Autobiography of a Thief — Chapter XII - On the Outside Again
_On the Outside Again.
_ My time on the second bit was drawing to a close.
I was eager to get out, of course, but I knew way down in my mind, that it would be only to graft again.
I made a resolution that I would regain my health and gather a little fall-money before I started in hard again on the Rocky Path.
On the day of my release, Warden Sage called me to his office and talked to me like a friend.
He did not know that I was a second timer, or he might not have been so kind to me.
He was a humane man, and in spite of his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced good things into Sing Sing.
He improved the condition of the cells and we were not confined there so much as we had been before he came.
On my first term many a man staid for days in his cell without ever going out; one man was confined twenty-eight days on bread and water.
But under Mr. Sage punishments were not so severe.
He even used to send delicacies to men chained up in the Catholic Chapel.
I should like to say a good word for Head Keeper Connoughton, too.
He was not generally liked, for he was a strict disciplinarian, but I think he was one of the best keepers in the country.
He was stern, but not brutal, and when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton was very kind.
He was not deceived by the fake lunatics, and used to say: "If you go to the mad-house, you are liable to become worse.
If you are all right in the morning I will give you a job out in the air."
Although Mr. Connoughton had had little schooling he was an intelligent man.
I believe the best thing the community can do to reform criminals is to have a more intelligent class of keepers.
As a rule they are ignorant, brutal and stupid, under-paid and inefficient; yet what is more important for the State's welfare than an intelligent treatment of convicts?
Short terms, too, are better than long ones, for when the criminal is broken down in health and made fearful, suspicious and revengeful, what can you expect from him?
However, in the mood I was in at the end of my second term, I did not believe that anything was any good as a preventive of crime.
I knew that when I got on the outside I wouldn't think of what might happen to me.
I knew that I couldn't or wouldn't carry a hod.
What ambition I had left was to become a more successful crook than I had ever been before.
Warden Sage gave me some good advice and then I left Sing Sing for New York.
I did not get the pleasure from going out again that had been so keen after my first bit.
My eye-sight was failing now, and I was sick and dull.
My only thought was to get back to my old haunts, and I drank several large glasses of whiskey at Sing Sing town, to help me on my way.
I intended to go straight home, as I felt very ill, to my father and mother, but I didn't see them for several days after my return to New York.
The first thing I did in the city was to deliver some messages from my fellow convicts to their relatives.
My third visit for that purpose was to the home of a fine young fellow I knew in stir.
It was a large family and included a married sister and her children.
They were glad to hear from Bobby, and I talked to them for some time about him, when the husband of the married sister came home, and began to quarrel with his wife.
He accused her of having strange men in the house, meaning me.
The younger brother and the rest of the family got back at the brother-in-law and gave him better than they got.
The little brother fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder".
The police surrounded the house and took us all to the station-house in the patrol wagon.
And so I spent the first night after my return in confinement.
It seemed natural, however.
In the morning we were taken before the magistrate, and the mother and sister testified that I had taken them a message from their boy, and had committed no offense.
The brother-in-law blurted out that he had married into a family of thieves, and that I had just returned from Sing Sing.
I was discharged, but fined five dollars.
Blessed are the peacemakers,--but not in my case!
I passed the next day looking for old girls and pals, but I found few of them.
Many were dead and others were in stir or had sunk so far down into the under world that even I could not find them.
I was only about thirty-two years old, but I had already a long acquaintance with the past.
Like all grafters I had lived rapidly, crowding, while at liberty, several days into one.
When I got back from my second bit the greater part of my life seemed to be made up of memories of other days.
Some of the old pals I did meet again had squared it, others were "dead" (out of the game) and some had degenerated into mere bums.
There are several different classes of "dead ones": 1. The man who has lost his nerve.
He generally becomes a whiskey fiend.
If he becomes hopelessly a soak the better class of guns shun him, for he is no good to work with.
He will not keep an engagement, or will turn up at the place of meeting too late or too early.
A grafter must be exactly on time.
It is as bad to be too early as too late, for he must not be seen hanging around the place of meeting.
Punctuality is more of a virtue in the under world than it is in respectable society.
The slackest people I know to keep their appointments, are the honest ones; or grafters who have become whiskey fiends.
These latter usually wind up with rot-gut booze and are sometimes seen selling songs on the Bowery.
2. The man who becomes a copper.
He is known as a stool-pigeon, and is detested and feared by all grafters.
Nobody will go with him.
Sometimes he becomes a Pinkerton man, and is a useful member of society.
When he loses his grip with the upper world, he belongs to neither, for the grafters won't look at him.
3. The man who knows a trade.
This grafter often "squares" it, is apt to marry and remain honest.
His former pals, who are still grafters, treat him kindly, for they know he is not a rat.
