promised me money,

-and here was only a sword! I cried for theatre money, and then the

-other boy boxed my ears. He went to his father, who was a free mason,

-and got a fifty cent "stamp." He gave me two three-cent pieces and

-kept the rest. I shall never forget that injustice as long as I live.

-I remember it as plainly as if it happened yesterday. We put the sword

-under a mill in Cherry Street and it disappeared a few hours later. I

-thought the boy and his father had stolen it, and told them so. I got

-another beating, but I believe my suspicion was correct, for the free

-mason used to give me a ten cent stamp whenever he saw me--to square

-me, I suppose.

-

-When it came to contests with boys of my own size I was not so meek,

-however. One day I was playing in Jersey, in the back-yard of a boy

-friend's house. He displayed his pen-knife, and it took my fancy. I

-wanted to play with it, and asked him to lend it to me. He refused,

-and I grabbed his hand. He plunged the knife into my leg. I didn't like

-that, and told him so, not in words, but in action. I remember that I

-took his ear nearly off with a hatchet. I was then eight years old.

-

-About this time I began to go to Sunday School, with what effect on my

-character remains to be seen. One day I heard a noted priest preach.

-I had one dollar and eighty cents in my pocket which I had stolen from

-my brother. I thought that each coin in my pocket was turning red-hot

-because of my anxiety to spend it. While the good man was talking of

-the Blessed One I was inwardly praying for him to shut up. He had two

-beautiful pictures which he intended to give to the best listener among

-the boys. When he had finished his talk he called me to him, gave me

-the pictures and said: "It's such boys as you who, when they grow up,

-are a pride to our Holy Church."

-

-A year later I went to the parochial school, but did not stay long,

-for they would not have me. I was a sceptic at seven and an agnostic

-at eight, and I objected to the prayers every five minutes. I had

-no respect for ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination in

-the slightest, partly because I learned at an early age to see the

-hypocrisy of many good people. One day half a dozen persons were

-killed in an explosion. One of them I had known. Neighbors said of him:

-"What a good man has gone," and the priest and my mother said he was

-in heaven. But he was the same man who had often told me not to take

-money from the money-drawer, for that was dangerous, but to search my

-father's pockets when he was asleep. For this advice I had given the

-rascal many a dollar. Ever after that I was suspicious of those who

-were over-virtuous. I told my mother I did not believe her and the

-priest, and she slapped my face and told me to mind my catechism.

-

-Everything mischievous that happened at the parochial school was laid

-to my account, perhaps not entirely unjustly. If a large firecracker

-exploded, it was James--that was my name. If some one sat on a bent

-pin, the blame was due to James. If the class tittered teacher Nolan

-would rush at me with a hickory stick and yell: "It's you, you devil's

-imp!" and then he'd put the question he had asked a hundred times

-before: "Who med (made) you?"

-

-I was finally sent away from the parochial school because I insulted

-one of the teachers, a Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing

-him whenever he studied his catechism, which I believed he already

-knew by heart. This brother's favorite, by the way, was a boy who used

-to say his prayers louder than anybody else. I met him fifteen years

-afterwards in state's prison. He had been settled for "vogel-grafting,"

-that is, taking little girls into hall-ways and robbing them of their

-gold ear-rings. He turned out pretty well, however, in one sense, for

-he became one of the best shoe-makers in Sing Sing.

-

-Although, as one can see from the above incidents, I was not given to

-veneration, yet in some ways I was easily impressed. I always loved old

-buildings, for instance. I was baptized in the building which was until

-lately the Germania Theatre, and which was then a church; and that

-old structure always had a strange fascination for me. I used to hang

-about old churches and theatres, and preferred on such occasions to

-be alone. Sometimes I sang and danced, all by myself, in an old music

-hall, and used to pore over the names marked in lead pencil on the

-walls. Many is the time I have stood at night before some old building

-which has since been razed to the ground, and even now I like to go

-round to their sites. I like almost anything that is old, even old men

-and women. I never loved my mother much until she was an old woman. All

-stories of the past interested me; and later, when I was in prison, I

-was specially fond of history.

-

-After I was dismissed from the parochial school, I entered the public

-school, where I stayed somewhat longer. There I studied reading,

-writing, arithmetic and later, grammar, and became acquainted with

-a few specimens of literature. I remember Longfellow's _Excelsior_

-was a favorite of mine. I was a bright, intelligent boy, and, if it

-had not been for conduct, in which my mark was low, I should always

-have had the gold medal, in a class of seventy. I used to play truant

-constantly, and often went home and told my mother that I knew more

-than the teacher. She believed me, for certainly I was the most

-intelligent member of my family.

-

-Yes, I was more intelligent than my parents or any of my brothers and

-sisters. Much good it has done me! Now that I have "squared it" I see a

-good deal of my family, and they are all happy in comparison with me.

-On Saturday nights I often go around to see my brother the truckman.

-He has come home tired from his week's work, but happy with his twelve

-dollar salary and the prospect of a holiday with his wife and children.

-They sit about in their humble home on Saturday night, with their pint

-of beer, their songs and their jovial stories. Whenever I am there,

-I am, in a way, the life of the party. My repartee is quicker than

-that of the others. I sing gayer songs and am jollier with the working

-girls who visit my brother's free home. But when I look at my stupid

-brother's quiet face and calm and strong bearing, and then realize my

-own shattered health and nerves and profound discontent, I know that

-my slow brother has been wiser than I. It has taken me many years on

-the rocky path to realize this truth. For by nature I am an Ishmælite,

-that is, a man of impulse, and it is only lately that wisdom has been

-knocked into me.

-

-Certainly I did not realize my fate when I was a kid of ten, filled

-with contempt for my virtuous and obscure family! I was overflowing

-with spirits and arrogance, and began to play "hooky" so often that I

-practically quit school about this time.

-

-It was then, too, that we moved again, this time to Cherry Street, to

-the wreck of my life. At the end of the block on which we lived was a

-corner saloon, the headquarters of a band of professional thieves. They

-were known as the Old Border Gang, and among them were several very

-well-known and successful crooks. They used to pass our way regularly,

-and boys older than I (my boy companions always had the advantage of me

-in years) used to point the famous "guns" out to me. When I saw one of

-these great men pass, my young imagination was fired with the ambition

-to be as he was! With what eagerness we used to talk about "Juggy,"

-and the daring robbery he committed in Brooklyn! How we went over again

-and again in conversation, the trick by which Johnny the "grafter" had

-fooled the detective in the matter of the bonds!

-

-We would tell stories like these by the hour, and then go round to

-the corner, to try to get a look at some of the celebrities in the

-saloon. A splendid sight one of these swell grafters was, as he stood

-before the bar or smoked his cigar on the corner! Well dressed, with

-clean linen collar and shirt, a diamond in his tie, an air of ease and

-leisure all about him, what a contrast he formed to the respectable

-hod-carrier or truckman or mechanic, with soiled clothes and no collar!

-And what a contrast was his dangerous life to that of the virtuous

-laborer!

-

-The result was that I grew to think the career of the grafter was the

-only one worth trying for. The real prizes of the world I knew nothing

-about. All that I saw of any interest to me was crooked, and so I began

-to pilfer right and left: there was nothing else for me to do. Besides

-I loved to treat those older than myself. The theatre was a growing

-passion with me and I began to be very much interested in the baseball

-games. I used to go to the Union grounds in Brooklyn, where after the

-third inning, I could usually get admitted for fifteen cents, to see

-the old Athletics or Mutuals play. I needed money for these amusements,

-for myself and other boys, and I knew of practically only one way to

-get it.

-

-If we could not get the money at home, either by begging or stealing,

-we would tap tills, if possible, in the store of some relative; or tear

-brass off the steps in the halls of flats and sell it at junk shops. A

-little later, we used to go to Grand Street and steal shoes and women's

-dresses from the racks in the open stores, and pawn them. In the old

-Seventh Ward there used to be a good many silver plates on the doors of

-private houses. These we would take off with chisels and sell to metal

-dealers. We had great fun with a Dutchman who kept a grocery store

-on Cherry Street. We used to steal his strawberries, and did not care

-whether he saw us or not. If he grabbed one of us, the rest of the gang

-would pelt him with stones until he let go, and then all run around the

-corner before the "copper" came into sight.

-

-All this time I grew steadily bolder and more desperate, and the day

-soon came when I took consequences very little into consideration.

-My father and mother sometimes learned of some exploit of mine, and a

-beating would be the result. I still got the blame for everything, as

-in school, and was sometimes punished unjustly. I was very sensitive

-and this would rankle in my soul for weeks, so that I stole harder

-than ever. And yet I think that there was some good in me. I was

-never cruel to any animals, except cats; for cats, I used to tie their

-tails together and throw them over a clothesline to dry. I liked dogs,

-horses, children and women, and have always been gentle to them. What

-I really was was a healthy young animal, with a vivid imagination and

-a strong body. I learned early to swim and fight and play base-ball.

-Dime and nickel novels always seemed very tame to me; I found it much

-more exciting to hear true stories about the grafters at the corner

-saloon!--big men, with whom as yet I did not dare to speak; I could

-only stare at them with awe.

-

-I shall never forget the first time I ever saw a pickpocket at work.

-It was when I was about thirteen years old. A boy of my own age, Zack,

-a great pal of mine, was with me. Zack and I understood one another

-thoroughly and well knew how to get theatre money by petty pilfering,

-but of real graft we were as yet ignorant, although we had heard many

-stories about the operations of actual, professional thieves. We used

-to steal rides in the cars which ran to and from the Grand Street

-ferries; and run off with overcoats and satchels when we had a chance.

-One day we were standing on the rear platform when a woman boarded the

-car, and immediately behind her a gentlemanly looking man with a high

-hat. He was well-dressed and looked about thirty-five years old. As

-the lady entered the car, the man, who stayed outside on the platform,

-pulled his hand away from her side and with it came something from her

-pocket--a silk handkerchief. I was on the point of asking the woman

-if she had dropped something, when Zack said to me, "Mind your own

-business." The man, who had taken the pocket-book along with the silk

-handkerchief, seeing that we were "next," gave us the handkerchief and

-four dollars in ten and fifteen cent paper money ("stamps").

-

-Zack and I put our heads together. We were "wiser" than we had been

-half an hour before. We had learned our first practical lesson in the

-world of graft. We had seen a pickpocket at work, and there seemed to

-us no reason why we should not try the game ourselves. Accordingly a

-day or two afterwards we arranged to pick our first pocket. We had,

-indeed, often taken money from the pockets of our relatives, but that

-was when the trousers hung in the closet or over a chair, and the owner

-was absent. This was the first time we had hunted in the open, so to

-speak; the first time our prey was really alive.

-

-It was an exciting occasion. Zack and I, who were "wise," (that is,

-up to snuff) got several other boys to help us, though we did not tell

-them what was doing, for they "were not buried" yet, that is, "dead,"

-or ignorant. We induced five or six of them to jump on and off the rear

-platform of a car, making as much noise and confusion as possible, so

-as to distract the attention of any "sucker" that might board. Soon I

-saw a woman about to get on the car. My heart beat with excitement, and

-I signalled to Zack that I would make the "touch." In those days women

-wore big sacques with pockets in the back, open, so that one could

-look in and see what was there. I took the silk handkerchief on the

-run, and with Zack following, went up a side street and gloried under

-a lamp-post. In the corner of the handkerchief, tied up, were five

-two-dollar bills, and for weeks I was J. P. Morgan.

-

-For a long time Zack and I felt we were the biggest boys on the block.

-We boasted about our great "touch" to the older boys of eighteen or

-nineteen years of age who had pointed out to us the grafters at the

-corner saloon. They were not "in it" now. They even condescended to be

-treated to a drink by us. We spent the money recklessly, for we knew

-where we could get more. In this state of mind, soon after that, I met

-the "pick" whom we had seen at work. He had heard of our achievement

-and kindly "staked" us, and gave us a few private lessons in picking

-pockets. He saw that we were promising youngsters, and for the sake

-of the profession gave us a little of his valuable time. We were proud

-enough, to be taken notice of by this great man. We felt that we were

-rising in the world of graft, and began to wear collars and neckties.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER II.

-

-_My First Fall._

-

-

-For the next two years, until I was fifteen, I made a great deal

-of money at picking pockets, without getting into difficulties with

-the police. We operated, at that time, entirely upon women, and were

-consequently known technically as Moll-buzzers--or "flies" that "buzz"

-about women.

-

-In those days, and for several years later, Moll-buzzing, as well as

-picking pockets in general, was an easy and lucrative graft. Women's

-dresses seemed to be arranged for our especial benefit; the back

-pocket, with its purse and silk handkerchief could be picked even by

-the rawest thief. It was in the days when every woman had to possess

-a fine silk handkerchief; even the Bowery "cruisers" (street-walkers)

-carried them; and to those women we boys used to sell the handkerchiefs

-we had stolen, receiving as much as a dollar, or even two dollars, in

-exchange.

-

-It was a time, too, before the great department stores and delivery

-wagon systems, and shoppers were compelled to carry more money with

-them than they do now, and to take their purchases home themselves

-through the streets. Very often before they reached their destination

-they had unconsciously delivered some of the goods to us. At that time,

-too, the wearing of valuable pins and stones, both by men and women,

-was more general than it is now. Furthermore, the "graft" was younger.

-There were not so many in the business, and the system of police

-protection was not so good. Altogether those were halcyon days for us.

-

-The fact that we were very young helped us particularly in this

-business, for a boy can get next to a woman in a car or on the street

-more easily than a man can. He is not so apt to arouse her suspicions;

-and if he is a handsome, innocent-looking boy, and clever, he can go

-far in this line of graft. He usually begins this business when he

-is about thirteen, and by the age of seventeen generally graduates

-into something higher. Living off women, in any form, does not appeal

-very long to the imagination of the genuine grafter. Yet I know

-thieves who continue to be Moll-buzzers all their lives; and who are

-low enough to make their living entirely off poor working girls. The

-self-respecting grafter detests this kind; and, indeed, these buzzers

-never see prosperous days after their boyhood. The business grows

-more difficult as the thief grows older. He cannot approach his prey

-so readily, and grows shabbier with declining returns; and shabbiness

-makes it difficult for him to mix up in crowds where this kind of work

-is generally done.

-

-For several years we youngsters made a great deal of money at this

-line. We made a "touch" almost every day, and I suppose our "mob,"

-composed of four or five lads who worked together, averaged three or

-four hundred dollars a week. We worked mainly on street cars at the

-Ferry, and the amount of "technique" required for robbing women was

-very slight. Two or three of us generally went together. One acted as

-the "dip," or "pick," and the other two as "stalls." The duty of the

-"stalls" was to distract the attention of the "sucker" or victim, or

-otherwise to hide the operations of the "dip". One stall would get

-directly in front of the woman to be robbed, the other directly behind

-her. If she were in such a position in the crowd as to render it hard

-for the "dip," or "wire" to make a "touch," one of the stalls might

-bump against her, and beg her pardon, while the dip made away with her

-"leather," or pocket-book.

-

-Shortly before I was fifteen years old I was "let in" to another kind

-of graft. One day Tim, Zack and I were boasting of our earnings to an

-older boy, twenty years of age, whose name was Pete. He grinned, and

-said he knew something better than Moll-buzzing. Then he told us about

-"shoving the queer" and got us next to a public truckman who supplied

-counterfeit bills. Our method was to carry only one bad bill among

-several good ones, so that if we were collared we could maintain our

-innocence. We worked this as a "side-graft," for some time. Pete and I

-used to go to mass on Sunday morning, and put a bad five dollar bill

-in the collector's box, taking out four dollars and ninety cents in

-change, in good money. We irreverently called this proceeding "robbing

-the dago in Rome." We use to pick "leathers," at the same time, from

-the women in the congregation. In those days I was very liberal in my

-religious views. I was not narrow, or bigoted. I attended Grace Church,

-in Tenth Street, regularly and was always well repaid. But after a

-while this lucrative graft came to an end, for the collector began

-to get "next". One day he said to me, "Why don't you get your change

-outside? This is the fourth time you have given me a big bill." So we

-got "leary" (suspicious) and quit.

-

-With my big rosy cheeks and bright eyes and complexion I suppose I

-looked, in those days, very holy and innocent, and used to work this

-graft for all it was worth. I remember how, in church, I used tracts or

-the Christian Advocate as "stalls"; I would hand them to a lady as she

-entered the church, and, while doing so, pick her pocket.

-

-Even at the early age of fifteen I began to understand that it was

-necessary to save money. If a thief wants to keep out of the "pen"

-or "stir," (penitentiary) capital is a necessity. The capital of a

-grafter is called "spring-money," for he may have to use it at any

-time in paying the lawyer who gets him off in case of an arrest, or in

-bribing the policeman or some other official. To "spring," is to escape

-from the clutches of the law. If a thief has not enough money to hire

-a "mouth-piece" (criminal lawyer) he is in a bad way. He is greatly

-handicapped, and can not "jump out" (steal) with any boldness.

-

-But I always had great difficulty in saving "fall-money," (the same as

-spring-money; that is money to be used in case of a "fall," or arrest).

-My temperament was at fault. When I had a few hundred dollars saved

-up I began to be troubled, not from a guilty conscience, but because

-I could not stand prosperity. The money burned a hole in my pocket. I

-was fond of all sorts of amusements, of "treating," and of clothes.

-Indeed, I was very much of a dude; and this for two reasons. In the

-first place I was naturally vain, and liked to make a good appearance.

-A still more substantial reason was that a good personal appearance is

-part of the capital of a grafter, particularly of a pickpocket. The

-world thinks that a thief is a dirty, disreputable looking object,

-next door to a tramp in appearance. But this idea is far from being

-true. Every grafter of any standing in the profession is very careful

-about his clothes. He is always neat, clean, and as fashionable as

-his income will permit. Otherwise he would not be permitted to attend

-large political gatherings, to sit on the platform, for instance, and

-would be handicapped generally in his crooked dealings with mankind.

-No advice to young men is more common in respectable society than

-to dress well. If you look prosperous the world will treat you with

-consideration. This applies with even greater force to the thief. Keep

-up a "front" is the universal law of success, applicable to all grades

-of society. The first thing a grafter is apt to say to a pal whom he

-has not seen for a long time is, "You are looking good," meaning that

-his friend is well-dressed. It is sure flattery, and if a grafter wants

-to make a borrow he is practically certain of opening the negotiations

-with the stereotyped phrase: "You are looking good;" for the only time

-you can get anything off a grafter is when you can make him think you

-are prosperous.

-

-But the great reason why I never saved much "fall-money" was not

-"booze," or theatres, or clothes. "Look for the woman" is a phrase, I

-believe, in good society; and it certainly explains a great deal of a

-thief's misfortunes. Long before I did anything in Graftdom but petty

-pilfering, I had begun to go with the little girls in the neighborhood.

-At that time they had no attraction for me, but I heard older boys say

-that it was a manly thing to lead girls astray, and I was ambitious to

-be not only a good thief, but a hard case generally. When I was nine or

-ten years old I liked to boast of the conquests I had made among little

-working girls of fourteen or fifteen. We used to meet in the hall-ways

-of tenement houses, or at their homes, but there was no sentiment in

-the relations between us, at least on my part. My only pleasure in it

-was the delight of telling about it to my young companions.

-

-When I was twelve years old I met a little girl for whom I had a

-somewhat different feeling. Nellie was a pretty, blue-eyed little

-creature, or "tid-bit," as we used to say, who lived near my home on

-Cherry Street. I used to take her over on the ferry for a ride, or

-treat her to ice-cream; and we were really chums; but when I began

-to make money I lost my interest in her; partly, too, because at that

-time I made the acquaintance of a married woman of about twenty-five

-years old. She discovered me one day in the hallway with Nellie, and

-threatened to tell the holy brother on us if I didn't fetch her a pint

-of beer. I took the beer to her room, and that began a relationship

-of perhaps a year. She used to stake me to a part of the money her

-husband, a workingman, brought her every Saturday night.

-

-Although the girls meant very little to me until several years later,

-I nevertheless began when I was about fifteen to spend a great deal of

-money on them. It was the thing to do, and I did it with a good grace.

-I used to take all kinds of working girls to the balls in Walhalla Hall

-in Orchard Street; or in Pythagoras, or Beethoven Halls, where many

-pretty little German girls of respectable families used to dance on

-Saturday nights. It was my pride to buy them things--clothes, pins, and

-to take them on excursions; for was I not a rising "gun," with money in

-my pocket? Money, however, that went as easily as it had come.

-

-Perhaps if I had been able to save money at that time I might not

-have fallen (that is, been arrested) so early. My first fall came,

-however, when I was fifteen years old; and if I was not a confirmed

-thief already, I certainly was one by the time I left the Tombs, where

-I stayed ten days. It happened this way. Zack and I were grafting,

-buzzing Molls, with a pal named Jack, who afterwards became a famous

-burglar. He had just escaped from the Catholic Protectory, and told us

-his troubles. Instead of being alarmed, however, I grew bolder, for if

-Jack could "beat" the "Proteck" in three months, I argued I could do

-it in twenty-four hours. We three ripped things open for some time;

-but one day we were grafting on Sixth Avenue, just below Twentieth

-Street, when I fell for a "leather." The "sucker," a good-looking Moll

-was coming up the Avenue. Her "book," which looked fat, was sticking

-out of her skirt. I, who was the "wire," gave Jack and Zack the tip

-(thief's cough), and they stalled, one in front, one behind. The girl

-did not "blow" (take alarm) and I got hold of the leather easily.

-It looked like a get-away, for no one on the sidewalk saw us. But as

-bad luck would have it, a negro coachman, standing in the street by

-the pavement, got next, and said to me, "What are you doing there?" I

-replied, "Shut up, and I'll give you two dollars." But he caught hold

-of me and shouted for the police. I passed the leather to Jack, who

-"vamoosed." Zack hit the negro in the face and I ran up Seventh Avenue,

-but was caught by a flyman (policeman), and taken to the station house.

-

-On the way to the police station I cried bitterly, for, after all,

-I was only a boy. I realized for the first time that the way of the

-transgressor is hard. It was in the afternoon, and I spent the time

-until next morning at ten, when I was to appear before the magistrate,

-in a cell in the station-house, in the company of an old grafter. In

-the adjoining cells were drunkards, street-walkers and thieves who had

-been "lined up" for the night, and I spent the long hours in crying and

-in listening to their indecent songs and jokes. The old grafter called

-to one of the Tenderloin girls that he had a kid with him who was

-arrested for Moll-buzzing. At this they all expressed their sympathy

-with me by saying that I would either be imprisoned for life or be

-hanged. They got me to sing a song, and I convinced them that I was

-tough.

-

-In the morning I was arraigned in the police court. As there was

-no stolen property on me, and as the sucker was not there to make a

-complaint, I was "settled" for assault only, and sent to the Tombs for

-ten days.

-

-My experience in the Tombs may fairly be called, I think, the turning

-point of my life. It was there that I met "de mob". I learned new

-tricks in the Tombs; and more than that, I began definitely to look

-upon myself as a criminal. The Tombs of twenty years ago was even less

-cheerful than it is at present. The Boys' Prison faced the Women's

-Prison, and between these two was the place where those sentenced to

-death were hanged. The boys knew when an execution was to take place,

-and we used to talk it over among ourselves. One man was hanged while

-I was there; and if anybody thinks that knowledge of such things helps

-to make boys seek the path of virtue, let him go forth into the world

-and learn something about human nature.

-

-On my arrival in the Tombs, Mrs. Hill, the matron, had me searched for

-tobacco, knives or matches, all of which were contraband; then I was

-given a bath and sent into the corridor of the cells where there were

-about twenty-five other boys, confined for various crimes, ranging

-from petty larceny to offenses of the gravest kind. On the second day

-I met two young "dips" and we exchanged our experiences in the world

-of graft. I received my first lesson in the art of "banging a super,"

-that is, stealing a watch by breaking the ring with the thumb and

-forefinger, and thus detaching it from the chain. They were two of the

-best of the Sixth Ward pickpockets, and we made a date to meet "on the

-outside." Indeed, it was not many weeks after my release before I could

-"bang a super," or get a man's "front" (watch and chain) as easily as

-I could relieve a Moll of her "leather".

-

-As I look back upon the food these young boys received in the tombs,

-it seems to me of the worst. Breakfast consisted of a chunk of poor

-bread and a cup of coffee made of burnt bread crust. At dinner we had

-soup (they said, at least, there was meat in it), bread and water;

-and supper was the same as breakfast. But we had one consolation. When

-we went to divine service we generally returned happy; not because of

-what the good priest said, but because we were almost sure of getting

-tobacco from the women inmates.

-

-Certainly the Gerry Society has its faults; but since its organization

-young boys who have gone wrong but are not yet entirely hardened, have

-a much better show to become good citizens than they used to have. That

-Society did not exist in my day; but I know a good deal about it, and I

-am convinced that it does a world of good; for, at least, when it takes

-children into its charge it does not surround them with an atmosphere

-of social crime.

-

-While in the Tombs I experienced my first disillusionment as to the

-honor of thieves. I was an impulsive, imaginative boy, and that a

-pal could go back on me never seemed possible. Many of my subsequent

-misfortunes were due to the treachery of my companions. I have learned

-to distrust everybody, but as a boy of fifteen I was green, and so the

-treachery I shall relate left a sore spot in my soul.

-

-It happened this way. On a May day, about two months before I was

-arrested, two other boys and I had entered the basement of a house

-where the people were moving, had made away with some silverware, and

-sold it to a Christian woman in the neighborhood for one twentieth of

-its value. When I had nearly served my ten days' sentence for assault,

-my two pals were arrested and "squealed" on me. I was confronted with

-them in the Tombs. At first I was mighty glad to see them, but when

-I found they had "squealed," I set my teeth and denied all knowledge

-of the "touch." I protested my innocence so violently that the police

-thought the other boys were merely seeking a scape-goat. They got

-twenty days and my term expired forty-eight hours afterwards. The

-silverware I stole that May morning is now an heirloom in the family of

-the Christian woman to whom I sold it so cheap.

-

-If I had always been as earnest a liar as I was on that occasion in the

-Tombs I might never have gone to "stir" (penitentiary); but I grew more

-indifferent and desperate as time went on; and, in a way, more honest,

-more sincerely a criminal: I hardly felt like denying it. I know some

-thieves who, although they have grafted for twenty-five years, have not

-yet "done time"; some of them escaped because they knew how to throw

-the innocent "con" so well. Take Tim, for instance. Tim and I grafted

-together as boys. He was not a very skilful pickpocket, and he often

-was on the point of arrest; but he had a talent for innocence, and the

-indignation act he would put up would melt a heart of stone. He has,

-consequently, never been in stir, while I, a much better thief, have

-spent half of my adult life there. That was partly because I felt,

-when I had once made a touch, that the property belonged to me. On

-one occasion I had robbed a "bloke" of his "red super" (gold watch),

-and made away with it all right, when I carelessly dropped it on the

-sidewalk. A crowd had gathered about, and no man really in his right

-mind, would have picked up that super. But I did it, and was nailed

-dead to rights by a "cop." Some time afterwards a pal asked me why

-the deuce I had been so foolish. "Didn't the super belong to me," I

-replied, indignantly. "Hadn't I earned it?" I was too honest a thief.

-That was one of my weaknesses.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER III.

-

-_Mixed-Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards._

-

-

-For a time--a short time--after I left the Tombs I was quiet. My

-relatives threw the gallows "con" into me hard, but at that time I

-was proof against any arguments they could muster. They were not able

-to show me anything that was worth while; they could not deliver the

-goods, so what was the use of talking?

-

-Although I was a disgrace at home, I was high cock-a-lorum among the

-boys in the neighborhood. They began to look up to me, as I had looked

-up to the grafters at the corner saloon. They admired me because I was

-a fighter and had "done time." I went up in their estimation because

-I had suffered in the good cause. And I began to get introductions to

-the older grafters in the seventh ward--grafters with diamond pins and

-silk hats. It was not long before I was at it harder than ever, uptown

-and downtown. I not only continued my trade as Moll-buzzer, but began

-to spread myself, got to be quite an adept in touching men for vests

-and supers and fronts; and every now and then "shoved the queer" or

-worked a little game of swindling. Our stamping-ground for supers and

-vests at that time was Fulton, Nassau, Lower Broadway and Wall Streets,

-and we covered our territory well. I used to work alone considerably.

-I would board a car with a couple of newspapers, would say, "News,

-boss?" to some man sitting down, would shove the paper in front of his

-face as a stall, and then pick his super or even his entire "front"

-(watch and chain). If you will stand for a newspaper under your chin

-I can get even your socks. Many is the "gent" I have left in the car

-with his vest entirely unbuttoned and his "front" gone. When I couldn't

-get the chain, I would snap the ring of the watch with my thumb and

-fore-finger, giving the thief's cough to drown the slight noise made

-by the breaking ring, and get away with the watch, leaving the chain

-dangling. Instead of a newspaper, I would often use an overcoat as a

-stall.

-

-It was only when I was on the "hurry-up," however, that I worked alone.

-It is more dangerous than working with a mob, but if I needed a dollar

-quick I'd take any risk. I'd jump on a car, and tackle the first sucker

-I saw. If I thought it was not diplomatic to try for the "front," and

-if there was no stone in sight, I'd content myself with the "clock"

-(watch). But it was safer and more sociable to work with other guys.

-We usually went in mobs of three or four, and our methods were much

-more complicated than when we were simply moll-buzzing. Each thief had

-his special part to play, and his duty varied with the position of the

-sucker and the pocket the "leather" was in. If the sucker was standing

-in the car, my stall would frequently stand right in front, facing him,

-while I would put my hand under the stall's arm and pick the sucker's

-leather or super. The other stalls would be distracting the attention

-of the sucker, or looking out for possible interruptions. When I had

-got possession of the leather I would pass it quickly to the stall

-behind me, and he would "vamoose." Sometimes I would back up to the

-victim, put my hand behind me, break his ring and pick the super, or I

-would face his back, reach round, unbutton his vest while a pal stalled

-in front with a newspaper, a bunch of flowers, a fan, or an overcoat,

-and get away with his entire front.

-

-A dip, as I have said, pays special attention to his personal

-appearance; it is his stock in trade; but when I began to meet boys

-who had risen above the grade of Moll-buzzers, I found that the dip, as

-opposed to other grafters, had many other advantages, too. He combines

-pleasure and instruction with business, for he goes to the foot-ball

-games, the New London races, to swell theatres where the graft is good,

-and to lectures. I have often listened to Bob Ingersoll, the greatest

-orator, in my opinion, that ever lived. I enjoyed his talk so much

-that I sometimes forgot to graft. But as a general rule, I was able to

-combine instruction with business. I very seldom dropped a red super

-because of an oratorical flourish; but the supers did not come my way

-all the time, I had some waiting to do, and in the meantime I improved

-my mind. Then a dip travels, too, more than most grafters; he jumps

-out to fairs and large gatherings of all descriptions, and grows to be

-a man of the world. When in the city he visits the best dance halls,

-and is popular because of his good clothes, his dough, and his general

-information, with men as well as women. He generally lives with a Moll

-who has seen the world, and who can add to his fund of information. I

-know a dip who could not read or write until he met a Moll, who gave

-him a general education and taught him to avoid things that interfered

-with his line of graft; she also took care of his personal appearance,

-and equipped him generally for an A No. 1 pickpocket. Women are much

-the same, I believe, in every rank of life.

-

-It was at this time, when I was a kid of fifteen, that I first met

-Sheenie Annie, who was a famous shop-lifter. She was twenty-one years

-old, and used to give me good advice. "Keep away from heavy workers,"

-(burglars) she would say; "there is a big bit in that." She had lived

-in Graftdom ever since she was a tid-bit, and she knew what she was

-talking about. I did not work with her until several years later,

-but I might as well tell her sad story now. I may say, as a kind of

-preface, that I have always liked the girl grafter who could take care

-of herself instead of sucking the blood out of some man. When I find

-a little working girl who has no other ambition than to get a little

-home together, with a little knick-knack on the wall, a little husband

-and a little child, I don't care for her. She is a nonentity. But such

-was not Sheenie Annie, who was a bright, intelligent, ambitious, girl;

-when she liked a fellow she would do anything for him, but otherwise

-she wouldn't let a man come near her.

-

-The little Jewish lassie, named Annie, was born in the toughest part

-of New York. Later on, as she advanced in years and became an expert

-pilferer, she was given the nickname of "Sheenie." She was brought

-up on the street, surrounded by thieves and prostitutes. Her only

-education was what she received during a year or two in the public

-school. She lived near Grand Street, then a popular shopping district.

-As a very little girl she and a friend used to visit the drygoods

-stores and steal any little notion they could. There was a crowd of

-young pickpockets in her street, and she soon got on to this graft,

-and became so skilful at it that older guns of both sexes were eager

-to take her under their tuition and finish her education. The first

-time I met her was in a well-known dance-hall--Billy McGlory's--and we

-became friends at once, for she was a good girl and full of mischief.

-She was not pretty, exactly, but she was passable. She was small, with

-thick lips, plump, had good teeth and eyes as fine and piercing as any

-I ever saw in man or woman. She dressed well and was a good talker, as

-nimble-witted and as good a judge of human nature as I ever met in her

-sex.

-

-Sheenie Annie's graft broadened, and from dipping and small

-shop-lifting she rose to a position where she doubled up with a mob

-of clever hotel workers, and made large amounts of money. Here was a

-girl from the lowest stratum of life, not pretty or well shaped, but

-whom men admired because of her wit and cleverness. A big contractor

-in Philadelphia was her friend for years. I have seen letters from him

-offering to marry her. But she had something better.

-

-For she was an artist at "penny-weighting" and "hoisting." The police

-admitted that she was unusually clever at these two grafts, and they

-treated her with every consideration. Penny-weighting is a very "slick"

-graft. It is generally worked in pairs, by either sex or both sexes.

-A man, for instance, enters a jewelry store and looks at some diamond

-rings on a tray. He prices them and notes the costly ones. Then he

-goes to a fauny shop (imitation jewelry) and buys a few diamonds which

-match the real ones he has noted. Then he and his pal, usually a woman,

-enter the jewelry store and ask to see the rings. Through some little

-"con" they distract the jeweler's attention, and then one of them (and

-at this Sheenie Annie was particularly good) substitutes the bogus

-diamonds for the good ones; and leaves the store without making a

-purchase.

-

-I can give an example of how Sheenie Annie "hoisted," from my own

-experience with her. On one occasion, when I was about eighteen years

-old, Sheenie and I were on a racket together. We had been "going it"

-for several days and needed some dough. We went into a large tailoring

-establishment, where I tried on some clothes, as a stall. Nothing

-suited me.--I took good care of that--but in the meantime Annie had

-taken two costly overcoats, folded them into flat bundles, and, raising

-her skirt quickly, had hidden the overcoats between her legs. We left

-the store together. She walked so straight that I thought she had got

-nothing, but when we entered a saloon a block away, and the swag was

-produced, I was forced to laugh. We "fenced" the overcoats and with the

-proceeds continued our spree.

-

-Once Sheenie "fell" at this line of graft. She had stolen some costly

-sealskins from a well-known furrier, and had got away with them. But

-on her third visit to the place she came to grief. She was going out

-with a sealskin coat under her skirt when the office-boy, who was

-skylarking about, ran into her, and upset her. When the salesman,

-who had gone to her rescue, lifted her up, she lost her grip on

-the sealskin sacque, and it fell to the floor. It was a "blow," of

-course, and she got nailed, but as she had plenty of fall-money, and a

-well-known politician dead to rights, she only got nine months in the

-penitentiary.

-

-Sheenie Annie was such a good shop-lifter that, with only an

-umbrella as a stall, she could make more money in a week than a poor

-needle-woman could earn in months. But she did not care for the money.

-She was a good fellow, and was in for fun. She was "wise," too, and

-I liked to talk to her, for she understood what I said, and was up to

-snuff, which was very piquant to me. She had done most of the grafts

-that I had done myself, and her tips were always valuable.

-

-To show what a good fellow she was, her sweetheart, Jack, and another

-burglar named Jerry were doing night work once, when they were unlucky

-enough to be nailed. Sheenie Annie went on the stand and swore perjury

-in order to save Jack. He got a year, but Jerry, who had committed the

-same crime, got six. While he was in prison Annie visited him and put

-up a plan by which he escaped, but he would not leave New York with

-her, and was caught and returned to "stir." Annie herself fell in half

-a dozen cities, but never received more than a few months. After I

-was released from serving my second bit in the "pen," I heard Annie

-had died insane. An old girl pal of hers told me that she had died a

-horrible death, and that her last words were about her old friends and

-companions. Her disease was that which attacks only people with brains.

-She died of paresis.

-

-Two other girls whom I knew when I was fifteen turned out to be

-famous shop-lifters--Big Lena and Blonde Mamie, who afterwards married

-Tommy, the famous cracksman. They began to graft when they were about

-fourteen, and Mamie and I used to work together. I was Mamie's first

-"fellow," and we had royal good times together. Lena, poor girl, is

-now doing five years in London, but she was one of the most cheerful

-Molls I ever knew. I met her and Mamie for the first time one day as

-they were coming out of an oyster house on Grand Street. I thought

-they were good-looking tid-bits, and took them to a picnic. We were

-so late that instead of going home Mamie and I spent the night at the

-house of Lena's sister, whose husband was a receiver of stolen goods,

-or "fence," as it is popularly called. In the morning Lena, Mamie and I

-made our first "touch" together. We got a few "books" uptown, and Mamie

-banged a satchel at Sterns. After that we often jumped out together,

-and took in the excursions. Sometimes Mamie or Lena would dip and I

-would stall, but more frequently I was the pick. We used to turn our

-swag over to Lena's sister's husband, Max, who would give us about

-one-sixth of its value.

-

-These three girls certainly were a crack-a-jack trio. You can't find

-their likes nowadays. Even in my time most of the girls I knew did not

-amount to anything. They generally married, or did worse. There were

-few legitimate grafters among them. Since I have been back this time

-I have seen a great many of the old picks and night-workers I used to

-know. They tell the same story. There are no Molls now who can compare

-with Big Lena, Blonde Mamie, and Sheenie Annie. Times are bad, anyway.

-

-After my experience in the Tombs I rose very rapidly in the world of

-graft, and distanced my old companions. Zack, the lad with whom I had

-touched my first Moll, soon seemed very tame to me. I fell away from

-him because he continued to eat bolivers (cookies), patronize the free

-baths, and stole horse-blankets and other trivial things when he could

-not get "leathers." He was not fast enough for me. Zack "got there,"

-nevertheless, and for little or nothing, for several years later I

-met him in State's prison. He told me he was going to Colorado on his

-release. I again met him in prison on my second bit. He was then going

-to Chicago. On my third hit I ran up against the same old jail-bird,

-but this time his destination was Boston. To-day he is still in prison.

