HONOR AMONG THIEVES SO CALLED
I have often wondered whence and wherefore that queer—what shall I call it, satisfaction, pride?—which I think a good many of us feel at being on nodding or talking terms with notorious characters. Please remember that I am now speaking as Josiah Flynt, the respectable citizen, and not as Josiah Flynt, the man of the Under World.
My capacity "for to see and to admire," as Mr. Kipling says, was fairly active in the most depressing days of my speckled past. The "seeing and admiring" is the privilege of the spectator who, because he is such, may be near the crowd and not of it. So, in a sense, I stood aloof, my insatiable curiosity often prompting me simply to observe where otherwise I might have freely partaken. This curiosity was one of my few saving graces, although it is only recently that I have become aware of its being so.
But this—may I call it philosophic?—habit of observation, and the making of many incidental and disreputable friendships, is or was, a totally distinct thing from the prideful zest with which John Brown, father, taxpayer, and pew-renter turns to James Jones, ditto, ditto, and ditto, and says:
"Notice that chap who nodded to me? That's 'Corky Bunch,' who fought and nearly killed Jimmy Upcut out in Colorado last year. He rents his flat from us."
Or it may be that James Jones will say something like this:
"That's 'Billy the Biff' who just said 'morning' to me. You know—leader of the Redfire gang. Said to have killed nine men. But they can't send him to the chair because he does all the thug work round election time for Barney O'Brill, the 'teenth ward boss. Ain't such a bad looker, is he? Swell dresser, too. Buys his shirts at our store." And Jones, who is as law-abiding a citizen as ever lived, turns to his friend a face which is pink with satisfaction.
Again—not long after my last return to New York, I made the acquaintance of a nice old gentleman who is the senior partner of a wholesale stationery concern, father of a fine family, deacon of a Harlem church, member of a citizens' committee, and much more of that sort of thing. Likewise, and for certain reasons which are not important enough to explain, I was introduced to him under another name than my own. He had been to New York's Chinatown once or twice in tow of a professional guide, who, knowing what was expected of him, had filled his patron with amazing stories of the quarter and its residents. The guide had, furthermore, introduced his charge to the fake opium joints, the fan-tan games and alleged highbinder clubs which are in turn arranged for the reception and the mulcting of visitors. Therefore the old fellow felt fully capable of playing leader himself the next time a collection of country cousins visited town, and I was invited to join the party.
"You needn't hesitate to come along," gurgled the ancient, cheerfully. "When you are with any one that knows Chinatown as well as I do, there isn't a bit of danger, believe me. It's only strangers to the place that are likely to get into trouble."
And this to me!
However, I went, and the large glee with which he pointed out, as hatchet-men and gamblers and lottery keepers and opium-joint proprietors and members of various tongs and of this society and that guild, inoffensive Chinese, who were in reality shopkeepers or laundry-men who had come down to Pell or Mott streets in order to have a night off, was a sight to see. It vouched for the industrious imagination of the professional guide, and when it was all over, and we were on our way uptown again, he beamingly remarked that unless people mixed with all sorts and conditions of folk they—the people—were likely to get very narrow. In other words, you could only round out your life by rubbing shoulders with disreputables.
I have already offered, or rather suggested, one explanation of this social phenomenon, and now another occurs to me. Haven't you, when a youngster, thrust your toes out under the blankets on a winter's morning for the express purpose of accentuating the comfort of the bed when you drew them back again? I guess you have. And so, I think, respectable people like to emphasize their respectability by bringing it into close, if temporary, contact with its antithesis. A shudderful joy results, no small part of which arises from the conviction that we are not like unto the other men.
Something like that which I have just set down came to me on the second day of my return to New York, while riding downtown on a Sixth Avenue car. It was Monday morning, and three-fourths of the passengers were bargain-hunting women, judging by their conversation. On the rear platform were two "moll-buzzers," or pickpockets, who make a specialty of robbing the fair sex, and sitting near the front door was a stylish, "well-groomed," reserved woman, whom I at once recognized as "Angeles Sal," or Sarah Danby, one of the cleverest women who ever stole a purse. There came to me a thrill of the feeling of which I have been speaking. I felt a pleasant glow of superiority in that I, alone, of all the people in the car, was so well versed in the affairs of the Under World that I knew that some of the dwellers therein were on board. I awaited the things which I felt sure were soon to happen.
They came somewhat more quickly than I had imagined.
At Herald Square the car stopped to let a half dozen of the women alight. Besides the "moll-buzzers," there were two or three other men on the rear platform, which was, in consequence, somewhat crowded. This was precisely as the pickpockets desired. Scarcely had the last woman gotten into the street when there came a loud shriek from one of them.
She turned, grabbed the hand-rail of the car that by this time had begun to move, and yelling, "I've been robbed!" ran along with it without loosening her grip. Naturally, every remaining passenger jumped to his feet, and I saw "Angeles Sal" press into a group that were clustered at the windows.
Events followed with surprising celerity. The car halted with a jerk, one of the "moll-buzzers"—the "stall," by the way—opened the near platform gate, jumped into the roadway, and disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him. The other seemed to vanish into thin air and simultaneously a police officer appeared at both front and rear doors.
