Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

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.

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.

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.