-

-As I fell away from the softies I naturally joined hands with

-more ambitious grafters, and with those with brains and with good

-connections in the upper world. As a lad of from fifteen to eighteen

-I associated with several boys who are now famous politicians in

-this city, and "on the level," as that phrase is usually meant. Jack

-Lawrence was a well-educated boy, and high up as far as his family

-was concerned. His father and brothers held good political positions,

-and it was only a taste for booze and for less genteel grafting that

-held Jack back. As a boy of sixteen or seventeen he was the trusted

-messenger of a well-known Republican politician, named J. I. D. One

-of Jacks pals became a Federal Judge, and another, Mr. D----, who was

-never a grafter, is at present a city magistrate in New York.

-

-While Jack was working for J. I. D., the politician, he was arrested

-several times. Once he abstracted a large amount of money from the vest

-pocket of a broker as he was standing by the old _Herald_ building.

-He was nailed, and sent word to his employer, the politician, who went

-to police headquarters, highly indignant at the arrest of his trusted

-messenger. He easily convinced the broker and the magistrate that Jack

-was innocent; and as far as the Republican politician's business was

-concerned, Jack was honest, for J. I. D. trusted him, and Jack never

-deceived him. There are some thieves who will not "touch" those who

-place confidence in them, and Jack was one of them.

-

-After he was released, the following conversation, which Jack related

-to me, took place between him and the politician, in the latter's

-office.

-

-"How was it?" the Big One said, "that you happened to get your fingers

-into that man's pocket?"

-

-Jack gave the "innocent con."

-

-"None of that," said J. I. D., who was a wise guy, "I know you have a

-habit of taking small change from strangers' pockets."

-

-Jack then came off his perch and gave his patron a lesson in the art

-of throwing the mit (dipping). At this the politician grinned, and

-remarked: "You will either become a reputable politician, for you have

-the requisite character, or you will die young."

-

-Jack was feared, hated and envied by the other young fellows in

-J. I. D.'s office, for as he was such a thorough rascal, he was a

-great favorite with those high up. But he never got J. I. D.'s full

-confidence until after he was tested in the following way. One day the

-politician put his gold watch on a table in his office. Jack saw it,

-picked it up and put it in the Big One's drawer. The latter entered the

-room, saw that the watch was gone, and said: "I forgot my watch. I must

-have left it home."

-

-"No," said Jack, "you left it on the table, and I put it in your desk."

-A smile spread over the patron's face.

-

-"Jack, I can trust you. I put it there just to test your honesty."

-

-The boy hesitated a moment, then, looking into the man's face, replied;

-"I know right well you did, for you are a wise guy."

-

-After that J. I. D. trusted Jack even with his love affairs.

-

-As Jack advanced in life he became an expert "gun," and was often

-nailed, and frequently brought before Magistrate D----, his old friend.

-He always got the benefit of the doubt. One day he was arraigned before

-the magistrate, who asked the flyman the nature of the complaint. It

-was the same as usual--dipping. Jack, of course, was indignant at such

-an awful accusation, but the magistrate told him to keep still, and,

-turning to the policeman, asked the culprit's name. When the copper

-told him, the magistrate exclaimed: "Why, that is not his name. I knew

-him twenty years ago, and he was a d---- rascal then; but that was not

-his name."

-

-Jack was shocked at such language from the bench, and swore with

-such vehemence that he was innocent, that he again got the benefit of

-the doubt, and was discharged, and this time justly, for he had not

-made this particular "touch." He was hounded by a copper looking for

-a reputation. Jack, when he was set free, turned to the magistrate,

-and said: "Your honor, I thank you, but you only did your duty to an

-innocent man." The magistrate had a good laugh, and remarked: "Jack, I

-wouldn't believe you if you swore on a stack of Bibles."

-

-A curious trait in a professional grafter is that, if he is "pinched"

-for something he did not do, although he has done a hundred other

-things for which he has never been pinched, he will put up such a wail

-against the abominable injustice that an honest man accused of the

-same offense would seem guilty in comparison. The honest man, even if

-he had the ability of a Philadelphia lawyer, could not do the strong

-indignation act that is characteristic of the unjustly accused grafter.

-Old thieves guilty of a thousand crimes will nourish revenge for years

-against the copper or judge who sends them up to "stir" on a false

-accusation.

-

-When I was from fifteen to seventeen years old, I met the man who,

-some think, is now practically leader of Tammany Hall. I will call him

-Senator Wet Coin. At that time he was a boy eighteen or nineteen and

-strictly on the level. He knew all the grafters well, but kept off the

-Rocky Path himself. In those days he "hung out" in an oyster shanty

-and ran a paper stand. It is said he materially assisted Mr. Pulitzer

-in making a success of the _World_, when that paper was started. He

-never drank, in spite of the name I have given him. In fact, he derived

-his real nickname from his habit of abstinence. He was the friend of

-a Bowery girl who is now a well-known actress. She, too, was always

-on the level in every way; although her brother was a grafter; this

-case, and that of Senator Wet Coin prove that even in an environment of

-thieves it is possible to tread the path of virtue. Wet Coin would not

-even buy a stolen article; and his reward was great. He became captain

-of his election district, ran for assemblyman, was elected, and got as

-high a position, with the exception of that of Governor, as is possible

-in the State; while in the city, probably no man is more powerful.

-

-Senator Wet Coin made no pretensions to virtue; he never claimed to

-be better than others. But in spite of the accusations against him,

-he has done far more for the public good than all the professional

-reformers, religious and other. He took many noted and professional

-criminals in the prime of their success, gave them positions and by his

-influence kept them honest ever since. Some of them are high up, even

-run gin-mills to-day. I met one of them after my second bit, who used

-to make his thousands. Now he has a salary of eighteen dollars a week

-and is contented. I had known him in the old days, and he asked:

-

-"What are you doing?"

-

-"The same old thing," I admitted. "What are you up to?"

-

-"I have squared it, Jim," he replied earnestly. "There's nothing in the

-graft. Why don't you go to sea?"

-

-"I'd as lief go to stir," I replied.

-

-We had a couple of beers and a long talk, and this is the way he gave

-it to me:

-

-"I never thought I could live on eighteen dollars a week. I have to

-work hard but I save more money than I did when I was making hundreds

-a week; for when it comes hard, it does not go easy. I look twice at my

-earnings before I part with them. I live quietly with my sister and am

-happy. There's nothing in the other thing, Jim. Look at Hope. Look at

-Dan Noble. Look at all the other noted grafters who stole millions and

-now are willing to throw the brotherly hand for a small borrow. If I

-had the chance to make thousands to-morrow in the under world, I would

-not chance it. I am happy. Better still, I am contented. Only for Mr.

-Wet Coin I'd be splitting matches in the stir these many years. Show

-me the reformer who has done as much for friends and the public as Wet

-Coin."

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-A "touch" that pleased me mightily as a kid was made just before my

-second fall. Superintendent Walling had returned from a summer resort,

-and found that a mob of "knucks" (another name for pick-pockets) had

-been "tearing open" the Third Avenue cars outside of the Post Office.

-About fifty complaints had been coming in every day for several weeks;

-and the Superintendent thought he would make a personal investigation

-and get one of the thieves dead to rights. He made a front that

-he was easy and went down the line. He did not catch any dips, but

-when he reached police head-quarters he was minus his gold watch and

-two hundred and fifty dollars in money. The story leaked out, and

-Superintendent Walling was unhappy. There would never have been a

-come-back for this "touch" if an old gun, who had just been nailed,

-had not "squealed" as to who touched the boss. "Little Mick" had done

-it, and the result was that he got his first experience in the House of

-Refuge.

-

-It was only a short time after Little Mick's fall that it came my turn

-to go to the House of Refuge. I had grown tougher and much stuck on

-myself and was taking bigger risks. I certainly had a swelled head in

-those days. I was seventeen years old at the time, and was grafting

-with Jack T----, who is now in Byrnes's book, and one of the swellest

-"Peter" men (safe-blowers) in the profession. Jack and I, along with

-another pal, Joe Quigley, got a duffer, an Englishman, for his "front,"

-on Grand Street, near Broadway. It was a "blow," and I, who was the

-"wire," got nailed. If I had not given my age as fifteen I should have

-been sent to the penitentiary. As it was I went to the House of Refuge

-for a year. Joe Quigley slipped up on the same game. He was twenty, but

-gave his age as fifteen. He had had a good shave by the Tombs barber,

-there was a false date of birth written in his Aunt's Bible, which was

-produced in court by his lawyer, and he would probably have gone with

-me to the House of Refuge, had not a Central Office man who knew him,

-happened in; Joe was settled for four years in Sing Sing.

-

-When I arrived at the House of Refuge, my pedigree was taken and my

-hair clipped. Then I went into the yard, looked down the line of boys

-on parade and saw about forty young grafters whom I knew. One of them

-is now a policeman in New York City, and, moreover, on the level.

-Some others, too, but not many, who were then in the House of Refuge,

-are now honest. Several are running big saloons and are captains of

-their election districts, or even higher up. These men are exceptions,

-however, for certainly the House of Refuge was a school for crime.

-Unspeakably bad habits were contracted there. The older boys wrecked

-the younger ones, who, comparatively innocent, confined for the crime

-of being orphans, came in contact with others entirely hardened. The

-day time was spent in the school and the shop, but there was an hour

-or two for play, and the boys would arrange to meet for mischief in the

-basement.

-

-Severe punishments were given to lads of fifteen, and their tasks

-were harder than those inflicted in State's prison. We had to make

-twenty-four pairs of overalls every day; and if we did not do our work

-we were beaten on an unprotected and tender spot until we promised to

-do our task. One morning I was made to cross my hands, and was given

-fifteen blows on the palms with a heavy rattan stick. The crime I had

-committed was inattention. The principal had been preaching about the

-Prodigal Son. I, having heard it before, paid little heed; particularly

-as I was a Catholic, and his teachings did not count for me. They

-called me a "Papist," and beat me, as I described.

-

-I say without hesitation that lads sent to an institution like the

-House of Refuge, the Catholic Protectory, or the Juvenile Asylum, might

-better be taken out and shot. They learn things there they could not

-learn even in the streets. The newsboy's life is pure in comparison. As

-for me, I grew far more desperate there than I had been before: and I

-was far from being one of the most innocent of boys. Many of the others

-had more to learn than I had, and they learned it. But even I, hard as

-I already was, acquired much fresh information about vice and crime;

-and gathered in more pointers about the technique of graft.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IV.

-

-_When the Graft Was Good._

-

-

-I stayed in the House of Refuge until I was eighteen, and when

-released, went through a short period of reform. I "lasted," I think,

-nearly three weeks, and then started in to graft again harder than

-ever. The old itch for excitement, for theatres, balls and gambling,

-made reform impossible. I had already formed strong habits and desires

-which could not be satisfied in my environment without stealing. I was

-rapidly becoming a confirmed criminal. I began to do "house-work,"

-which was mainly sneak work up town. We would catch a basement open

-in the day time, and rummage for silverware, money or jewels. There

-is only a step from this to the business of the genuine burglar, who

-operates in the night time, and whose occupation is far more dangerous

-than that of the sneak thief. However, at this intermediate kind of

-graft, our swag, for eighteen months, was considerable. One of our

-methods was to take servant girls to balls and picnics and get them

-to tip us off to where the goods were and the best way to get them.

-Sometimes they were guilty, more often merely suckers.

-

-During the next three years, at the expiration of which I made my first

-trip to Sing Sing, I stole a great deal of money and lived very high.

-I contracted more bad habits, practically ceased to see my family at

-all, lived in a furnished room and "hung out" in the evening at some

-dance-hall, such as Billy McGlory's Old Armory, George Doe's or "The"

-Allen's. Sheenie Annie was my sweetheart at this period, and after we

-had made a good touch what times we would have at Coney Island or at

-Billy McGlory's! Saturday nights in the summer time a mob of three or

-four of us, grafters and girls, would go to the island and stop at a

-hotel run by an ex-gun. At two or three o'clock in the morning we'd

-all leave the hotel, with nothing on but a quilt, and go in swimming

-together. Sheenie Annie, Blonde Mamie and Big Lena often went with

-us. At other times we took respectable shop-girls, or even women who

-belonged to a still lower class. What boy with an ounce of thick blood

-in his body could refuse to go with a girl to the Island?

-

-And Billy McGlory's! What times we had there, on dear old Saturday

-nights! At this place, which contained a bar-room, dance-room,

-pool-room and a piano, congregated downtown guns, house-men and thieves

-of both sexes. No rag-time was danced in those days, but early in the

-morning we had plenty of the cancan. The riots that took place there

-would put to shame anything that goes on now.[A] I never knew the town

-so tight-shut as it is at present. It is far better, from a moral point

-of view than it has ever been before; at least, in my recollection.

-"The" Allen's was in those days a grade more decent than McGlory's; for

-at "The's" nobody who did not wear a collar and coat was admitted. I

-remember a pal of mine who met a society lady on a slumming expedition

-with a reporter. It was at McGlory's. The lady looked upon the grafter

-she had met as a novelty. The grafter looked upon the lady in the same

-way, but consented to write her an article on the Bowery. He sent her

-the following composition, which he showed to me first, and allowed me

-to copy it. I always did like freaks. I won't put in the bad grammar

-and spelling, but the rest is:

-

-"While strolling, after the midnight hour, along the Lane, that

-historic thoroughfare sometimes called the Bowery, I dropped into a

-concert hall. At a glance, I saw men who worked hard during the week

-and needed a little recreation. Near them were their sisters (that

-is, if we all belong to the same human family), who had fallen by the

-wayside. A man was trying to play a popular song on a squeaky piano,

-while another gent tried to sing the first part of the song, when the

-whole place joined in the chorus with a zest. I think the song was most

-appropriate. It was a ditty of the slums entitled, 'Dear Old Saturday

-Night.'"

-

-When I was about nineteen I took another and important step in the

-world of graft. One night I met a couple of swell grafters, one of

-whom is at the present time a Pinkerton detective. They took me to

-the Haymarket, where I met a crowd of guns who were making barrels of

-money. Two of them, Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, became my friends,

-and introduced me to Mr. R----, who has often kept me out of prison.

-He was a go-between, a lawyer, and well-known to all good crooks. If

-we "fell" we had to notify him and he would set the underground wires

-working, with the result that our fall money would need replenishing

-badly, but that we'd escape the stir.

-

-That I was not convicted again for three years was entirely due to my

-fall money and to the cleverness of Mr. R----. Besides these expenses,

-which I considered legitimate, I used to get "shaken down" regularly by

-the police and detectives. The following is a typical case:

-

-I was standing one day on the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery

-when a copper who knew me came up and said: "There's a lot of knocking

-(complaining) going on about the Grand Street cars being torn open. The

-old man (the chief) won't stand for it much longer."

-

-"It wasn't me," I said.

-

-"Well, it was one of the gang," he replied, "and I will have to make an

-arrest soon, or take some one to headquarters for his mug," (that is,

-to have his picture taken for the rogues' gallery).

-

-I knew what that meant, and so I gave him a twenty dollar bill. But

-I was young and often objected to these exorbitant demands. More than

-anybody else a thief hates to be "touched," for he despises the sucker

-on whom he lives. And we were certainly touched with great regularity

-by the coppers.

-

-Still, we really had nothing to complain of in those days, for we made

-plenty of money and had a good time. We even used to buy our collars,

-cuffs and gloves cheap from grafters who made it their business to

-steal those articles. They were cheap guns,--pipe fiends, petty larceny

-thieves and shop-lifters--but they helped to make our path smoother.

-

-After I met the Haymarket grafter I used to jump out to neighboring

-cities on very profitable business. A good graft was to work the fairs

-at Danbury, Waverly, Philadelphia and Pittsburg, and the foot-ball

-games at Princeton. I always travelled with three or four others, and

-went for gatherings where we knew we would find "roofers," or country

-gentlemen. On my very first jump-out I got a fall, but the copper was

-open to reason. Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, splendid pickpockets,

-(I always went with good thieves, for I had become a first-class dip

-and had a good personal appearance) were working with me in Newark,

-where Vice-President Hendricks was to speak. I picked a watch in the

-crowd, and was nailed. But Dutch Lonzo, who had the gift of gab better

-than any man I ever met, took the copper into a saloon. We all had a

-drink, and for twenty-five dollars I escaped even the station-house.

-Unfortunately, however, I was compelled to return the watch; for the

-copper had to "square" the sucker. Then the copper said to Dutch

-Lonzo, whom he knew: "Go back and graft, if you want, but be sure

-to look me up." In an hour or two we got enough touches to do us for

-two weeks. Senator Wet Coin was at this speech with about two hundred

-Tammany braves, and we picked so many pockets that a newspaper the next

-day said there must have been at least one hundred and ninety-nine

-pickpockets in the Tammany delegation. We fell quite often on these

-trips, but we were always willing to help the coppers pay for their

-lower flats. I sometimes objected because of their exorbitant demands,

-but I was still young. I knew that longshoremen did harder work for

-less pay than the coppers, and I thought, therefore, that the latter

-were too eager to make money on a sure-thing graft. And I always hated

-a sure-thing graft.

-

-But didn't we strike it rich in Connecticut! Whether the people of that

-State suffer from partial paralysis or not I don't know, but certainly

-if all States were as easy as Connecticut the guns would set up as

-Vanderbilts. I never even got a tumble in Connecticut. I ripped up the

-fairs in every direction, and took every chance. The inhabitants were

-so easy that we treated them with contempt.

-

-After a long trip in Connecticut I nearly fell on my return, I was that

-raw. We were breech-getting (picking men's pockets) in the Brooklyn

-cars. I was stalling in front, Lonzo was behind and Charlie was the

-pick. Lonzo telephoned to me by gestures that Charlie had hold of

-the leather, but it wouldn't come. I was hanging on a strap, and,

-pretending to slip, brought my hand down heavily on the sucker's hat,

-which went over his ears. The leather came, was slipped to me, Lonzo

-apologized for spoiling the hat and offered the sucker a five dollar

-bill, which he politely refused. Now that was rough work, and we would

-not have done it, had we not been travelling so long among the Reubs

-in Connecticut. We could have made our gets all right, but we were so

-confident and delayed so long that the sucker blew before we left the

-car, and Lonzo and Charlie were nailed, and the next morning arraigned.

-In the meantime, however, we had started the wires working, and

-notified Mr. R.---- and Lonzo's wife to "fix" things in Brooklyn. The

-reliable attorney got a bondsman, and two friends of his "fixed" the

-cops, who made no complaint. Lonzo's wife, an Irishwoman and a handsome

-grafter, had just finished a five year bit in London. It cost us six

-hundred dollars to "fix" that case, and there was only two hundred and

-fifty dollars in the leather.

-

-That made Lonzo's wife exceedingly angry.

-

-"Good Lord," she said. "There's panthers for you in New York! There's

-the blokes that shakes you down too heavy. I'd want an unlimited cheque

-on the Bank of England if you ever fell again."

-

-A little philosophy on the same subject was given me one day by an

-English Moll, who had fallen up-State and had to "give up" heavily.

-

-"I've been in a good many cities and 'amlets in this country," said

-she, "but gad! blind me if I ever want to fall in an 'amlet in this

-blooming State again. The New York police are at least a little

-sensible at times, but when these Rufus's up the State get a Yorker or

-a wise guy, they'll strip him down to his socks. One of these voracious

-country coppers who sing sweet hymns in jail is a more successful gun

-than them that hit the rocky path and take brash to get the long green.

-It is only the grafter that is supposed to protect the people who makes

-a success of it. The hypocritical mouthings of these people just suit

-the size of their Bibles."

-

-Lonzo and I, and Patsy, a grafter I had picked up about this time,

-made several fat trips to Philadelphia. At first we were leary of the

-department stores, there had been so many "hollers," and worked the

-"rattlers" (cars) only. We were told by some local guns that we could

-not "last" twenty-four hours in Philadelphia without protection, but

-that was not our experience. We went easy for a time, but the chances

-were too good, and we began voraciously to tear open the department

-stores, the churches and the theatres; and without a fall. Whenever

-anybody mentioned the fly-cops (detectives) of Philadelphia it reminded

-us of the inhabitants of Connecticut. They were not "dead": such a

-word is sacred. Their proper place was not on the police force, but

-on a shelf in a Dutchman's grocery store labelled the canned article.

-Philadelphia was always my town, but I never stayed very long, partly

-because I did not want to become known in such a fat place, and partly

-because I could not bear to be away from New York very long; for,

-although there is better graft in other cities, there is no such place

-to live in as Manhattan. I had no fear of being known in Philadelphia

-to the police; but to local guns who would become jealous of our

-grafting and tip us off.

-

-On one of my trips to the City of Brotherly Love I had a poetical

-experience. The graft had been good, and one Sunday morning I left Dan

-and Patsy asleep, and went for a walk in the country, intending, for a

-change, to observe the day of rest. I walked for several hours through

-a beautiful, quiet country, and about ten o'clock passed a country

-church. They were singing inside, and for some reason, probably because

-I had had a good walk in the country, the music affected me strangely.

-I entered, and saw a blind evangelist and his sister. I bowed my head,

-and my whole past life came over me. Although everything had been

-coming my way, I felt uneasy, and thought of home for the first time

-in many weeks. I went back to the hotel in Philadelphia, feeling very

-gloomy, and shut myself up in my room. I took up my pen and began

-a letter to a Tommy (girl) in New York. But I could not forget the

-country church, and instead of writing to the little Tommy, I wrote the

-following jingles:

-

-     "When a child by mother's knee

-     I would watch, watch, watch

-     By the deep blue sea,

-     And the moon-beams played merrily

-     On our home beside the sea.

-

-CHORUS.

-

-     "The Evening Star shines bright-i-ly

-     Above our home beside the sea,

-     And the moon-beams danced beamingly

-     On our home beside the sea.

-     But now I am old, infirm and grey

-     I shall never see those happy days;

-     I would give my life, all my wealth, and fame

-     To hear my mother gently call my name."

-

-Towards evening Patsy and Dan returned from a good day's work. Patsy

-noticed I was quiet and unusually gloomy, and asked:

-

-"What's the matter? Didn't you get anything?"

-

-"No," I replied, "I'm going back to New York."

-

-"Where have you been?" asked Dan.

-

-"To church," I replied.

-

-"In the city?" he asked.

-

-"No," I replied, "in the country."

-

-"I cautioned you," said Dan, "against taking such chances. There's

-no dough in these country churches. If you want to try lone ones on a

-Sunday take in some swell church in the city."

-

-The following Sunday I went to a fashionable church and got a few

-leathers, and afterwards went to all the swell churches in the city. I

-touched them, but they could not touch me. I heard all the ministers

-in Philadelphia, but they could not move me the way that country

-evangelist did. They were all artificial in comparison.

-

-Shortly after my poetical experience in Philadelphia I made a trip up

-New York State with Patsy, Dan and Joe, and grafted in a dozen towns.

-One day when we were on the cars going from Albany to Amsterdam, we saw

-a fat, sleepy-looking Dutchman, and I nicked him for a clock as he was

-passing along the aisle to the end of the car. It took the Dutchman

-about ten minutes after he had returned to his seat to blow that his

-super was gone, and his chain hanging down. A look of stupid surprise

-spread over his innocent countenance. He looked all around, picked up

-the end of his chain, saw it was twisted, put his hand in his vest

-pocket, then looked again at the end of the chain, tried his pocket

-again, then went through all of his pockets, and repeated each of these

-actions a dozen times. The passengers all got "next," and began to

-grin. "Get on to the Hiker," (countryman) said Patsy to Joe, and they

-both laughed. I told the Dutchman that the clock must have fallen down

-the leg of his underwear; whereupon the Reuben retired to investigate,

-searched himself thoroughly and returned, only to go through the same

-motions, and then retire to investigate once more. It was as good as a

-comedy. But it was well there were no country coppers on that train.

-They would not have cared a rap about the Dutchman's loss of his

-property, but we four probably should have been compelled to divide

-with them.

-

-Grafters are a superstitious lot. Before we reached Buffalo a feeling

-came over me that I had better not work in that town; so Joe, Dan and

-an English grafter we had picked up, named Scotty, stopped at Buffalo,

-and Patsy and I went on. Sure enough, in a couple of days Joe wired

-me that Scotty had fallen for a breech-kick and was held for trial.

-I wired to Mr. R----, who got into communication with Mr. J----, a

-Canadian Jew living in Buffalo, who set the wires going. The sucker

-proved a very hard man to square, but a politician who was a friend

-of Mr. J---- showed him the errors of his way, and before very long

-Scotty returned to New York. An English Moll-buzzer, a girl, got hold

-of him and took him back to London. It was just as well, for it was

-time for our bunch to break up. We were getting too well-known; and

-falls were coming too frequent. So we had a general split. Joe went to

-Washington, Patsy down East, Scotty to "stir" in London and I stayed in

-Manhattan, where I shortly afterwards met Big Jack and other burglars

-and started in on that dangerous graft. But before I tell about my

-work in that line, I will narrate the story of Mamie and Johnny, a

-famous cracksman, whom I met at this time. It is a true love story of

-the Under World. Johnny, and Mamie, who by the way is not the same as

-Blonde Mamie, are still living together in New York City, after many

-trials and tribulations, one of the greatest of which was Mamie's

-enforced relation with a New York detective. But I won't anticipate on

-the story, which follows in the next chapter.

-

-

-FOOTNOTE:

-

-     [A] Summer of 1902

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER V.

-

-_Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds._

-

-

-Johnny met Mamie when he was sixteen. At that time he was looked up

-to in the neighborhood as one of the most promising of the younger

-thieves.

-

-He was an intelligent, enterprising boy and had, moreover, received an

-excellent education in the school of crime. His parents had died before

-he was twelve years old, and after that the lad lived at the Newsboys'

-Lodging House, in Rivington Street, which at that time and until it

-ceased to exist was the home of boys some of whom afterwards became

-the swellest of crooks, and some very reputable citizens and prominent

-politicians. A meal and a bed there cost six cents apiece and even the

-youngest and stupidest waif could earn or steal enough for that.

-

-Johnny became an adept at "hooking" things from grocery stores and

-at tapping tills. When he was thirteen years old he was arrested for

-petty theft, passed a night in the police station, and was sent to the

-Catholic Protectory, where he was the associate of boys much older and

-"wiser" in crime than he. At that place were all kinds of incurables,

-from those arrested for serious felonies to those who had merely

-committed the crime of being homeless. From them Johnny learned the

-ways of the under world very rapidly.

-

-After a year of confinement he was clever enough to make a key and

-escape. He safely passed old "Cop O'Hagen," whose duty it was to watch

-the Harlem bridge, and returned to the familiar streets in lower New

-York, where the boys and rising pickpockets hid him from the police,

-until they forgot about his escape.

-

-From that time Johnny's rise in the world of graft was rapid. He

-was so successful in stealing rope and copper from the dry-docks

-that the older heads took him in hand and used to put him through

-the "fan-light" windows of some store, where his haul was sometimes

-considerable. He began to grow rich, purchased some shoes and

-stockings, and assumed a "tough" appearance, with great pride. He rose

-a step higher, boarded tug-boats and ships anchored at the docks, and

-constantly increased his income. The boys looked upon him as a winner

-in his line of graft, and as he gave "hot'l" (lodging-house) money to

-those boys who had none, he was popular. So Johnny became "chesty",

-began to "spread" himself, to play pool, to wear good linen collars and

-to associate with the best young thieves in the ward.

-

-It was at this time that he met Mamie, who was a year or two younger

-than he. She was a small, dark, pale-faced little girl, and as neat

-and quick-witted as Johnny. She lived with her parents, near the

-Newsboys' Lodging House, where Johnny still "hung out". Mamie's father

-and mother were poor, respectable people, who were born and bred in the

-old thirteenth ward, a section famous for the many shop girls who were

-fine "spielers" (dancers). Mamie's mother was one of the most skillful

-of these dancers, and therefore Mamie came by her passion for the waltz

-very naturally; and the light-footed little girl was an early favorite

-with the mixed crowd of dancers who used to gather at the old Concordia

-Assembly Rooms, on the Bowery.

-

-It was at this place that Johnny and Mamie met for the first time. It

-was a case of mutual admiration, and the boy and girl started in to

-"keep company." Johnny became more ambitious in his line of graft;

-he had a girl! He needed money to buy her presents, to take her to

-balls, theatres and picnics; and he began to "gun", which means to

-pickpockets, an occupation which he found far more lucrative than

-"swagging" copper from the docks or going through fan-light windows. He

-did not remain content, however, with "dipping" and, with several much

-older "grafters", he started in to do "drag" work.

-

-"Drag" work is a rather complicated kind of stealing and success at

-it requires considerable skill. Usually a "mob" of four grafters work

-together. They get "tipped off" to some store where there is a line

-of valuable goods, perhaps a large silk or clothing-house. One of the

-four, called the "watcher", times the last employee that leaves the

-place to be "touched". The "watcher" is at his post again early in

-the morning, to find out at what time the first employee arrives. He

-may even hire a furnished room opposite the store, in order to secure

-himself against identification by some Central Office detective who

-might stroll by. When he has learned the hours of the employees he

-reports to his "pals". At a late hour at night the four go to the

-store, put a spindle in the Yale lock, and break it with a blow from a

-hammer. They go inside, take another Yale lock, which they have brought

-with them, lock themselves in, go upstairs, carry the most valuable

-goods downstairs and pile them near the door. Then they go away, and,

-in the morning, before the employees are due, they drive up boldly

-to the store with a truck; representing a driver, two laborers, and a

-shipping clerk. They load the wagon with the goods, lock the door, and

-drive away. They have been known to do this work in full view of the

-unsuspecting policeman on the beat.

-

-While Johnny had advanced to this distinguished work, Mamie, too,

-had become a bread-earner, of a more modest and a more respectable

-kind. She went to work in a factory, and made paper boxes for two and

-one-half dollars a week. So the two dressed very well, and had plenty

-of spending money. Unless Johnny had some work to do they always met in

-the evening, and soon were seriously in love with one another. Mamie

-knew what Johnny's line of business was, and admired his cleverness.

-The most progressive people in her set believed in "getting on" in

-any way, and how could Mamie be expected to form a social morality for

-herself? She thought Johnny was the nicest boy in the world, and Johnny

-returned her love to the full. So Johnny finally asked her if she would

-"hitch up" with him for life, and she gladly consented.

-

-They were married and set up a nice home in Allen Street. It was before

-the time when the Jews acquired an exclusive right to that part of

-the town, and in this neighborhood Mamie and Johnny had many friends

-who used to visit them in the evening; for the loving couple were

-exceedingly domestic, and, when Johnny had no business on hand, seldom

-went out in the evening. Johnny was a model husband. He had no bad

-habits, never drank or gambled, spent as much time as he could with

-his wife, and made a great deal of money. Mamie gave up her work in the

-shop, and devoted all her attention to making Johnny happy and his home

-pleasant.

-

-For about four years Johnny and Mamie lived very happily together.

-Things came their way; and Johnny and his pals laid by a considerable

-amount of money against a rainy day. To be sure, they had their little

-troubles. Johnny "fell," that is to say, was arrested, a score of

-times, but succeeded in getting off. It was partly due to good luck,

-and partly to the large amount of fall-money he and his pals had

-gathered together.

-

-On one occasion it was only Mamie's cleverness and devotion that saved

-Johnny, for a time, from the penitentiary. One dark night Johnny

-and three pals, after a long conversation in the saloon of a ward

-politician, visited a large jewelry store on Fulton Street, Brooklyn,

-artistically opened the safe, and made away with fifteen thousand

-dollars. It was a bold and famous robbery, and the search for the

-thieves was long and earnest. Johnny and his friends were not suspected

-at first, but an old saying among thieves is, "wherever there are three

-or four there is always a leak," a truth similar to that announced by

-Benjamin Franklin: "Three can keep a secret when two are dead."

-

-One of Johnny's pals, Patsy, told his girl in confidence how the

-daring "touch" was made. That was the first link in the long chain of

-gossip which finally reached the ears of the watching detectives; and

-the result was that Patsy and Johnny were arrested. It was impossible

-to "settle" this case, no matter how much "fall-money" they had at

-their disposal; for the jeweler belonged to the Jewelers' Protective

-Association, which will prosecute those who rob anyone belonging to

-their organization.

-

-As bribery was out of the question, Johnny and Patsy, who were what is

-called in the underworld "slick articles," put their heads together,

-and worked out a scheme. The day of their trial in the Brooklyn Court

-came around. They were waiting their turn in the prisoner's "pen,"

-adjoining the Court, when Mamie came to see them. The meeting between

-her and Johnny was very affecting. After a few words Mamie noticed

-that her swell Johnny wore no neck-tie. Johnny, seemingly embarrassed,

-turned to a Court policeman, and asked him to lend him his tie for a

-short time. The policeman declined, but remarked that Mamie had a tie

-that would match Johnny's complexion very well. Mamie impulsively took

-off her tie, put it on Johnny, kissed him, and left the Court-house.

-

-Johnny was to be tried in ten minutes, but he induced his lawyer to

-have the trial put off for half an hour; and another case was tried

-instead. Then he took off Mamie's neck-tie, tore the back out of it,

-and removed two fine steel saws. He gave one to Patsy, and in a few

-minutes they had penetrated a small iron bar which closed a little

-window leading to an alley. Patsy was too large to squeeze himself

-through the opening, but "stalled" for Johnny while the latter "made

-his gets". When they came to put these two on trial there was a

-sensation in Court. No Johnny! Patsy knew nothing about it, he said;

-and he received six years for his crime.

-

-But Johnny's day for a time in the "stir" soon came around. He made a

-good "touch", and got away with the goods, but was betrayed by a pal, a

-professional thief who was in the pay of the police, technically called

-a "stool-pigeon". Mamie visited Johnny in the Tombs, and when she found

-the case was hopeless she wanted to go and steal something herself so

-that she might accompany her boy to prison. But when Johnny told her

-there were no women at Sing Sing she gave up the idea. Johnny went to

-prison for four years, and Mamie went to a tattooer, and, as a proof of

-her devotion, had Johnny's name indelibly stamped upon her arm.

-

-Mamie, in consequence of her fidelity to Johnny, whom she regularly

-visited at Sing Sing, was a heroine and a martyr in the eyes of the

-grafters of both sexes. The money she and Johnny had saved began to

-dwindle, and soon she was compelled to work again at box-making. She

-remained faithful to Johnny, although many a good grafter tried to make

-up to the pretty girl. When Johnny was released from Sing Sing, Mamie

-was even happier than he. They had no money now, but some politicians

-and saloon-keepers who knew that Johnny was a good money-getter, set

-them up in a little house. And they resumed their quiet domestic life

-together.

-

-Their happiness did not last long, however. Johnny needed money more

-than ever now and resumed his dangerous business. He got in with a

-quartette of the cleverest safe-crackers in the country, and made

-a tour of the Eastern cities. They made many important touches, but

-finally Johnny was again under suspicion for a daring robbery in Union

-Square, and was compelled to become a solitary fugitive. He sent word,

-through an old-time burglar, to Mamie, exhorted her to keep up the

-home, and promised to send money regularly. He was forced, however,

-to stay away from New York for several years, and did not dare to

-communicate with Mamie.

-

-At first, Mamie tried to resume her work at box-making. But she had

-had so much leisure and had lived so well that she found the work

-irksome and the pay inadequate. Mamie knew many women pickpockets and

-shop-lifters, friends of her husband. When some of these adventurous

-girls saw that Mamie was discontented with her lot, they induced her to

-go out and work with them. So Mamie became a very clever shop-lifter,

-and, for a time, made considerable money. Then many of the best "guns"

-in the city again tried to make up to Mamie, and marry her. Johnny

-was not on the spot, and that, in the eyes of a thief, constitutes

-a divorce. But Mamie still loved her wayward boy and held the others

-back.

-

-In the meantime Johnny had become a great traveller. He knew that the

-detectives were so hot on his track that he dared to stay nowhere very

-long; nor dared to trust anyone: so he worked alone. He made a number

-of daring robberies, all along the line from Montreal to Detroit, but

-they all paled in comparison with a touch he made at Philadelphia, a

-robbery which is famous in criminal annals.

-

-He had returned to Philadelphia, hoping to get a chance to send word

-to Mamie, whom he had not seen for years, and for whom he pined. While

-in the city of brotherly love he was "tipped off" to a good thing. He

-boldly entered a large mercantile house, and, in thirteen minutes, he

-opened a time-lock vault, and abstracted three hundred thousand dollars

-worth of negotiable bonds and escaped.

-

-The bold deed made a sensation all over the country. The mercantile

-house and the safe manufacturers were so hot for the thief that the

-detectives everywhere worked hard and "on the level". Johnny was not

-suspected then, and never "did time" for this touch. For a while he

-hid in Philadelphia; boarded there with a poor, respectable family,

-representing himself as a laborer out of work. He spent the daytime in

-a little German beer saloon, playing pinocle with the proprietor; and

-was perfectly safe.

-

-But his longing for Mamie had grown so strong that he could not bear

-it. He knew that the detectives were still looking for him because

-of the old crime, and that they were hot to discover the thief of the

-negotiable bonds. He sent word to Mamie, nevertheless, through an old

-pal he found at Philadelphia, and arranged to see her at Mount Vernon,

-near New York.

-

-The two met in the side room of a little saloon near the railway

-station; and the greeting was affectionate in the extreme. They had not

-seen one another for years! And hardly a message had been exchanged.

-After a little Johnny told Mamie, proudly, that it was he who had

-stolen the negotiable bonds.

-

-"Now," he added, "we are rich. After a little I can sell these bonds

-for thirty cents on the dollar and then you and I will go away and

-give up this life. I am getting older and my nerve is not what it was

-once. We'll settle down quietly in London or some town where we are not

-known, and be happy. Won't we, dear?"

-

-Mamie said "Yes," but she appeared confused. When Johnny asked her what

-was the matter, she burst into tears; and choked and sobbed for some

-time before she could say a word. She ordered a glass of whiskey, which

-she never used to drink in the old days, and when the bar-tender had

-left, she turned to the worried Johnny, embraced him tenderly and said,

-in a voice which still trembled:

-

-"Johnny, will you forgive me if I tell you something? It's pretty bad,

-but not so bad as it might be, for I love only you."

-

-Johnny encouraged her with a kiss and she continued, in a broken voice:

-

-"When you were gone again, Johnny, I tried to make my living at the

-old box-making work; but the pay wasn't big enough for me then. So I

-began to graft--dipping and shop-lifting--and made money. But a Central

-Office man you used to know--Jim Lennon--got on to me."

-

-"Jim Lennon?" said Johnny, "Sure, I knew him. He used to be sweet on

-you, Mamie. He treated you right, I hope."

-

-Mamie blushed and looked down.

-

-"Well?" said Johnny.

-

-"Jim came to me one day," she continued, "and told me he wouldn't

-stand for what I was doing. He said the drygoods people were hollering

-like mad; and that he'd have to arrest me if I didn't quit. I tried to

-square him with a little dough, but I soon saw that wasn't what he was

-after."

