The Autobiography of a Thief

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s 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 s

hop. 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

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, a

he 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 necessar

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 shou

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 b

ation 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 w

dered 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 stole

ladelphia. 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 artic

en-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.

elt no strong desire to work for the State. I was expected to cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually caned about two. I did not believe in work. I felt at that time that New York State owed me a living. I was getting a living all right, but I

still very little, for it was just then that the legislature had shut down on contract labor in the prisons. The outside merchants squealed because they could not compete with unpaid convict labor; and so the prison authorities had to shut down many of their shops, running only enough to supply the inside demand, which was sligh

ment, before my health began to give way; for I had my books from the good prison libraries, my pi

; but I educated myself while in stir. Previous to going to Sing Sing my education had been almost entirely in the line of graft; but in

f humanity. Goethe said that Luther threw the world back two hundred years, but I deny it; for Luther, like Voltaire, pointed out the ignorance and wickedness of the priests of their day. These churchmen did not understand the teachings of Christ. Was Voltaire delusional? The priests must have thought so, but they were

ipling, he denounced the cowardly, fawning sycophants who surrounded Louis XIV,[B] and wrote a sarcastic poem on His Nibs, and was confined in the Bastille for two years. His courage, his wit, his sarcasms, his hatred of his persecutors, and his love and kindness, stamp him as one of the great, healthy intellect

erience as a traveller, to his novels, which are not real enough. Ernest Renan was a bracing and clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed in reading his Life of Jesus. I exp

seem idiotic to me. Balzac is a bird of another feather. In my opinion he was one of the best dissectors of human nature that the world ever produced. Not even Shakespeare was his equal. His depth in searching for motives, his discernment in detecting a hypocrite, his skill in showing up wo

correctly, for I imagined him to be gentle and humane. Any man with ability and brains equal to his could not be otherwise. What a character is Becky Sharp! In her way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie Annie. She did not love Rawdon as a good wife should. If she had she would not be the interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful to Rawdon for three reasons; first, he married her; seco

Clive throws the glass of wine in his cousin's face. The honest horror of the father, his indignation when old Captain Costigan uses bad language, his exit when he hears a song in the Music Hall-all this is true realism. But the scene that makes this book Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old Colone

ot sleep until I had read this book with a relish. It acted on me like a bottle of good wine, leaving me peaceful after a time o

s made readable by two characters, Noddy Boffin and Silas Wegg. Where Wegg reads, as he thinks, The Last of the Russians, when the book was The Decline and Fall Of the Roman Em

e outside by becoming a Sunday School superintendent; and four of the meanest thieves I ever knew got their start in that way. Who has not enjoyed Micawber, with his frothy personality and straitened circumstances, and the unctuous Barkis.-Poor Emily! Who could blame her? What woman could help liking Steerforth? It is strange and true t

in real life such a brutal character as Bill Sykes; and I have met some tough grafters, as the course of this book will show. Nancy Sykes, however, is true to life. In her degradation she was still a woman. I contend that a woman is never so low but a man was the cause. One passage in the book has often touched me, as it showed that Nancy had not lost her sex. When she

he asks for a second platter of mush to the horror of the teachers, is not overdrawn. When I was in one of our penal institutions, at a later time of my life

atter they ought to be read. Why object to the girl of sixteen reading such books and not to the woman of thirty-five? I think their mental strength is about equal. Both are romantic and the woman of thirty-five will fall in love as quickly as the girl of sixteen. I think a woman is always a girl; at least, it has been so in my experience. One day I was grafting in Philadelphia. It was raining, and a woman was walking along on Walnut Street. She slipped on the wet sidewalk and fell. I ran to her assistance, and saw that her figure was slim and girlish and that she had a round, rosy face, but that her hair was pure white. Whe

spendthrifts and excited populace, the gamblers and the ruined but gay young gentlemen, all mixed up with the grandeur of Ireland, are the work

Wordsworth, Gray and Goldsmith, but I liked Tom Moore and Robert Burns better. The greatest of all the poets, however, in my