They know, too, that he is a bright and intelligent man, and that it is well to keep on the right side of him.
Such a man has often educated himself in stir, and, when he squares it, is apt to join a political club, and is called in by the leader to help out in an election, for he possesses some brains.
The gun is apt to make him an occasional present, for he can help the grafter, in case of a fall, because of his connection with the politicians.
This kind of "dead one" often keeps his friends the grafters, while in stir, next to the news in the city.
4. The gun who is _supposed_ to square it.
This grafter has got a bunch of money together and sees a good chance to open a gin-mill, or a Raines Law hotel, or a gambling joint.
He knows how to take care of the repeaters, and is handy about election time.
In return he gets protection for his illegal business.
He is a go-between, and is on good terms with coppers and grafters.
He supplies the grafter who has plenty of fall-money with bondsmen, makes his life in the Tombs easy, and gets him a good job while in stir.
This man is supposed to be "dead," but he is really very much alive.
Often a copper comes to him and asks for the whereabouts of some grafter or other.
He will reply, perhaps: "I hear he is in Europe, or in the West."
The copper looks wise and imagines he is clever.
The "dead" one sneers, and, like a wise man, laughs in his sleeve; for he is generally in communication with the man looked for.
5. The sure-thing grafter.
He is a man who continues to steal, but wants above everything to keep out of stir, where he has spent many years.
So he goes back to the petty pilfering he did as a boy.
General Brace and the Professor belonged to this class of "dead ones."
The second night I spent on the Bowery after my return from my second bit I met Laudanum Joe, who is another good example of this kind of "dead one."
At one time he made thousands of dollars, but now he is discouraged and nervous.
He looked bad (poorly dressed) but was glad to see me.
"How is graft?"
he asked.
"I have left the Rocky Path," I replied, thinking I would throw a few "cons" into him.
"I am walking straight.
Not in the religious line, either."
He smiled, which was tantamount to saying that I lied.
"What are you working at?"
he asked.
"I am looking for a job," I replied.
"Jimmy, is it true, that you are pipes (crazy)?
I heard you got buggy (crazy) in your last bit."
"Joe," I replied, "you know I was never bothered above the ears."
"If you are going to carry the hod," he said, "you might as well go to the pipe-house, and let them cure you.
Have you given up smoking, too?"
he continued.
He meant the hop.
I conned him again and said: "Yes."
He showed the old peculiar, familiar grin, and said: "Say, I have no coin.
Take me with you and give me a smoke."
I tried to convince him that there was nothing in it, but he was a doubter.
"What are _you_ doing, Joe?"
I asked.
"O, just getting a few shillings," he replied, meaning that he was grafting.
"Why don't you give up the booze?"
I asked.
I had made a break, for he said, quickly: "Why?
Because I don't wear a Piccadilly collar?"
All grafters of any original calibre are super-sensitive, to a point very near insanity.
Laudanum Joe thought I had reference to his dress, which was very bum.
"Joe," I said, "I never judge a man by his clothes, especially one that I know."
"Jimmy," he said, "the truth is I can't stand another long bit in stir.
I do a little petty pilfering that satisfies my wants--a cup of tea, plenty of booze, and a little hop.
If I fall I only go to the workhouse for a couple of months.
The screws know I have seen better days and I can get a graft and my booze while there.
If I aint as prosperous as I was once, why not dream I'm a millionaire?"
Some grafters who have been prosperous at one time fall even lower than Laudanum Joe.
When they get fear knocked into them and can't do without whiskey they sink lower and lower.
Hungry Bob is another example.
I grafted with him as a boy, but when I met him on the Bowery after my second bit I hardly knew him, and at first he failed to recognize me entirely.
I got him into a gin-mill, however, and he told how badly treated he had been just before we met.
He had gone into a saloon kept by an old pal of his who had risen in the world, and asked him for fifteen cents to buy a bed in a lodging-house.
"Go long, you pan-handler (beggar)," said his old friend.
Poor Bob was badly cut up about it, and talked about ingratitude for a long time.
But he had his lodging money, for a safe-cracker who knew Hungry Bob when he was one of the gayest grafters in town, happened to be in the saloon, and he gave the "bum" fifteen cents for old times sake.
"How is it, Bob," I said to him, "that you are not so good as you were?"
"You want to know what put me on the bum?"
he answered.
"Well, it's this way.
I can't trust nobody, and I have to graft alone.
That's one thing.
Then, too, I like the booze too much, and when I'm sitting down I can't get up and go out and hustle the way I used to."
Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort for sailors and hard-luck grafters in the lower Bowery, when a Sheenie I knew came in.
"Hello, Jim," he said.
"How's graft, Mike?"
I replied.
"Don't mention it."
"What makes you look so glum?"
"I'm only after being turned out of police court this morning."