-

-"'Look here, Mamie,' he finally said. 'It's just this way. Johnny is a

-good fellow, but he's dead to you and dead to me. He's done time, and

-that breaks all marriage ties. Now, I want you to hitch up with me, and

-lead an honest life. I'll give you a good home, and you won't run any

-more risk of the pen!'"

-

-Johnny grew very pale as Mamie said the last words; and when she

-stopped speaking, he said quietly:

-

-"And you did it?"

-

-Mamie again burst into tears. "Oh, Johnny," she cried, "what else could

-I do. He wouldn't let me go on grafting, and I had to live."

-

-"And so you married him?" Johnny insisted.

-

-The reply was in a whisper.

-

-"Yes," she said.

-

-For the next thirty seconds Johnny thought very rapidly. This woman had

-his liberty in her hands. He had told her about the negotiable bonds.

-Besides, he loved Mamie and understood the difficulty of her position.

-His life as a thief had made him very tolerant in some respects. He

-therefore swallowed his emotion, and turned a kind face to Mamie.

-

-"You still love me?" he asked, "better than the copper?"

-

-"Sure," said Mamie, warmly.

-

-"Now listen," said Johnny, the old business-like expression coming back

-into his face. "I am hounded for the old trick; and the detectives are

-looking everywhere for these negotiable bonds, which I have here, in

-this satchel. Can I trust you with them? Will you mind them for me,

-until things quiet down?"

-

-"Of course, I will," said Mamie, gladly.

-

-So they parted once more. Johnny went into hiding again, and Mamie

-went to the detective's house, with the negotiable bonds. She had no

-intention of betraying Johnny; for she might be arrested for receiving

-stolen goods; and, besides, she still loved her first husband. So she

-planted the bonds in the bottom of the detective's trunk.

-

-Here was a pretty situation. Her husband, the detectives, and

-many other "fly-cops" all over the country, were looking for these

-negotiable bonds, at the very moment when they were safely stowed

-away in the detective's trunk. Mamie and Johnny, who continued to meet

-occasionally, often smiled at the humor of the situation.

-

-Soon, however, suspicion for the Philadelphia touch began to attach

-to Johnny. Mamie's detective asked her one evening if she had heard

-anything about Johnny, of late.

-

-"Not for years," said Mamie, calmly.

-

-But one night, several Central Office men followed Mamie as she went

-to Mt. Vernon to meet Johnny; and when the two old lovers parted,

-Johnny was arrested on account of the fifteen thousand dollar robbery

-in Brooklyn, from the penalty of which he had escaped by means of

-Mamie's neck-tie many years before. The detectives suspected Johnny

-of having stolen the bonds, but of this they could get no evidence. So

-he was sent to Sing Sing for six years on the old charge. When he was

-safely in prison the detectives induced him to return the bonds, on the

-promise that he would not be prosecuted at his release, and would be

-paid a certain sum of money. The mercantile house agreed, and Johnny

-sent word to Mamie to give up the bonds. Then, of course, the detective

-knew about the trick that Mamie had played him. But he, like Johnny,

-was a philosopher, and forgave the clever woman. When he first heard of

-it, however, he had said to her, indignantly:

-

-"You cow, if you had given the bonds to me, I would have been made a

-police captain, and you my queen."

-

-As soon as Johnny got out of stir, Mamie quit the detective, and the

-couple are now living again together in a quiet, domestic manner, in

-Manhattan.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VI.

-

-_What The Burglar Faces._

-

-

-For a long time I took Sheenie Annie's advice and did not do any night

-work. It is too dangerous, the come-back is too sure, you have to

-depend too much on the nerve of your pals, the "bits" are too long; and

-it is very difficult to square it. But as time went on I grew bolder.

-I wanted to do something new, and get more dough. My new departure was

-not, however, entirely due to ambition and the boldness acquired by

-habitual success. After a gun has grafted for a long time his nervous

-system becomes affected, for it is certainly an exciting life. He is

-then very apt to need a stimulant. He is usually addicted to either

-opium or chloral, morphine or whiskey. Even at this early period I

-began to take a little opium, which afterwards was one of the main

-causes of my constant residence in stir, and was really the wreck of my

-life, for when a grafter is doped he is inclined to be very reckless.

-Perhaps if I had never hit the hop I would not have engaged in the

-dangerous occupation of a burglar.

-

-I will say one thing for opium, however. That drug never makes a man

-careless of his personal appearance. He will go to prison frequently,

-but he will always have a good front, and will remain a self-respecting

-thief. The whiskey dip, on the other hand, is apt to dress carelessly,

-lose his ambition and, eventually to go down and out as a common "bum".

-

-I began night-work when I was about twenty years old, and at first

-I did not go in for it very heavily. Big Jack, Jerry, Ed and I made

-several good touches in Mt. Vernon and in hotels at summer resorts and

-got sums ranging from two hundred to twenty-seven hundred dollars.

-We worked together for nearly a year with much success and only an

-occasional fall, and these we succeeded in squaring. Once we had a

-shooting-match which made me a little leary. I was getting out the

-window with my swag, when a shot just grazed my eye. I nearly decided

-to quit then, but, I suppose because it was about that time I was

-beginning to take opium, I continued with more boldness than ever.

-

-One night Ed, a close pal of mine, was operating with me out in Jersey.

-We were working in the rear of a house and Ed was just shinning up the

-back porch to climb in the second story window, when a shutter above

-was thrown open and, without warning, a pistol shot rang out.

-

-Down came Ed, falling like a log at my feet.

-

-"Are you hurt?" said I.

-

-"Done!" said he, and I saw it was so.

-

-Now a man may be nervy enough, but self-preservation is the first rule

-of life. I turned and ran at the top of my speed across two back yards,

-then through a field, then over a fence into what seemed a ploughed

-field beyond. The ground was rough and covered with hummocks, and as I

-stumbled along I suddenly tripped and fell ten feet down into an open

-grave. The place was a cemetery, though I had not recognized it in the

-darkness. For hours I lay there trembling, but nobody came and I was

-safe. It was not long after that, however, that something did happen to

-shake my nerve, which was pretty good. It came about in the following

-way.

-

-A jeweler, who was a well-known "fence", put us on to a place where we

-could get thousands. He was one of the most successful "feelers-out" in

-the business. The man who was my pal on this occasion, Dal, looked the

-place over with me and though we thought it a bit risky, the size of

-the graft attracted us. We had to climb up on the front porch, with an

-electric light streaming right down on us.

-

-I had reached the porch when I got the well-known signal of danger. I

-hurriedly descended and asked Dal what was the matter.

-

-"Jim," he said, "there's somebody off there, a block away."

-

-We investigated, and you can imagine how I felt when we found nothing

-but an old goat. It was a case of Dal's nerves, but the best of us get

-nervous at times.

-

-I went to the porch again and opened the window with a putty knife

-(made of the rib of a woman's corset), when I got the "cluck" again,

-and hastily descended, but again found it was Dal's imagination.

-

-Then I grew hot, and said: "You have knocked all the nerve out of me,

-for sure."

-

-"Jim," he replied, "I ain't feeling good."

-

-Was it a premonition? He wanted to quit the job, but I wouldn't let

-him. I opened up on him. "What!" I said. "You are willing to steal one

-piece of jewelry and take your chance of going to stir, but when we get

-a good thing that would land us in Easy Street the rest of our lives,

-you weaken!"

-

-Dal was quiet, and his face unusually pale. He was a good fellow, but

-his nerve was gone. I braced him up, however, and told him we'd get the

-"éclat" the third time, sure. Then climbing the porch the third time, I

-removed my shoes, raised the window again, and had just struck a light

-when a revolver was pressed on my head. I knocked the man's hand up,

-quick, and jumped. As I did so I heard a cry and then the beating of a

-policeman's stick on the sidewalk.

-

-I ran, with two men after me, and came to the gateway of a yard, where

-I saw a big bloodhound chained to his kennel. He growled savagely, but

-it was neck or nothing, so I patted his head just as though I were not

-shaking with fear, slipped down on my hands and knees and crept into

-his dog-house. Why didn't he bite me? Was it sympathy? When my pursuers

-came up, the owner of the house, who had been aroused by the cries,

-said: "He is not here. This dog would eat him up." When the police saw

-the animal they were convinced of it too.

-

-A little while later I left my friend's kennel. It was four o'clock in

-the morning and I had no shoes on and only one dollar and sixty cents

-in my pocket. I sneaked through the back window of the first house I

-saw, stole a pair of shoes and eighty dollars from a room where a man

-and his wife were sleeping. Then I took a car. Knowing that I was still

-being looked for, I wanted to get rid of my hat, as a partial disguise.

-On the seat with me was a working man asleep. I took his old soft hat,

-leaving my new derby by his side, and also took his dinner pail. Then

-when I left the car I threw away my collar and necktie, and reached New

-York, disguised as a workingman. The next day the papers told how poor

-old Dal had been arrested. Everything that had happened for weeks was

-put on him.

-

-A week later Dal was found dead in his cell, and I believe he did the

-Dutch act (suicide), for I remember one day, months before that fatal

-night, Dal and I were sitting in a politicians saloon, when he said to

-me:

-

-"Jim, do you believe in heaven?"

-

-"No," said I.

-

-"Do you believe in hell?" he asked.

-

-"No," said I.

-

-"I've got a mind to find out," he said quickly, and pointed a big

-revolver at his teeth. One of the guns in the saloon said: "Let him try

-it," but I knocked the pistol away, for something in his manner made me

-think seriously he would shoot.

-

-"You poor brute," I said to him. "I'll put your ashes in an urn some

-day and write "Dear Old Saturday Night" for an epitaph for you; but it

-isn't time yet."

-

-It did not take many experiences like the above to make me very leary

-of night-work; and I went more slowly for some time. I continued

-to dip, however, more boldly than ever and to do a good deal of day

-work; in which comparatively humble graft the servant girls, as I have

-already said, used to help us out considerably. This class of women

-never interested me as much as the sporting characters, but we used to

-make good use of them; and sometimes they amused us.

-

-I remember an entertaining episode which took place while Harry, a

-pal of mine at the time, and I, were going with a couple of these

-hard-working Molls. Harry was rather inclined to be a sure-thing

-grafter, of which class of thieves I shall say more in another chapter;

-and after my recent dangerous adventures I tolerated that class more

-than was customary with me. Indeed, if Harry had been the real thing I

-would have cut him dead; as it was he came near enough to the genuine

-article to make me despise him in my ordinary mood. But, as I say, I

-was uncommonly leary just at that time.

-

-He and I were walking in Stuyvesant Square when we met a couple of

-these domestic slaves. With a "hello," we rang in on them, walked them

-down Second Avenue and had a few drinks all around. My girl told me

-whom she was working with. Thinking there might be something doing I

-felt her out further, with a view to finding where in the house the

-stuff lay. Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly, I easily got the

-desired information. We took the girls into Bonnell's Museum, at Eighth

-Street and Broadway, and saw a howling border melodrama, in which wild

-Indians were as thick as Moll-buzzers in 1884. Mary Anne, who was my

-girl, said she should tell her mistress about the beautiful play; and

-asked for a program. They were all out, and so I gave her an old one,

-of another play, which I had in my pocket. We had a good time, and made

-a date with them for another meeting, in two weeks from that night;

-but before the appointed hour we had beat Mary Anne's mistress out of

-two hundred dollars worth of silverware, easily obtained, thanks to

-the information I had received from Mary Anne. When we met the girls

-again, I found Mary Anne in a great state of indignation; I was afraid

-she was "next" to our being the burglars, and came near falling through

-the floor. But her rage, it seemed, was about the play. She had told

-her mistress about the wild Indian melodrama she had seen, and then had

-shown her the program of _The Banker's Daughter_.

-

-"But there is no such thing as an Indian in _The Banker's Daughter_,"

-her mistress had said. "I fear you are deceiving me, Mary Anne, and

-that you have been to some low place on the Bowery."

-

-The other servants in the house got next and kidded Mary Anne almost

-to death about Indians and _The Banker's Daughter_. After I had quieted

-her somewhat she told me about the burglary that had taken place at her

-house, and Harry and I were much interested. She was sure the touch had

-been made by two "naygers" who lived in the vicinity.

-

-It was shortly after this incident that I beat Blackwell's Island out

-of three months. A certain "heeler" put me on to a disorderly house

-where we could get some stones. I had everything "fixed." The "heeler"

-had arranged it with the copper on the beat, and it seemed like a sure

-thing; although the Madam, I understood, was a good shot and had plenty

-of nerve. My accomplice, the heeler, was a sure thing grafter, who had

-selected me because I had the requisite nerve and was no squealer. At

-two o'clock in the morning a trusted pal and I ascended from the back

-porch to the Madam's bed-room. I had just struck a match, when I heard

-a female voice say, "What are you doing there?" and a bottle, fired at

-my head, banged up against the wall with a crash. I did not like to

-alarm women, and so I made my "gets" out the window, over the fence,

-and into another street, where I was picked up by a copper, on general

-principles.

-

-The Madam told him that the thief was over six feet tall and had a

-fierce black mustache. As I am only five feet seven inches and was

-smoothly shaven, it did not seem like an identification; although when

-she saw me she changed her note, and swore I was the man. The copper,

-who knew I was a grafter, though he did not think I did that kind of

-work, nevertheless took me to the station-house, where I convinced

-two wardmen that I had been arrested unjustly. When I was led before

-the magistrate in the morning, the copper said the lady's description

-did not tally with the short, red-haired and freckled thief before

-his Honor. The policemen all agreed, however, that I was a notorious

-grafter, and the magistrate, who was not much of a lawyer, sent me to

-the Island for three months on general principles.

-

-I was terribly sore, for I knew I had been illegally treated. I felt

-as much a martyr as if I had not been guilty in the least; and I

-determined to escape at all hazards; although my friends told me I

-would be released any day; for certainly the evidence against me had

-been insufficient.

-

-After I had been on the Island ten days I went to a friend, who

-had been confined there several months and said: "Eddy, I have been

-unjustly convicted for a crime I committed--such was my way of putting

-it--and I am determined to make my elegant, (escape) come what will. Do

-you know the weak spots of this dump?"

-

-He put me "next", and I saw there was a chance, a slim one, if a man

-could swim and didn't mind drowning. I found another pal, Jack Donovan,

-who, like me, could swim like a fish; he was desperate too, and willing

-to take any chance to see New York. Five or six of us slept together

-in one large cell, and on the night selected for our attempt, Jack and

-I slipped into a compartment where about twenty short term prisoners

-were kept. Our departure from the other cell, from which it was very

-difficult to escape after once being locked in for the night, was not

-noticed by the night guard and his trusty because our pals in the cell

-answered to our names when they were called. It was comparatively easy

-to escape from the large room where the short term men were confined.

-Into this room, too, Jack and I had taken tools from the quarry during

-the daytime.

-

-It was twelve o'clock on a November night when we made our escape.

-We took ropes from the canvas cot, tied them together, and lowered

-ourselves to the ground on the outside, where we found bad weather,

-rain and hail. We were unable to obtain a boat, but secured a telegraph

-pole, rolled it into the water, and set off with it for New York.

-The terrific tide at Hellgate soon carried us well into the middle

-of Long Island Sound, and when we had been in the water half an hour,

-we were very cold and numb, and began to think that all was over. But

-neither of us feared death. All I wanted was to save enough money to

-be cremated; and I was confident my friends would see to that. I don't

-think fear of death is a common trait among grafters. Perhaps it is

-lack of imagination; more likely, however, it is because they think

-they won't be any the worse off after death.

-

-Still, I was not sorry when a wrecking boat suddenly popped our way.

-The tug did not see us, and hit Jack's end of the pole a hard blow that

-must have shaken him off. I heard him holler "Save me," and I yelled

-too. I didn't think anything about capture just then. All my desire to

-live came back to me.

-

-I was pulled into the boat. The captain was a good fellow. He was

-"next" and only smiled at my lies. What was more to the purpose he

-gave me some good whiskey, and set me ashore in Jersey City. Jack was

-drowned. All through life I have been used to losing a friend suddenly

-by the wayside; but I have always felt sad when it happened. And yet it

-would have been far better for me if I had been picked out for an early

-death. I guess poor Jack was lucky.

-

-Certainly there are worse things than death. Through these three years

-of continual and for the most part successful graft, I had known a

-man named Henry Fry whose story is one of the saddest. If he had been

-called off suddenly as Jack was, he would certainly have been deemed

-lucky by those who knew; for he was married to a bad woman. He was

-one of the most successful box-men (safe-blowers) in the city, and

-made thousands, but nothing was enough for his wife. She used to say,

-when he would put twelve hundred dollars in her lap, "This won't meet

-expenses. I need one thousand dollars more." She was unfaithful to

-him, too, and with his friends. When I go to a matinée and see a lot

-of sleek, fat, inane looking women, I wonder who the poor devils are

-who are having their life blood sucked out of them. Certainly it was so

-with Henry, or Henny, as we used to call him.

-

-One day, I remember, we went down the Sound with a well-known

-politician's chowder party, and Henny was with us. Two weeks

-earlier New York had been startled by a daring burglary. A large

-silk-importer's place of business was entered and his safe, supposed

-to be burglar-proof, was opened. He was about to be married, and his

-valuable wedding presents, which were in the safe, and six thousand

-dollars worth of silk, were stolen. It was Henny and his pals who

-had made the touch, but on this beautiful night on the Sound, Henny

-was sad. We were sitting on deck, as it was a hot summer night, when

-Henny jumped off his camp-stool and asked me to sing a song. I sang

-a sentimental ditty, in my tenor voice, and then Henny took me to the

-side of the boat, away from the others.

-

-"Kid," he said, "I feel trouble coming over me."

-

-"Cheer up," I replied. "You're a little down-hearted, that's all."

-

-"I wish to God," he said, "I was like you."

-

-I pulled out a five dollar bill and a two dollar bill and remarked:

-"I've got just seven dollars to my name."

-

-He turned to me and said:

-

-"But you are happy. You don't let anything bother you."

-

-Henny did not drink as a rule; that was one reason he was such a good

-box-man, but on this occasion we had a couple of drinks, and I sang

-"I love but one." Then Henny ordered champagne, grew confidential, and

-told me his troubles.

-

-"Kid" he said, "I've got thirty five hundred dollars on me. I have

-been giving my wife a good deal of money, but don't know what she does

-with it. In sixty days I have given her three thousand dollars, and she

-complains about poverty all the time."

-

-Henny had a nice flat of seven or eight rooms; he owed nothing and

-had no children. He said he was unable to find any bank books in his

-wife's trunk, and was confident she was not laying the money by. She

-did not give it to her people, but even borrowed money from her father,

-a well-to-do builder.

-

-Two days after the night of the excursion, one of Henny's pals in the

-silk robbery, went into a gin mill, treated everybody, and threw a

-one thousand dollar bill down on the bar. Grafters, probably more than

-others, like this kind of display. It is the only way to rise in their

-society. A Central Office detective saw this little exhibition, got

-into the grafters confidence and weeded him out a bit. A night or two

-afterwards Henny was in bed at home, when the servant girl, who was in

-love with Henny, and detested his wife because she treated her husband

-so badly (she used to say to me, "She ain't worthy to tie his shoe

-string") came to the door and told Henny and his wife that a couple of

-men and a policeman in uniform were inquiring for him. Henny replied

-sleepily that they were friends of his who had come to buy some stones;

-but the girl was alarmed. She knew that Henny was crooked and feared

-that those below meant him no good. She took the canvas turn-about

-containing burglar's tools which hung on the wall near the bed, and

-pinned it around her waist, under her skirt, and then admitted the

-three visitors.

-

-The sergeant said to Henny, who had dressed himself, "You are under

-suspicion for the silk robbery." Yet there was, as is not uncommon, a

-"but," which is as a rule a monetary consideration. Henny knew that

-the crime was old, and, as he thought his "fence" was safe, he did

-not see how there could be a come-back. So he did not take the hint to

-shell out, and worked the innocent con. But those whose business it is

-to watch the world of prey, put two and two together, and were "next"

-that Henny and his mob had pulled off the trick. So they searched the

-house, expecting to find, if not _éclat_, at least burglars tools;

-for they knew that Henny was at the top of the ladder, and that he

-must have something to work with. While the sergeant was going through

-Henny's trunk, one of the flymen fooled with the pretty servant girl.

-She jumped, and a pair of turners fell on the floor. It did not take

-the flyman long to find the whole kit of tools. Henny was arrested,

-convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for five years. While in prison

-he became insane, his delusion being that he was a funny man on the

-Detroit Free Press, which he thought was owned by his wife.

-

-I never discovered what Henny's wife did with the money she had from

-him. When I last heard of her she was married to another successful

-grafter, whom she was making unhappy also. In a grafter's life a woman

-often takes the part of the avenger of society. She turns against the

-grafters their own weapons, and uses them with more skill, for no man

-can graft like a woman.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-I had now been grafting for three years in the full tide of success.

-Since the age of eighteen I had had no serious fall. I had made

-much money and lived high. I had risen in the world of graft, and

-I had become, not only a skillful pickpocket, but a good swindler

-and drag-worker and had done some good things as a burglar. I was

-approaching my twenty-first year, when, as you will see, I was to go to

-the penitentiary for the first time. This is a good place, perhaps, to

-describe my general manner of life, my daily menu, so to speak, during

-these three fat years: for after my first term in state's prison things

-went from bad to worse.

-

-I lived in a furnished room; or at a hotel. If there was nothing doing

-in the line of graft, I'd lie abed late, and read the newspapers to see

-if any large gathering, where we might make some touches, was on hand.

-One of my girls, of whom there was a long succession, was usually with

-me. We would breakfast, if the day was an idle one, about one or two

-o'clock in the afternoon. Then we'd send to the restaurant and have

-a beefsteak or chops in our rooms, and perhaps a whiskey sour. If it

-was another grafter's girl I'd won I'd be greatly pleased, for that

-kind of thing is a game with us. In the afternoon I'd take in some

-variety show; or buy the "Tommy" a present; if it was summer we might

-go to a picnic, or to the Island. If I was alone, I would meet a pal,

-play billiards or pool, bet on the races, baseball and prize fights,

-jump out to the Polo grounds, or go to Patsy's house and have a game

-of poker. Patsy's wife was a handsome grafter; and Patsy was jealous.

-Every gun is sensitive about his wife, for he doesn't know how long he

-will have her with him. In the evening I would go to a dance-hall; or

-to Coney Island if the weather was good.

-

-If it was a busy day, that is, if there was a touch to be pulled off,

-we would get up in the morning or the afternoon, according to the best

-time for the particular job in hand. In the afternoon we would often

-graft at the Polo grounds, where we had a copper "right." We did not

-have the same privileges at the race track, because it was protected by

-the Pinkerton men. We'd console ourselves at the Polo grounds, which

-we used to tear wide open, and where I never got even a hint of a

-fall; the coppers got their percentage of the touches. In the morning

-we would meet at one of the grafters homes or rooms and talk over our

-scheme for the day or night. If we were going outside the city we would

-have to rise very early. Sometimes we were sorry we had lost our sleep;

-particularly the time we tried to tear open the town of Sing Sing,

-near which the famous prison is. We found nothing to steal there but

-pig iron, and there were only two pretty girls in the whole village.

-We used to jump out to neighboring towns, not always to graft, but

-sometimes to see our girls, for like sailors, the well-dressed, dapper

-pickpocket has a girl in every port. If we made a good touch in the

-afternoon we'd go on a spree in the evening with Sheenie Annie, Blonde

-Mamie, Big Lena or some other good-natured lasses, or we'd go over and

-inspect the Jersey maidens. After a good touch we would put some of the

-dough away for fall-money, or for our sick relatives or guns in stir

-or in the hospital. We'd all chip in to help out a woman grafter in

-trouble, and pool a piece of jewelry sometimes, for the purpose. Then,

-our duty done, we would put on our best front, and visit our friends

-and sporting places. Among others we used to jump over to a hotel kept

-by an ex-gun, one of the best of the spud men (green goods men), who is

-now on the level and a bit of a politician. He owns six fast horses, is

-married and has two beautiful children.

-

-A few months before I was sent to the penitentiary for the first time,

-I had my only true love affair. I have liked many girls, but sentiment

-of the kind I felt for Ethel has played little part in my life. For

-Ethel I felt the real thing, and she for me. She was a good, sensible

-girl, and came from a respectable family. She lived with her father,

-who was a drummer, and took care of the house for him. She was a

-good deal of a musician, and, like most other girls, she was fond of

-dancing. I first met her at Beethoven Hall, and was introduced to her

-by a man, an honest laborer, who was in love with her. I liked her at

-first sight, but did not love her until I had talked with her. In two

-weeks we were lovers, and went everywhere together. The workingman

-who loved her too was jealous and began to knock me. He told her I

-was a grafter, but she would not believe him; and said nothing to me

-about it, but it came to my ears through an intimate girl pal of hers.

-Shortly after that I fell for a breech-kick (was arrested for picking

-a man's trouser's pocket), but I had a good lawyer and the copper

-was one of those who are open to reason. I lay a month in the Tombs,

-however, before I got off, and Ethel learned all about it. She came to

-the Tombs to see me, but, instead of reproaches, I got sympathy from

-her. After I was released I gave her some of my confidence. She asked

-me if I wouldn't be honest, and go to work; and said she would ask

-her father to get me a job. Her father came to me and painted what my

-life would be, if I kept on. I thought the matter over sincerely. I

-had formed expensive habits which I could not keep up on any salary I

-could honestly make. Away down in my mind (I suppose you would call it

-soul) I knew I was not ready for reform. I talked with Ethel, and told

-her that I loved her, but that I could not quit my life. She said she

-would marry me anyway. But I thought the world of her, and told her

-that though I had blasted my own life I would not blast hers. I would

-not marry her, she was so good and affectionate. When we parted, I said

-to myself: Man proposes, habit disposes.

-

-It was certainly lucky that I did not marry that sweet girl, for a

-month after I had split with her, I fell for a long term in state's

-prison. It was for a breech-kick, which I could not square. I had gone

-out of my hotel one morning for a bottle of whiskey when I met two

-grafters, Johnny and Alec, who were towing a "sucker" along with them.

-They gave me the tip that it was worth trying. Indeed, I gathered that

-the man must have his bank with him, and I nicked him in a car for his

-breech-leather. A spectator saw the deed and tipped off a copper. I was

-nailed, but had nothing on me, for I had passed the leather to Alec.

-I was not in the mood for the police station, and with Alec's help I

-"licked" the copper, who pulled his gun and fired at us as we ran up a

-side street. Alec blazed back, and escaped, but I was arrested. I could

-not square it, as I have said, for I had been wanted at Headquarters

-for some time past, because I did not like to give up, and was no

-stool-pigeon. I notified Mr. R----, who was told to keep his hands off.

-I had been tearing the cars open for so long that the company wanted

-to "do" me. They got brassy-mouthed and yelled murder. I saw I had

-a corporation against me and hadn't a living chance to beat it. So I

-pleaded guilty and received five years and seven months at Sing Sing.

-

-A boy of twenty-one, I was hand-cuffed with two old jail-birds, and as

-we rode up on a Fourth Avenue car to the Grand Central Station, I felt

-deeply humiliated for the first time in my life. When the passengers

-stared at me I hung my head with shame.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VII.

-

-_In Stir._

-

-

-I hung my head with shame, but not because of contrition. I was ashamed

-of being caught and made a spectacle of. All the way to Sing Sing

-station people stared at us as if we were wild animals. We walked from

-the town to the prison, in close company with two deputy sheriffs. I

-observed considerably, knowing that I should not see the outside world

-again for a number of years. I looked with envy at the people we passed

-who seemed honest, and thought of home and the chances I had thrown

-away.

-

-When I reached the stir I was put through the usual ceremonies. My

-pedigree was taken, but I told the examiners nothing. I gave them a

-false name and a false pedigree. Then a bath was given to my clothes

-and I was taken to the tailor shop. When my hair had been cropped close

-and a suit of stripes given me I felt what it was to be the convicted

-criminal. It was not a pleasant feeling, I can tell you, and when I was

-taken to my cell my heart sank indeed. A narrow room, seven feet, four

-inches long; dark, damp, with moisture on the walls, and an old iron

-cot with plenty of company, as I afterwards discovered--this was to be

-my home for years. And I as full of life as a young goat! How could I

-bear it?

-

-After I had been examined by the doctor and questioned about my

-religion by the chaplain, I was left to reflect in my cell. I was

-interrupted in my melancholy train of thought by two convicts who

-were at work in the hall just outside my cell. I had known them on

-the outside, and they, taking good care not to be seen by the screws

-(keepers) tipped me off through my prison door to everything in stir

-which was necessary for a first timer to know. They told me to keep

-my mouth shut, to take everything from the screws in silence, and if

-assigned to a shop to do my work. They told me who the stool-pigeons

-were, that is to say, the convicts who, in order to curry favor and

-have an easy time, put the keepers next to what other convicts are

-doing, and so help to prevent escapes. They tipped me off to those

-keepers who were hard to get along with, and put me next to the

-Underground Tunnel, and who were running it. Sing Sing, they said, is

-the best of the three New York penitentiaries: for the grub is better

-than at the others, there are more privileges, and, above all, it is

-nearer New York, so that your friends can visit you more frequently.

-They gave me a good deal of prison gossip, and told me who among my

-friends were there, and what their condition of health was. So and so

-had died or gone home, they said, such and such had been drafted to

-Auburn or Clinton prisons. If I wanted to communicate with my friends

-in stir all that was necessary for me to do was to write a few stiffs

-(letters) and they would be sent by the Underground Tunnel. They asked

-me about their old pals, hang-outs and girls in New York, and I, in

-turn gave them a lot of New York gossip. Like all convicts they shed a

-part of the things they had received from home, gave me canned goods,

-tobacco and a pipe. It did not take me long to get on to the workings

-of the prison.

-

-I was particularly interested in the Underground Tunnel, for I saw

-at once its great usefulness. This is the secret system by which

-contraband articles, such as whiskey, opium and morphine are brought

-into the prison. When a rogue is persuasive with the coin of the realm

-he can always find a keeper or two to bring him what he considers

-the necessaries of life, among which are opium, whiskey and tobacco.

-If you have a screw "right," you can be well supplied with these

-little things. To get him "right" it is often necessary to give him a

-share--about twenty per cent--of the money sent you from home. This

-system is worked in all the State prisons in New York, and during

-my first term, or any of the other terms for that matter, I had no

-difficulty in supplying my growing need for opium.

-

-I do not want people to get the idea that it is always necessary to

-bribe a keeper, in order to obtain these little luxuries; for many a

-screw has brought me whiskey and hop, and contraband letters from other

-inmates, without demanding a penny. A keeper is a human being like the

-rest of us, and he is sometimes moved by considerations other than of

-pelf. No matter how good and conscientious he may be, a keeper is but

-a man after all, and, having very little to do, especially if he is in

-charge of an idle gang of "cons" he is apt to enter into conversation

-with them, particularly if they are better educated or more interesting

-than he, which often is the case. They tell him about their escapades

-on the outside and often get his sympathy and friendship. It is

-only natural that those keepers who are good fellows should do small

-favors for certain convicts. They may begin by bringing the convicts

-newspapers to read, but they will end by providing them with almost

-everything. Some of them, however, are so lacking in human sympathy,

-that their kindness is aroused only by a glimpse of the coin of the

-realm; or by the prospect of getting some convict to do their dirty

-work for them, that is, to spy upon their fellow prisoners.

-

-At Auburn penitentiary, whither I was drafted after nine months at

-Sing Sing, a few of the convicts peddled opium and whiskey, with, of

-course, the connivance of the keepers. There are always some persons in

-prison as well as out who want to make capital out of the misfortunes

-of others. These peddlars, were despised by the rest of the convicts,

-for they were invariably stool-pigeons; and young convicts who never

-before knew the power of the drug became opium fiends, all on account

-of the business propensities of these detestable rats (stool-pigeons)

-who, because they had money and kept the screws next to those cons who

-tried to escape, lived in Easy Street while in stir.

-

-While on this subject, I will tell about a certain famous "fence"

-(at one of these prisons) although he did not operate until my second

-term. At that time things were booming on the outside. The graft was so

-good that certain convicts in my clique were getting good dough sent

-them by their pals who were at liberty; and many luxuries came in,

-therefore, by the Underground Tunnel. Now those keepers who are next

-to the Underground develop, through their association with convicts, a

-propensity to graft, but usually have not the nerve to hustle for the

-goods. So they are willing to accept stolen property, not having the

-courage and skill to steal, from the inhabitants of the under world.

-A convict, whom I knew when at liberty, named Mike, thought he saw

-an opportunity to do a good "fencing" business in prison. He gave a

-"red-front" (gold watch and chain), which he had stolen in his good

-days, to a certain keeper who was running the Underground, and thus

-got him "right." Then Mike made arrangements with two grafters on the

-outside to supply the keeper and his friends with what they wanted. If

-the keeper said his girl wanted a stone, Mike would send word to one

-of the thieves on the outside to supply a good diamond as quickly as

-possible. The keeper would give Mike a fair price for these valuable

-articles and then sell the stones or watches, or make his girl a

-present.

-

-Other keepers followed suit, for they couldn't see how there was any

-"come-back" possible, and soon Mike was doing a thriving business. It

-lasted for five or six months, when Mike stopped it as a regular graft

-because of the growing cupidity of the keepers. One of them ordered

-a woman's watch and chain and a pair of diamond ear-rings through the

-Underground Tunnel. Mike obtained the required articles, but the keeper

-paid only half of what he promised, and Mike thereupon shut up shop.

-Occasionally, however, he continued to sell goods stolen by his pals

-who were at liberty, but only for cash on the spot, and refused all

-credit. The keepers gradually got a great feeling of respect for this

-convict "fence" who was so clever and who stood up for his rights; and

-the business went on smoothly again, for a while.

-

-But finally it was broken up for good. A grafter on the outside, Tommy,

-sent through the Underground a pawn ticket for some valuable goods,

-among them a sealskin sacque worth three hundred dollars, which he

-had stolen and hocked in Philadelphia. Mike sold the pawn-ticket to

-a screw. Soon after that Tommy, or one of his pals, got a fall and

-"squealed". The police got "next" to where the goods were, and when

-the keeper sent the ticket and the money to redeem the articles they

-allowed them to be forwarded to the prison, but arrested the keeper for

-receiving stolen goods. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years,

-but got off through influence. That, however, finished the "fence" at

-the institution.

-

-To resume the thread of my narrative, the day after I reached Sing Sing

-I was put through the routine that lasted all the time I was there. At

-six-thirty in the morning we were awakened by the bell and marched in

-lock-step (from which many of us were to acquire a peculiar gait that

-was to mark us through life and help prevent us from leading decent

-lives) to the bucket-shop, where we washed, marched to the mess for

-breakfast at seven-thirty, then to the various shops to work until

-eleven-thirty, when at the whistle we would form again into squads

-and march, again in the lock-step, fraternally but silently, to our

-solemn dinner, which we ate in dead silence. Silence, indeed, except

-on the sly, was the general rule of our day, until work was over, when

-we could whisper together until five o'clock, the hour to return to

-our cells, into which we would carry bread for supper, coffee being

-conveyed to us through a spout in the wall. The food at Sing Sing was

-pretty good. Breakfast consisted of hash or molasses, black coffee and

-bread; and at dinner we had pork and beans, potatoes, hot coffee and

-bread. Pork and beans gave place to four eggs on Friday, and sometimes

-stews were given us. It was true what I'd heard, that Sing Sing has the

-best food of any institution I have known. After five o'clock I would

-read in my cell by an oil lamp (since my time electricity has been put

-in the prison) until nine o'clock, when I had to put out my light and

-go to bed.

-

-I had a great deal more time for reading and meditation in my lonely

-cell than one would think by the above routine. I was put to work in

-the shop making chairs. It was the first time I had ever worked in my

-life, and I took my time about it. I felt no strong desire to work for

-the State. I was expected to cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually

-caned about two. I did not believe in work. I felt at that time that

-New York State owed me a living. I was getting a living all right, but

-I was ungrateful. I did not thank them a wee bit. I must have been a

-bad example to other "cons," for they began to get as tired as myself.

-At any rate, I lost my job, and was sent back to my cell, where I

-stayed most of the time while at Sing Sing.

-

-I worked, indeed, very little at any time during my three bits in the

-penitentiary. The prison at Sing Sing, during the nine months I was

-there on my first term, was very crowded, and there was not enough work

-to go round; and I was absolutely idle most of the time. When I had

-been drafted to Auburn I found more work to do, but still very little,

-for it was just then that the legislature had shut down on contract

-labor in the prisons. The outside merchants squealed because they could

-not compete with unpaid convict labor; and so the prison authorities

-had to shut down many of their shops, running only enough to supply

-the inside demand, which was slight. For eighteen months at Auburn I

-did not work a day. I think it was a very bad thing for the health of

-convicts when this law was passed; for certainly idleness is a very bad

-thing for most of them; and to be shut up nearly all the time in damp,

-unhealthy cells like those at Sing Sing, is a terrible strain on the

-human system.

-

-Personally, however, I liked to be in my cell, especially during my

-first year of solitary confinement, before my health began to give

-way; for I had my books from the good prison libraries, my pipe or

-cigarettes, and last, but not least, I had a certain portion of opium

-that I used every day.

-

-For me, prison life had one great advantage. It broke down my health

-and confirmed me for many years in the opium habit, as we shall see;

-but I educated myself while in stir. Previous to going to Sing Sing my

-education had been almost entirely in the line of graft; but in stir,

-I read the English classics and became familiar with philosophy and the

-science of medicine and learned something about chemistry.

-

-One of my favorite authors was Voltaire, whom I read, of course, in a

-translation. His "Dictionary" was contraband in prison but I read it

-with profit. Voltaire was certainly one of the shrewdest of men, and

-as up to snuff as any cynical grafter I know, and yet he had a great

-love for humanity. He was the philosopher of humanity. Goethe said

-that Luther threw the world back two hundred years, but I deny it; for

-Luther, like Voltaire, pointed out the ignorance and wickedness of the

-priests of their day. These churchmen did not understand the teachings

-of Christ. Was Voltaire delusional? The priests must have thought so,

-but they were no judges, for they were far worse and less humane than

-the French revolutionists. The latter killed outright, but the priests

-tortured in the name of the Most Humane. I never approved of the

-methods of the French revolutionists, but certainly they were gentle in

-comparison with the priests of the Spanish Inquisition.