Instinctively my eyes sought Sal. She was in the act of getting out from among the others, and by a single swift movement stood in front of me. Then she made a scarcely audible sound with her lips—something like the ghost of a kiss—and as her right hand passed to the left, apparently for the purpose of opening a hand-bag which was hanging from her left wrist, I felt something drop into the folds of a newspaper which I was carrying in an upright fashion between my hands, its lower edges resting on my knee. The woman had recognized me as of the Under World, had given me the thief's call for help and caution, and had planted her "swag" on me without further parley. Indeed, there wasn't time for talk, only time for action. The next instant, the excited little woman who had been "touched," burst into the car, accompanied by a third policeman.
"Now, madam," said the detective, brusquely, "is there anybody here whom you think lifted your purse? If so, pick the person out and we will go to the station house." The woman hesitated, glancing from face to face.
"This is infamous," said Sal, in a tone of well-bred anger to a lady who was standing by her side. "We are all of us, so it seems, practically accused of theft." And she moved toward the front door.
"You will excuse me, lady," said the officer on guard, "but you will please stop in the car until this party has said her say out."
Sal flushed indignantly, and drew herself up with magnificent haughtiness. Then she pulled out her cardcase.
"If you don't know me, my good man," she remarked, quietly, "I suppose you have heard of my husband?" And she passed him a pasteboard.
The detective simply wilted as he glanced at the card.
"I beg your pardon, madam," he said. "No offense meant; line of duty, you know, madam." And, mumbling more apologies, he helped her off the car and made way for her through the crowd that had gathered.
Later I learned that Sal had "sized up" the detective as unknown to her. She had the audacity to make it appear—on her cards—that she was the wife of a certain member of the judiciary who was the owner of an international reputation.
It should be added that the cards stood her in good stead on several occasions. But when the shining light of the bench began to get polite notes from department stores in which he was requested to be good enough to ask his wife to be somewhat more discreet in her methods of "obtaining expensive goods, inasmuch as some of our assistants to whom Mrs. —— is not known, may cause her inconvenience," he began to investigate. These communications meant that she had been caught shoplifting and had only squeezed out of the scrapes by her grande dame manner and her visiting cards.
In the meantime I had been sitting with Sal's swag "fiddled," or concealed, in my newspaper and expecting a squeal from the "touched" one every instant.
The squeal didn't come off, however. Neither did the excited little woman identify her despoiler. So the police departed and the car went on. I took an early opportunity of disembarking, and in a convenient place examined that which the newspaper contained—I don't mean the news.
Sal's graft proved to be a small gold or gilt purse, which contained a few bills and a couple of valuable rings, which were evidently on their way to a jeweler's for repairs. One was a cluster ring of diamonds and rubies that had had its hoop broken. The other had two big, white stones, set gypsy fashion—it was a man's ring, or rather the stones were so set. But one of the diamonds having loosened had been removed and sewed up in a bit of muslin which, in turn, was secured to the ring itself. The purse evidently belonged to a woman.
Now, you would have thought that the moment that the cry of "thief" was raised, the owner of the rings would have assured herself that the valuables were all right, and would remain so. That thought by the same token would mark you as a denizen of the Over instead of the Under World.
Angeles Sal was not only an expert with her hands, but also a student of human nature. For that matter most "guns" are those whose graft is somewhat out of the ordinary. So, when the "squeal" was put up, she kept a keen eye on the women passengers and saw most of them slap their hands on that part of their persons where their valuables were hidden. The action was involuntary, as it always is in such cases. It told Sal all she wanted to know.
She selected to "touch" a woman who was carrying a suede hand-bag, the fastenings of which were of the dumb-bell order. This woman had, when the outcry was raised, spasmodically touched the lower part of the bag, felt it a moment, and, satisfied, turned her attention to the crowd outside. This was Sal's cue, and it was an easy matter for her to "teaze" the bag open, extract the purse, and re-shut the former. Her knowledge of everyday people's nature had taught her that if the idea of the rings being safe was once fixed in their owner's mind the latter would, in consequence, be safer to "touch" than she would be under ordinary circumstances.
This reminds me that a good many of the successful "get-aways" of the Powers that Prey are due to an insight into the workings of the human mentality rather than to agile fingers or elaborate kits of tools. If you know what the other man is going to do next, he is yours, or rather his belongings are. This is an aphorism that is always in order in the Under World. So it is that "guns" are always studying the art of forecasting. So well are most "plants" arranged, in consequence, that, for the most part, when they fail it is on account of the interposition of the unexpected rather than from any defects in the plan of campaign.