"What was the rap, Mike?"
"I'm looking too respectable.
They asked me where I got the clothes.
I
told them I was working, which was true.
I have been a waiter for three months.
The flymen took me to headquarters.
I was gathered in to make a reputation for those two shoo-flies.
Whenever I square it and go to work I am nailed regularly, because my mug is in the Hall of Fame.
When I am arrested, I lose my job every time.
Nobody knows you now, Jim.
You could tear the town open."
I made a mental resolution to follow Mike's advice very soon--as soon as my health was a little better.
Just then Jack, a boyhood pal of mine, who knew the old girls, Sheenie Annie and the rest, came in.
I
was mighty glad to see him, and said so to him.
"I guess you've got the advantage of me, bloke," was his reply.
"Don't you remember Jimmy the Kid, ten years ago, in the sixth?"
I
jogged his memory with the names of a few pals of years ago, and when he got next, he said: "I wouldn't have known you, Jim.
I thought you were dead many years ago in stir.
I heard it time and time again.
I thought you were past and gone."
After a short talk, I said: "Where's Sheenie Annie?"
"Dead," he replied.
"Mamie?"
I asked.
"Dead," he replied.
"Lucy?"
"In stir."
"Swedish Emmy?"
"She's married."
"Any good Molls now?
I'm only after getting back from stir and am not next," I said.
"T'aint like old times, Jim," he said.
"The Molls won't steal now.
They aint got brains enough.
They are not innocent.
They are ignorant.
All they know how to do is the badger."
I went with Jack to his house, where he had an opium layout.
There we found several girls and grafters, some smoking hop, some with the subtle cigarette between their lips.
I was introduced to an English grafter, named Harry.
He said he was bloomin' glad to see me.
He was just back from the West, he said, but I thought it was the pen.
He began to abuse the States, and I said: "You duffer, did you ever see such pretty girls as here?
Did you ever wear a collar and tie in the old country?"
He grew indignant and shouted: "'Oly Cobblestones!
In this ---- country I have two hundred bucks (dollars) saved up every time, but I never spend a cent of it.
'Ow to 'Ell am I better off here?
I'm only stealin' for certain mugs (policemen) and fer those 'igher up, so they can buy real estate.
They enjoy their life in this country and Europe off my 'ard earned money and the likes of me.
They die as respected citizens.
I die in the work'us as an outcast.
Don't be prating about your ---- country!"
As soon as I had picked out a good mob to join I began to graft again.
Two of my new pals were safe-blowers, and we did that graft, and day-work, as well as the old reliable dipping.
But I wasn't much at the graft during the seven months I remained on the outside.
My health continued bad, and I did not feel like "jumping out" so much as I had done formerly.
I did not graft except when my funds were very low, and so, of course, contrary to my plans, I saved no fall-money.
I had a girl, an opium lay-out and a furnished room, where I used to stay most of the time, smoking with pals, who, like myself, had had the keen edge of their ambition taken off.
I had a strange longing for music at that time; I suppose because my nerves were weaker than they used to be.
I
kept a number of musical instruments in my room, and used to sing and dance to amuse my visitors.
During these seven months that I spent mainly in my room, I used to reflect and philosophize a lot, partly under the influence of opium.
I would moralize to my girl or to a friend, or commune with my own thoughts.
I often got in a state of mind where everything seemed a joke to me.
I often thought of myself as a spectator watching the play of life.
I observed my visitors and their characteristics and after they had left for the evening loved to size them up in words for Lizzie.
My eyes were so bad that I did not read much, but I took it out in epigrams and wise sayings.
I will give a few specimens of the kind of philosophy I indulged in.
"You always ought to end a speech with a sneer or a laconic remark.
It is food for thought.
The listener will pause and reflect."
"It is not what you make, but what you save, that counts.
It isn't the big cracksman who gets along.
It is the unknown dip who saves his earnings."
"To go to Germany to learn the language is as bad as being in stir for ten years."
"Jump out and be a man and don't join the Salvation Army."
"Always say to the dip who says he wants to square it; Well, what's your other graft?"
"When a con gets home he is apt to find his sweetheart married, and a 'Madonna of the wash tubs.'
" "He made good money and was a swell grafter, but he got stuck on a Tommy that absorbed his attention, and then he lost his punctuality and went down and out."
"Do a criminal a bodily injury and he may forget.
Wound his feelings and he will never forgive."
"Most persons have seen a cow or a bull with a board put around its head in such a way that the animal can see nothing.
It is a mode of punishment.
Soon the poor beast will go mad, if the board is not removed.
What chance has the convict, confined in a dark cell for years, to keep his senses?
He suffers from astigmatism of the mind."
"I am as much entitled to an opinion as any other quack on the face of the earth."
"General Grant is one of my heroes.