-

-I think that, in variety of subjects, Voltaire has no equal among

-writers. Shrewd as he was, he had a soul, and his moral courage was

-grand. His defense of young Barry, who was arrested for using language

-against the church, showed his kindness and breadth of mind. On his

-arrival in Paris, when he was only a stripling, he denounced the

-cowardly, fawning sycophants who surrounded Louis XIV,[B] and wrote

-a sarcastic poem on His Nibs, and was confined in the Bastille for

-two years. His courage, his wit, his sarcasms, his hatred of his

-persecutors, and his love and kindness, stamp him as one of the great,

-healthy intellects of mankind. What a clever book is _Candide_! What

-satire! What wit! As I lay on my cot how often I laughed at his caustic

-comments on humanity! And how he could hate! I never yet met a man of

-any account who was not a good hater. I own that Voltaire was ungallant

-toward the fair sex. But that was his only fault.

-

-I enjoyed Victor Hugo because he could create a great character, and

-was capable of writing a story with a plot. I rank him as a master

-of fiction, although I preferred his experience as a traveller, to

-his novels, which are not real enough. Ernest Renan was a bracing

-and clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed in reading his _Life

-of Jesus_. I expected to get a true outline of Christ's time and

-a character sketch of the man himself, but I didn't. I went to the

-fountain for a glass of good wine, but got only red lemonade.

-

-I liked Dumas, and revelled in the series beginning with _The Three

-Musketeers_. I could not read Dumas now, however. I also enjoyed

-Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey, for they are very sensational; but that was

-during my first term in stir. I could not turn a page of their books

-now, for they would seem idiotic to me. Balzac is a bird of another

-feather. In my opinion he was one of the best dissectors of human

-nature that the world ever produced. Not even Shakespeare was his

-equal. His depth in searching for motives, his discernment in detecting

-a hypocrite, his skill in showing up women, with their follies, their

-loves, their little hypocrisies, their endearments, their malice and

-their envy is unrivalled. It is right that Balzac should show woman

-with all her faults and follies and virtues, for if she did not possess

-all these characteristics, how could man adore her?

-

-In his line I think Thackeray is as great as Balzac. When I had read

-_Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, _The Newcomes_ and _Barry Lyndon_, I was

-so much interested that I read anything of his I could lay my hands

-on, over and over again. With a novel of Thackeray's in my hand I would

-become oblivious to my surroundings, and long to know something of this

-writers personality. I think I formed his mental make-up correctly,

-for I imagined him to be gentle and humane. Any man with ability and

-brains equal to his could not be otherwise. What a character is Becky

-Sharp! In her way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie Annie. She did

-not love Rawdon as a good wife should. If she had she would not be the

-interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful to Rawdon for three

-reasons; first, he married her; second, he gave her a glimpse into a

-station in life her soul longed for; third, he came from a good family,

-and was a soldier and tall, and it is well-known that little women

-like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky. She often grinned at his lack

-of brains. She grinned at everything, and when we learn that Becky got

-religion at the end of the book, instead of saying, God bless her, we

-only grin, too.

-

-_Pendennis_ is a healthy book. I always sympathize with Pen and Laura

-in their struggles to get on, and when the baby was born I was willing

-to become Godpapa, just for its Mamma's sake. _The Newcomes_ I call

-Thackeray's masterpiece. It is truer to life than any other book I

-ever read. Take the scene where young Clive throws the glass of wine

-in his cousin's face. The honest horror of the father, his indignation

-when old Captain Costigan uses bad language, his exit when he hears a

-song in the Music Hall--all this is true realism. But the scene that

-makes this book Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old Colonel

-is dying. The touching devotion of Madam and Ethel, the love for old

-Tom, his last word "_adsum_" the quiet weeping of his nurse, and the

-last duties to the dead; the beautiful tenderness of the two women, of

-a kind that makes the fair sex respected by all men--I can never forget

-this scene till my dying day.

-

-When I was sick in stir a better tonic than the quack could prescribe

-was Thackeray's _Book of Snobs_. Many is the night I could not sleep

-until I had read this book with a relish. It acted on me like a bottle

-of good wine, leaving me peaceful after a time of pleasure. In this

-book are shown up the little egotisms of the goslings and the foibles

-of the sucklings in a masterly manner.

-

-I read every word Dickens ever wrote; and I often ruminated in my

-mind as to which of his works is the masterpiece. _Our Mutual Friend_

-is weak in the love scenes, but the book is made readable by two

-characters, Noddy Boffin and Silas Wegg. Where Wegg reads, as he

-thinks, _The Last of the Russians_, when the book was _The Decline and

-Fall Of the Roman Empire_, there is the quintessence of humor. Silas's

-wooden leg and his occupation of selling eggs would make anybody smile,

-even a dip who had fallen and had no money to square it.

-

-The greatest character in _David Copperfield_ is Uriah Heep. The prison

-scene where this humble hypocrite showed he knew his Bible thoroughly,

-and knew the advantage of having some holy quotations pat, reminded

-me often of men I have known in Auburn and Sing Sing prisons. Some

-hypocritical jail-bird would dream that he could succeed on the outside

-by becoming a Sunday School superintendent; and four of the meanest

-thieves I ever knew got their start in that way. Who has not enjoyed

-Micawber, with his frothy personality and straitened circumstances,

-and the unctuous Barkis.--Poor Emily! Who could blame her? What woman

-could help liking Steerforth? It is strange and true that good women

-are won by men they know to be rascals. Is it the contrast between Good

-and Evil, or is it because the ne'er-do-well has a stronger character

-and more magnetic force? Agnes was one of the best women in the world.

-Contrast her with David's first wife. Agnes was like a fine violin,

-while Dora was like a wailing hurdy-gurdy.

-

-_Oliver Twist_ is Dickens's strongest book. He goes deeper into human

-nature there than in any other of his writings. Fagin, the Jew, is a

-very strong character, but overdrawn. The picture of Fagin's dens and

-of the people in them, is true to life. I have seen similar gatherings

-many a time. The ramblings of the Artful Dodger are drawn from the real

-thing, but I never met in real life such a brutal character as Bill

-Sykes; and I have met some tough grafters, as the course of this book

-will show. Nancy Sykes, however, is true to life. In her degradation

-she was still a woman. I contend that a woman is never so low but a

-man was the cause. One passage in the book has often touched me, as it

-showed that Nancy had not lost her sex. When she and Bill were passing

-the prison, she turned towards it and said: "Bill, they were fine

-fellows that died to-day." "Shut your mouth," said Bill. Now I don't

-think there is a thief in the United States who would have answered

-Nancy's remark that way. Strong arm workers who would beat your brains

-out for a few dollars would be moved by that touch of pity in Nancy's

-voice.

-

-But Oliver himself is the great character, and his story reminds me

-of my own. The touching incident in the work-house where his poor

-stomach is not full, and he asks for a second platter of mush to the

-horror of the teachers, is not overdrawn. When I was in one of our

-penal institutions, at a later time of my life, I was ill, and asked

-for extra food; but my request was looked upon as the audacity of a

-hardened villain. I had many such opportunities to think of Oliver.

-

-I always liked those authors who wrote as near life as decency would

-permit. Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_ has often amused me, and _Tom

-Jones_, _Roderick Random_ and _Peregrine Pickle_ I have read over and

-over again. I don't see why good people object to such books. Some

-people are forever looking after the affairs of others and neglecting

-their own; especially a man whom I will call Common Socks who has put

-himself up as a mentor for over seventy millions of people. Let me tell

-the busy ladies who are afraid that such books will harm the morals of

-young persons that the more they are cried down the more they will be

-read. For that matter they ought to be read. Why object to the girl

-of sixteen reading such books and not to the woman of thirty-five?

-I think their mental strength is about equal. Both are romantic and

-the woman of thirty-five will fall in love as quickly as the girl of

-sixteen. I think a woman is always a girl; at least, it has been so in

-my experience. One day I was grafting in Philadelphia. It was raining,

-and a woman was walking along on Walnut Street. She slipped on the wet

-sidewalk and fell. I ran to her assistance, and saw that her figure was

-slim and girlish and that she had a round, rosy face, but that her hair

-was pure white. When I asked her if she was hurt, she said "yes," but

-when I said "Let me be your grandson and support you on my way," I put

-my foot into it, for, horrors! the look she gave me, as she said in an

-icy voice, "I was never married!" I wondered what manner of men there

-were in Philadelphia, and, to square myself, I said: "Never married!

-and with a pair of such pretty ankles!" Then she gave me a look,

-thanked me, and walked away as jauntily as she ever did in her life,

-though she must have been suffering agonies from her sprained ankle.

-Since that time I have been convinced that they of the gentle sex are

-girls from fifteen to eighty.

-

-I read much of Lever, too, while I was in stir. His pictures of Ireland

-and of the noisy strife in Parliament, the description of Dublin with

-its spendthrifts and excited populace, the gamblers and the ruined but

-gay young gentlemen, all mixed up with the grandeur of Ireland, are the

-work of a master. I could only compare this epoch of worn-out regalia

-with a St. Patrick's day parade twenty years ago in the fourth ward of

-Manhattan.

-

-Other books I read in stir were Gibbon's _Roman Empire_, Carlyle's

-_Frederick the Great_, and many of the English poets. I read

-Wordsworth, Gray and Goldsmith, but I liked Tom Moore and Robert Burns

-better. The greatest of all the poets, however, in my estimation, is

-Byron. His loves were many, his adventures daring, and his language was

-as broad and independent as his mind.

-

-

-FOOTNOTE:

-

-     [B] _Sic._ (Editor's Note.)

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VIII.

-

-In Stir (_continued_).

-

-

-Sing Sing was overflowing with convicts, and after I had been there

-nine months, I and a number of others were transferred to Auburn

-penitentiary. There I found the cells drier, and better than at

-Sing Sing, but the food not so good. The warden was not liked by the

-majority of the men, but I admired him for two things. He believed in

-giving us good bread; and he did not give a continental what came into

-the prison, whether it was a needle or a cannister, as long as it was

-kept in the cell and not used.

-

-It was in Auburn stir that opium grew to be a habit with me. I used to

-give the keepers who were running the Underground one dollar of every

-five that were sent me, and they appreciated my kindness and kept me

-supplied with the drug. What part the hop began to play in my life may

-be seen from the routine of my days at Auburn; particularly at those

-periods when there was no work to be done. After rising in the morning

-I would clean out my cell, and turn up my bed and blankets; then I went

-to breakfast, then if there was no work to do, back to my cell, where

-I ate a small portion of opium, and sometimes read the daily paper,

-which was also contraband. It is only the stool-pigeons, those convicts

-who have money, or the cleverest among the rascals, who get many of

-these privileges. After I had had my opium and the newspaper I would

-exercise with dumb-bells and think or read in my cell. Then I would

-have a plunge bath and a nap, which would take me up to dinner time.

-After dinner I would read in my cell again until three o'clock, when I

-would go to the bucket-shop or exercise for half an hour in the yard,

-in lock step, with the others; then back to the cell, taking with me

-bread and a cup of coffee made out of burnt bread crust, for my supper.

-In the evening I would read and smoke until my light went out, and

-would wind up the day with a large piece of opium, which grew larger,

-as time passed.

-

-For a long time I was fairly content with what was practically solitary

-confinement. I had my books, my pipe, cigarettes and my regular supply

-of hop. Whether I worked in the daytime or not I would usually spend my

-evenings in the same way. I would lie on my cot and sometimes a thought

-like the following would come to me: "Yes, I have stripes on. When I

-am released perhaps some one will pity me, particularly the women. They

-may despise and avoid me, most likely they will. But I don't care. All

-I want is to get their wad of money. In the meantime I have my opium

-and my thoughts and am just as happy as the millionaire, unless he has

-a narcotic."

-

-After the drug had begun to work I would frequently fall into a deep

-sleep and not wake until one or two o'clock the following morning; then

-I would turn on my light, peer through my cell door, and try to see

-through the little window out in the corridor. A peculiar nervousness

-often came over me at this hour, particularly if the weather had been

-rainy, and my imagination would run on a ship-wreck very often, or on

-some other painful subject; and I might tell the story to myself in

-jingles, or jot it down on a piece of paper. Then my whole being would

-be quiet. A gentle, soothing melancholy would steal upon me. Often

-my imagination was so powerfully affected that I could really see

-the events of my dream. I could see the ship tossing about on waves

-mountain high. Then and only then I was positive I had a soul. I was

-in such a state of peace that I could not bear that any human being

-should suffer. At first the scenes before my imagination would be most

-harrowing, with great loss of life, but when one of the gentle sex

-appeared vividly before me a shudder passed over me, and I would seek

-consolation in jingles such as the following:

-

-     A gallant bark set sail one day

-     For a port beyond the sea,

-     The Captain had taken his fair young bride

-     To bear him company.

-     This little brown lass

-     Was of Puritan stock.

-     Her eyes were the brightest e'er seen.

-     They never came back;

-     The ship it was wrecked

-     In a storm in the old Gulf Stream.

-

-     Two years had passed, then a letter came

-     To a maid in a New England town.

-     It began Darling Kate, it ended Your Jack,

-     I am alive in a foreign land.

-     The Captain, his gentle young wife and your own

-     Were saved by that hand unseen,

-     But the rest----they went down

-     In that terrible storm

-     That night in the old Gulf Stream.

-

-But these pleasures would soon leave me, and I would grow very

-restless. My only resource was another piece of opium. Sometimes I

-awoke much excited, paced my cell rapidly and felt like tearing down

-the door. Sometimes a book would quiet me. The best soother I had

-was the most beautiful poem in the English language--Walt Whitman's

-_Ode To Death_. When I read this poem, I often imagined I was at the

-North Pole, and that strange shapes in the clouds beckoned me to come

-to them. I used to forget myself, and read aloud and was entirely

-oblivious to my surroundings, until I was brought to myself by the

-night guard shouting, "What in ---- is the matter with you?"

-

-After getting excited in this way I usually needed another dose of

-hop. I have noticed that the difference between opium and alcohol is

-that the latter is a disintegrator and tears apart, while the opium

-is a subtle underminer. Opium, for a long time anyway, stimulates the

-intelligence; while the reverse is true of alcohol. It was under the

-influence of opium that I began to read philosophy. I read Hume and

-Locke, and partly understood them, I think, though I did not know

-that Locke is pronounced in only one syllable till many years after

-I had read and re-read parts of _The Human Understanding_. It was not

-only the opium, but my experience on the outside, that made me eager

-for philosophy and the deeper poetry; for a grafters wits, if they

-don't get away from him altogether, become keen through his business,

-since he lives by them. It was philosophy, and the spectacle of men

-going suddenly and violently insane all about me, that led me first

-to think of self-control, though I did not muster enough to throw

-off the opium habit till many years afterwards. I began to think of

-will-power about this time, and I knew it was an acquired virtue, like

-truth and honesty. I think, from a moral standpoint, that I lived as

-good a life in prison as anybody on the outside, for at least I tried

-to overcome myself. It was life or death, or, a thousand times worse,

-an insane asylum. Opium led me to books besides those on philosophy,

-which eventually helped to cure me. At this time I was reading Balzac,

-Shakespeare, Huxley, Tyndall and Lavater. One poem of Shakespeare's

-touched me more than any other poem I ever read--_The Rape of Lucrece_.

-It was reading such as this that gave me a broader view, and I began to

-think that this was a terrible life I was leading. But, as the reader

-will see, I did not know what hell was until several years later.

-

-I had been in stir about four years on my first bit when I began to

-appreciate how terrible a master I had come under. Of course, to a

-certain extent, the habit had been forced upon me. After a man has

-had for several years bad food, little air and exercise, no natural

-companionship, particularly with the other sex, from whom he is

-entirely cut off, he really needs a stimulant. Many men fall into the

-vilest of habits. I found, for my part, that only opium would calm

-me. It takes only a certain length of time for almost all convicts to

-become broken in health, addicted to one form or another of stimulant

-which in the long run pulls them down completely. Diseases of various

-kinds, insanity and death, are the result. But before the criminal

-is thus released, he grows desperate in the extreme; particularly if

-he resorts to opium, for that drug makes one reckless. The hop fiend

-never takes consequences into consideration. Under its influence I

-became very irritable and unruly, and would take no back talk from the

-keepers. They and the stool-pigeons began to be afraid of me. I would

-not let them pound me in any way, and I often got into a violent fight.

-

-As long as I had my regular allowance of opium, which in the fourth

-year of my term was about twenty grains a day, I was peaceable enough.

-It was when I began to lessen the amount, with the desire to give

-it up, that I became so irritable and violent. The strain of reform,

-even in this early and unsuccessful attempt, was terrible. At times I

-used to go without the full amount for several days; but then I would

-relapse and go on a debauch until I was almost unconscious. After

-recovery, I would make another resolution, only to fall again.

-

-But my life in stir was not all that of the solitary; there were means,

-even when I was in the shop, of communicating with my fellow convicts;

-generally by notes, as talking was forbidden. Notes, too, were

-contraband, but we found means of sending them through cons working

-in the hall. Sometimes good-natured or avaricious keepers would carry

-them; but as a rule a convict did not like to trust a note to a keeper.

-He was afraid that the screw would read it, whereas it was a point of

-honor with a convict to deliver the note unread. The contents of these

-notes were usually news about our girls or pals, which we had received

-through visitors--rare, indeed!--or letters. By the same means there

-was much betting done on the races, baseball games and prize fights. We

-could send money, too, or opium, in the same way, to a friend in need;

-and we never required an I. O. U.

-

-We were allowed to receive visitors from the outside once every two

-months; also a box could be delivered to us at the same intervals

-of time. My friends, especially my mother and Ethel, sent me things

-regularly, and came to see me. They used to send me soap, tooth brushes

-and many other delicacies, for even a tooth brush is a delicacy in

-prison. Ethel stuck to me for three years and visited me regularly

-during that period. Then her visits ceased, and I heard that she had

-married. I couldn't blame her, but I felt bad about it all the same.

-

-But my mother came as often as the two months rolled by; not only

-during this first term, but during all my bits in stir. Certainly

-she has stuck to me through thick and thin. She has been my only true

-friend. If she had fallen away from me, I couldn't have blamed her;

-she would only have gone with the rest of the world; but she didn't.

-She was good not only to me, but to my friends, and she had pity for

-everybody in stir. I remember how she used to talk about the rut worn

-in the stone pavement at Sing Sing, where the men paced up and down.

-"Talk about the Bridge of Sighs!" she used to say.

-

-When a man is in stir he begins to see what an ungrateful brute he

-has been; and he begins to separate true friends from false ones. He

-thinks of the mother he neglected for supposed friends of both sexes,

-who are perhaps friendly at the beginning of his sentence, but soon

-desert him if he have a number of years to serve. Long after all others

-have ceased coming to see him, his old mother, bowed and sad, will

-trudge up the walk from the station to visit her thoughtless and erring

-son! She carries on her arm a heavy basket of delicacies for the son

-who is detested by all good citizens, and in her heart there is still

-hope for her boy. She has waited many years and she will continue to

-wait. What memories come to the mother as she sees the mansion of woes

-on the Hudson looming up before her! Her son is again a baby in her

-imagination; or a young fellow, before he began to tread the rocky

-path!--They soon part, for half an hour is all that is given, but they

-will remember forever the mothers kiss, the son's good-bye, the last

-choking words of love and familiar advice, as she says: "Trust in God,

-my lad."

-

-After one of my mothers visits I used to have more sympathy for my

-fellow convicts. I was always a keen observer, and in the shops or

-at mess time, and when we were exercising together in lock step, or

-working about the yard or in the halls, I used to "feel out" my brother

-"cons," often with a kindly motive. I grew very expert in telling when

-a friend was becoming insane; for imprisonment leads to insanity, as

-everybody knows. Many a time a man I knew in stir would grow nervous

-or absent-minded, then suspicious, and finally would be sent to the

-madhouse at Dannemora or Matteawan.

-

-For instance, take a friend of mine named Billy. He was doing a bit

-of ten years. In the fifth year of his sentence I noticed that he was

-brooding, and I asked him what was the matter.

-

-"I am afraid," he said, "that my wife is going outside of me."

-

-"You are not positive, are you?" I asked.

-

-"Well," he answered, "she visited me the other day, and she was looking

-good (prosperous). My son was with her, and he looked good, too.

-She gave me five dollars and some delicacies. But she never had five

-dollars when I was on the outside."

-

-"She's working," said I, trying to calm him.

-

-"No; she has got a father and mother," he replied, "and she is living

-with them."

-

-"Billy," I continued, "how long have you been in stir?"

-

-"Growing on six years," he said.

-

-"Billy," I proceeded, "what would you do if you were on the outside and

-she was in prison for six years?"

-

-"Well," he replied, "I'd have to give myself some rope."

-

-"Philosophers claim that it is just as hard for a woman to live alone

-as for a man," I said. "You're unreasonable, Billy. Surely you can't

-blame her."

-

-Billy's case is an instance of how, when a convict has had bad food,

-bad air and an unnatural routine for some time, he begins to borrow

-trouble. He grows anæmic and then is on the road to insanity. If he

-has a wife he almost always grows suspicious of her, though he does not

-speak about it until he has been a certain number of years in prison.

-It was not long after the above conversation took place that Billy was

-sent to the insane asylum at Matteawan.

-

-Sometimes, after a man has begun to grow insane, he will show it by

-reticence, rather than by talkativeness, according to his disposition.

-One of my intimate friends, in stir much longer than I, was like a ray

-of sunshine, witty and a good story teller. His laugh was contagious

-and we all liked to see him. He was one of the best night prowlers

-(burglars) in the profession, and had many other gifts. After he

-had been in stir, however, for a few years, he grew reticent and

-suspicious, thought that everybody was a stool-pigeon, and died a

-raving maniac a few years later at Matteawan.

-

-Sometimes a convict will grow so nervous that he will attempt to

-escape, even when there is no chance, or will sham insanity. An

-acquaintance of mine, Louis, who had often grafted with me when we

-were on the outside, told me one day he did not expect to live his bit

-out. When confined a man generally thinks a lot about his condition,

-reads a book on medicine and imagines he has every disease the book

-describes. Louis was in this state, and he consulted me and two others

-as to whether he ought not to "shoot a bug" (sham insanity); and so

-get transferred to the hospital. One advised him to attack a keeper and

-demand his baby back. But as Billy had big, black eyes and a cadaverous

-face, I told him he'd better shoot the melancholy bug; for he could

-do that better. Accordingly in the morning when the men were to go to

-work in the stone yard, Billy appeared in the natural (naked). He had

-been stalled off by two friends until he had reached the yard. There

-the keepers saw him, and as they liked him, they gently took him to

-the hospital. He was pronounced incurably insane by two experts, and

-transferred to the madhouse. The change of air was so beneficial that

-Louis speedily recovered his senses. At least, the doctors thought so

-when he was discovered trying to make his elegant (escape); and he was

-sent back to stir.

-

-As a rule, however, those who attempted to sham insanity failed. They

-were usually lacking in originality. At any hour of the day or night

-the whole prison might be aroused by some convict breaking up house,

-as it was called when a man tried to shoot the bug. He might break

-everything in his cell, and yell so loud that the other convicts in the

-cells near by would join in and make a horrible din. Some would curse,

-and some laugh or howl. If it was at night and they had been awakened

-out of an opium sleep, they would damn him a thousand miles deep. His

-friends, however, who knew that he was acting, would plug his game

-along by talking about his insanity in the presence of stool-pigeons.

-These latter would tell the keepers that he was buggy (insane), and,

-if there was not a blow, he might be sent to the hospital. Before that

-happened, however, he had generally demolished all his furniture. The

-guards would go to his cell, and chain him up in the Catholic chapel

-until he could be examined by the doctor. Warden Sage was a humane man,

-and used to go to the chapel himself and try to quiet the fake lunatic,

-and give him dainties from his own table. During the night the fake had

-historic company, for painted on the walls were, on one side of him,

-Jesus, and on the other, Judas and Mary Magdalene.

-

-A favorite method of shooting the bug, and a rather difficult one for

-the doctors to detect, was that of hearing voices in one's cell. This

-is more dangerous for the convict than for anybody else, for when a

-fake tries to imagine he hears voices, he usually begins to really

-believe he does, and then from a fake he becomes a genuine freak.

-Another common fake is to tell the keeper that you have a snake in

-your arm, and then take a knife and try to cut it out; but it requires

-nerve to carry this fake through. Sometimes the man who wants to make

-the prison hospital merely fakes ordinary illness. If he has a screw or

-a doctor "right" he may stay for months in the comparatively healthy

-hospital at Sing Sing, where he can loaf all day, and get better food

-than at the public mess. It is as a rule only the experienced guns who

-are clever enough to work these little games.

-

-For faking, conversing, loafing in the shop, and for many other

-forbidden things, we were often punished, though the screws as often

-winked at small misdemeanors. At Sing Sing they used to hang us up by

-the wrists sometimes until we fainted. Auburn had a jail, now used as

-the condemned cells, where there was no bed and no light. In this place

-the man to be punished would remain from four to ten days and live on

-ten ounces of bread and half a jug of water a day. In addition, the

-jail was very damp, worse even than the cells at Sing Sing, where I

-knew many convicts who contracted consumption of the lungs and various

-kidney complaints.

-

-Indeed, a great deal of dying goes on in State's prison. During my

-first term it seemed as if three niggers died to every white man. A

-dozen of us working around the front would comment on the "stiffs"

-when they were carried out. One would ask, "Who's dead?" The reply

-might be, "Only a nigger." One day I was talking in the front with a

-hall-room man when a stiff was put in the wagon. "Who's dead?" I asked.

-The hall-man wanted to bet it was a nigger. I bet him a dollar it was

-a white man, and then asked the hospital nurse, who said it was not a

-nigger, but an old pal of mine, named Jerry Donovan. I felt sore and

-would not accept the money I had won. Poor Jerry and I did house-work

-together for three months, some of which I have told of, and he was a

-good fellow, and a sure and reliable grafter. And now he had "gone up

-the escape," and was being carried to the little graveyard on the side

-of the hill where only an iron tag would mark his place of repose.

-

-My intelligence was naturally good, and when I began to get some

-education I felt myself superior to many of my companions in stir. I

-was not alone in this feeling, for in prison there are many social

-cliques; though fewer than on the outside. Men who have been high

-up and have held responsible positions when at liberty make friends

-in stir with men they formerly would not have trusted as their

-boot-blacks. The professional thieves usually keep together as much as

-possible in prison, or communicate together by means of notes; though

-sometimes they associate with men who, not professional grafters, have

-been sent up for committing some big forgery, or other big swindle. The

-reason for this is business; for the gun generally has friends among

-the politicians, and he wants to associate while in stir only with

-others who have influence. It is the guns who are usually trusted by

-the screws in charge of the Underground Tunnel, for the professional

-thief is less likely to squeal than the novice. Therefore, the big

-forger who has stolen thousands, and may be a man of ability and

-education appreciates the friendship of the professional pickpocket

-who can do him little favors, such as railroading his mail through the

-Underground, and providing him with newspapers, or a bottle of booze.

-

-The pull of the professional thief with outside politicians often

-procures him the respect and consideration of the keepers. One day a

-convict, named Ed White, was chinning with an Irish screw, an old man

-who had a family to support. Jokes in stir lead to friendship, and when

-the keeper told Ed that he was looking for a job for his daughter, who

-was a stenographer, Ed said he thought he could place her in a good

-position. The old screw laughed and said; "You loafer, if you were made

-to carry a hod you wouldn't be a splitting matches in stir." But Ed

-meant what he had said, and wrote to the famous Tammany politician, Mr.

-Wet Coin, who gave the girl a position as stenographer at a salary of

-fourteen dollars a week. The old screw took his daughter to New York,

-and when he returned to Auburn he began to "Mister" Ed. "I 'clare to

-God," he said, "I don't know what to make out of you. Here you are

-eating rotten hash, cooped up like a wild animal, with stripes, when

-you might be making twelve to fifteen dollars a week." Ed replied,

-sarcastically, "That would about keep me in cigar money."

-

-One of the biggest men I knew in stir was Jim A. McBlank, at one time

-chief of police and Mayor of Coney Island. He was sent to Sing Sing

-for his repeating methods at election, at which game he was A No. 1.

-He got so many repeaters down to the island that they were compelled

-to register as living under fences, in dog kennels, tents, or any old

-place. There was much excitement in the prison when the Lord of Coney

-Island was shown around the stir by Principal Keeper Connoughton. He

-was a good mechanic, and soon had a gang of men working under him;

-though he was the hardest worker of them all. After he had been there

-awhile the riff-raff of of the prison, though they had never heard

-the saying that familiarity breeds contempt, dropped calling him

-Mr. McBlank, and saluted him as plain Jimmy. He was never in touch,

-however, with the majority of the convicts, for he was too close to the

-authorities; and the men believe that convicts can not be on friendly

-terms with the powers that be unless they are stool-pigeons. Another

-thing that made the "cons" dislike the Mayor was the fact, that, when

-he was chief of police, he had settled a popular dip named Feeley for

-ten years and a half. The very worst thing against him, however, was

-his private refrigerator in which he kept butter, condensed milk and

-other luxuries, which he did not share with the other convicts. One

-day a young convict named Sammy, tried to beat Sing Sing. He bricked

-himself up in the wall, leaving a movable opening at the bottom.

-While waiting a chance to escape Sammy used to sally forth from his

-hiding-place and steal something good from McBlank's box. One night,

-while helping himself to the Mayor's delicacies, he thought he heard

-a keeper, and hastily plunging his arm into the refrigerator he made

-away with a large piece of butter. What did the ex-Chief of police do

-but report the loss of his butter to the screws which put them next to

-the fact that the convict they had been looking for for nine nights was

-still in the stir. The next night they would have rung the "all-right"

-bell, and given up the search, and indeed, they rang the bell, but

-watched; and when Sammy, thinking he could now go to New York, came out

-of his hiding place, he was caught. When the story circulated in the

-prison all kinds of vengeance were vowed against McBlank, who was much

-frightened. I heard him say that he would rather have lost his right

-arm than see the boy caught. What a come-down for a man who could throw

-his whole city for any state or national candidate at election time,

-to be compelled to apologize as McBlank was, to the lowest element

-in prison. Here indeed was the truth of that old saying: pride goeth

-before a fall.

-

-One of the best liked of the convicts I met during my first bit was

-Ferdinand Ward, who got two years for wrecking the firm in which

-General Grant and his son were partners. He did many a kindness in stir

-to those who were tough and had few friends. Another great favorite

-was Johnny Hope, son of Jimmy Hope, who stole three millions from the

-Manhattan Bank. The father got away, and Johnny, who was innocent,

-was nailed by a copper looking for a reputation, and settled for

-twenty years in Sing Sing, because he was his father's son and had the

-misfortune to meet an ambitious copper. When Johnny had been in prison

-about ten years, the inspector, who was the former copper, went to the

-Governor, and said he was convinced that the boy was innocent. But

-how about young Hope's wrecked life? Johnny's father, indeed, was a

-well-known grafter whom I met in Auburn, where we worked together for a

-while in the broom-shop. He was much older than I, and used to give me

-advice.

-

-"Don't ever do a day's work in your life, my boy," he would say,

-"unless you can't help it. You are too intelligent to be a drudge."

-

-Another common remark of his was: "Trust no convict," and a third was:

-"It is as easy to steal five thousand dollars as it is to steal five

-dollars."

-

-Old man Hope had stolen millions and ought to know what he was talking

-about. In personal appearance he was below the medium height, had light

-gray hair and as mild a pair of eyes as I ever saw in man or woman. I

-ranked him as a manly old fellow, and he was an idol among the small

-crooks, though he did not have much to do with them. He seemed to like

-to talk to me, partly because I never talked graft, and he detested

-such talk particularly among prison acquaintances. He referred one day

-to a pick pocket in stir who was always airing what he knew about the

-graft. "He's tiresome," said old Hope. "He is always talking shop."

-

-One of the worst hated men at Auburn was Weeks, a well-known club man

-and banker, who once stole over a million dollars. He was despised

-by the other convicts, for he was a "squealer." One of the screws in

-charge of the Underground Tunnel was doing things for Weeks, who had

-a snap,--the position of book-keeper, in the clothing department. In

-his desk he kept whiskey, beer and cigars, and lived well. One day a

-big bug paid him a visit, and Weeks belched how he had to give up his

-watch and chain in order to secure luxuries. His friend, the big bug,

-reported to the prison authorities, and the principal keeper went to

-Weeks and made the coward squeal on the keeper who had his "front." The

-screw lost his job, and when the convicts heard of it, they made Weeks'

-life miserable for years.

-

-But the man who was hated worst of all those in prison was Biff

-Ellerson. I never understood why the other cons hated him, unless

-it was that he always wore a necktie; this is not etiquette in stir,

-which in the convicts' opinion ought to be a place of mourning. He had

-been a broker and a clubman, and was high up in the world. Ellerson

-was a conscientious man, and once, when a mere boy, who had stolen

-a ten dollar watch, was given fifteen years, had publicly criticized

-the judge and raised a storm in the newspapers. Ellerson compared this

-lad's punishment with that of a man like Weeks, who had robbed orphans

-out of their all and only received ten years for it. Many is the time

-that this man, Biff Ellerson, has been kind to men in stir who hated

-him. He had charge of the dungeon at Auburn where convicts who had

-broken the rules were confined. I have known him to open my door and

-give me water on the quiet, many a time, and he did it for others who

-were ungrateful, and at the risk, too, of never being trusted again by

-the screws and of getting a dose of the cuddy-hole himself.

-

-By far the greater number of these swell grafters who steal millions

-die poor, for it is not what a man steals, but what he saves, that

-counts. I have often noticed that the bank burglar who is high up in

-his profession is not the one who has the most money when he gets to be

-forty-five or fifty years of age. The second or third class gun is more

-likely to lay by something. His general expenses are not so large and

-he does not need so much fall-money; and in a few years he can usually

-show more money than the big gun who has a dozen living on him. I knew

-a Big One who told me that every time he met a certain police official,

-his watch, a piece of jewelry, a diamond stud or even his cuff buttons

-were much admired. The policeman always had some relative or friend who

-desired just the kind of ornament the Big One happened to be wearing at

-the time.

-

-I cannot help comparing those swell guys whom I knew at Sing Sing

-with a third class pickpocket I met on the same bit. The big ones are

-dead or worse, but the other day I met, in New York, my old pickpocket

-friend in stir, Mr. Aut. I am positive that the hand-shake he gave me

-was only a muscular action, for Mr. Aut has "squared it", and the gun

-who has reformed and has become prosperous does not like to meet an

-old acquaintance, who knows too much about his past life. When I ran

-across him in the city I started in to talk about old times in stir

-and of pals we knew in the long ago, but he answered me by saying,

-"Nix", which meant "Drop It". To get him to talk I was forced to throw

-a few "Larrys" into him, such as: "Well, old man, only for your few

-mistakes of the past, you might be leader of Tammany Hall." Gradually

-he expanded and told me how much he had gained in weight since he

-left stir and what he had done for certain ungrateful grafters. He

-boasted that he could get bail for anyone to the sum of fifty thousand

-dollars, and he told the truth, for this man, who had been a third

-class dip, owns at the present time, three gin-mills and is something

-of a politician. He has three beautiful children and is well up in

-the world. His daughter was educated at a convent, and his son is at a

-well-known college.

-

-Yet I remember the time when this ex gun, Mr. Aut, and I, locked near

-one another in Sing Sing and consoled one another with what little

-luxuries we could get together. Our letters, booze and troubles were

-shared between us, and many is the time I have felt for him; for he

-had married a little shop girl and had two children at that time.

-When he got out of stir he started in to square it, that is, not to

-go to prison any more. He was wise and no one can blame him. He is a

-good father and a successful man. If he had been a better grafter it

-would not have been so easy for him to reform. I wish him all kinds

-of prosperity, but I don't like him as well as I did when we wore the

-striped garb and whispered good luck to one another in that mansion of

-woes on the Hudson.

-

-One of Mr. Aut's possessions makes me smile whenever I think of it.

-In his swell parlor, over a brand new piano, hangs an oil painting

-of himself, in which he takes great pride. I could not help thinking

-that that picture showed a far more prosperous man and one in better

-surroundings than a certain photograph of his which is quite as highly

-treasured as the more costly painting; although it is only a tintype,

-numbered two thousand and odd, in the Rogues' Gallery.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IX.

-

-_In Stir and Out._

-

-

-Some of the most disagreeable days I ever spent in prison were

-the holidays, only three of which during the year, however, were

-kept--Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In Sing Sing there

-was no work on those days, and we could lie abed longer in the morning.

-The food was somewhat better than usual. Breakfast consisted of boiled

-ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a cup of coffee with milk. After

-mess we went, as usual, to chapel, and then gave a kind of vaudeville

-show, all with local talent. We sang rag-time and sentimental songs,

-some of us played on an instrument, such as the violin, mandolin, or

-cornet, and the band gave the latest pieces from comic opera. After the

-show was over we went to the mess-room again where we received a pan

-containing a piece of pie, some cheese, a few apples, as much bread as

-we desired and--a real luxury in stir--two cigars. With our booty we

-then returned to our cells, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, and

-after the guards had made the rounds to see that none of the birds had

-gone astray, we were locked up until the next morning, without anything

-more to eat. We were permitted to talk to one another from our cells

-until five o'clock, when the night guards went on duty. Such is--just

-imagine it--a great day in Sing Sing! The gun, no matter how big a guy

-he is, even if he has robbed a bank and stolen millions, is far worse

-off than the meanest laborer, be he ever so poor. He may have only a

-crust, but he has that priceless boon, his liberty.

-

-At Auburn the routine on holidays is much the same as that of Sing

-Sing; but one is not compelled to go to chapel, which is a real

-kindness. I don't think a man ought to be forced to go to church, even

-in stir, against his will. On holidays in Auburn a man may stay in his

-cell instead of attending divine service, if he so desires, and not be

-punished for it. Many a con prefers not to go even to the vaudeville

-show, which at Auburn is given by outside talent, but remains quietly

-all day in his cell. There is one other great holiday privilege at

-Auburn, which some of the convicts appreciate more than I did. When

-the clock strikes twelve o'clock the convicts, locked in their cells,

-start in to make the rest of the night hideous, by pounding on the

-doors, playing all sorts of instruments, blowing whistles, and doing

-everything else that would make a noise. There is no more sleep that

-night, for everything is given over to Bedlam, until five thirty in the

-morning, when discipline again reigns, and the nervous man who detests

-these holidays sighs with pleasure, and says to himself: "I am so glad

-that at last everything is quiet in this cursed stir."

-

-What with poor food, little air and exercise, no female society, bad

-habits and holidays, it is no wonder that there are many attempts, in

-spite of the danger, to escape from stir. Most of these attempts are

-unsuccessful, but a few succeed. One of the cleverest escapes I know of

-happened during my term at Auburn. B---- was the most feared convict in

-the prison. He was so intelligent, so reckless and so good a mechanic

-that the guards were afraid he would make his elegant any day. Indeed,

-if ever a man threw away gifts for not even the proverbial mess of

-pottage, it was this man B----. He was the cleverest man I ever met in

-stir or out. It was after one of the delightful holidays in Auburn that

-B----, who was a nervous man, decided to make his gets. He picked a

-quarrel with another convict and was so rough that the principal keeper

-almost decided to let him off; but when B---- spat in his face he

-changed his mind and put him in the dungeon. I have already mentioned

-this ram-shackle building at Auburn. It was the worst yet. All B----'s

-clothing was taken off and an old coat, shirt, and trousers without

-buttons were given him. An old piece of bay rope was handed him to tie

-around his waist, and he was left in darkness. This was what he wanted,

-for, although they had stripped him naked and searched him, he managed

-to conceal a saw, which he used to such good purpose that on the second

-night he had sawed himself into the yard. Instead of trying to go over

-the wall, as most cons would have done, B---- placed a ladder, which

-he found in the repair shop, against the wall, and when the guards

-discovered next morning that B---- was not in the dungeon, and saw the

-ladder on the wall, they thought he had escaped, and did not search

-the stir but notified the towns to look after him. He was not found,

-of course, for he was hiding in the cellar of the prison. A night or

-two afterwards he went to the tailor shop, selected the best suit of

-clothes in the place, opened the safe which contained the valuables

-of the convicts, with a piece of steel and a hammer, thus robbing his

-fellow sufferers, and escaped by the ladder. After several months of

-freedom he was caught, sent back to stir, and forfeited half of his

-commutation time.

-

-A more tragic attempt was made by the convicts, Big Benson and Little

-Kick. They got tools from friends in the machine shop and started in

-to saw around the locks of their doors. They worked quietly, and were

-not discovered. The reason is that there is sometimes honor among

-thieves. Two of their friends in their own gallery, two on the gallery

-above and two on that underneath, tipped them off, by a cough or

-some other noise, whenever the night guard was coming; and they would

-cease their work with the saws. Convicts grow very keen in detecting

-the screw by the creaking of his boots on the wooden gallery floor;

-if they are not quite sure it is he, they often put a small piece of

-looking-glass underneath the door, and can thus see down the gallery in

-either direction a certain distance. Whenever Benson and Kick were at

-work, they would accompany the noise of the saw with some other noise,

-so as to drown the former, for they knew that, although they had some

-friends among the convicts, there were others who, if they got next,

-would tip off the keepers that an escape was to be made. In the morning

-they would putty up the cuts made in the door during the night. One

-night when everything was ready, they slipped from their cells, put the

-mug on the guard, took away his cannister, and tied him to the bottom

-of one of their cells. They did the same to another guard, who was

-on the watch in the gallery below, went to the outside window on the

-Hudson side of Sing Sing, and putting a Jack, which they had concealed

-in the cell, between the bars of the window, spread them far apart,

-so that they could make their exit. At this point however they were

-discovered by a third guard, who fired at them, hitting Little Kick in

-the leg. The shot aroused the sergeant of the guards and he gave the

-alarm. Big Benson was just getting through the window when the whole

-pack of guards fired at him, killing him as dead as a door-nail. Little

-Kick lost his nerve and surrendered, and was taken to the dungeon. Big

-Benson, who had been serving a term for highway robbery, was one of the

-best liked men in stir, and when rumors reached the convicts that he

-had been shot, pandemonium broke loose in the cells. They yelled and

-beat their coffee cups against the iron doors, and the officials were

-powerless to quiet them. There was more noise even than on a holiday at

-Auburn.

-

-Soon after I was transferred from Sing Sing to Auburn, a friend came to

-me and said: "Jimmy, are you on either of the shoe-shop galleries? No?

-Well, if you can get on Keeper Riley's gallery I think you can spring

-(escape)."

-

-Then he let me in on one of the cleverest beats I ever knew; if I could

-have succeeded in being put on that gallery I should not have finished

-my first term in State's prison. At that time work was slack and the

-men were locked in their cells most of the time. Leahy started in to

-dig out the bricks from the ceiling of his cell. Each day, when taking

-his turn for an hour in the yard, he would give the cement, which he

-had done up in small packages, to friends, who would dump it in their

-buckets, the contents of which they would then throw into the large

-cesspool. While exercising in the yard, the cons would throw the bricks

-Leahy had removed on an old brick pile under the archway. After he had

-removed sufficient stuff to make a hole big enough to crawl through,

-all he had left to do was to saw a few boards, and remove a few tiles,

-and then he was on the roof. It is the habit of the guard, when he goes

-the rounds, to rap the ceiling of every cell with his stick, to see

-if there is an excavation. Leahy had guarded against this by filling

-a small box with sand and placing it in the opening. Then he pasted a

-piece of linen over the box and whitewashed it. Even when the screw

-came around to glance in his cell Leahy would continue to work, for

-he had rigged up a dummy of himself in bed. When he reached the roof,

-he dropped to a lower building, reached the wall which surrounds the

-prison, and with a rope lowered himself to the ground. With a brand

-new suit of clothes which a friend had stolen from the shop, Leahy went

-forth into the open, and was never caught.

-

-At Sing Sing an old chum of mine named Tom escaped, and would never

-have been caught if he had not been so sentimental. Indeed, he was

-improvident in every way. He had been a well-known house-worker, and

-made lots of money at this graft, but he lived well and blew what he

-stole, and consequently did many years in prison. He was nailed for

-a house that was touched of "éclat" worth thousands, and convicted,

-though of this particular crime he was, I am convinced, innocent; of

-course, he howled like a stuck pig about the injustice of it, all his

-life. While he was in Raymond Street jail he got wind of the men who

-really did the job. They were pals and he asked them to try to turn

-him out. His girl, Tessie, heard of it and wanted to go to Police

-Headquarters and squeal on the others, to save her sweetheart. But Tom

-was frantic, for there was no squeal in him. You find grafters like

-that sometimes, and Tom was always sentimental. He certainly preferred

-to go to stir rather than have the name of being a belcher. So he went

-to Sing Sing for seven and a half years. He was a good mechanic and

-was assigned to a brick-laying job on the wall. He had an easy time

-in stir, for he had a screw right, and got many luxuries through the

-Underground; and was not watched very closely. One day he put a suit

-of clothes under his stripes, vamoosed into a wood near by, and removed

-his stripes. He kept on walking till he reached Connecticut, which, as

-I have said, is the softest state in the Union.

-

-Tom would never have finished that bit in stir, if, as I have also

-said, he had not been so sentimental. When in prison a grafter

-continually thinks about his old pals and hang-outs, and the last

-scenes familiar to him before he went to stir. Tom was a well-known

-gun, with his picture in the Hall of Fame, and yet, after beating

-prison, and leaving years behind, and knowing that if caught he would

-have to do additional time, would have the authorities sore against him

-and be confined in the dark cell, he yet, in spite of all that, after a

-short time, made for his old haunts on the Bowery, where he was nailed

-by a fly-cop and sent back to Sing Sing. So much for the force of habit

-and of environment, especially when a grafter is a good fellow and

-loves his old pals.

-

-On one occasion Tom was well paid for being a good fellow. Jack was

-a well-known pugilist who had become a grafter. His wife's sister had

-married a millionaire, and Jack stole the millions, which amounted, in

-this case, to only one hundred thousand dollars. For this he was put

-in prison for four years. While in stir, Tom, who had a screw right,

-did him many favors, which Jack remembered. Years afterwards they were

-both on the outside again. Tom was still a grafter, but Jack had gone

-to work for a police official as general utility man, and gained the

-confidence of his employer, who was chief of the detective force. The

-latter got Jack a position as private detective in one of the swellest

-hotels in Florida. Now, Tom happened to be grafting in that State, and

-met his old friend Jack at the hotel. Instead of tipping off the chief

-that Tom was a grafter, Jack staked his old pal, for he remembered the

-favors he had received in stir. Tom was at liberty for four years, and

-then was brought to police headquarters where the chief said to him:

-"I know that you met Jack in Florida, and I am sore because he did

-not tip me off." Tom replied indignantly: "He is not a hyena like your

-ilk. He is not capable of the basest of all crimes, ingratitude. I can

-forgive a man who puts his hand in my pocket and steals my money. I can

-forgive him, for it may do him good. He may invest the money and become

-an honored member of the community. But the crime no man can forgive

-is ingratitude. It is the most inhuman of crimes and only your ilk is

-capable of it."

-

-The Chief smiled at Tom's sentiment--that was always his weak

-point--poor Tom!--and said: "Well, you are a clever thief, and I'm glad

-I was wise enough to catch you." Whereupon Tom sneered and remarked: "I

-could die of old age in this city for all of you and your detectives. I

-was tipped off to you by a Dicky Bird (stool pigeon) damn him!" I have

-known few grafters who had as much feeling as Tom.

-

-More than five years passed, and the time for my release from Auburn

-drew near. The last weeks dragged terribly; they seemed almost as

-long as the years that had gone before. Sometimes I thought the time

-would never come. The day before I was discharged I bade good-bye to

-my friends, who said to me, smiling: "She has come at last," or "It's

-near at hand," or "It was a long time a-coming." That night I built

-many castles in the air, with the help of a large piece of opium: and

-continued to make the good resolutions I had begun some time before.

-I had permission from the night guard to keep my light burning after

-the usual hour, and the last book I read on my first term in stir was

-_Tristram Shandy_. Just before I went to bed I sang for the last time

-a popular prison song which had been running in my head for months:

-

-     "Roll round, '89, '90, '91, sweet '92 roll around.

-     How happy I shall be the morning I go free, sweet '92 roll

-     around."

-

-Before I fell asleep I resolved to be good, to quit opium and not to

-graft any more. The resolution was easily made and I went to bed happy.

-I was up at day-break and penned a few last words to my friends and

-acquaintances remaining in stir. I promised some of them that I would

-see their friends on the outside and send them delicacies and a little

-money. They knew that I would keep my promise, for I have always been a

-man of my word; as many of the most successful grafters are. It is only

-the vogel-grafter, the petty larceny thief or the "sure-thing" article,

-who habitually breaks his word. Many people think that a thief can not

-be trusted; and it certainly is true that the profession does not help

-to make a man virtuous in his personal relations. But it is also true

-that a man may be, and sometimes is, honorable in his dealings with

-his own world, and at the same time a desperate criminal in the other.

-It is not of course common, to find a thief who is an honest man; but

-is there very often an honest man anywhere, in the world of graft or

-out of it? If it is often, so much the better, but that has not been

-my experience. Does not everyone know that the men who do society the

-greatest injury have never done time; in fact, may never have broken

-any laws? I am not trying to excuse myself or my companions in crime,

-but I think the world is a little twisted in its ideas as to right and

-wrong, and who are the greatest sinners.

-

-When six o'clock on the final day came round it was a great relief. I

-went through the regular routine, and at eight o'clock was called to

-the front office, received a new suit of clothes, as well as my fare

-home and ten dollars with which to begin life afresh.

-

-"Hold on," I said, to the Warden. "I worked eighteen months. Under the

-new piece-price plan I ought to be allowed a certain percentage of my

-earnings."

-

-The Warden, who was a good fellow and permitted almost anything to come

-in by the Underground Tunnel, asked the clerk if there was any more

-money for me. The clerk consulted with the keepers and then reported to

-the Warden that I was the most tired man that ever entered the prison;

-adding that it was very nervy of me to want more money, after they had

-treated me far better than the parent of the Prodigal treated his son.

-The Warden, thereupon, remarked to me that if I went pilfering again

-and were not more energetic than I had been in prison, I would never

-eat. "Goodbye," he concluded.

-

-"Well," I said, "I hope we'll never meet again."

-

-With my discharge papers in my hand, and in my mind a resolution never

-to go back to the stir where so many of my friends, strong fellows,

-too, had lost their lives or had become physical or mental wrecks, I

-left Auburn penitentiary and went forth into the free world. I had

-gone to stir a boy of twenty-one, and left it a man of twenty-six.

-I entered healthy, and left broken down in health, with the marks of

-the jail-bird upon me; marks, mental and physical, that would never

-leave me, and habits that I knew would stick closer than a brother.

-I knew that there was nothing in a life of crime. I had tested that

-well enough. But there were times during the last months I spent in my

-cell, when, in spite of my good resolutions, I hated the outside world

-which had forced me into a place that took away from my manhood and

-strength. I knew I had sinned against my fellow men, but I knew, too,

-that there had been something good in me. I was half Irish, and about

-that race there is naturally something roguish; and that was part of

-my wickedness. When I left stir I knew I was not capable, after five

-years and some months of unnatural routine, of what I should have been

-by nature.

-

-A man is like an electric plant. Use poor fuel and you will have poor

-electricity. The food is bad in prison. The cells at Sing Sing are

-a crime against the criminal; and in these damp and narrow cells he

-spends, on the average, eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. In the

-name of humanity and science what can society expect from a man who has

-spent a number of years in such surroundings? He will come out of stir,

-as a rule, a burden on the tax-payers, unable to work, and confirmed

-in a life of crime; desperate, and willing to take any chance. The

-low-down, petty, canting thief, who works all the charitable societies

-and will rob only those who are his benefactors, or a door-mat, is

-utterly useless in prison or out. The healthy, intelligent, ambitious

-grafter is capable of reform and usefulness, if shown the error of his

-ways or taken hold of before his physical and mental health is ruined

-by prison life. You can appeal to his manhood at that early time.

-After he has spent a certain number of years in stir his teeth become

-decayed; he can not chew his food, which is coarse and ill-cooked; his

-stomach gets bad: and once his stomach becomes deranged it is only a

-short time before his head is in a like condition. Eventually, he may

-be transferred to the mad-house. I left Auburn stir a happy man, for

-the time, for I thought everything would be smooth sailing. As a matter

-of fact I could not know the actual realities I had to face, inside and

-outside of me, and so all my good resolutions were nothing but a dream.

-

-It was a fine May morning that I left Auburn and I was greatly excited

-and bewildered by the brightness and joy of everything about me. I took

-my hat off, gazed up at the clear sky, looked up and down the street

-and at the passers-by, with a feeling of pleasure and confusion. I

-turned to the man who had been released with me, and said, "Let's go

-and get something to eat." On the way to the restaurant, however, the

-jangling of the trolleys upset my nerves. I could not eat, and drank a

-couple of whiskies. They did not taste right. Everything seemed tame,

-compared with the air, which I breathed like a drunken man.

-

-I bought a few pounds of tea, canned goods, cheese and fruit, which I

-sent by a keeper to my friends in stir. I also bought for my friends a

-few dollars' worth of morphine and some pulverized gum opium. How could

-I send it to them, for the keeper was not "next" to the Underground?

-Suddenly I had an idea. I bought ten cents worth of walnuts, split

-them, took the meat out, put the morphine and opium in, closed them

-with mucilage, put them in a bag and sent them to the convicts with the

-basket of other things I had left with the innocent keeper.

-

-I got aboard my train, and as I pulled out of the town of Auburn gave

-a great sigh of relief. I longed to go directly to New York, for I

-always did like big cities, particularly Manhattan, and I was dying to

-see some of my old girls. But I stopped off at Syracuse, according to

-promises, to deliver some messages to the relatives of convicts, and

-so reached New York a few hours later than my family and friends had

-expected. They had gone to meet an earlier train, and had not waited,

-so that when I reached my native city after this long absence I found

-nobody at the station to welcome me back. It made me sad for a moment,

-but when I passed out into the streets of the big town I felt excited

-and joyous, and so confused that I thought I knew almost everybody on

-the street. I nearly spoke to a stranger, a woman, thinking she was

-Blonde Mamie.

-

-I soon reached the Bowery and there met some of my old pals; but was

-much surprised to find them changed and older. For years and years

-a convict lives in a dream. He is isolated from the realities of the

-outside world. In stir he is a machine, and his mind is continually

-dwelling on the last time he was at liberty; he thinks of his family

-and friends as they were then. They may have become old, sickly and

-wrinkled, but he does not realize this. When, set free, he tries to

-find them, he expects that they will be unchanged, but if he finds

-them at all, what a shock! An old-timer I knew, a man named Packey,

-who had served fifteen years out of a life sentence, and had been twice

-declared insane, told me that he had reached a state of mind in which

-he imagined himself to be still a young fellow, of the age he was when

-he first went to stir.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER X.

-

-_At the Graft Again._

-

-

-I spent my first day in New York looking up my old pals and girls,

-especially the latter. How I longed to exchange friendly words with a

-woman! But the girls I knew were all gone, and I was forced to make new

-acquaintances on the spot. I spent all the afternoon and most of the

-evening with a girl I picked up on the Bowery; I thought she was the

-most beautiful creature in the world; but when I saw her again weeks

-afterwards, when women were not so novel to me, I found her almost

-hideous. I must have longed for a young woman's society, for I did not

-go to see my poor old mother until I had left my Bowery acquaintance.

-And yet my mother had often proved herself my only friend! But I had

-a long talk with her before I slept, and when I left her for a stroll

-in the wonderful city before going to bed my resolution to be good was

-keener than ever.

-

-As I sauntered along the Bowery that night the desire to talk to an

-old pal was strong. But where was I to find a friend? Only in places

-where thieves hung out. "Well," I said to myself, "there is no harm in

-talking to my old pals. I will tell them there is nothing in the graft,

-and that I have squared it." I dropped into a music hall, a resort for

-pickpockets, kept by an old gun, and there I met Teddy, whom I had not

-seen for years.

-

-"Hello, Jim," he said, giving me the glad hand, "I thought you were

-dead."

-

-"Not quite so bad as that, Teddy," I replied, "I am still in evidence."

-

-We had a couple of beers. I could not quite make up my mind to tell him

-I had squared it; and he put me next to things in town.

-

-"Take my advice," he said, "and keep away from ---- ---- (naming

-certain clubs and saloons where thieves congregated). The proprietors

-of these places and the guns that hang out there, many of them anyway,

-are not on the level. Some of the grafters who go there have the

-reputation of being clever dips, but they have protection from the

-Front Office men because they are rats and so can tear things open

-without danger. By giving up a certain amount of stuff and dropping

-a stall or two occasionally to keep up the flyman's reputation, they

-are able to have a bank account and never go to stir. The flymen hang

-out in these joints, waiting for a tip, and they are bad places for a

-grafter who is on the level."

-

-I listened with attention, and said, by force of habit:

-

-"Put me next to the stool-pigeons, Teddy. You know I am just back from

-stir."

-

-"Well," he answered, "outside of so and so (and he mentioned

-half-a-dozen men by name) none of them who hang out in those joints can

-be trusted. Come to my house, Jim, and we'll have a long talk about old

-times, and I will introduce you to some good people (meaning thieves)."

-

-I went with him to his home, which was in a tenement house in the lower

-part of the first ward. He introduced me to his wife and children and a

-number of dips, burglars and strong-armed men who made his place a kind

-of rendezvous. We talked old times and graft, and the wife and little

-boy of eight years old listened attentively. The boy had a much better

-chance to learn the graft than I had when a kid, for my father was an

-honest man.

-

-The three strong-arm men (highwaymen) were a study to me, for they were

-Westerners, with any amount of nerve. One of them, Denver Red, a big

-powerful fellow, mentioned a few bits he had done in Western prisons,

-explained a few of his grafts and seemed to despise New York guns, whom

-he considered cowardly. He said the Easterners feared the police too

-much, and always wanted to fix things before they dared to graft.

-

-I told them a little about New York State penitentiaries, and then

-Ted said to Denver Red: "What do you think of the big fellow?" Denver

-grinned, and the others followed suit, and I heard the latest story. A

-well-known politician, leader of his district, a cousin of Senator Wet

-Coin; a man of gigantic stature, with the pleasing name, I will say, of

-Flower, had had an adventure. He is even better developed physically

-than mentally, and virtually king of his district, and whenever he

-passes by, the girls bow to him, the petty thief calls him "Mister"

-and men and women alike call him "Big Flower." Well, one night not

-long before the gathering took place in Teddy's house, Big Flower was

-passing through the toughest portion of his bailiwick, humming ragtime,

-when my new acquaintances, the three strong-arm workers from the West,

-stuck him up with cannisters, and relieved him of a five carat diamond

-stud, a gold watch and chain and a considerable amount of cash. The

-next day there was consternation among the clan of the Wet Coins, for

-Big Flower, who had been thus nipped, was their idol. We all laughed

-heartily at the story, and I went home and to sleep.

-

-The next day I found it a very easy thing to drift back to my old

-haunts. In the evening I went to a sporting house on Twenty-seventh

-Street, where a number of guns hung out. I got the glad hand and an

-invitation to join in some good graft. I said I was done with the Rocky

-Path. They smiled and gently said: "We have been there, too, Jim."

-

-One of them added: "By the way, I hear you are up against the hop,

-Jim." It was Billy, and he invited me home with him. There I met Ida,

-as pretty a little shop girl as one wants to see. Billy said there

-was always an opening for me, that times were pretty good. He and Ida

-had an opium layout, and they asked me to take a smoke. I told them my

-nerves were not right, and that I had quit. "Poor fellow," said Billy.

-

-Perhaps it was the sight or smell of the hop, but anyway I got the

-yen-yen and shook as in an ague. My eyes watered and I grew as pale as

-a sheet. I thought my bones were unjointing and took a pint of whiskey;

-it had no effect. Then Billy acted as my physician and prepared a pill

-for me. So vanished one good resolution. My only excuse to myself was:

-Human nature is weak, ain't it? No sooner had I taken the first pill

-than a feeling of ecstasy came over me. I became talkative, and Billy,

-noticing the effect, said: "Jim, before you try to knock off the hop,

-you had better wait till you reach the next world." The opium brought

-peace to my nerves and dulled my conscience and I had a long talk with

-Billy and Ida about old pals. They told me who was dead, who were in

-stir and who were good (prosperous).

-

-Not many days after my opium fall I got a note from Ethel, who had

-heard that I had come home. In the letter she said that she was not

-happy with her husband, that she had married to please her father and

-to get a comfortable home. She wanted to make an appointment to meet

-me, whom, she said, she had always loved. I knew what her letter meant,

-and I did not answer it, and did not keep the appointment. My relation

-to her was the only decent thing in my life, and I thought I might

-as well keep it right. I have never seen her since the last time she

-visited me at Auburn.

-

-For some time after getting back from stir I tried for a job, but the

-effort was only half-hearted on my part, and people did not fall over

-themselves in their eagerness to find something for the ex-convict to

-do. Even if I had had the best intentions in the world, the path of the

-ex-convict is a difficult one, as I have since found. I was run down

-physically, and could not carry a hod or do any heavy labor, even if I

-had desired to. I knew no trade and should have been forever distrusted

-by the upper world. The only thing I could do well was to graft; and

-the only society that would welcome me was that of the under world. My

-old pals knew I had the requisite nerve and was capable of taking my

-place in any good mob. My resolutions began to ooze away, especially as

-at that time my father was alive and making enough money to support the

-rest of the family. So I had only myself to look out for--and that was

-a lot; for I had my old habits, and new ones I had formed in prison, to

-satisfy. When I stayed quietly at home I grew intensely nervous; and

-soon I felt that I was bound to slip back to the world of graft. I am

-convinced that I would never have returned to stir or to my old trade,

-however, if my environment had been different, on my release, from

-what it had been formerly; and if I could have found a job. I don't

-say this in the way of complaint. I now know that a man can reform

-even among his old associates. It is impossible, as the reader will

-see, I believe, before he finishes this book, for me ever to fall back

-again. Some men acquire wisdom at twenty-one, some not till they are

-thirty-five, and some never. Wisdom came to me when I was thirty-five.

-If I had had my present experience, I should not have fallen after my

-first bit; but I might not have fallen anyway, if I had been placed

-in a better environment after my first term in prison. A man can stand

-alone, if he is strong enough, and has sufficient reasons; but if he is

-tottering, he needs outside help.

-

-I was tottering, and did not get the help, and so I speedily began to

-graft again. I started in on easy game, on picking pockets and simple

-swindling. I made my first touch, after my return, on Broadway. One

-day I met the Kid there, looking for a dollar as hard as a financier.

-He asked me if I was not about ready to begin again, and pointed out

-a swell Moll, big, breezy and blonde, coming down the street, with

-a large wallet sticking out of her pocket. It seemed easy, with no

-come-back in sight, and I agreed to stall for the Kid. Just as she went

-into Denning's which is now Wanamaker's, I went in ahead of her, turned

-and met her. She stopped; and at that moment the Kid nicked her. We

-got away all right and found in the wallet over one hundred dollars and

-a small knife. In the knife were three rivets, which we discovered on

-inspection to be magnifying glasses. We applied our eyes to the same

-and saw some pictures which would have made Mr. Anthony Comstock howl;

-if he had found this knife on this aristocratic lady he would surely

-have sent her to the penitentiary. It was a beautiful pearl knife,

-gold tipped, and must have been a loss; and yet I felt I was justified

-in taking that wallet. I thought I had done the lady a good turn. She

-might have been fined, and why shouldn't I have the money, rather than

-the magistrate?

-

-The Kid was one of the cleverest dips I ever knew; he was delicate and

-cunning, and the best stone-getter in the city. But he had one weakness

-that made him almost a devil. He fell in love with every pretty face he

-saw, and cared no more for leading a girl astray than I minded kicking

-a cat. I felt sorry for many a little working girl he had shaken after

-a couple of weeks; and I used to jolly them to cheer them up.

-

-I once met Kate, one of them, and said, with a smile: "Did you hear

-about the Kid's latest? Why don't you have him arrested for bigamy?"

-

-She did not smile at first, but said: "He'll never have any luck. My

-mother is a widow, and she prays to God to afflict him with a widow's

-curse."

-

-"One of the Ten Commandments," I replied, "says, 'thou shalt not take

-the name of the Lord thy God in vain,' and between you and me, Kate,

-the commandment does not say that widows have the monopoly on cursing.

-It is a sin, anyway, whether it is a man, a girl or a widow."

-

-This was too deep for Kate.

-

-"Stop preaching, Jim," she said, "and give me a drink," and I did.

-After she had drunk half-a-dozen glasses of beer she felt better.

-

-Women are queer, anyway. No matter how bad they are, they are always

-good. All women are thieves, or rather petty pilferers, bless them!

-When I was just beginning to graft again, and was going it easy, I used

-to work a game which well showed the natural grafting propensities of

-women. I would buy a lot of Confederate bills for a few cents, and put

-them in a good leather. When I saw a swell-looking Moll, evidently out

-shopping, walking along the street, I would drop the purse in her path;

-and just as she saw it I would pick it up, as if I had just found it.

-Nine women out of ten would say, "It's mine, I dropped it." I would

-open the leather and let her get a peep of the bills, and that would

-set her pilfering propensities going. "It's mine," she would repeat.

-"What's in it?" I would hold the leather carefully away from her, look

-into it cautiously and say: "I can see a twenty dollar bill, a thirty

-dollar bill, and a one hundred dollar bill, but how do I know you

-dropped it?" Then she'd get excited and exclaim, "If you don't give it

-to me quick I'll call a policeman." "Madam," I would reply, "I am an

-honest workingman, and if you will give me ten dollars for a reward, I

-will give you this valuable purse." Perhaps she would then say: "Give

-me the pocket-book and I'll give you the money out of it." To that I

-would reply: "No, Madam, I wish you to receive the pocket-book just as

-it was." I would then hand her the book and she would give me a good

-ten dollar bill. "There is a woman down the street," I would continue,

-"looking for something." That would alarm her and away she would go

-without even opening the leather to see if her money was all right.

-She wouldn't shop any more that day, but would hasten home to examine

-her treasure--worth, as she would discover to her sorrow, about thirty

-cents. Then, no doubt, her conscience would trouble her. At least, she

-would weep; I am sure of that.

-

-When I got my hand in again, I began to go for stone-getting, which

-was a fat graft in those days, when the Lexow committee was beginning

-their reform. Everybody wore a diamond. Even mechanics and farmers

-were not satisfied unless they had pins to stick in their ties. They

-bought them on the installment plan, and I suppose they do yet. I could

-always find a laborer or a hod-carrier that had a stone. They usually

-called attention to it by keeping their hands carefully on it; and very

-often it found its way into my pocket, for carelessness is bound to

-come as soon as a man thinks he is safe. They probably thought of their

-treasure for months afterwards; at least, whenever the collector came

-around for the weekly installments of pay for stones they no longer

-possessed.

-

-It was about this time that I met General Brace and the Professor.

-One was a Harvard graduate, and the other came from good old Yale; and

-both were grafters. When I knew them they used to hang out in a joint

-on Seventh Street, waiting to be treated. They had been good grafters,

-but through hop and booze had come down from forging and queer-shoving

-to common shop-lifting and petty larceny business. General Brace

-was very reticent in regard to his family and his own past, but as I

-often invited him to smoke opium with me, he sometimes gave me little

-confidences. I learned that he came from a well-known Southern family,

-and had held a good position in his native city; but he was a blood,

-and to satisfy his habits he began to forge checks. His relatives

-saved him from prison, but he left home and started on the downward

-career of graftdom. We called him General Brace because he looked like

-a soldier and was continually on the borrow; but a good story always

-accompanied his asking for a loan and he was seldom refused. I have

-often listened to this man after he had smoked a quantity of opium,

-and his conversational powers were something remarkable. Many a gun and

-politician would listen to him with wonder. I used to call him General

-Brace Coleridge.

-

-The Professor was almost as good a talker. We used to treat them both,

-in order to get them to converse together. It was a liberal education

-to hear them hold forth in that low-down saloon, where some of the

-finest talks on literature and politics were listened to with interest

-by men born and bred on the East Side, with no more education than

-a turnip, but with keen wits. The graduates had good manners, and we

-liked them and staked them regularly. They used to write letters for

-politicians and guns who could not read or write. They stuck together

-like brothers. If one of them had five cents, he would go into a morgue

-(gin-mill where rot-gut whiskey could be obtained for that sum) and

-pour out almost a full tumbler of booze. Just as he sipped a little

-of the rot-gut, his pal would come in, as though by accident. If it

-was the General who had made the purchase, he would say: "Hello, old

-pal, just taste this fine whiskey. It tastes like ten-cent stuff." The

-Professor would take a sip and become enthusiastic. They would sip and

-exclaim in turn, until the booze was all gone, and no further expense

-incurred. This little trick grew into a habit, and the bar-tender got

-on to it, but he liked Colonel Brace and the Professor so much that he

-used to wink at it.

-

-I was in this rot-gut saloon one day when I met Jesse R----, with whom

-I had spent several years in prison. I have often wondered how this man

-happened to join the under world; for he not only came of a good family

-and was well educated, but was also of a good, quiet disposition, a

-prime favorite in stir and out. He was tactful enough never to roast

-convicts, who are very sensitive, and was so sympathetic that many

-a heartache was poured into his ear. He never betrayed a friend's

-confidence.

-

-I was glad to meet Jesse again, and we exchanged greetings in the

-little saloon. When he asked me what I was doing, I replied that I had

-a mortgage on the world and that I was trying to draw my interest from

-the same. I still had that old dream, that the world owed me a living.

-I confided in him that I regarded the world as my oyster more decidedly

-than I had done before I met him in stir. I found that Jesse, however,

-had squared it for good and was absolutely on the level. He had a good

-job as shipping clerk in a large mercantile house; when I asked him if

-he was not afraid of being tipped off by some Central Office man or by

-some stool-pigeon, he admitted that that was the terror of his life;

-but that he had been at work for eighteen months, and hoped that none

-of his enemies would turn up. I asked him who had recommended him for

-the job, and I smiled when he answered: "General Brace". That clever

-Harvard graduate often wrote letters which were of assistance to guns

-who had squared it; though the poor fellow could not take care of

-himself.

-

-Jesse had a story to tell which seemed to me one of the saddest I have

-heard: and as I grew older I found that most all stories about people

-in the under world, no matter how cheerfully they began, ended sadly.

-It was about his brother, Harry, the story that Jesse told. Harry was

-married, and there is where the trouble often begins. When Jesse was

-in prison Harry, who was on the level and occupied a good position as a

-book-keeper, used to send him money, always against his wife's wishes.

-She also complained because Harry supported his old father. Harry

-toiled like a slave for this woman who scolded him and who spent his

-money recklessly. He made a good salary, but he could not keep up with

-her extravagance. One time, while in the country, she met a sporting

-man, Mr. O. B. In a few weeks it was the old, old story of a foolish

-woman and a pretty good fellow. While she was in the country, her young

-son was drowned, and she sent Harry a telegram announcing it. But she

-kept on living high and her name and that of O. B. were often coupled.

-Harry tried to stifle his sorrow and kept on sending money to the

-bladder he called wife, who appeared in a fresh new dress whenever she

-went out with Mr. O. B. One day Harry received a letter, calling him to

-the office to explain his accounts. He replied that he had been sick,

-but would straighten everything out the next day. When his father went

-to awaken him in the morning, Harry was dead. A phial of morphine on

-the floor told the story. Jesse reached his brother's room in time to

-hear his old father's cry of anguish and to read a letter from Harry,

-explaining that he had robbed the firm of thousands, and asking his

-brother to be kind to Helene, his wife.

-

-Then Jesse went to see the woman, to tell her about her husband's

-death. He found her at a summer hotel with Mr. O. B., and heard the

-servants talk about them.

-

-"Jim," said Jesse to me, at this point in the story, "here is wise

-council. Wherever thou goest, keep the portals of thy lugs open; as

-you wander on through life you are apt to hear slander about your women

-folks. What is more entertaining than a little scandal, especially when

-it doesn't hit home? But don't look into it too deep, for it generally

-turns out true, or worse. I laid a trap for my poor brothers wife,

-and one of her letters, making clear her guilt, fell into my hands.

-A telegram in reply from Mr. O. B., likewise came to me, and in a

-murderous frame of mind, I read its contents, and then laughed like a

-hyena: 'I am sorry I cannot meet you, but I was married this morning,

-and am going on my wedding tour. _Au Revoir._' You ask me what became

-of my sister-in-law? Jim, she is young and pretty, and will get along

-in this world. But, truly, the wages of sin is to her Living Ashes."

-

-It was not very long after my return home that I was at work again,

-not only at safe dipping and swindling, but gradually at all my old

-grafts, including more or less house work. There was a difference,

-however. I grew far more reckless than I had been before I went to

-prison. I now smoked opium regularly, and had a lay-out in my furnished

-room and a girl to run it. The drug made me take chances I never used

-to take; and I became dead to almost everything that was good. I went

-home very seldom. I liked my family in a curious way, but I did not

-have enough vitality or much feeling about anything. I began to go out

-to graft always in a dazed condition, so much so that on one occasion

-a pal tried to take advantage of my state of mind. It was while I was

-doing a bit of house-work with Sandy and Hacks, two clever grafters.

-We inserted into the lock the front door key which we had made, threw

-off the tumblers, and opened the door. Hacks and I stalled while Sandy

-went in and got six hundred dollars and many valuable jewels. He did

-not show us much of the money, however. The next day the newspapers

-described the "touch," and told the amount of money which had been

-stolen. Then I knew I had been "done" by Sandy and Hacks, who stood

-in with him, but Sandy said the papers were wrong. The mean thief,

-however, could not keep his mouth shut, and I got him. I am glad

-I was not arrested for murder. It was a close shave, for I cut him

-unmercifully with a knife. In this I had the approval of my friends,

-for they all believed the worst thing a grafter could do was to sink a

-pal. Sandy did not squeal, but he swore he would get even with me. Even

-if I had not been so reckless as I was then, I would not have feared

-him, for I knew there was no come-back in him.

-

-Another thing the dope did was to make me laugh at everything. It was

-fun for me to graft, and I saw the humor of life. I remember I used to

-say that this world is the best possible; that the fine line of cranks

-and fools in it gives it variety. One day I had a good laugh in a

-Brooklyn car. Tim, George and I got next to a Dutchman who had a large

-prop in his tie. He stood for a newspaper under his chin, and his stone

-came as slick as grease. A minute afterwards he missed his property,

-and we did not dare to move. He told his wife, who was with him, that

-his stone was gone. She called him a fool, and said that he had left

-it at home, in the bureau drawer, that she remembered it well. Then

-he looked down and saw that his front was gone, too. He said to his

-wife: "I am sure I had my watch and chain with me," but his wife was

-so superior that she easily convinced him he had left it at home. The

-wisdom of women is beyond finding out. But I enjoyed that incident. I

-shall never forget the look that came over the Dutchman's face when he

-missed his front.

-

-I was too sleepy those days to go out of town much on the graft; and

-was losing my ambition generally. I even cared very little for the

-girls, and gave up many of my amusements. I used to stay most of the

-time in my furnished room, smoking hop. When I went out it was to get

-some dough quick, and to that end I embraced almost any means. At night

-I often drifted into some concert hall, but it was not like the old

-days when I was a kid. The Bowery is far more respectable now than it

-ever was before. Twenty years ago there was no worse place possible for

-ruining girls and making thieves than Billy McGlory's joint on Hester

-Street. About ten o'clock in the morning slumming parties would chuckle

-with glee when the doors at McGlory's would be closed and young girls

-in scanty clothing, would dance the can-can. These girls would often

-fight together, and frequently were beaten unmercifully by the men

-who lived on them and their trade. Often men were forcibly robbed in

-these joints. There was little danger of an arrest; for if the sucker

-squealed, the policeman on the beat would club him off to the beat of

-another copper, who would either continue the process, or arrest him

-for disorderly conduct.

-

-At this time, which was just before the Lexow Committee began its work,

-there were at least a few honest coppers. I knew one, however, that

-did not remain honest. It happened this way. The guns had been tearing

-open the cars so hard that the street car companies, as they had once

-before, got after the officials, who stirred up Headquarters. The riot

-act was read to the dips. This meant that, on the second offense, every

-thief would be settled for his full time and that there would be no

-squaring it. The guns lay low for a while, but two very venturesome

-grafters, Mack and Jerry, put their heads together and reasoned thus:

-"Now that the other guns are alarmed it is a good chance for us to get

-in our fine work."

-

-Complaints continued to come in. The police grew hot and sent Mr.

-F----, a flyman, to get the rascals. Mr. F---- had the reputation of

-being the most honest detective on the force. He often declared that

-he wanted promotion only on his merits. Whenever he was overheard in

-making this remark there was a quiet smile on the faces of the other

-coppers. F---- caught Mack dead to rights, and, not being a diplomat,

-did not understand when the gun tried to talk reason to him. Even a

-large piece of dough did not help his intellect, and Mack was taken to

-the station-house. When a high official heard about it he swore by all

-the gods that he would make an example of that notorious pickpocket,

-Mack; but human nature is weak, especially if it wears buttons. Mack

-sent for F----'s superior, the captain, and the following dialogue took

-place:

-

-_Captain_: What do you want?

-

-_Mack_: I'm copped.

-

-_Captain_: Yes, and you're dead to rights.

-

-_Mack_: I tried to do business with F----. What is the matter with him?

-

-_Captain_: He is a policeman. He wants his promotion by merit. (Even

-the Captain smiled.)

-

-_Mack_: I'd give five centuries (five hundred dollars) if I could get

-to my summer residence in Asbury Park.