He was a boy at fifteen.
He was a boy when he died.
A boy is loyalty personified.
General Grant had been given a task to do, and like a boy, he did it.
He was one of our greatest men, and belongs with Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Robert Ingersoll."
"Why don't we like the books we liked when we were boys?
It is not because our judgment is better, but because we have a dream of our own now, and want authors to dream along the same lines."
"The only gun with principles is the minor grafter."
"The weakest man in the universe is he who falls from a good position and respectable society into the world of graft.
Forgers and defaulters are generally of this class.
A professional gun, who has been a thief all his life, is entitled to more respect."
"In writing a book on crime, one ought to have in mind to give the public a truthful account of a thief's life, his crimes, habits, thoughts, emotions, vices and virtues, and how he lives in prison and out.
I believe this ought to be done, and the man who does it well must season his writings with pathos, humor, sarcasm, tragedy, and thus give the real life of the grafter."
"Sympathy with a grafter who is trying to square it is a tonic to his better self."
"The other day I was with a reporter and a society lady who were seeing the town.
The lady asked me how I would get her diamond pin.
It was fastened in such a way that to get it, strong arm work would be necessary.
I explained how I would "put the mug on her" while my husky pal went through her.
'But,' she said, 'that would hurt me.'
As if the grafters cared!
What a selfish lady to be always thinking of herself!"
"Life is the basis of philosophy.
Philosophy is an emanation from our daily routine.
After a convict has paced his cell a few thousand times he sometimes has an idea.
Philosophy results from life put through a mental process, just as opium, when subjected to a chemical experiment, produces laudanum.
Why, therefore, is not life far stronger than a narcotic?"
"I believe in platonic love, for it has been in my own life.
A woman always wants love, whether she is eighteen or eighty--real love.
Many is the time I have seen the wistful look in some woman's eye when she saw that it was only good fellowship or desire on my part."
"In this age of commerce there is only one true friendship, the kind that comes through business."
"An old adage has it that all things come to him who waits.
Yes: poverty, old age and death.
The successful man is he who goes and gets it."
"If thy brother assaults you, do not weep, nor pray for him, nor turn the other cheek, but assail him with the full strength of your muscles, for man at his best is not lovable, nor at his worst, detestable."
"There is more to be got in Germany, judging from what Dutch Lonzo used to say, than in England or America, only the Dutchmen are too thick-headed to find it out.
A first class gun in Germany would be ranked as a ninth-rater here."
"Grafters are like the rest of the world in this: they always attribute bad motives to a kind act."
"From flim-flam (returning short change) to burglary is but a step, provided one has the nerve."
"Why would a woman take to him (a sober, respectable man but lacking in temperament) unless she wanted a good home?"
"If there is anything detestable, it is a grafter who will steal an overcoat in the winter time."
"'Look for the woman.'
A fly-cop gets many a tip from some tid-bit in whom a grafter has reposed confidence."
* * * * * I did not do, as I have said, any more grafting than was necessary during these seven months of liberty; but I observed continually, living in an opium dream, and my pals were more and more amusing to me.
When I thought about myself and my superior intelligence, I was sad, but I thought about myself as little as possible.
I preferred to let my thoughts dwell on others, who I saw were a a fine line of cranks and rogues.
Somewhere in the eighties, before I went to stir, there was a synagogue at what is now 101 Hester Street.
The synagogue was on the first floor, and on the ground floor was a gin-mill, run by an ex-Central Office man.
Many pickpockets used to hang out there, and they wanted to drive the Jews out of the first floor, so that they could lay out a faro game there.
So they swore and carried on most horribly on Saturdays, when the rabbi was preaching, and finally got possession of the premises.
Only a block away from this old building was a famous place for dips to get "books", in the old days.
Near by was Ridley's dry-goods store, in which there were some cash-girls who used to tip us off to who had the books, and were up to the graft themselves.
They would yell "cash" and bump up against the sucker, while we went through him.
The Jews were few in those days, and the Irish were in the majority.
On the corner of Allen and Hester Streets stood the saloon of a well-known politician.
Now a Jew has a shop there.
Who would think that an Isaacs would supersede a Finnigan?
At the gin-mill on Hester Street, I used to know a boy dip named Buck.
When I got back from my second bit I found he had developed into a box-man, and had a peculiar disposition, which exists outside, as well as inside, Graftdom.
He had one thousand eight hundred dollars in the bank, and a fine red front (gold watch and chain), but he was not a good fellow.
He used to invite three or four guns to have a drink, and would order Hennessy's brandy, which cost twenty cents a glass.
After we had had our drinks he would search himself and only find perhaps twenty cents in his clothes.
He got into me several times before I "blew".
One time, after he had ordered drinks, he began the old game, said he thought he had eighteen dollars with him, and must have been touched.