-

-_Captain_: How long would it take you to get it?

-

-_Mack_: (He, too, was laconic.) I got it on me.

-

-_Captain_: Give it here.

-

-_Mack_: It's a sure turn-out?

-

-_Captain_: Was I ever known to go back on my word?

-

-Mack handed the money over, and went over to court in the afternoon

-with F----. The Captain was there, and whispered to F----: "Throw him

-out." That nearly knocked F---- down, but he and Mack took a car, and

-he said to the latter: "In the name of everything how did you hypnotize

-the old man?" Mack replied, with a laugh: "I tried to mesmerize you in

-the same way; but you are working on your merits."

-

-Mack was discharged, and F---- decided to be a diplomat henceforth.

-From an honest copper he became as clever a panther as ever shook coin

-from a gun. Isn't it likely that if a man had a large income he would

-never go to prison? Indeed, do you think that well-known guns could

-graft with impunity unless they had some one right? Nay! Nay! Hannah.

-They often hear the song of split half or no graft.

-

-But at that time I was so careless that I did not even have enough

-sense to save fall-money, and after about nine months of freedom I fell

-again. One day three of us boarded a car in Brooklyn and I saw a mark

-whom I immediately nicked for his red super, which I passed quickly

-to one of my stalls, Eddy. We got off the car and walked about three

-blocks, when Eddy flashed the super, to look at it. The sucker, who had

-been tailing, blew, and Eddy threw the watch to the ground, fearing

-that he would be nailed. A crowd gathered around the super, I among

-them, the other stall, Eddy having vamoosed, and the sucker. No man in

-his senses would have picked up that gold watch. But I did it and was

-nailed dead to rights. I felt that super belonged to me. I had nicked

-it cleverly, and I thought I had earned it! I was sentenced to four

-years in Sing Sing, but I did not hang my head with shame, this time,

-as I was taken to the station. It was the way of life and of those

-I associated with, and I was more a fatalist than ever. I hated all

-mankind and cared nothing for the consequences of my acts.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XI.

-

-_Back to Prison._

-

-

-I was not recognized by the authorities at Sing Sing as having been

-there before. I gave a different name and pedigree, of course, but

-the reason I was not known as a second-timer was that I had spent only

-nine months at Sing Sing on my first term, the remainder having been

-passed at Auburn. There was a new warden at Sing Sing, too, and some

-of the other officials had changed; and, besides, I must have been

-lucky. Anyway, none of the keepers knew me, and this meant a great

-deal to me; for if I had been recognized as a second-timer I should

-have had a great deal of extra time to serve. On my first term I had

-received commutation time for good behavior amounting to over a year,

-and there is a rule that if a released convict is sent back to prison,

-he must serve, not only the time given him on his second sentence, but

-the commutation time on his first bit. Somebody must have been very

-careless, for I beat the State out of more than a year.

-

-Some of the convicts, indeed, knew that I had served before; but they

-did not squeal. Even some of those who did not know me had an inkling

-of it, but would not tell. It was still another instance of honor among

-thieves. If they had reported me to the authorities, they might have

-had an easier time in stir and had many privileges, such as better

-jobs and better things to eat. There were many stool-pigeons there, of

-course, but somehow these rats did not get wind of me.

-

-It did not take me long to get the Underground Tunnel in working order

-again, and I received contraband letters, booze, opium and morphine

-as regularly as on my first bit. One of the screws running the Tunnel

-at the time, Jack R----, was a little heavier in his demands than I

-thought fair. He wanted a third instead of a fifth of the money sent

-the convicts from home. But he was a good fellow, and always brought

-in the hop as soon as it arrived. Like the New York police he was hot

-after the stuff, but who can blame him? He wanted to rise in the world,

-and was more ambitious than the other screws. I continued my pipe

-dreams, and my reading; indeed, they were often connected. I frequently

-used to imagine that I was a character in one of the books; and often

-choked the detestable Tarquin into insensibility.

-

-On one occasion I dreamed that I was arraigned before my Maker and

-charged with murder. I cried with fear and sorrow, for I felt that even

-before the just God there was no justice; but a voice silenced me and

-said that to be guilty of the crime of murder, it was not necessary

-to use weapons or poison. Suddenly I seemed to see the sad faces of

-my father and mother, and then I knew what the voice meant. Indeed, I

-was guilty. I heard the word, "Begone," and sank into the abyss. After

-many thousand years of misery I was led into the Chamber of Contentment

-where I saw some of the great men whose books I had read. Voltaire, Tom

-Paine and Galileo sat on a throne, but when I approached them with awe,

-the angel, who had the face of a keeper, told me to leave. I appealed

-to Voltaire, and begged him not to permit them to send me among the

-hymn-singers. He said he pitied me, but that I was not fit to be with

-the great elect. I asked him where Dr. Parkhurst was, and he answered

-that the doctor was hot stuff and had evaporated long ago. I was led

-away sorrowing, and awoke in misery and tears, in my dark and damp

-cell.

-

-On this bit I was assigned to the clothing department, where I stayed

-six months, but did very little work. Warden Sage replaced Warden

-Darson and organized the system of stool-pigeons in stir more carefully

-than ever before; so it was more difficult than it was before to

-neglect our work. I said to Sage one day: "You're a cheap guy. You

-ought to be President of a Woman's Sewing Society. You can do nothing

-but make an aristocracy of stool-pigeons." I gave up work after six

-months because of my health, which had been bad for a long time, but

-now grew worse. My rapid life on the outside, my bad habits, and my

-experience in prison were beginning to tell on me badly. There was a

-general breaking-down of my system. I was so weak and coughed so badly

-that they thought I was dying. The doctors said I had consumption and

-transferred me to the prison hospital, where I had better air and food

-and was far more comfortable in body but terribly low in my mind. I

-was so despondent that I did not even "fan my face" (turn my head away

-to avoid having the outside world become familiar with my features)

-when visitors went through the hospital. This was an unusual degree

-of carelessness for a professional gun. One reason I was so gloomy was

-that I was now unable to get hold of my darling hop.

-

-I was so despondent in the hospital that I really thought I should soon

-become an angel; and my environment was not very cheerful, for several

-convicts died on beds near me. Whenever anybody was going to die,

-every convict in the prison knew about it, for the attendants would

-put three screens around the dying man's bed. There were about twenty

-beds in the long room, and near me was an old boyhood pal, Tommy Ward,

-in the last stages of consumption. Tommy and I often talked together

-about death, and neither of us was afraid of it. I saw a dozen men die

-during my experience in state prisons and I never heard one of them

-clamor for a clergyman. Tommy was doing life for murder, and ought to

-have been afraid of death, if anyone was. But when he was about to die,

-he sent word to me to come to his bedside, and after a word or two of

-good-bye he went into his agony. The last words he ever said were: "Ah,

-give me a big Peter (narcotic)." He did not receive the last rites of

-the Catholic Church, and his ignorant family refused to bury him. So

-Tommy's cell number was put on the tombstone, if it could be called

-such, which marked his grave in the little burying ground outside the

-prison walls.

-

-Indeed, it is not easy to throw the religious con (confidence game)

-into a convict. Often, while we were in chapel, the dominie would tell

-us that life was short; but hardly one of the six or seven hundred

-criminals who were listening believed the assertion. They felt that

-the few years they were doing for the good of their country were as

-long as centuries. If there were a few "cons" who tried the cheerful

-dodge, they did not deceive anybody, for their brother guns knew that

-they were sore in their hearts because they had been caught without

-fall-money, and so had to serve a few million years in stir.

-

-After I got temporarily better in health and had left the hospital,

-I began to read Lavater on physiognomy more industriously than ever.

-With his help I became a close student of faces, and I learned to tell

-the thoughts and emotions of my fellow convicts. I watched them at

-work and when their faces flushed I knew they were thinking of Her.

-Sometimes I would ask a man how She was, and he would look confused,

-and perhaps angry because his day dream was disturbed. And how the

-men used to look at women visitors who went through the shops! It was

-against the rules to look at the inhabitants of the Upper World who

-visited stir, but I noticed that after women visitors had been there

-the convicts were generally more cheerful. Even a momentary glimpse of

-those who lived within the pale of civilization warmed their hearts.

-After the ladies had gone the convicts would talk about them for hours.

-Many of their remarks were vulgar and licentious, but some of the men

-were broken down with feeling and would say soft things. They would

-talk about their mothers and sweethearts and eventually drift back on

-their ill-spent lives. How often I thought of the life behind me! Then

-I would look at the men about me, some of whom had stolen millions and

-had international reputations--but all discouraged now, broken down in

-health, penniless and friendless. If a man died in stir he was just a

-cadaver for the dissecting table, nothing more. The end fitted in well

-with his misspent life. These reflections would bring us around again

-to good resolutions.

-

-People who have never broken the law--I beg pardon, who were never

-caught--can not understand how a man who has once served in stir will

-take another chance and go back and suffer the same tortures. A society

-lady I once met said she thought criminals who go on grafting, when

-they know what the result will be, must be lacking in imagination. I

-replied to her: "Madam, why do you lace tight and indulge in social

-dissipation even after you know it is bad for the health? You know it

-is a strain on your nerves, but you do it. Is it because you have no

-imagination? That which we all dread most--death--we all defy."

-

-The good book says that all men shall earn their bread by the sweat

-of their brow, but we grafters make of ourselves an exception, with

-that overweening egotism and brash desire to do others with no return,

-which is natural to everybody. Only when the round-up comes, either in

-the sick bed or in the toils, we often can not bear our burdens and

-look around to put the blame on someone else. If a man is religious,

-why should he not drop it on Jesus? Man! How despicable at times! How

-ungallant to his ancestor of the softer sex! From time immemorial he

-has exclaimed: "Only for her, the deceiving one, my better half, I

-should be perfect."

-

-Convicts, particularly if they are broken in health, often become

-like little children. It is not unusual for them to grow dependent on

-dumb pets, which they smuggle into prison by means of the Underground

-Tunnel. The man in stir who has a white mouse or robin is envied by

-the other convicts, for he has something to love. If an artist could

-only witness the affection that is centered on a mouse or dog, if he

-could only depict the emotions in the hard face of the criminal, what a

-story! I had a white rat, which I had obtained with difficulty through

-the Underground. I used to put him up my sleeve, and he would run all

-over my body, he was so tame. He would stand on his hind legs or lie

-down at my command. Sometimes, when I was lonely and melancholy, I

-loved this rat like a human being.

-

-In May, 1896, when I still had about a year to serve on my second

-term, a rumor circulated through the prison that some of the Salvation

-Army were going to visit the stir. The men were greatly excited at

-the prospect of a break in the dreary routine. I imagined that a big

-burly Salvationist, beating a drum, with a few very thin Salvation

-lasses, would march through the prison yard. I was dumbfounded by the

-reality, for I saw enter the Protestant chapel, which was crowded with

-eager convicts, two delicate, pretty women. No actor or actress ever

-got a warmer welcome than that given to Mrs. Booth and her secretary,

-Captain Jennie Hughes. After the clapping of hands and cheering had

-ceased, Mrs. Booth arose and made a speech, which was listened to in

-deep silence. Certainly she was eloquent, and what she said impressed

-many an old gun. She was the first visitor who ever promised practical

-Christianity and eventually carried out the promise. She promised to

-build homes for us after our release; and in many cases, she did, and

-we respect her. She spoke for an hour, and afterwards granted private

-interviews, and many of the convicts told her all their troubles, and

-she promised to take care of their old mothers, daughters and wives.

-

-Before leaving the chapel, she sang: "O Lord, let the waves of

-thy crimson sea roll over me." I did not see how such a pretty,

-intelligent, refined and educated woman could say such a bloody thing,

-but she probably had forgotten what the words really meant. At any

-rate, she is a good woman, for she tried hard to have the Parole Bill

-passed. That bill has recently become a law, and it is a good one, in

-my opinion; but it has one fault. It only effects first-timers. The

-second and third timers, who went to Sing Sing years ago when there was

-contract labor and who worked harder than any laborer in New York City,

-ought to have a chance, too. Show a little confidence in any man, even

-though he be a third-timer, as I have been, and he will be a better man

-for it.

-

-After the singing, on that first morning of Mrs. Booth's visit,

-she asked those convicts who wanted to lead a better life to stand

-up. About seventy men out of the five or six hundred arose, and

-the others remained seated. I was not among those who stood up. I

-never met anybody who could touch me in that way. I don't believe in

-instantaneous Christianity. I knew half a dozen of the men who stood

-up, and they were not very strong mentally. I often wondered what the

-motives were that moved the men in that manner. Man is a social animal,

-and Mrs. Booth was a magnetic woman. After I had heard her speak once,

-I knew that. She had a good personal appearance and one other requisite

-that appealed strongly to those who were in our predicament--her sex.

-Who could entirely resist the pleadings of a pretty woman with large

-black eyes?

-

-Certainly I was moved by this sincere and attractive woman, but my

-own early religious training had made me suspicious of the whole

-business. Whenever anybody tried to reform me through Christianity I

-always thought of that powerful Celt who used to rush at me in Sunday

-school with a hickory stick and shout "Who made you?" And I don't think

-that most of the men who profess religion in prison are sincere. They

-usually want to curry favor with the authorities, or get "staked" after

-they leave stir. One convict, whom I used to call "The Great American

-Identifier," because he used to graft by claiming to be a relative of

-everybody that died, from California to Maine and weeping over the dead

-body, was the worst hypocrite I ever saw--a regular Uriah Heep. He was

-one of Mrs. Booth's converts and stood up in chapel. After she went

-away he said to me: "What a blessing has been poured into my soul since

-I heard Mrs. Booth." Another hypocrite said to me on the same occasion:

-"I don't know what I would do only for Mrs. Booth. She has lightened

-my weary burdens." Now, I would not trust either of those men with a

-box of matches; and so I said to the Great American Identifier: "You

-are the meanest, most despicable thief in the whole stir. I'd respect

-you if you had the nerve to rob a live man, but you always stole from

-a cadaver." He was horrified at my language and began to talk of a

-favorite subject with him--his wealthy relatives.

-

-Some of these converts were not hypocrites, but I don't think even they

-received any good from their conversion. Some people go to religion

-because they have nothing else to distract their thoughts, and the

-subject sometimes is a mania with them. The doctors say that there is

-only one incurable mental disease--religious insanity. In the eyes

-of the reformers Mrs. Booth does a great thing by making some of us

-converts, but experts in mental diseases declare that it is very bad

-to excite convicts to such a pitch. Many of the weak-minded among them

-lose their balance and become insane through these violent religious

-emotions.

-

-I did not meet so many of the big guns on my second term as on my

-first; but, of course, I came across many of my old pals and formed

-some new acquaintances. It was on this term that four of us used to

-have what I called a tenement house oratory talk whenever we worked

-together in the halls. Some of us were lucky enough at times to serve

-as barbers, hall-men and runners to and from the shops, and we used to

-gather together in the halls and amuse ourselves with conversation.

-Dickey, Mull, Mickey and I became great pals in this way. Dickey was

-a desperate river pirate who would not stand a roast from anybody,

-but was well liked. Mull was one of the best principled convicts I

-ever knew in my life. He was quiet, delicate and manly, and opposed to

-abusing young boys, yet if you did him an injury he would cut the liver

-out of you. He was a good fellow. Mickey was what I called a tenement

-house philosopher. He'd stick his oar into every bit of talk that was

-started. One day the talk began on Tammany Hall and went something like

-this:

-

-"All crooked officials," said Mull, "including all of them, ought to be

-railroaded to Sing Sing."

-

-_Dickey_: "Through their methods the county offices are rotten from the

-judge to the policeman."

-

-_Mull_: "I agree with you."

-

-_Mickey_: "Ah, wat's the matter wid Tammany? My old man never voted any

-other ticket. Neither did yours. When you get into stir you act like

-college professors. Why don't you practice what you spout? I always

-voted the Tammany ticket--five or six times every election day. How is

-it I never got a long bit?"

-

-_Mull_: "How many times, Mickey, have you been in stir?"

-

-_Mickey_: "This is the fourth, but the highest I got was four years."

-

-_Dickey_: "You never done anything big enough to get four."

-

-_Mickey_: "I didn't, eh? You have been hollering that you are innocent,

-and get twenty years for piracy. I only get four, but I am guilty every

-time. There is a big difference between that and twenty, aint it?"

-

-Mull slapped Mickey on the back and said: "Never mind. You will get

-yours yet on the installment plan." Then, turning to me, Mull asked:

-"Jim, don't you think that if everything was square and on the level

-we'd stand a better chance?"

-

-"No," I replied. "In the first place we have not reached the

-millennium. In the second place they would devise some legal scheme to

-keep a third timer the rest of his natural days. I know a moccasin who

-would move heaven and earth to have such a bill passed, and he is one

-of the crookedest philanthropists in America to-day. I am a grafter,

-and I believe that the present administration is all right. I know that

-I can stay out of prison as long as I save my fall-money. When I blow

-that in I ought to go to prison. Every gun who is capable of stealing,

-knows that if he puts by enough money he can not only keep out of stir

-but can beat his way into heaven. I'm arguing as a professional thief."

-

-This was too much for Mickey, who said: "Why don't you talk United

-States and not be springing whole leaves out of a dictionary?"

-

-Just then Big Jim came up. He had heard what I said and he joined

-in: "You know why I got the tenth of a century? I had thousands in my

-pocket and went to buy some silk underwear at a haberdasher's in New

-York. But it seemed to me a waste of good coin to buy them, so I stole

-a dozen pair of silk stockings. They tried to arrest me, I shot, and

-got ten years. I always did despise a petty thief, but I never felt

-like kicking him till then. Ten years for a few stockings! Can you

-blame the judge? I didn't. Even a judge admires a good thief. If I had

-robbed a bank I'd never have got such a long bit. The old saying is

-true: Kill one man and you will be hanged. Kill sixteen, and the United

-States Government is likely to pension you."

-

-The tenement-house philosopher began to object again, when the guard,

-as usual, came along to stop our pleasant conversation. He thought we

-were abusing our privileges.

-

-It was during this bit that I met the man with the white teeth, as he

-is now known among his friends. I will call him Patsy, and tell his

-story, for it is an unusual one. He was a good deal older man than I

-and was one of the old-school burglars, and a good one. They were a

-systematic lot, and would shoot before they stood the collar; but they

-were gentlemanly grafters and never abused anybody. The first thing

-Patsy's mob did after entering a house was to round up all the inmates

-and put them into one room. There one burglar would stick them up

-with a revolver, while the others went through the house. On a fatal

-occasion Patsy took the daughter of the house, a young girl of eighteen

-or nineteen, in his arms and carried her down stairs into the room

-where the rest of the family had been put by the other grafters. As he

-carried the girl down stairs, she said: "Mr. Burglar, don't harm me."

-Patsy was masked, all but his mouth, and when he said: "You are as safe

-as if you were in your father's arms," she saw his teeth, which were

-remarkably fine and white. Patsy afterwards said that the girl was not

-a bit alarmed, and was such a perfect coquette that she noticed his

-good points. The next morning she told the police that one of the bad

-men had a beautiful set of teeth. The flymen rounded up half a dozen

-grafters on suspicion, among them Patsy; and no sooner did he open his

-mouth, than he was recognized, and settled for a long bit. Poor Patsy

-has served altogether about nineteen years, but now he has squared

-it, and is a waiter in a Bowery saloon, more content with his twelve

-dollars a week than he used to be with his thousands. I often go around

-and have a glass with him. He is now a quiet, sober fellow, and his

-teeth are as fine as ever.

-

-One day a man named "Muir," a mean, sure-thing grafter, came to the

-stir on a visit to some of his acquaintances. He had never done a bit

-himself, although he was a notorious thief. But he liked to look at the

-misfortunes of others, occasionally. On this visit he got more than he

-bargained for. He came to the clothing department where Mike, who had

-grafted with Muir in New York, and I, were at work. Muir went up to

-Mike and offered him a bill. Mike threw it in Muir's face and called

-him--well, the worst thing known in Graftdom. "If it wasn't for you,"

-he said, "I wouldn't be doing this bit."

-

-There are several kinds of sure-thing grafters. Some are crooked

-gamblers, some are plain stool-pigeons, some are discouraged thieves

-who continue to graft but take no risks. Muir was one of the meanest

-of the rats that I have known, yet in a way, he was handy to the

-professional gun. He had somebody "right" at headquarters and could

-generally get protection for his mob; but he would always throw the mob

-over if it was to his advantage. He and two other house-work men robbed

-a senator's home, and such a howl went up that the police offered all

-manner of protection to the grafter who would tip them off to who got

-the stuff. Grafters who work with the coppers don't want it known among

-those of their own kind, for they would be ostracized. If they do a

-dirty trick they try to throw it on someone else who would not stoop to

-such a thing. Muir was a diplomat, and tipped off the Central Office,

-and those who did the trick, all except Tom and Muir, were nailed. A

-few nights after that the whisper was passed among guns of both sexes,

-who had gathered at a resort up-town, that somebody had squealed. The

-muttered curses meant that some Central Office man had by wireless

-telegraphy put the under world next that somebody had tipped off the

-police. But it was not Muir that the hard names were said against: the

-Central Office man took care of that. With low cunning Muir had had the

-rumor circulated that it was Tom who had thrown them down, and Tommy

-was ostracized.

-

-I knew Muir and I knew Tommy, and I was sure that the latter was

-innocent. Some time after Tom had been cut by the rest of the gang I

-saw Muir drinking with two Central Office detectives, in a well-known

-resort, and I was convinced that he was the rat. His personal

-appearance bore out my suspicion. He had a weak face, with no fight in

-it. He was quiet of speech, always smiling, and as soft and noiseless

-as the animal called the snake. He had a narrow, hanging lip, small

-nose, large ears, and characterless, protruding eyes. The squint look

-from under the eye-brows, and the quick jerk of the hand to the chin,

-showed without doubt that he possessed the low cunning too of that

-animal called the rat. Partly through my influence, Muir gradually got

-the reputation of being a sure-thing grafter, but he was so sleek that

-he could always find some grafter to work with him. Pals with whom he

-fell out, always shortly afterwards came to harm. That was the case

-with Big Mike, who spat in Muir's face, when the latter visited him in

-Sing Sing. When Muir did pickpocket work, he never dipped himself, but

-acted as a stall. This was another sure-thing dodge. Muir never did a

-bit in stir because he was of more value to headquarters than a dozen

-detectives. The fact that he never did time was another thing that

-gradually made the gang suspicious of him. Therefore, at the present

-time he is of comparatively little value to the police force, and may

-be settled before long. I hope so.

-

-One of the meanest things Muir ever did was to a poor old "dago"

-grafter, a queer-maker (counterfeiter). The Italian was putting

-out unusually good stuff, both paper and metal, and the avaricious

-Muir thought he saw a good chance to get a big bit of money from

-the dago. He put up a plan with two Central Office men to bleed the

-counterfeiter. Then he went to the dago and said he had got hold of

-some big buyers from the West who would buy five thousand dollars worth

-of the "queer." They met the supposed buyers, who were in reality

-the two Central Office men, at a little saloon. After a talk the

-detectives came out in their true colors, showed their shields, and

-demanded one thousand dollars. The dago looked at Muir, who gave him

-the tip to pay the one thousand dollars. The Italian, however, thinking

-Muir was on the level, misunderstood the sign, and did not pay. The

-outraged detectives took the Italian to police headquarters, but did

-not show up the queer at first; they still wanted their one thousand

-dollars. So the dago was remanded and remanded, getting a hearing every

-twenty-four hours, but there was never enough evidence. Finally the

-poor fellow got a lawyer, and then the Central Office men gave up the

-game, and produced the queer as evidence. The United States authorities

-prosecuted the case, and the Italian was given three years and a half.

-After he was released he met Muir on the East Side, and tried to kill

-him with a knife. That is the only way Muir will ever get his deserts.

-A man like him very seldom dies in state's prison, or is buried in

-potter's field. He often becomes a gin-mill keeper and captain of his

-election district, for he understands how to control the repeaters who

-give Tammany Hall such large majorities on election day in Manhattan.

-

-It was on this second bit in prison, as I have said in another place,

-that the famous "fence" operated in stir. I knew him well. He was a

-clever fellow, and I often congratulated him on his success with the

-keepers; for he was no stool-pigeon and got his pull legitimately. He

-was an older grafter than I and remembered well Madame Mandelbaum, the

-Jewess, one of the best fences, before my time, in New York City. At

-the corner of Clinton and Rivington Streets there stood until a few

-years ago a small dry goods and notions store, which was the scene of

-transactions which many an old gun likes to talk about. What plannings

-of great robberies took place there, in Madame Mandelbaum's store!

-She would buy any kind of stolen property, from an ostrich feather

-to hundreds and thousands of dollars' worth of gems. The common

-shop-lifter and the great cracksman alike did business at this famous

-place. Some of the noted grafters who patronized her store were Jimmy

-Hope, Shang Draper, Billy Porter, Sheenie Mike, Red Leary, Johnnie

-Irving, Jack Walsh, alias John the Mick, and a brainy planner of big

-jobs, English George.

-

-Madame Mandelbaum had two country residences in Brooklyn where she

-invited her friends, the most famous thieves in two continents. English

-George, who used to send money to his son, who was being educated in

-England, was a frequent visitor, and used to deposit with her all

-his valuables. She had two beautiful daughters, one of whom became

-infatuated with George, who did not return her love. Later, she and

-her daughters, after they became wealthy, tried to rise in the world

-and shake their old companions. The daughters were finely dressed and

-well-educated, and the Madame hunted around for respectable husbands

-for them. Once a bright reporter wrote a play, in which the central

-character was Madame Mandelbaum. She read about it in the newspapers

-and went, with her two daughters, to see it. They occupied a private

-box, and were gorgeously dressed. The old lady was very indignant when

-she saw the woman who was supposed to be herself appear on the stage.

-The actress, badly dressed, and made up with a hooked nose, was jeered

-by the audience. After the play, Madame Mandelbaum insisted on seeing

-the manager of the theatre. She showed him her silks and her costly

-diamonds and then said: "Look at me. I am Madame Mandelbaum. Does that

-huzzy look anything like me?" Pointing to her daughters she continued:

-"What must my children think of such an impersonation? Both of them are

-better dressed and have more money and education than that strut, who

-is only a moment's plaything for bankers and brokers!"

-

-In most ways, of course, my life in prison during the second term was

-similar to what it was on my first term. Books and opium were my main

-pleasures. If it had not been for them and for the thoughts about life

-and about my fellow convicts which they led me to form, the monotony

-of the prison routine would have driven me mad. My health was by that

-time badly shattered. I was very nervous and could seldom sleep without

-a drug.

-

-My moral health was far worse, too, than it had been on my first term.

-Then I had made strong efforts to overcome the opium habit, and laid

-plans to give up grafting. Then I had some decent ambitions, and did

-not look upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas on the second

-term, I had grown to take a hopeless view of my case. I began to feel

-that I could not reform, no matter how hard I tried. It seemed to

-me, too, that it was hardly worth while now to make an effort, for I

-thought my health was worse than it really was and that I should die

-soon, with no opportunity to live the intelligent life I had learned to

-admire through my books. I still made good resolutions, and some effort

-to quit the hop, but they were weak in comparison with the efforts

-I had made during my first term. More and more it seemed to me that

-I belonged in the under world for good, and that I might as well go

-through it to the end. Stealing was my profession. It was all I knew

-how to do, and I didn't believe that anybody was interested enough in

-me to teach me anything else. On the other hand, what I had learned on

-the Rocky Path would never leave me. I was sure of my knowledge of the

-technique of graft, and I knew that a sucker was born every minute.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XII.

-

-_On the Outside Again._

-

-

-My time on the second bit was drawing to a close. I was eager to get

-out, of course, but I knew way down in my mind, that it would be only

-to graft again. I made a resolution that I would regain my health and

-gather a little fall-money before I started in hard again on the Rocky

-Path.

-

-On the day of my release, Warden Sage called me to his office and

-talked to me like a friend. He did not know that I was a second timer,

-or he might not have been so kind to me. He was a humane man, and in

-spite of his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced good

-things into Sing Sing. He improved the condition of the cells and we

-were not confined there so much as we had been before he came. On my

-first term many a man staid for days in his cell without ever going

-out; one man was confined twenty-eight days on bread and water. But

-under Mr. Sage punishments were not so severe. He even used to send

-delicacies to men chained up in the Catholic Chapel.

-

-I should like to say a good word for Head Keeper Connoughton, too.

-He was not generally liked, for he was a strict disciplinarian, but I

-think he was one of the best keepers in the country. He was stern, but

-not brutal, and when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton was very kind.

-He was not deceived by the fake lunatics, and used to say: "If you go

-to the mad-house, you are liable to become worse. If you are all right

-in the morning I will give you a job out in the air." Although Mr.

-Connoughton had had little schooling he was an intelligent man.

-

-I believe the best thing the community can do to reform criminals

-is to have a more intelligent class of keepers. As a rule they are

-ignorant, brutal and stupid, under-paid and inefficient; yet what is

-more important for the State's welfare than an intelligent treatment

-of convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long ones, for when

-the criminal is broken down in health and made fearful, suspicious and

-revengeful, what can you expect from him? However, in the mood I was in

-at the end of my second term, I did not believe that anything was any

-good as a preventive of crime. I knew that when I got on the outside I

-wouldn't think of what might happen to me. I knew that I couldn't or

-wouldn't carry a hod. What ambition I had left was to become a more

-successful crook than I had ever been before.

-

-Warden Sage gave me some good advice and then I left Sing Sing for New

-York. I did not get the pleasure from going out again that had been

-so keen after my first bit. My eye-sight was failing now, and I was

-sick and dull. My only thought was to get back to my old haunts, and

-I drank several large glasses of whiskey at Sing Sing town, to help

-me on my way. I intended to go straight home, as I felt very ill, to

-my father and mother, but I didn't see them for several days after my

-return to New York. The first thing I did in the city was to deliver

-some messages from my fellow convicts to their relatives. My third

-visit for that purpose was to the home of a fine young fellow I knew

-in stir. It was a large family and included a married sister and her

-children. They were glad to hear from Bobby, and I talked to them for

-some time about him, when the husband of the married sister came home,

-and began to quarrel with his wife. He accused her of having strange

-men in the house, meaning me. The younger brother and the rest of the

-family got back at the brother-in-law and gave him better than they

-got. The little brother fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder".

-The police surrounded the house and took us all to the station-house

-in the patrol wagon. And so I spent the first night after my return in

-confinement. It seemed natural, however. In the morning we were taken

-before the magistrate, and the mother and sister testified that I had

-taken them a message from their boy, and had committed no offense.

-The brother-in-law blurted out that he had married into a family of

-thieves, and that I had just returned from Sing Sing. I was discharged,

-but fined five dollars. Blessed are the peacemakers,--but not in my

-case!

-

-I passed the next day looking for old girls and pals, but I found few

-of them. Many were dead and others were in stir or had sunk so far

-down into the under world that even I could not find them. I was only

-about thirty-two years old, but I had already a long acquaintance with

-the past. Like all grafters I had lived rapidly, crowding, while at

-liberty, several days into one. When I got back from my second bit

-the greater part of my life seemed to be made up of memories of other

-days. Some of the old pals I did meet again had squared it, others were

-"dead" (out of the game) and some had degenerated into mere bums.

-

-There are several different classes of "dead ones":

-

-1. The man who has lost his nerve. He generally becomes a whiskey

-fiend. If he becomes hopelessly a soak the better class of guns shun

-him, for he is no good to work with. He will not keep an engagement, or

-will turn up at the place of meeting too late or too early. A grafter

-must be exactly on time. It is as bad to be too early as too late, for

-he must not be seen hanging around the place of meeting. Punctuality is

-more of a virtue in the under world than it is in respectable society.

-The slackest people I know to keep their appointments, are the honest

-ones; or grafters who have become whiskey fiends. These latter usually

-wind up with rot-gut booze and are sometimes seen selling songs on the

-Bowery.

-

-2. The man who becomes a copper. He is known as a stool-pigeon, and is

-detested and feared by all grafters. Nobody will go with him. Sometimes

-he becomes a Pinkerton man, and is a useful member of society. When

-he loses his grip with the upper world, he belongs to neither, for the

-grafters won't look at him.

-

-3. The man who knows a trade. This grafter often "squares" it, is apt

-to marry and remain honest. His former pals, who are still grafters,

-treat him kindly, for they know he is not a rat. They know, too, that

-he is a bright and intelligent man, and that it is well to keep on the

-right side of him. Such a man has often educated himself in stir, and,

-when he squares it, is apt to join a political club, and is called

-in by the leader to help out in an election, for he possesses some

-brains. The gun is apt to make him an occasional present, for he can

-help the grafter, in case of a fall, because of his connection with

-the politicians. This kind of "dead one" often keeps his friends the

-grafters, while in stir, next to the news in the city.

-

-4. The gun who is _supposed_ to square it. This grafter has got a

-bunch of money together and sees a good chance to open a gin-mill,

-or a Raines Law hotel, or a gambling joint. He knows how to take care

-of the repeaters, and is handy about election time. In return he gets

-protection for his illegal business. He is a go-between, and is on good

-terms with coppers and grafters. He supplies the grafter who has plenty

-of fall-money with bondsmen, makes his life in the Tombs easy, and gets

-him a good job while in stir. This man is supposed to be "dead," but he

-is really very much alive. Often a copper comes to him and asks for the

-whereabouts of some grafter or other. He will reply, perhaps: "I hear

-he is in Europe, or in the West." The copper looks wise and imagines he

-is clever. The "dead" one sneers, and, like a wise man, laughs in his

-sleeve; for he is generally in communication with the man looked for.

-

-5. The sure-thing grafter. He is a man who continues to steal, but

-wants above everything to keep out of stir, where he has spent many

-years. So he goes back to the petty pilfering he did as a boy. General

-Brace and the Professor belonged to this class of "dead ones." The

-second night I spent on the Bowery after my return from my second

-bit I met Laudanum Joe, who is another good example of this kind of

-"dead one." At one time he made thousands of dollars, but now he is

-discouraged and nervous. He looked bad (poorly dressed) but was glad to

-see me.

-

-"How is graft?" he asked.

-

-"I have left the Rocky Path," I replied, thinking I would throw a few

-"cons" into him. "I am walking straight. Not in the religious line,

-either."

-

-He smiled, which was tantamount to saying that I lied.

-

-"What are you working at?" he asked.

-

-"I am looking for a job," I replied.

-

-"Jimmy, is it true, that you are pipes (crazy)? I heard you got buggy

-(crazy) in your last bit."

-

-"Joe," I replied, "you know I was never bothered above the ears."

-

-"If you are going to carry the hod," he said, "you might as well go to

-the pipe-house, and let them cure you. Have you given up smoking, too?"

-he continued.

-

-He meant the hop. I conned him again and said: "Yes." He showed the old

-peculiar, familiar grin, and said:

-

-"Say, I have no coin. Take me with you and give me a smoke."

-

-I tried to convince him that there was nothing in it, but he was a

-doubter.

-

-"What are _you_ doing, Joe?" I asked.

-

-"O, just getting a few shillings," he replied, meaning that he was

-grafting.

-

-"Why don't you give up the booze?" I asked.

-

-I had made a break, for he said, quickly:

-

-"Why? Because I don't wear a Piccadilly collar?"

-

-All grafters of any original calibre are super-sensitive, to a point

-very near insanity. Laudanum Joe thought I had reference to his dress,

-which was very bum.

-

-"Joe," I said, "I never judge a man by his clothes, especially one that

-I know."

-

-"Jimmy," he said, "the truth is I can't stand another long bit in stir.

-I do a little petty pilfering that satisfies my wants--a cup of tea,

-plenty of booze, and a little hop. If I fall I only go to the workhouse

-for a couple of months. The screws know I have seen better days and I

-can get a graft and my booze while there. If I aint as prosperous as I

-was once, why not dream I'm a millionaire?"

-

-Some grafters who have been prosperous at one time fall even lower

-than Laudanum Joe. When they get fear knocked into them and can't

-do without whiskey they sink lower and lower. Hungry Bob is another

-example. I grafted with him as a boy, but when I met him on the Bowery

-after my second bit I hardly knew him, and at first he failed to

-recognize me entirely. I got him into a gin-mill, however, and he told

-how badly treated he had been just before we met. He had gone into a

-saloon kept by an old pal of his who had risen in the world, and asked

-him for fifteen cents to buy a bed in a lodging-house. "Go long, you

-pan-handler (beggar)," said his old friend. Poor Bob was badly cut up

-about it, and talked about ingratitude for a long time. But he had his

-lodging money, for a safe-cracker who knew Hungry Bob when he was one

-of the gayest grafters in town, happened to be in the saloon, and he

-gave the "bum" fifteen cents for old times sake.

-

-"How is it, Bob," I said to him, "that you are not so good as you were?"

-

-"You want to know what put me on the bum?" he answered. "Well, it's

-this way. I can't trust nobody, and I have to graft alone. That's one

-thing. Then, too, I like the booze too much, and when I'm sitting down

-I can't get up and go out and hustle the way I used to."

-

-Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort for sailors and hard-luck

-grafters in the lower Bowery, when a Sheenie I knew came in.

-

-"Hello, Jim," he said.

-

-"How's graft, Mike?" I replied.

-

-"Don't mention it."

-

-"What makes you look so glum?"

-

-"I'm only after being turned out of police court this morning."

-

-"What was the rap, Mike?"

-

-"I'm looking too respectable. They asked me where I got the clothes. I

-told them I was working, which was true. I have been a waiter for three

-months. The flymen took me to headquarters. I was gathered in to make

-a reputation for those two shoo-flies. Whenever I square it and go to

-work I am nailed regularly, because my mug is in the Hall of Fame. When

-I am arrested, I lose my job every time. Nobody knows you now, Jim. You

-could tear the town open."

-

-I made a mental resolution to follow Mike's advice very soon--as soon

-as my health was a little better. Just then Jack, a boyhood pal of

-mine, who knew the old girls, Sheenie Annie and the rest, came in. I

-was mighty glad to see him, and said so to him.

-

-"I guess you've got the advantage of me, bloke," was his reply.

-

-"Don't you remember Jimmy the Kid, ten years ago, in the sixth?" I

-jogged his memory with the names of a few pals of years ago, and when

-he got next, he said:

-

-"I wouldn't have known you, Jim. I thought you were dead many years ago

-in stir. I heard it time and time again. I thought you were past and

-gone."

-

-After a short talk, I said:

-

-"Where's Sheenie Annie?"

-

-"Dead," he replied.

-

-"Mamie?" I asked.

-

-"Dead," he replied.

-

-"Lucy?"

-

-"In stir."

-

-"Swedish Emmy?"

-

-"She's married."

-

-"Any good Molls now? I'm only after getting back from stir and am not

-next," I said.

-

-"T'aint like old times, Jim," he said. "The Molls won't steal now. They

-aint got brains enough. They are not innocent. They are ignorant. All

-they know how to do is the badger."

-

-I went with Jack to his house, where he had an opium layout. There

-we found several girls and grafters, some smoking hop, some with the

-subtle cigarette between their lips. I was introduced to an English

-grafter, named Harry. He said he was bloomin' glad to see me. He was

-just back from the West, he said, but I thought it was the pen. He

-began to abuse the States, and I said:

-

-"You duffer, did you ever see such pretty girls as here? Did you ever

-wear a collar and tie in the old country?"

-

-He grew indignant and shouted: "'Oly Cobblestones! In this ---- country

-I have two hundred bucks (dollars) saved up every time, but I never

-spend a cent of it. 'Ow to 'Ell am I better off here? I'm only stealin'

-for certain mugs (policemen) and fer those 'igher up, so they can buy

-real estate. They enjoy their life in this country and Europe off my

-'ard earned money and the likes of me. They die as respected citizens.

-I die in the work'us as an outcast. Don't be prating about your ----

-country!"

-

-As soon as I had picked out a good mob to join I began to graft again.

-Two of my new pals were safe-blowers, and we did that graft, and

-day-work, as well as the old reliable dipping. But I wasn't much at

-the graft during the seven months I remained on the outside. My health

-continued bad, and I did not feel like "jumping out" so much as I had

-done formerly. I did not graft except when my funds were very low, and

-so, of course, contrary to my plans, I saved no fall-money. I had a

-girl, an opium lay-out and a furnished room, where I used to stay most

-of the time, smoking with pals, who, like myself, had had the keen edge

-of their ambition taken off. I had a strange longing for music at that

-time; I suppose because my nerves were weaker than they used to be. I

-kept a number of musical instruments in my room, and used to sing and

-dance to amuse my visitors.

-

-During these seven months that I spent mainly in my room, I used to

-reflect and philosophize a lot, partly under the influence of opium.

-I would moralize to my girl or to a friend, or commune with my own

-thoughts. I often got in a state of mind where everything seemed a joke

-to me. I often thought of myself as a spectator watching the play of

-life. I observed my visitors and their characteristics and after they

-had left for the evening loved to size them up in words for Lizzie.

-

-My eyes were so bad that I did not read much, but I took it out in

-epigrams and wise sayings. I will give a few specimens of the kind of

-philosophy I indulged in.

-

-"You always ought to end a speech with a sneer or a laconic remark. It

-is food for thought. The listener will pause and reflect."

-

-"It is not what you make, but what you save, that counts. It isn't

-the big cracksman who gets along. It is the unknown dip who saves his

-earnings."

-

-"To go to Germany to learn the language is as bad as being in stir for

-ten years."

-

-"Jump out and be a man and don't join the Salvation Army."

-

-"Always say to the dip who says he wants to square it; Well, what's

-your other graft?"

-

-"When a con gets home he is apt to find his sweetheart married, and a

-'Madonna of the wash tubs.'"

-

-"He made good money and was a swell grafter, but he got stuck on a

-Tommy that absorbed his attention, and then he lost his punctuality and

-went down and out."

-

-"Do a criminal a bodily injury and he may forget. Wound his feelings

-and he will never forgive."

-

-"Most persons have seen a cow or a bull with a board put around its

-head in such a way that the animal can see nothing. It is a mode of

-punishment. Soon the poor beast will go mad, if the board is not

-removed. What chance has the convict, confined in a dark cell for

-years, to keep his senses? He suffers from astigmatism of the mind."

-

-"I am as much entitled to an opinion as any other quack on the face of

-the earth."

-

-"General Grant is one of my heroes. He was a boy at fifteen. He was

-a boy when he died. A boy is loyalty personified. General Grant had

-been given a task to do, and like a boy, he did it. He was one of our

-greatest men, and belongs with Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Robert

-Ingersoll."

-

-"Why don't we like the books we liked when we were boys? It is not

-because our judgment is better, but because we have a dream of our own

-now, and want authors to dream along the same lines."

-

-"The only gun with principles is the minor grafter."

-

-"The weakest man in the universe is he who falls from a good position

-and respectable society into the world of graft. Forgers and defaulters

-are generally of this class. A professional gun, who has been a thief

-all his life, is entitled to more respect."

-

-"In writing a book on crime, one ought to have in mind to give the

-public a truthful account of a thief's life, his crimes, habits,

-thoughts, emotions, vices and virtues, and how he lives in prison and

-out. I believe this ought to be done, and the man who does it well must

-season his writings with pathos, humor, sarcasm, tragedy, and thus give

-the real life of the grafter."

-

-"Sympathy with a grafter who is trying to square it is a tonic to his

-better self."

-

-"The other day I was with a reporter and a society lady who were

-seeing the town. The lady asked me how I would get her diamond pin.

-It was fastened in such a way that to get it, strong arm work would be

-necessary. I explained how I would "put the mug on her" while my husky

-pal went through her. 'But,' she said, 'that would hurt me.' As if the

-grafters cared! What a selfish lady to be always thinking of herself!"

-

-"Life is the basis of philosophy. Philosophy is an emanation from our

-daily routine. After a convict has paced his cell a few thousand times

-he sometimes has an idea. Philosophy results from life put through a

-mental process, just as opium, when subjected to a chemical experiment,

-produces laudanum. Why, therefore, is not life far stronger than a

-narcotic?"

-

-"I believe in platonic love, for it has been in my own life. A woman

-always wants love, whether she is eighteen or eighty--real love. Many

-is the time I have seen the wistful look in some woman's eye when she

-saw that it was only good fellowship or desire on my part."

-

-"In this age of commerce there is only one true friendship, the kind

-that comes through business."

-

-"An old adage has it that all things come to him who waits. Yes:

-poverty, old age and death. The successful man is he who goes and gets

-it."

-

-"If thy brother assaults you, do not weep, nor pray for him, nor turn

-the other cheek, but assail him with the full strength of your muscles,

-for man at his best is not lovable, nor at his worst, detestable."

-

-"There is more to be got in Germany, judging from what Dutch Lonzo

-used to say, than in England or America, only the Dutchmen are too

-thick-headed to find it out. A first class gun in Germany would be

-ranked as a ninth-rater here."

-

-"Grafters are like the rest of the world in this: they always attribute

-bad motives to a kind act."

-

-"From flim-flam (returning short change) to burglary is but a step,

-provided one has the nerve."

-

-"Why would a woman take to him (a sober, respectable man but lacking in

-temperament) unless she wanted a good home?"

-

-"If there is anything detestable, it is a grafter who will steal an

-overcoat in the winter time."

-

-"'Look for the woman.' A fly-cop gets many a tip from some tid-bit in

-whom a grafter has reposed confidence."

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-I did not do, as I have said, any more grafting than was necessary

-during these seven months of liberty; but I observed continually,

-living in an opium dream, and my pals were more and more amusing to me.

-When I thought about myself and my superior intelligence, I was sad,

-but I thought about myself as little as possible. I preferred to let

-my thoughts dwell on others, who I saw were a a fine line of cranks and

-rogues.

-

-Somewhere in the eighties, before I went to stir, there was a synagogue

-at what is now 101 Hester Street. The synagogue was on the first floor,

-and on the ground floor was a gin-mill, run by an ex-Central Office

-man. Many pickpockets used to hang out there, and they wanted to drive

-the Jews out of the first floor, so that they could lay out a faro game

-there. So they swore and carried on most horribly on Saturdays, when

-the rabbi was preaching, and finally got possession of the premises.

-Only a block away from this old building was a famous place for dips

-to get "books", in the old days. Near by was Ridley's dry-goods store,

-in which there were some cash-girls who used to tip us off to who had

-the books, and were up to the graft themselves. They would yell "cash"

-and bump up against the sucker, while we went through him. The Jews

-were few in those days, and the Irish were in the majority. On the

-corner of Allen and Hester Streets stood the saloon of a well-known

-politician. Now a Jew has a shop there. Who would think that an Isaacs

-would supersede a Finnigan?

-

-At the gin-mill on Hester Street, I used to know a boy dip named Buck.

-When I got back from my second bit I found he had developed into a

-box-man, and had a peculiar disposition, which exists outside, as well

-as inside, Graftdom. He had one thousand eight hundred dollars in the

-bank, and a fine red front (gold watch and chain), but he was not a

-good fellow. He used to invite three or four guns to have a drink, and

-would order Hennessy's brandy, which cost twenty cents a glass. After

-we had had our drinks he would search himself and only find perhaps

-twenty cents in his clothes. He got into me several times before I

-"blew". One time, after he had ordered drinks, he began the old game,

-said he thought he had eighteen dollars with him, and must have been

-touched. Then he took out his gold watch and chain and threw it on the

-bar. But who would take it? I went down, of course, and paid for the

-drinks. When we went out together, he grinned, and said to me: "I pity

-you. You will never have a bank account, my boy."

-

-The next time Buck threw down his watch and said he would pay in the

-morning, I thought it was dirt, for I knew he had fifty dollars on him.

-So I said to the bartender: "Take it and hock it, and get what he owes

-you. This chump has been working it all up and down the line. I won't

-be touched by the d---- grafter any more."

-

-Buck was ready witted and turning to the bartender, said: "My friend

-here is learning how to play poker and has just lost eighteen dollars.

-He is a dead sore loser and is rattled."

-

-We went out with the watch, without paying for our drinks, and he said

-to me: "Jim, I don't believe in paying a gin-mill keeper. If the powers

-that be were for the people instead of for themselves they would have

-such drinkables free on every corner in old New York." The next time

-Buck asked me to have a drink I told him to go to a warm place in

-the next world. Buck was good to his family. He was married and had a

-couple of brats.

-

-Many a man educates himself in stir, as was my case. Jimmy, whom I ran

-up against one day on the street, is a good example. He had squared

-it and is still on the level. When I saw him, after my second bit, he

-was making forty dollars a week as an electrical engineer; and every

-bit of the necessary education he got in prison. At one time he was

-an unusually desperate grafter; and entirely ignorant of everything,

-except the technique of theft. Many years ago he robbed a jewelry

-store and was sent to Blackwell's Island for two years. The night of

-the day he was released he burglarized the same store and assaulted

-the proprietor. He was arrested with the goods on him and brought to

-General Sessions before Recorder Smythe, who had sentenced him before.

-He got ten years at Sing Sing and Auburn, and for a while he was one of

-the most dangerous and desperate of convicts, and made several attempts

-to escape. But one day a book on electricity fell into his hands, and

-from that time on he was a hard student. When he was released from stir

-he got a job in a large electrical plant up the State, and worked for

-a while, when he was tipped off by a country grafter who had known him

-in stir. He lost his job, and went to New York, where he met me, who

-was home after my first term. I gave him the welcome hand, and, after

-he had told me his story, I said: "Well, there is plenty of money in

-town. Jump out with us." He grafted with me and my mob for a while,

-but got stuck on a Tommy, so that we could not depend on him to keep

-his appointments, and we dropped him. After that he did some strong arm

-work with a couple of gorillas and fell again for five years. When he

-returned from stir he got his present position as electrical engineer.

-He had it when I met him after my second bit and he has it to-day. I am

-sure he is on the level and will be so as long as he holds his job.

-

-About this time I was introduced to a peculiar character in the shape

-of a few yards of calico. It was at Carey's place on Bleecker Street

-that I first saw this good-looking youth of nineteen, dressed in the

-latest fashion. His graft was to masquerade as a young girl, and for

-a long time Short-Haired Liz, as we called him, was very successful.

-He sought employment as maid in well-to-do families and then made away

-with the valuables. One day he was nailed, with twenty charges against

-him. He was convicted on the testimony of a chamber-maid, with whom,

-in his character of lady's maid, he had had a lark. Mr. R----, who was

-still influential, did his best for him, for his fall-money was big,

-and he only got a light sentence.

-

-I heard one day that an old pal of mine, Dannie, had just been hanged.

-It gave me a shock, for I had often grafted with him when we were kids.

-As there were no orchards on the streets of the east side, Dannie and I

-used to go to the improvised gardens that lined the side-walks outside

-of the green grocers' shops, and make away with strawberries, apples,

-and other fruits. By nature I suppose boys are no more bothered with

-consciences than are police officials. Dannie rose rapidly in the world

-of graft and became very dangerous to society. As a grafter he had one

-great fault. He had a very quick temper. He was sensitive, and lacking

-in self-control, but he was one of the cleverest guns that ever came

-from the Sixth Ward, a place noted for good grafters of both sexes. He

-married a respectable girl and had a nice home, for he had enough money

-to keep the police from bothering him. If it had not been for his bad

-temper, he might be grafting yet. He would shoot at a moment's notice,

-and the toughest of the hard element were afraid of him. One time he

-had it in for an old pal of his named Paddy. For a while Paddy kept

-away from the saloon on Pell Street where Dannie hung out, but Paddy,

-too, had nerve, and one day he turned up at his old resort, the Drum,

-as it was called. He saw Dannie and fired a cannister at him. Dannie

-hovered between life and death for months, and had four operations

-performed on him without anæsthetics. After he got well Dannie grafted

-on the Albany boats. One night he and his pals tried to get a Moll's

-leather, but some Western guns who were on the boat were looking for

-provender themselves and nicked the Moll. Dannie accused them of taking

-his property, and, as they would not give up, pulled his pistol. One

-of the Western guns jumped overboard, and the others gave up the stuff.

-Dannie was right, for that boat belonged to him and his mob.

-

-A few months after that event Dannie shot a mug, who had called him

-a rat, and went to San Antonio, Texas, where he secured a position

-as bartender. One day a well-known gambler who had the reputation

-of being a ten time killer began to shoot around in the saloon for

-fun. Dannie joined in the game, shot the gambler twice, and beat the

-latter's two pals into insensibility. A few months afterwards he came

-to New York with twenty-seven hundred dollars in his pocket; and he

-enjoyed himself, for it is only the New York City born who love the

-town. But he had better have stayed away, for in New York he met his

-mortal enemy, Splitty, who had more brains than Dannie, and was running

-a "short while house" in the famous gas house block in Hester Street.

-One night Dannie was on a drunk, spending his twenty-seven hundred

-dollars, and riding around in a carriage with two girls. Beeze, one of

-the Molls, proposed to go around to Splitty's. They went, and Beeze and

-the other girl were admitted, but Dannie was shut out. He fired three

-shots through the door. One took effect in Beeze's breast fatally, and

-Dannie was arrested.

-

-While in Tombs waiting trial he was well treated by the warden, who

-was leader of the Sixth Ward, and who used to permit Dannie's wife

-to visit him every night. At the same time Dannie became the victim

-of one of the worst cases of treachery I ever heard of. An old pal of

-his, George, released from Sing Sing, went to visit him in the Tombs.

-Dannie advised George not to graft again until he got his health back,

-suggesting that meanwhile he eat his meals at his (Dannie's) mother's

-house. The old lady had saved up about two hundred and fifty dollars,

-which she intended to use to secure a new trial for her son. George

-heard of the money and put up a scheme to get it. He told the old woman

-that Dannie was going to escape from the Tombs that night and that he

-had sent word to his mother to give him (George) the money. The villain

-then took the money and skipped the city, thus completing the dirtiest

-piece of work I ever heard of. "Good Heavens!" said Dannie, when he

-heard of it. "A study in black!" Dannie, poor fellow, was convicted,

-and, after a few months, hanged.

-

-Another tragedy in Manhattan was the end of Johnny T----. I had been

-out only a short time after my second bit, when I met him on the

-Bowery. He was just back, too, and complained that all his old pals

-had lost their nerve. Whenever he made a proposition they seemed to

-see twenty years staring them in the face. So he had to work alone. His

-graft was burglary, outside of New York. He lived in the city, and the

-police gave him protection for outside work. He was married and had two

-fine boys. One day a copper, contrary to the agreement, tried to arrest

-him for a touch made in Mt. Vernon. Johnny was indignant, and wouldn't

-stand for a collar under the circumstances. He put four shots into the

-flyman's body. He was taken to the station-house, and afterwards tried

-for murder. The boys collected a lot of money and tried to save him,

-but he had the whole police force against him and in a few months he

-was hanged.

-

-A friend of mine, L----, had a similar fate. He was a prime favorite

-with the lasses of easy virtue, and was liked by the guns. One night

-when I met him in a joint where grafters hung out, he displayed a split

-lip, given him by the biggest bully in the ward. It was all about a

-girl named Mollie whom the bully was stuck on and on whose account he

-was jealous of L----, whom all the women ran after. A few nights later,

-L---- met the bully who had beaten him and said he had a present for

-him. "Is it something good?" asked the gorilla. "Yes," said L----, and

-shot him dead. L---- tried to escape, but was caught in Pittsburg, and

-extradited to New York, where he was convicted partly on the testimony

-of the girl, whom I used to call Unlimited Mollie. She was lucky, for

-instead of drifting to the Bowery, she married a policeman, who was

-promoted. L---- was sentenced to be hanged, but he died game.

-

-I think kleptomania is not a very common kind of insanity, at least

-in my experience. Most grafters steal for professional reasons, but

-Big Sammy was surely a kleptomaniac. He had no reason to graft, for

-he was well up in the world. When I first met he was standard bearer

-at a ball given in his honor, and had a club named after him. He had

-been gin-mill keeper, hotel proprietor, and theatrical manager, and had

-saved money. He had, too, a real romance in his life, for he loved one

-of the best choir singers in the city. She was beautiful and loved him,

-and they were married. She did not know that Sammy was a gun; indeed,

-he was not a gun, really, for he only used to graft for excitement, or

-at least, what business there was in it was only a side issue. After

-their honeymoon Sammy started a hotel at a sea-side resort, where

-the better class of guns, gamblers and vaudeville artists spent their

-vacation. That fall he went on a tour with his wife who sang in many of

-the churches in the State. Sammy was a good box-man. He never used puff

-(nitro-glycerine), but with a few tools opened the safes artistically.

-His pal Mike went ahead of the touring couple, and when Sammy arrived

-at a town he was tipped off to where the goods lay. When he heard that

-the police were putting it on to the hoboes, he thought it was a good

-joke and kept it up. He wanted the police to gather in all the black

-sheep they could, for he was sorry they were so incompetent.

-

-The loving couple returned to New York, and were happy for a long

-time. But finally the wife fell ill, and under-went an operation, from

-the effects of which she never recovered. She became despondent and

-jealous of Sammy, though he was one of the best husbands I have known.

-One morning he had an engagement to meet an old pal who was coming

-home from stir. He was late, and starting off in a hurry, neglected

-to kiss his wife good-bye. She called after him that he had forgotten

-something. Sammy, feeling for his money and cannister, shouted back

-that everything was all right, and rushed off. His wife must have been

-in an unusually gloomy state of mind, for she took poison, and when

-Sammy returned, she was dead. It drove Sammy almost insane, for he

-loved her always. A few days afterwards he jumped out for excitement

-and forgetfulness and was so reckless when he tried to make a touch

-that he was shot almost to pieces. He recovered, however, and was

-sent to prison for a long term of years. He is out again, and is

-now regularly on the turf. During his bit in stir all his legitimate

-enterprizes went wrong, and when he was released, there was nothing for

-it but to become a professional grafter.

-

-During the seven months which elapsed between the end of my second, and

-the beginning of my third term, I was not a very energetic grafter, as

-I have said. Graft was good at the time and a man with the least bit

-of nerve could make out fairly well. My nerve had not deserted me, but

-somehow I was less ambitious. Philosophy and opium and bad health do

-not incline a man to a hustling life. The excitement of stealing had

-left me, and now it was merely business. I therefore did a great deal

-of swindling, which does not stir the imagination, but can be done more

-easily than other forms of graft. I was known at headquarters as a dip,

-and so I was not likely to be suspected for occasional swindling, just

-as I had been able to do house-work now and then without a fall.

-

-I did some profitable swindling at this time, with an Italian named

-Velica for a pal. It was a kind of graft which brought quick returns

-without much of an outlay. For several weeks we fleeced Velica's

-country men brown. I impersonated a contractor and Velica was my

-foreman. We put advertisements in the newspapers for men to work on the

-railroads or for labor on new buildings. We hired desk room in a cheap

-office, where we awaited our suckers, who came in droves, though only

-one could see us at a time. Our tools for this graft were pen, paper,

-and ink; and one new shovel and pick-axe. Velica did the talking and I

-took down the man's name and address. Velica told his countryman that

-we could not afford to run the risk of disappointing the railroad,

-so that he would have to leave a deposit as a guarantee that he would

-turn up in the morning. If he left a deposit of a few dollars we put

-his name on the new pick and shovel, which we told him he could come

-for in the morning. If we induced many to give us deposits, using the

-same pick and shovel as a bribe, we made a lot of money during the

-day. The next morning we would change our office and vary our form of

-advertisement.

-

-Sometimes we met our victims at saloons. Velica would be talking to

-some Italian immigrant who had money, when I would turn up and be

-introduced. Treating all around and flashing a roll of bills I could

-soon win the sucker's respect and confidence, and make him ante up on

-any old con. One day in a saloon in Newark we got an Italian guy for

-one hundred and fifty dollars. Before he left the place, however, he

-suspected something. We had promised him the position of foreman of

-a gang of laborers, and after we got his dough we could not let well

-enough alone, and offered to give his wife the privilege of feeding

-the sixty Italians of whom he was to be the foreman. I suppose the dago

-thought that we were too good, for he blew and pulled his gun. I caught

-him around the waist, and the bartender, who was with us, struck him

-over the head with a bottle of beer. The dago dropped the smoke-wagon

-and the bartender threatened to put him in prison for pulling a rod on

-respectable people. The dago left the saloon and never saw his money

-again.

-

-About this time, too, I had an opportunity to go into still another

-lucrative kind of swindling, but didn't. It was not conscience either

-that prevented me from swindling the fair sex, for in those days all

-touches,--except those made by others off myself--seemed legitimate.

-I did not go in for it because, at the time it was proposed to me,

-I had enough money for my needs, and as I have said, I was lazy. It

-was a good graft, however, and I was a fool for not ringing in on it.

-The scheme was to hire a floor in a private house situated in any

-good neighborhood. One of the mob had to know German, and then an

-advertisement would be inserted in the _Herald_ to the effect that

-a young German doctor who had just come from the old country wanted

-to meet a German lady of some means with a view to matrimony. A pal

-of mine who put such an advertisement in a Chicago paper received no

-less than one hundred and forty five answers from women ranging in age

-from fifteen to fifty. The grafters would read the letters and decide

-as to which ladies they thought had some money. When these arrived at

-the office, in answer to the grafters' letters, they would meet two or

-three men, impersonating the doctor and his friends, who had the gift

-of "con" to a remarkable degree. The doctor would suggest that if the

-lady would advance sufficient money to start him in business in the

-West it would be well. If he found she had plenty of money he married

-her immediately, one of his pals acting the clergyman. She then drew

-all her money from the bank, and they went to a hotel. There the doctor

-leaving her in their room, would go to see about the tickets for the

-West, and never return. The ladies always jumped at these offers, for

-all German women want to marry doctors or clergymen; and all women are

-soft, even if they are so apt to be natural pilferers themselves.

-

-When I was hard up, and if there was no good confidence game in sight,

-I didn't mind taking heavy chances in straight grafting; for I lived

-in a dream, and through opium, was not only lazy, but reckless. On one

-occasion a Jew fence had put up a plan to get a big touch, and picked

-me out to do the desperate part of the job. The fence was an expert in

-jewels and worked for one of the biggest firms that dealt in precious

-stones. He kept an eye on all such stores, watching for an opening

-to put his friends the grafters "next." To the place in question he

-was tipped off by a couple of penny weighters, who claimed it was a

-snap. He agreed with them, but kept his opinion to himself, and came

-to see me about it. I and two other grafters watched the place for a

-week. One day the two clerks went out together for lunch, leaving the

-proprietor alone in the store. This was the opportunity. I stationed

-one of my pals at the window outside and the other up the street to

-watch. If I had much trouble with "the mark" the pal at the window was

-to come to my assistance. With red pepper (to throw, if necessary, in

-the sucker's eyes) and a good black jack I was to go into the store and

-buy a baby's ring for one dollar. While waiting for my change, I was

-to price a piece of costly jewelry, and while talking about the merits

-of the diamond, hit my man on the head with the black jack. Then all I

-had to do was to go behind the counter and take the entire contents of

-the window--only a minute's work, for all the costly jewels were lying

-on an embroidered piece of velvet, and I had only to pick up the four

-corners of the velvet, bundle it into a green bag, and jump into the

-cab which was waiting for us a block away. Well, I had just about got

-the proprietor in a position to deal him the blow when the man at the

-window weakened, and came in and said, "Vix." I thought there was a

-copper outside, or that one of the clerks was returning, and told the

-jeweler I would send my wife for the ring. I went out and asked my pal

-what was the matter. He said he was afraid I would kill the old fellow,

-and that the come-back would be too strong. My other pal I found a

-block away. We all went back together to the fence, and then I opened

-on them, I tell you. I called them petty larceny barnacles, and came

-near clubbing them, I was so indignant. I have often had occasion to

-notice that most thieves who will steal a diamond or a "front" weaken

-when it comes to a large touch, even though there may be no more danger

-in it than in the smaller enterprises. I gave those two men a wide

-berth after that, and whenever I met them I sneered; for I could not

-get over being sore. The "touch" was a beauty, with very little chance

-of a come-back, for the police don't look among the pickpockets for

-the men who make this kind of touches, and I and my two companions were

-known to the coppers as dips.

-

-Just before I fell for my third and most terrible term, I met Lottie,

-and thought of marrying. I did not love her, but liked her pretty

-well, and I was beginning to feel that I ought to settle down and

-have a decent woman to look after me, for my health was bad and I had

-little ambition. Lottie seemed the right girl for the place. She was

-of German extraction, and used to shave me sometimes at her father's

-barber shop, where I first met her. She seemed to me a good, honest

-girl, and I thought I could not do better, especially as she was very

-fond of me. Women like the spruce dips, as I have said before, and even

-when my graft had broadened, I always retained the dress, manners and

-reputation of a pickpocket. Lottie promised to marry me, and said that

-she could raise a few hundred dollars from her father, with which I

-might start another barber shop, quit grafting, and settle down to my

-books, my hop and domestic life. One day she gave me a pin that cost

-nine dollars, she said, and she wouldn't let me make her a present. All

-in all, she seemed like a sensible girl, and I was getting interested

-in the marriage idea. One day, however, I discovered something. I

-was playing poker in the office of a hotel kept by a friend of mine,

-when a man and woman came down stairs together and passed through the

-office. They were my little German girl and the owner of a pawn-shop,

-a Sheenie of advanced years. Suddenly I realized where she had got the

-pin she gave me; and I began to believe stories I had heard about her.

-I thought I would test her character myself. I did, and found it weak.

-I did not marry her! What an escape! Every man, even a self-respecting

-gun, wants an honest woman, if it comes to hitching up for good.

-

-Soon after I escaped Lottie, I got my third fall for the stir. The

-other times that I had been convicted, I was guilty, but on this

-occasion I was entirely innocent. Often a man who has done time and is

-well-known to the police is rounded up on suspicion and convicted when

-he is innocent, and I fell a victim to this easy way of the officials

-for covering up their failure to find the right person. I had gone one

-night to an opium joint near Lovers Row, a section of Henry Street

-between Catherine and Oliver Streets, where some guns of both sexes

-were to have a social meeting. We smoked hop and drank heavily and told

-stories of our latest touches. While we were thus engaged I began to

-have severe pains in my chest, which had been bothering me occasionally

-for some time, and suddenly I had a hemorrhage. When I was able I left

-the joint to see a doctor, who stopped the flow of blood, but told

-me I would not live a month if I did not take good care of myself.

-I got aboard a car, went soberly home to my furnished room, and--was

-arrested.

-

-I knew I had not committed any crime this time and thought I should

-of course be released in the morning. Instead however of being taken

-directly to the station house, I was conducted to a saloon, and

-confronted with the "sucker". I had never seen him before, but he

-identified me, just the same, as the man who had picked his pocket.

-I asked him how long ago he had missed his valuables, and when he

-answered, "Three hours," I drew a long sigh of relief, for I was at

-the joint at that time, and thought I could prove an alibi. But though

-the rapper seemed to weaken, the copper was less trustful and read

-the riot act to him. I was so indignant I began to call the policeman

-down vigorously. I told him he had better try to make a reputation on

-me some other time, when I was really guilty, whereupon he lost his

-temper, and jabbed me in the chest with his club, which brought on

-another flow of blood from my lungs.

-

-In this plight I was taken to the station house, still confident I

-should soon be set at liberty, although I had only about eighty dollars

-for fall-money. I hardly thought I needed it, but I used it just the

-same, to make sure, and employed a lawyer. For a while things looked

-favorable to me, for I was remanded back from court every morning for

-eight days, on account of lack of evidence, which is almost equivalent

-to a turn-out in a larceny case. Even the copper began to pig it

-(weaken), probably thinking he might as well get a share of my "dough,"

-since it began to look as if I should beat the case. But on the ninth

-day luck turned against me. The Chief of detectives "identified" me as

-another man, whispering a few words to the justice, and I was committed

-under two thousand dollars bail to stand trial in General Sessions. I

-was sent to the Tombs to await trial, and I knew at last that I was

-lost. My character alone would convict me; and my lawyer had told

-me that I could not prove an alibi on the oaths of the thieves and

-disorderly persons who had been with me in the opium joint.

-

-No matter how confirmed a thief a man may be, I repeat, he hates to be

-convicted for something he has not done. He objects indeed more than

-an honest man would do, for he believes in having the other side play

-fair; whereas the honest man simply thinks a mistake has been made.

-While in the Tombs a murderous idea formed in my mind. I felt that I

-had been horribly wronged, and was hot for revenge. I was desperate,

-too, for I did not think I should live my bit out. Determined to make

-half a dozen angels, including myself, I induced a friend, who came

-to see me in the Tombs, to get me a revolver. I told him I wanted to

-create a panic with a couple of shots, and escape, but in reality I had

-no thought of escape. I was offered a light sentence, if I would plead

-guilty, but I refused. I believed I was going to die anyway, and that

-things did not matter; only I would have as much company as possible on

-the road to the other world. I meant to shoot the copper who had beaten

-me with his club, District Attorney Olcott, the judge, the complainant

-and myself as well, as soon as I should be taken into the court room

-for trial. The pistol however was taken away from me before I entered

-the court: I was convicted and sentenced to five years at Sing Sing.

-

-Much of the time I spent in stir on my third bit I still harbored

-this thought of murder. That was one reason I did not kill myself. The

-determination to do the copper on my release was always in my mind. I

-planned even a more cunning revenge. I imagined many a scheme to get

-him, and gloat over his dire misfortunes. One of my plans was to hunt

-him out on his beat, invite him to drink, and put thirty grains of

-hydrate of chloral in his glass. When he had become unconscious I would

-put a bottle of morphine in his trousers pocket, and then telephone to

-a few newspapers telling them that if they would send reporters to the

-saloon they would have a good story against a dope copper who smoked

-too much. The result would be, I thought, a rap against the copper

-and his disgrace and dismissal from the force would follow. Sometimes

-this seemed to me better than murder; for every copper who is "broke"

-immediately becomes a bum. When my copper should have become a bum I

-imagined myself catching him dead drunk and cutting his hamstrings.

-Certainly I was a fiend when I reflected on my wrongs, real and

-imaginary. At other times I thought I merely killed him outright.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIII.

-

-_In the Mad-House._

-

-

-On the road to Sing Sing again! The public may say I was surely an

-incorrigible and ought to have been shut up anyway for safe keeping,

-but are they right if they say so? During my confinement I often heard

-the prison chaplain preach from the text "Though thou sinnest ninety

-and nine times thy sin shall be forgiven thee."

-

-Probably Christ knew what He meant: His words do not apply to the

-police courts of Manhattan. These do not forgive, but send you up for

-the third term, which, if it is a long one, no man can pass through

-without impairment in body or in brain. It is better to make the

-convict's life as hard as hell for a short term, than to wear out his

-mind and body. People need not wonder why a man, knowing what is before

-him, steals and steals again. The painful experiences of his prison

-life, too often renewed, leave him as water leaves a rubber coat. Few

-men are really impressionable after going through the deadening life in

-stir.

-

-Five months of my third term I spent at Sing Sing, and then, as on my

-first bit, I was drafted to Auburn. At Sing Sing I was classified as

-a second term man. I have already explained that during my first term

-I earned over a year's commutation time; and that that time would have

-been legally forfeited when I was sent up again within nine months for

-my second bit if any one, except a few convicts, had remembered I had

-served before.

-

-When, on my third sentence, I now returned to Sing Sing, I found that

-the authorities were "next," and knew that I had "done" them on the

-second bit. They were sore, because it had been their own carelessness,

-and they were afraid of getting into trouble. To protect themselves

-they classified me as a second term man, but waited for a chance to do

-me. I suppose it was some d---- Dickey Bird (stool-pigeon) who got them

-next that I had done them; but I never heard who it was, though I tried

-to find out long and earnestly.

-

-When I got back to my cell in Sing Sing this third time I was gloomy

-and desperate to an unusual degree, still eaten up with my desire

-for vengeance on those who had sent me to stir for a crime I had not

-committed. My health was so bad that my friends told me I would never

-live my bit out, and advised me to get to Clinton prison, if possible,

-away from the damp cells at Sing Sing. But I took no interest in what

-they said, for I did not care whether I lived or died. I expected to

-die very soon, and in the meantime thought I was well enough where I

-was. I did not fear death, and I had my hop every day. All I wanted

-from the keepers was to be let alone in my cell and not annoyed with

-work. The authorities had an inkling that I was in a desperate state of

-mind, and probably believed it was healthier for them to let me alone

-a good deal of the time.

-

-Before long schemes began to form in my head to make my gets (escape).

-I knew I wouldn't stop at murder, if necessary in order to spring; for,

-as I have said, I cared not whether I lived or died. On the whole,

-however, I rather preferred to become an angel at the beginning of

-my bit than at the end. I kept my schemes for escape to myself, for I

-was afraid of a leak, but the authorities must somehow have suspected

-something, for they kept me in my cell twenty-three hours out of the

-twenty-four. Perhaps it was just because they had it in for me for

-beating them on my second bit. As before, I consoled myself, while

-waiting a chance to escape, with some of my favorite authors; but my

-eye-sight was getting bad and I could not read as much as I used to.

-

-It was during these five months at Sing Sing that I first met Dr.

-Myers, of whom I saw much a year or two later in the mad-house. At Sing

-Sing he had some privileges, and used to work in the hall, where it was

-easy for me to talk to him through my cell door. This remarkable man,

-had been a splendid physician in Chicago. He had beaten some insurance

-companies out of one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, but was

-in Sing Sing because he had been wrongfully convicted on a charge of

-murder. He liked me, especially when later we were in the insane asylum

-together, because I would not stand for the abuse given to the poor

-lunatics, and would do no stool-pigeon or other dirty work for the

-keepers. He used to tell me that I was too bright a man to do any work

-with my hands. "Jim," he said once, "I would rather see you marry my

-daughter than give her to an ignorant business man. I know you would

-treat her kindly and that she would learn something of the world. As

-my wife often said, I would rather die at thirty-eight after seeing the

-world and enjoying life than live in a humdrum way till ninety."

-

-He explained the insurance graft to me, and I still think it the surest

-and most lucrative of all grafts. For a man with intelligence it is

-the very best kind of crooked work. About the only way the insurance

-companies can get back at the thieves is through a squeal. Here are a

-few of the schemes he told me for this graft:

-

-A man and his female pal take a small house in town or on the outskirts

-of a large city. The man insures his life for five thousand dollars.

-After they have lived there a while, and passed perhaps as music

-teachers, they take the next step, which is to get a dead body. Nothing

-is easier. The man goes to any large hospital, represents himself as a

-doctor and for twenty-five dollars can generally get a stiff, which he

-takes away in a barrel or trunk. He goes to a furnished room, already

-secured, and there dresses the cadaver in his own clothes, putting his

-watch, letters and money in the cadavers pockets. In the evening he

-takes the body to some river or stream and throws it in. He knows from

-the newspapers when the body has been found, and notifies his woman

-pal, who identifies it as her husband's body. There are only two snags

-that one must guard against in this plot. The cadaver must not differ

-much in height from the person that has been insured; and its lungs

-must not show that they were those of anybody dead before thrown into

-the water. The way to prepare against this danger is to inject some

-water with a small medical pump into the lungs of the stiff before it

-is thrown overboard. Then it is easy for the "widow" to get the money,

-and meet the alleged dead man in another country.

-

-A more complicated method, in which more money is involved, is as

-follows. The grafter hires an office and represents himself as an

-artist, a bric-à-brac dealer, a promoter or an architect. Then he jumps

-to another city and takes out a policy under the tontien or endowment

-plan. When the game is for a very large amount three or four pals are

-necessary. If no one of the grafters is a doctor, a physician must

-be impersonated, but this is easy. If there are, say, ten thousand

-physicians in Manhattan, not many of whom have an income of ten

-thousand a year, it is perhaps not difficult to get a diploma. After

-a sheepskin is secured, the grafter goes to another State, avoiding,

-unless he is a genuine physician, New York and Illinois, for they have

-boards of regents. The acting quack registers so that he can practice

-medicine and hangs out his shingle. The acting business man takes out a

-policy, and pays the first premium. Before the first premium is paid he

-is dead, for all the insurance company knows. Often a live substitute,

-instead of a dead one, is secured. The grafter goes to the charity

-hospital and looks over the wrecks waiting to die. Some of these poor

-dying devils jump at the chance to go West. It is necessary, of course,

-to make sure that the patient will soon become an angel, or everything

-will fall through. Then the grafter takes the sick man to his house and

-keeps him out of sight. When he is about to die he calls in the grafter

-who is posing as a physician. After the death of the substitute the

-doctor signs the death certificate, the undertaker prepares the body,

-which is buried. The woman grafter is at the funeral, and afterwards

-she sends in her claim to the companies. On one occasion in Dr. Myers's

-experience, he told me, the alleged insured man was found later with

-his head blown off, but when the wife identified the body, the claim

-had been paid.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-One afternoon, after I had been at Sing Sing five months, I was

-taken from my cell, shackled hand and foot, and sent, with fifty

-other convicts, to Auburn. When I had been at Auburn prison about six

-months I grew again exceedingly desperate, and made several wild and

-ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I would take no back talk from the

-keepers, and began to be feared by them. One day I had a fight with

-another convict. He struck me with an iron weapon, and I sent him to

-the hospital with knife thrusts through several parts of his body.

-Although I had been a thief all my life, and had done some strong arm

-work, by nature I was not quarrelsome, and I have never been so quick

-to fight as on my third term. I was locked up in the dungeon for a week

-and fed on bread and water in small quantities. After my release I was

-confined to my cell for several days, and used to quarrel with whoever

-came near me. The keepers began to regard me as a desperate character,

-who would cause them a great deal of trouble; and feared that I might

-escape or commit murder at any time. One day, I remember, a keeper

-threatened to club me with a heavy stick he had. I laughed at him and

-told him to make a good job of it, for I had some years still to serve,

-and if he did not kill me outright, I would have plenty of time to get

-back at him. The cur pigged it (weakened). They really wanted to get

-rid of me, however, and one morning the opportunity came.

-

-I was feeling especially bad that morning and went to see the doctor,

-who told me I had consumption, and transferred me to the consumptive

-ward in the prison. There the doctor and four screws came to my

-bedside, and the doctor inserted a hyperdermic needle into my arm. When

-I awoke I found myself in the isolated dungeon, nicknamed the Keeley

-Cure by the convicts, where I was confined again for several weeks, and

-had a hyperdermic injection every day. At the end of that time I was

-taken before the doctors, who pronounced me insane. With three other

-convicts who were said to be "pipes" (insane) I was shackled hand and

-foot, put on a train and taken to the asylum for the criminal insane

-at Matteawan. I had been in bad places before, but at Matteawan I first

-learned what it is to be in Hell.

-

-Why was I put in the Pipe House? Was I insane?

-

-In one way I have been insane all my life, until recently. There is a

-disease called astigmatism of the conscience, and I have been sorely

-afflicted with that. I have always had the delusion, until the last

-few months, that it is well to "do" others. In that way I certainly was

-"pipes." And in another way, too, I was insane. After a man has served

-many years in stir and has contracted all the vices, he is not normal,

-even if he is not violently insane. His brain loses its equilibrium,

-no matter how strong-minded he may be, and he acquires astigmatism of

-the mind, as well as of the conscience. The more astigmatic he becomes,

-the more frequently he returns to stir, where his disease grows worse,

-until he is prison-mad.

-

-To the best of my knowledge and belief I was not insane in any definite

-way--no more so than are nine out of ten of the men who had served

-as much time in prison as I. I suppose I was not sent to the criminal

-insane asylum because of a perverted conscience. The stir, I believe,

-is supposed to cure that. Why did they send me to the mad-house? I

-don't know, any more than my reader, unless it was because I caused

-the keepers and doctors too much trouble, or because for some reason or

-other they wanted to do me.

-

-But whether I had a delusion or not--and I am convinced myself that

-I have always been right above the ears--there certainly are many

-perfectly sane men confined in our state asylums for the criminal

-insane. Indeed, if all the fake lunatics were sent back to prison, it

-would save the state the expense of building so many hospitals. But I

-suppose the politicians who want patronage to distribute would object.

-

-Many men in prison fake insanity, as I have already explained. Many

-of them desire to be sent to Matteawan or Dannemora insane asylums,

-thinking they will not need to work there, will have better food and

-can more easily escape. They imagine that there are no stool-pigeons in

-the pipe-house, and that they can therefore easily make their elegant

-(escape). When they get to the mad-house they find themselves sadly

-mistaken. They find many sane stool-pigeons there, and their plans for

-escape are piped off as well there as in stir. And in other ways, as

-I shall explain, they are disappointed. The reason the "cons" don't

-get on to the situation in the mad-house through friends who have been

-there is that they think those who have been in the insane asylum are

-really pipes. When I got out of the mad-house and told my friends about

-it, they were apt to remark, laconically, "He's in a terrible state."

-When they get there themselves, God help them. I will narrate what

-happened to me, and some of the horrible things I saw there.

-

-After my pedigree was taken I was given the regulation clothes, which,

-in the mad-house, consist of a blue coat, a pair of grey trousers, a

-calico shirt, socks and a pair of slippers. I was then taken to the

-worst violent ward in the institution, where I had a good chance to

-observe the real and the fake lunatics. No man or woman, not even an

-habitual criminal, can conceive, unless he has been there himself,

-what our state asylums are. My very first experience was a jar. A big

-lunatic, six feet high and a giant in physique, came up to me in the

-ward, and said: "I'll kick your head off, you ijit (idiot). What the

----- did you come here for? Why didn't you stop off at Buffalo?" I

-thought that if all the loons were the size of this one I wasn't going

-to have much show in that violent ward; for I weighed only one hundred

-and fifteen pounds at the time. But the big lunatic changed his note,

-smiled and said: "Say, Charley, have you got any marbles?" I said,

-"No," and then, quick as a flash, he exclaimed: "Be Japes, you don't

-look as if you had enough brains to play them."

-

-I had been in this ward, which was under the Head Attendant, nick-named

-"King" Kelly, for two days, when I was taken away to a dark room in

-which a demented, scrofulous negro had been kept. For me not even

-a change of bed-clothing was made. In rooms on each side of me were

-epileptics and I could hear, especially when I was in the ward, raving

-maniacs shouting all about me. I was taken back to the first ward,

-where I stayed for some time. I began to think that prison was heaven

-in comparison with the pipe house. The food was poor, we were not

-supposed to do any work, and we were allowed only an hour in the yard.

-We stayed in our ward from half past five in the morning until six

-o'clock at night, when we went to bed. It was then I suffered most,

-for there was no light and I could not read. In stir I could lie on

-my cot and read, and soothe my nerves. But in the mad-house I was not

-allowed to read, and lay awake continually at night listening to the

-idiots bleating and the maniacs raving about me. The din was horrible,

-and I am convinced that in the course of time even a sane man kept in

-an insane asylum will be mad; those who are a little delusional will go

-violently insane. My three years in an insane asylum convinced me that,

-beyond doubt, a man contracts a mental ailment just as he contracts

-a physical disease on the outside. I believe in mental as well as

-physical contagion, for I have seen man after man, a short time after

-arriving at the hospital, become a raving maniac.

-

-For weeks and months I had a terrible fight with myself to keep my

-sanity. As I had no books to take up my thoughts I got into the habit

-of solving an arithmetical problem every day. If it had not been for

-my persistence in this mental occupation I have no doubt I should have

-gone violently insane.

-

-It is only the sensitive and intelligent man who, when placed in such

-a predicament, really knows what torture is. The cries of the poor

-demented wretches about me were a terrible lesson. They showed me more

-than any other experience I ever passed through the error of a crooked

-life.

-

-I met many a man in the violent ward who had been a friend of mine

-and good fellow on the outside. Now the brains of all of them were

-gone, they had the most horrible and the most grotesque delusions. But

-horrible or grotesque they were always piteous. If I were to point out

-the greatest achievement that man has accomplished to distinguish him

-from the brute, it would be the taking care of the insane. A child is

-so helpless that when alms is asked for his maintenance it is given

-willingly, for every man and woman pities and loves a child. A lunatic

-is as helpless as a child, and often not any more dangerous. The maniac

-is misrepresented, for in Matteawan and Dannemora taken together there

-are very few who are really violent.

-

-And now I come to the most terrible part of my narrative, which many

-people will not believe--and that is the cruelty of the doctors and

-attendants, cruelty practiced upon these poor, deluded wretches.

-

-With my own eyes I saw scores of instances of abuse while I was at

-Matteawan and later at Dannemora. It is, I believe, against the law to

-strike an insane man, but any man who has ever been in these asylums

-knows how habitual the practice is. I have often seen idiots in the

-same ward with myself violently attacked and beaten by several keepers

-at once. Indeed, some of us used to regard a beating as our daily

-medicine. Patients are not supposed to do any work; but those who

-refused to clean up the wards and do other work for the attendants were

-the ones most likely to receive little mercy.

-

-I know how difficult it is for the public to believe that some of their

-institutions are as rotten as those of the Middle Ages; and when a

-man who has been both in prison and in the pipe house is the one who

-makes the accusation, who will believe him? Of course, his testimony

-on the witness stand is worthless. I will merely call attention,

-however, to the fact that the great majority of the insane are so

-only in one way. They have some delusion, but are otherwise capable of

-observation and of telling the truth. I will also add that the editor

-of this book collected an immense number of instances of brutality from

-several men, besides myself, who had spent years there, and that those

-instances also pointed to the situation that I describe. Moreover, I

-can quote the opinion of the writer on criminology--Josiah Flynt--as

-corroborative of my statements. He has said in my presence and in that

-of the editor of this book, Mr. Hapgood, that his researches have led

-him to believe that the situation in our state asylums for the criminal

-insane is horrible in the extreme.

-

-Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be brutal? In the first place,

-there is very little chance of a come-back, for who will believe men

-who have ever been shut up in an insane asylum? And very often these

-attendants themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin with, they are

-men of low intelligence, as is shown by the fact that they will work

-for eighteen dollars a month, and after they have associated with

-insane men for years they are apt to become delusional themselves.

-Taking care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on the intelligence

-of the best men. Is it any wonder that the ordinary attendant often

-becomes nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor idiot who won't

-do dirty work or whose silly noises get on his nerves? I have noticed

-attendants who, after they had been in the asylum a few months,

-acquired certain insane characteristics, such as a jerking of the

-head from one side to the other, looking up at the sky, cursing some

-imaginary person, and walking with the body bent almost double.

-

-Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something that made me realize I

-was up against a hard joint. An attendant in the isolation ward had an

-incurable patient under him, whom he was in the habit of compelling to

-do his work for him, such as caning chairs and cleaning cuspidors. The

-attendants had two birds in his room, and he used to make Mickey, the

-incurable idiot, clean out the cage for him. One day Mickey put the

-cages under the boiling water, to clean them as usual. The attendant

-had forgot to remove the birds, and they were killed by the hot water.

-Another crank, who was in the bath room with Mickey, spied the dead

-pets, and he and Mickey began to eat them. They were picking the bones

-when the attendant and two others discovered them--and treated them as

-a golfer treats his golf-balls.

-

-Another time I saw an insane epileptic patient try to prevent four

-attendants from playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He was delusional

-on religious subjects and thought the attendants were doing wrong. The

-reward he received for caring for the religious welfare of his keepers

-was a kick in the stomach by one of the attendants, while another hit

-him in the solar plexus, knocking him down, and a third jammed his head

-on the floor until the blood flowed. After he was unconscious a doctor

-gave him a hyperdermic injection and he was put to bed. How often,

-indeed, have I seen men knocked out by strong arm work, or strung up

-to the ceiling with a pair of suspenders! How often have I seen them

-knocked unconscious for a time or for eternity--yes--for eternity, for

-insane men sometimes do die, if they are treated too brutally. In that

-case, the doctor reports the patient as having died of consumption, or

-some other disease. I have seen insane men turned into incurable idiots

-by the beatings they have received from the attendants. I saw an idiot

-boy knocked down with an iron pot because he insisted on chirping out

-his delusion. I heard a patient about to be beaten by four attendants

-cry out: "My God, you won't murder me?" and the answer was, "Why not?

-The Coroner would say you died of dysentery." The attendants tried

-often to force fear into me by making me look at the work they had done

-on some harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances of this kind. I

-could give scores of them, with names of attendants and patients, and

-sometimes even the dates on which these horrors occurred. But I must

-cut short this part of my narrative. Every word of it, as sure as I

-have a poor old mother, is true, but it is too terrible to dwell upon,

-and will probably not be believed. It will be put down as one of my

-delusions, or as a lie inspired by the desire of vengeance.

-

-Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the authorities in the insane

-asylum, for I objected vigorously to the treatment of men really

-insane. It is as dangerous to object to the curriculum of a mad-house

-in the State of New York as it is to find fault with the running of

-the government in Russia. In stir I never saw such brutality as takes

-place almost every day in the pipe house. I reported what I saw, and

-though I was plainly told to mind my own business, I continued to

-object every time I saw a chance, until soon the petty spite of the

-attendants was turned against me. I was reported continually for things

-I had not done, I had no privileges, not even opium or books, and was

-so miserable that I repeatedly tried to be transferred back to prison.

-A doctor once wrote a book called _Ten Years in a Mad-House_, in which

-he says "God help the man who has the attendants against him; for these

-demented brutes will make his life a living hell." Try as I might,

-however, I was not transferred back to stir, partly because of the

-sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry favor with the attendants,

-invented lies about attempts on my part to escape. If I had not had

-such a poor opinion of the powers that be and had stopped finding fault

-I should no doubt have been transferred back to what was beginning to

-seem to me, by contrast, a delightful place--state's prison.

-

-The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe house was paresis. I thought

-a great deal about it, and observed the cranks about me continually. I

-noticed that almost all insane persons are musical, that they can hum a

-tune after hearing it only once. I suppose the meanest faculty in the

-human brain is that of memory, and that idiots, lunatics and madmen

-learn music so easily because that part of the brain which is the

-seat of memory is the only one that is active; the other intellectual

-qualities being dead, so that the memory is untroubled by thought.

-

-I was often saddened at the sight of poor George, who had been a good

-dip and an old pal of mine. When he first saw me in the pipe house he

-asked me about his girl. I told him she was still waiting, and he said:

-"Why doesn't she visit me then?" When I replied: "Wait awhile," he

-smiled sadly, and said: "I know." He then put his finger to his head,

-and, hanging his head, his face suddenly became a blank. I was helpless

-to do anything for him. I was so sorry for him sometimes that I wanted

-to kill him and myself and end our misery.

-

-Another friend of mine thought he had a number of white blackbirds and

-used to talk to them excitedly about gold. This man had a finely shaped

-head. I have read in a book of phrenology that a man's intelligence

-can be estimated by the shape of his head. I don't think this theory

-amounts to anything, for most of the insane men I knew had good heads.

-I have formed a little theory of my own (I am as good a quack as

-anybody else) about insanity. I used to compare a well shaped lunatic's

-head to a lady's beautiful jewel box from which my lady's maid had

-stolen the precious stones. The crank's head contained both quantity

-and quality of brains, but the grey matter was lacking. The jewel box

-and the lunatic's head were both beautiful receptacles, but the value

-had flown.

-

-Another lunatic, a man named Hogan, thought that girls were continually

-bothering him. "Now go away, Liz, and leave me alone," he would

-say. One day a lady about fifty years old visited the hospital with

-Superintendent Allison, and came to the violent ward where Hogan

-and I were. She was not a bit afraid, and went right up to Hogan

-and questioned him. He exclaimed, excitedly, "Go away, Meg. You're

-disfigured enough without my giving you another sockdolager." She

-stayed in the ward a long while and asked many questions. She had as

-much nerve as any lady I ever saw. As she and Allison were leaving

-the ward, Hogan said: "Allison, chain her up. She is a bad egg." The

-next day I learned that this refined, delicate and courageous woman

-had once gone to war with her husband, a German prince, who had been

-with General Sherman on his memorable march to the sea. She was born

-an American, and belonged to the Jay family, but was now the Princess

-Salm-Salm.

-

-The most amusing crank (if the word amusing can be used of an insane

-man) in the ward was an Englishman named Alec. He was incurably insane,

-but a good musician and mathematician. One of his delusions was that

-he was the sacred camel in the London Zoo. His mortal enemy was a

-lunatic named Jimmy White, who thought he was a mule. Jimmy often came

-to me and said: "You didn't give your mule any oats this morning." He

-would not be satisfied until I pretended to shoe him. Alec had great

-resentment for Jimmy because when Alec was a camel in the London

-Zoo Jimmy used to prevent the ladies and the kids from giving him

-sweets. When Jimmy said: "I never saw the man before," Alec replied

-indignantly, "I'm no man. I'm a sacred camel, and I won't be interfered

-with by an ordinary, common mule, like you."

-

-There are divers sorts of insanity. I had an interview with a doctor,

-a high officer in the institution, which convinced me, perhaps without

-reason, that insanity was not limited to the patients and attendants.

-One day an insane man was struck by an attendant in the solar plexus.

-He threw his hands up in the air, and cried: "My God, I'm killed." I

-said to another man in the ward: "There's murder." He said: "How do

-you know?" I replied: "I have seen death a few times." In an hour, sure

-enough, the report came that the insane man was dead. A few days later

-I was talking with the doctor referred to and I said:

-

-"I was an eye-witness of the assault on D----." And I described the

-affair.

-

-"You have been reported to me repeatedly," he replied.

-

-"By whom?" I asked, "attendants or patients?"

-

-"By patients," he replied.

-

-"Surely," I remarked, "you don't believe half what insane men tell you,

-do you? Doctor, these same patients (in reality sane stool-pigeons)

-that have been reporting me, have accused you of every crime in the

-calendar."

-

-"Oh, but," he said, "I am an old man and the father of a family."

-

-"Doctor," I continued, "do you believe that a man can be a respectable

-physician and still be insane?"

-

-"What do you mean?" he said.

-

-"In California lately," I replied, "A superintendent of an insane

-asylum has been accused of murder, arson, rape and peculation. This

-man, too, was more than fifty, had a mother, a wife and children, and

-belonged to a profession which ought to be more sympathetic with a

-patient than the church with its communicants. When a man will stoop to

-such crimes, is it not possible that there is a form of mental disease

-called partial, periodical paralysis of the faculty humane, and was not

-Robert Louis Stevenson right when he wrote _Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde_?"

-

-The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and shouted: "Don't you dare to tell

-anybody about this interview." I looked into his eyes and smiled, for

-I am positive that at that moment I looked into the eyes of a madman.

-

-King Kelly, an attendant who had been on duty in insane asylums for

-many years, was very energetic in trying to get information from the

-stool-pigeons. The patients used to pass notes around among themselves,

-and the attendants were always eager to get hold of those notes,

-expecting to find news of beats (escapes) about to be attempted. I knew

-that King Kelly was eager to discover "beats" and as I, not being a

-stool-pigeon, was in bad odor with him, I determined to give him a jar.

-So one day I wrote him the following note:

-

-"Mr. Kelly; You have been in this hospital for years. The socks and

-suspenders which should go to the patients are divided impartially

-between you and the other attendants. Of the four razors, which lately

-arrived for patients, two are in your trunk, one you sent to your

-brother in Ireland, and the fourth you keep in the ward for show, in

-case the doctor should be coming around."

-

-That night when I was going to bed I slipped the note into the Kings

-hand and whispered: "There's going to be a beat tonight." The King

-turned pale, and hurriedly ordered the men in the ward to bed, so that

-he could read the note. Before reading it he handed it to a doctor, to

-be sure to get the credit of stopping the beat as soon as possible.

-The doctor read it and gave the King the laugh. In the morning, when

-the doctor made his rounds, Mr. Kelly said to him: "We have one or two

-funny men in the ward who, instead of robbing decent people, could

-have made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's." The result was that the

-doctor put me down for three or four new delusions. Knowing the Celtic

-character thoroughly I used to crack many a joke on the King. I would

-say to another patient, as the King passed: "If it hadn't been for

-Kelly we should have escaped that time sure." That would make him wild.

-My gift of ridicule was more than once valuable to me in the mad-house.

-

-But I must say that the King was pretty kind when a patient was ill.

-When I was so ill and weak that I didn't care whether I died or not,

-the old King used to give me extras,--milk, eggs and puddings. And

-in his heart the old man hated stool-pigeons, for by nature he was a

-dynamiter and believed in physical force and not mental treachery.

-

-The last few months I served in the insane asylum was at Dannemora,

-where I was transferred from Matteawan. The conditions at the two

-asylums are much the same. While at Dannemora I continued my efforts

-to be sent back to stir to finish my sentence, and used to talk to the

-doctors about it as often as I had an opportunity. A few months before

-I was released I had an interview with a Commissioner--the first one in

-three years, although I had repeatedly demanded to talk to one.

-

-"How is it," I said, "that I am not sent back to stir?"

-

-He turned to the ward doctor and asked: "What is this mans condition?"

-

-"Imaginary wrongs," replied the doctor.

-

-That made me angry, and I remarked, sarcastically: "It is curious

-that when a man tries to make a success at little things he is a dead

-failure."

-

-"What do you mean?" asked the Superintendent, trying to feel me out for

-a new delusion.

-

-I pointed to the doctor and said: "Only a few years ago this man was

-interlocutor in an amateur minstrel troupe. As a barn-stormer he was a

-failure. Since he has risen to the height of being a mad-house doctor

-he is a success."

-

-Then I turned to the Commissioner and said: "Do you know what

-constitutes a cure in this place and in Matteawan?"

-

-"I'd like to know," he replied.

-

-"Well," I said, "when a man stoops to carrying tales on other patients

-and starts in to work cleaning cuspidors, then, and not till then, he

-is cured. Everybody knows that, in the eyes of attendants and doctors,

-the worst delusions in the asylum are wanting to go home, demanding

-more food, and disliking to do dirty work and bear tales."

-

-I don't know whether my talk with the Commissioner had any effect

-or not, but a little while after that, when my term expired, I was

-released. I had been afraid I should not be, for very often a man is

-kept in the asylum long after his term expires, even though he is no

-more insane than I was. When the stool-pigeons heard that I was to be

-released they thought I must have been a rat under cover, and applied

-every vile name to me.

-

-I had been in hell for several years; but even hell has its uses. When

-I was sent up for my third term, I thought I should not live my bit

-out, and that, as long as I did live, I should remain a grafter at

-heart. But the pipe house cured me, or helped to cure me, of a vice

-which, if it had continued, would have made me incapable of reform,

-even if I had lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I went to the

-mad-house there had been periods when I had little opium, either

-because I could not obtain it, or because I was trying to knock it

-off. My sufferings in consequence had been violent, but the worst moral

-and physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot came to me after I

-had entered the pipe house; for I could practically get no opium. That

-deprivation, added to the horrors I saw every day, was enough to make

-any man crazy. At least, I thought so at the time. I must have had a

-good nervous system to have passed through it all.

-

-Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at all. During my first

-months in the madhouse, the doctor occasionally took pity on me and

-gave me a little of the drug, but taken in such small quantities it

-was worse than useless. He used to give me sedatives, however, which

-calmed me for a time. Occasionally, too, I would get a little hop from

-a trusty, who was a friend of mine, and I had smuggled in some tablets

-of morphine from stir; but the supply was soon exhausted, and I saw

-that the only thing to do was to knock it off entirely. This I did,

-and made no more attempts to obtain the drug. For the last two years in

-the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can not describe the agonies

-I went through. Every nerve and muscle in my body was in pain most of

-the time, my stomach was constantly deranged, my eyes and mouth exuded

-water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of suicide were constant with

-me. Of course, I could never have given up this baleful habit through

-my own efforts alone. The pipe house forced me to make the attempt, and

-after I had held off for two years, I had enough strength to continue

-in the right path, although even now the longing for it returns to

-me. It does not seem possible that I can ever go back to it, for that

-terrible experience in the mad-house made an indelible impression. I

-shall never be able to wipe out those horrors entirely from my mind.

-When under the influence of opium I used frequently to imagine I

-smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I never smell certain sweet

-perfumes now without the whole horrible experience rushing before my

-mind. Life in a mad-house taught me a lesson I shall never forget.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIV.

-

-_Out of Hell._

-

-

-I left Dannemora asylum for the criminal insane on a cold winter

-morning. I had my tickets to New York, but not a cent of money.

-Relatives or friends are supposed to provide that. I was happy,

-however, and I made a resolution, which this time I shall keep, never

-to go to stir or the pipe house again. I knew very well that I could

-never repeat such an experience without going mad in reality; or dying.

-The first term I spent in stir I had my books and a new life of beauty

-and thought to think about. Once for all I had had that experience. The

-thought of going through prison routine again--the damp cells, the poor

-food, the habits contracted, with the mad-house at the end--no, that

-could never be for me again. I felt this, as I heard the loons yelling

-good-bye to me from the windows. I looked at the gloomy building

-and said to myself: "I have left Hell, and I'll shovel coal before I

-go back. All the ideas that brought me here I will leave behind. In

-the future I will try to get all the good things out of life that I

-can--the really good things, a glimpse of which I got through my books.

-I think there is still sufficient grey matter in my brain for that."

-

-I took the train for New York, but stopped off at Plattsburg and Albany

-to deliver some messages from the poor unfortunates to their relatives.

-I arrived in New York at twelve o'clock at night, having had nothing to

-eat all day. My relatives and friends had left the station, but were

-waiting up for me in my brother's house. This time I went straight

-to them. My father had died while I was in the pipe house, and now I

-determined that I would be at last a kind son to the mother who had

-never deserted me. I think she felt that I had changed and the tears

-that flowed from her eyes were not all from unhappiness. She told me

-about my father's last illness, and how cheerful he had been. "I bought

-him a pair of new shoes a month before he died," she said. "He laughed

-when he saw them and said: 'What extravagance! To buy shoes for a dying

-man!'"

-

-Living right among them, I met again, of course, many of my old

-companions in crime, and found that many of them had thought I was

-dead. It was only the other day that I met "Al", driving a peddlers

-wagon. He, like me, had squared it. "I thought you died in the pipe

-house, Jim," he said. This has happened to me a dozen times since my

-return. I had spent so much time in stir that the general impression

-among the guns at home seemed to be that I had "gone up the escape."

-

-As a general thing I found that guns who had squared it and become

-prosperous had never been very successful grafters. Some of the best

-box-men and burglars in the business are now bar-tenders in saloons

-owned by former small fry among the dips. There are waiters now in

-saloons and concert halls on the bowery who were far cleverer thieves

-than the men who employ them, and who are worth thousands. Hungry Joe

-is an instance. Once he was King of confidence men, and on account of

-his great plausibility got in on a noted person, on one occasion, for

-several thousand dollars. And now he will beg many a favor of men he

-would not look at in the old days.

-

-A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive. I had always known

-that, but never realized it so keenly as I have since my return from

-the mad-house. Above everything else a grafter is suspicious, whether

-he has squared it or not--suspicious of his pals and of everybody

-else. When my old pals saw that I was not working with them, they

-wondered what my private graft was. When I told them I was on the level

-and was looking for a job, they either laughed or looked at me with

-suspicion in their eyes. They saw I was looking good (well-dressed)

-and they could not understand it. They put me down, some of them, as

-a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively that I am no longer with

-them, and most of them have given me the frosty mit. Only the bums

-who used to be grafters sail up to me in the Bowery. They have not

-got enough sense left even for suspicion. The dips who hang out in the

-thieves' resorts are beginning to hate me; not because I want to injure

-them, for I don't, but because they think I do. I told one of them, an

-old friend, that I was engaged in some literary work. He was angry in

-an instant and said: "You door mat thief. You couldn't get away with a

-coal-scuttle."

-

-One day I was taking the editor of this book through the Bowery,

-pointing out to him some of my old resorts, when I met an old pal

-of mine, who gave me the glad hand. We had a drink, and I, who was

-feeling good, started in to jolly him a little. He had told me about

-an old pal of ours who had just fallen for a book and was confined in a

-Brooklyn jail. I took out a piece of "copy" paper and took the address,

-intending to pay a visit to him, for everybody wants sympathy. What

-a look went over that grafter's face! I saw him glance quickly at the

-editor and then at me, and I knew then he had taken alarm, and probably

-thought we were Pinkerton men, or something as bad. I tried to carry

-it off with a laugh, for the place was full of thieves, and told him

-I would get him a job on a newspaper. He answered hastily that he had

-a good job in the pool-room and was on the level. He started in to try

-to square it with my companion by saying that he "adored a man who had

-a job." A little while afterwards he added that he hated anybody who

-would graft after he had got an honest job. Then, to wind up his little

-game of squaring himself, he ended by declaring that he had recently

-obtained a very good position.

-

-That was one of the incidents that queered me with the more intelligent

-thieves. He spread the news, and whenever I meet one of that gang on

-the Bowery I get the cold shoulder, a gun is so mighty quick to grow

-suspicious. A grafter who follows the business for years is a study

-in psychology, and his two most prominent characteristics are fear and

-suspicion. If some stool-pigeon tips him off to the police, and he is

-sent to stir, he invariably suspects the wrong person. He tells his

-friends in stir that "Al done him," and pretty soon poor Al, who may

-be an honest thief, is put down as a rat. If Al goes to stir very often

-the result is a cutting match between the two.

-

-There are many convicts in prison who lie awake at night concocting

-stories about other persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions. If

-the prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper he invariably reads the

-society news very carefully. He can tell more about the Four Hundred

-than the swells will ever know about themselves; and he tells very

-little good of them. Such stories are fabricated in prison and repeated

-out of it.

-

-When I was in Auburn stir I knew a young fellow named Sterling, as

-straight a thief as ever did time. He had the courage of a grenadier

-and objected to everything that was mean and petty. He therefore

-had many enemies in prison, and they tried to make him unpopular by

-accusing him of a horrible crime. The story reached my ears and I

-tried to put a stop to it, but I only did him the more harm. When

-Sterling heard the tale he knocked one of his traducers senseless

-with an iron bar. Tongues wagged louder than ever and one day he

-came to me and talked about it and I saw a wild look in his eyes.

-His melancholia started in about that time, and he began to suspect

-everybody, including me. His enemies put the keepers against him and

-they made his life almost unbearable. Generally the men that tip off

-keepers to the alleged violent character of some convict are the worst

-stool-pigeons in the prison. Even the Messiah could not pass through

-this world without arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the name of

-common sense, then, could Sterling, or I, or any other grafter expect

-otherwise than to be traduced? It was the politicians who were the

-cause of Christ's trials; and the politicians are the same to-day as

-they were then. They have very little brains, but they have the low

-cunning which is the first attribute of the human brute. They pretend

-to be the people's advisers, but pile up big bank accounts. Even the

-convict scum that come from the lower wards of the city have all the

-requisites of the successful politician. Nor can one say that these

-criminals are of low birth, for they trace their ancestors back for

-centuries. The fact that convicts slander one another with glee and

-hear with joy of the misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that

-they come from a very old family; from the wretched human stock that

-demanded the crucifixion of Christ.

-

-This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something I should like to

-eliminate from my own character. Even now I am afflicted with it.

-Since my release I often have the old feeling come over me that I am

-being watched; and sometimes without any reason at all. Only recently

-I was riding on a Brooklyn car, when a man sitting opposite happened

-to glance at me two or three times. I gave him an irritated look. Then

-he stared at me, to see what was the matter, I suppose. That was too

-much, and I asked him, with my nerves on edge, if he had ever seen me

-before. He said "No", with a surprised look, and I felt cheap, as I

-always do after such an incident. A neighbor of mine has a peculiar

-habit of watching me quietly whenever I visit his family. I know that

-he is ignorant of my past but when he stares at me, I am rattled.

-I begin to suspect that he is studying me, wondering who I am. The

-other day I said to him, irritably: "Mr. K----, you have a bad habit

-of watching people." He laughed carelessly and I, getting hot, said:

-"Mr. K---- when I visit people it is not with the intention of stealing

-anything." I left the house in a huff and his sister, as I afterwards

-found, rebuked him for his bad manners.

-

-Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being over suspicious. I am

-suspicious even of my family. Sometimes when I sit quietly at home

-with my mother in the evening, as has grown to be a habit with me, I

-see her look at me. I begin immediately to think that she is wondering

-whether I am grafting again. It makes me very nervous, and I sometimes

-put on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be alone. One day, when

-I was in stir, my mother visited me, as she always did when they gave

-her a chance. In the course of our conversation she told me that on my

-release I had better leave the city and go to some place where I was

-not known. "For," she said, "your character, my boy, is bad." I grabbed

-her by the arm and exclaimed: "Who is it that is circulating these

-d---- stories about me?" My poor mother merely meant, of course, that

-I was known as a thief, but I thought some of the other convicts had

-slandered me to her. It was absurd, of course, but the outside world

-cannot understand how suspicious a grafter is. I have often seen a man,

-who afterwards became insane, begin being queer through suspiciousness.

-

-Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious of me, when I

-told them I had squared it, or when I refused to say anything about

-my doings. Of course I don't care, for I hate the Bowery now and

-everything in it. Whenever I went, as I did several times with my

-editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust passed over me. I pity my

-old pals, but they no longer interest me. I look upon them as failures.

-I have seen a new light and I shall follow it. Whatever the public may

-think of this book, it has already been a blessing to me. For it has

-been honest work that I and my friend the editor have done together,

-and leads me to think that there may yet be a new life for me. I

-feel now that I should prefer to talk and associate with the meanest

-workingman in this city than with the swellest thief. For a long time

-I have really despised myself. When old friends and relatives look at

-me askance I say to myself: "How can I prove to them that I am not the

-same as I was in the past?" No wonder the authorities thought I was

-mad. I have spent the best years of my life behind the prison bars. I

-could have made out of myself almost anything I wanted, for I had the

-three requisites of success: personal appearance, health and, I think,

-some brains. But what have I done? After ruining my life, I have not

-even received the proverbial mess of pottage. As I look back upon my

-life both introspectively and retrospectively I do not wonder that

-society at large despises the criminal.

-

-I am not trying to point a moral or pose as a reformer. I cannot say

-that I quit the old life because of any religious feeling. I am not

-one of those who have reformed by finding Jesus at the end of a gas

-pipe which they were about to use as a black jack on a citizen, just

-in order to finger his long green. I only saw by painful experience

-that there is nothing in a life of crime. I ran up against society,

-and found that I had struck something stronger and harder than a stone

-wall. But it was not that alone that made me reform. What was it?

-Was it the terrible years I spent in prison? Was it the confinement

-in a mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine become drivelling

-idiots? Was it my reading of the great authors, and my becoming

-acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the great men of the world?

-Was it a combination of these things? Perhaps so, but even that does

-not entirely explain it, does not go deep enough. I have said that I

-am not religious, and I am not. And yet I have experienced something

-indefinable, which I suppose some people might call an awakening of

-the soul. What is that, after all, but the realization that your way of

-life is ruining you even to the very foundation of your nature?

-

-Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking in religion; for

-certainly the character of Christ strongly appeals to me. I don't care

-for creeds, but the personality of the Nazarene, when stripped of the

-aroma of divinity, appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether they

-are atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any man that has understanding

-reveres the life of Christ, for He practiced what He preached and died

-for humanity. He was a perfect specimen of manhood, and had developed

-to the highest degree that trait which is lacking in most all men--the

-faculty humane.

-

-I believe that a time comes in the lives of many grafters when they

-desire to reform. Some do reform for good and all, and I shall show the

-world that I am one of them; but the difficulties in the way are great,

-and many fall again by the wayside.

-

-They come out of prison marked men. Many observers can tell an

-ex-convict on sight. The lock-step is one of the causes. It gives a

-man a peculiar gait which he will retain all his life. The convicts

-march close together and cannot raise their chests. They have to keep

-their faces turned towards the screw. Breathing is difficult, and most

-convicts suffer in consequence from catarrh, and a good many from lung

-trouble. Walking in lock-step is not good exercise, and makes the men

-nervous. When the convict is confined in his cell he paces up and down.

-The short turn is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his mind.

-That short walk will always have control of me. I cannot sit down now

-to eat or write, without jumping up every five minutes in order to

-take that short walk. I have become so used to it that I do not want

-to leave the house, for I can pace up and down in my room. I can take

-that small stretch all day long and not be tired, but if I walk a long

-straight distance I get very much fatigued. When I wait for a train

-I always begin that short walk on the platform. I have often caught

-myself walking just seven feet one way, and then turning around and

-walking seven feet in the opposite direction. Another physical mark,

-caused by a criminal life rather than by a long sojourn in stir, is

-an expressionless cast of countenance. The old grafter never expresses

-any emotions. He has schooled himself until his face is a mask, which

-betrays nothing.

-

-A much more serious difficulty in the way of reform is the ex-convict's

-health which is always bad if a long term of years has been served.

-Moreover, his brain has often lost its equilibrium and powers of

-discernment. When he gets out of prison his chance of being able to

-do any useful work is slight. He knows no trade, and he is not strong

-enough to do hard day labor. He is given only ten dollars, when he

-leaves stir, with which to begin life afresh. A man who has served a

-long term is not steady above the ears until he has been at liberty

-several months; and what can such a man do with ten dollars? It would

-be cheaper for the state in the end to give an ex-convict money enough

-to keep him for several months; for then a smaller percentage would

-return to stir. It would give the man a chance to make friends, to look

-for a job, and to show the world that he is in earnest.

-

-A criminal who is trying to reform is generally a very helpless

-being. He was not, to begin with, the strongest man mentally, and

-after confinement is still less so. He is preoccupied, suspicious

-and a dreamer, and when he gets a glimpse of himself in all his

-naked realities, is apt to become depressed and discouraged. He is

-easily led, and certainly no man needs a good friend as much as the

-ex-convict. He is distrusted by everybody, is apt to be "piped off"

-wherever he goes, and finds it hard to get work which he can do. There

-are hundreds of men in our prisons to-day who, if they could find

-somebody who would trust them and take a genuine interest in them,

-would reform and become respectable citizens. That is where the Tammany

-politician, whom I have called Senator Wet Coin is a better man than

-the majority of reformers. When a man goes to him and says he wants to

-square it he takes him by the hand, trusts and helps him. Wet Coin does

-not hand him a soup ticket and a tract nor does he hold on tight to his

-own watch chain fearing for his red super, hastily bidding the ex-gun

-to be with Jesus.

-

-

-

-

-EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT.

-

-

-The life of the thief is at an end; and the life of the man and good

-citizen has begun. For I am convinced that Jim is strictly on the

-level, and will remain so. The only thing yet lacking to make his

-reform sure is a job. I, and those of my friends who are interested,

-have as yet failed to find anything for him to do that is, under the

-circumstances, desirable. The story of my disappointments in this

-respect is a long one, and I shall not tell it. I have learned to think

-that patience is the greatest of the virtues; and of this virtue an

-ex-gun needs an enormous amount. If Jim and his friends prove good in

-this way, the job will come. But waiting is hard, for Jim is nervous,

-in bad health, with an old mother to look after, and with new ambitions

-which make keen his sense of time lost.

-

-One word about his character: I sometimes think of my friend the

-ex-thief as "Light-fingered Jim"; and in that name there lingers a note

-of vague apology. As he told his story to me, I saw everywhere the mark

-of the natural rogue, of the man grown with a roguish boy's brain.

-The humor of much of his tale seemed to me strong. I was never able

-to look upon him as a deliberate malefactor. He constantly impressed

-me as gentle and imaginative, impressionable and easily influenced,

-but not naturally vicious or vindictive. If I am right, his reform is

-nothing more or less than the coming to years of sober maturity. He is

-now thirty-five years old, and as he himself puts it: "Some men acquire

-wisdom at twenty-one, others at thirty-five, and some never."

-

-

-

-

-EVERYMAN

-

-The XVth Century morality play, with reproductions of old wood cuts.

-$1.00, postage paid or at your bookseller's. The first book to bear the

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-     _The Sun, New York._

-

-"The best of the old moralities, easy to read and fair to look upon."

-

-     _Evening Post, New York._

-

-"The book is well done, and should find a place on the shelves and in

-the spirits of all who care for the best in life and art."

-

-     JOHN CORBIN, in

-     _The New York Times_.

-

-"Everyman" in book form will be welcomed by the large number of people

-whose attention has been called to this ancient morality play by its

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-

-     _The Outlook, New York._

-

-"The first publication of (the new house) "Everyman," the fifteenth

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-     NEW YORK

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