If the foregoing story interests you at all it will probably be on the score of its being an illustration of the so-called "honor among thieves." In other words, you will have come to the conclusion that Sal, thinking that she recognized in me a member of the Under World, threw herself and her "swag" on my presumed "honor," trusting to luck for us to meet again and "divvy" on the usual terms that exist between pal and pal; for, in all cases of a "touch," the parties to it share alike. Now, as a matter of fact, Sal's motive was of an entirely different kind. She knew that she was in a tight place, saw one chance of saving her booty, and took it. That was all that it amounted to, and, from her point of view, she did perfectly right. Newspapers and cheap novels are responsible for a whole lot of romantic humbug in regard to pickpockets and their doings, from the time of Robin Hood down, including the "thieves' honor" proposition.
It is proper for me to add that I advertised the purse and the rings as being "found," and they were, in due time, restored to their owner.
I have often been asked as to whether "honor among thieves" is fact or fiction. The question is not easy to answer. In the first place, honor is a relative term, its interpretation, so it seems to me, depending on place, person and circumstance. Those casuists of the cynical sort who affirm that all human motive is based on selfishness, will hardly except the attribute in question from their generalization.
However open to criticism this same generalization is, so far as it applies to the average citizen, I am certainly inclined to accept it when the crook is concerned. The business of attaching to yourself things that don't belong to you is plainly of a very selfish nature. It has its inception as well as its execution in a desire to get as much possible pleasure with as little possible trouble as may be, and that, too, while ignoring the incidental rights of anybody and everybody.
This statement, as I take it, is a pretty fair definition of selfishness of any and every description. As most motives take color from the acts from which they spring or to which they relate, it follows that the "honor" which we are pleased to think of as existing between rogues, is in reality a something which is prompted by a due regard for the persons or the purses of the self-same individuals. This distinguishes the honor that obtains in the Under World from that which is mostly in evidence in the Over World. In the latter instance the factor of one's good name or character is involved; it is absent in the former. From this characterization you will infer, as I intend you shall, that the "honor" of the Powers that Prey is but a poor sort of a thing after all, and is, as I have intimated, but personal interest more or less thinly disguised.
Still, sometimes the disguise is so clever that it looks like the real thing—to the outsider; but "wise" people rarely fail in tracing the reasons which prompt a rogue to refuse to give away a pal. Even when his doing so means a long term in prison as against immunity if he would only use his tongue to "peach" on his associate and therefore cause that person's conviction.
In such cases the newspapers, so I've noticed, are apt to give the mum one a species of glorification which is never deserved. I want the words set up in italics; they deserve that distinction. Let me repeat, the crook who cannot be got to "flash" on his gang, either by the third degree at the "Front Office"—the often brutal inquisition at police headquarters—the prison chaplain, or the district attorney's staff, is never dumb because his "honor" prompts him to remain so. It is his self-interest that bids him keep his mouth shut.
Some seven years ago, a bank in a little New Jersey town, about fifty miles due west of New York, was one night "done up" in good shape. The "peter-men," of whom there were four, secured something like eighteen thousand dollars in greenbacks, to say nothing of a bunch of negotiable papers and a couple of small jewel safes, weighing about a hundred pounds each. The rich residents of the locality used to store their sunbursts, tiaras and rings in these safes, which, by the way, were kept in the main safe of the bank. This was known to the gang who turned the trick, and the big safe proving easy, the little ones "fell" in consequence.
The "guns" who were on the job hailed from the West, and had been working together for some years. They were all "good people," as the detective phrase is for clever crooks. There was "Bandy" Schwarz, an old-timer, who had seen the inside of every "stir and jug" west of the Missouri; "Ike" Mindin, otherwise "Beak," an expert with the drills and levers; "Sandy" Hope, a notorious cracksman of Chicago birth and criminal reputation, who, at the time of the New Jersey "plant," was wanted in Kansas City in connection with the shooting of a watchman of a dry goods store; and another man who shall be nameless, so far as I am concerned. I may add, however, that at this writing he is living in New York, and has a fairly prosperous undertaking business (of all things!), having "squared it" for a half dozen or more years. If he should happen to read this, he will know that the small, weazen-faced chap who used to be about a good deal with Pete Dolby's gang in the old days in Chicago, isn't ungrateful. Following the breaking up of Dolby's crowd, through the stool-pigeon, "Dutch Joe," I would many a time have had to "carry the banner," or walk the streets all night if it hadn't been for this man, who was always ready to give up a bed or a cup of coffee.
As I've said before, the "get-away"—that is, the method of escaping with the "swag"—is always carefully worked out by the framers of a "plant," or proposed robbery. In this case it was of a rather elaborate sort. The safe was to be drilled and jimmied instead of being blown, because of the proximity of houses to the bank. Then the plunder was to be loaded into a buggy, the wheels of which were rubber-tired, while the horses' hoofs were wrapped in cloth to deaden their sound. The buggy was then to be driven to an appointed spot near South Amboy, where a cat-boat in charge of Sandy would be in waiting, to which the articles were to be transferred. Then the craft was to be rowed off to a fishing-ground, where the day was to be spent, and as night fell, was to head for Gravesend Bay, where it was believed that the valuables could be gotten on shore without suspicion, either as fish or as the outfit of a fishing party.
But the unexpected happened. The "getaway" was begun all right, but a couple of miles from the bank the buggy broke down under the weight of the two safes. This was about four-thirty and in June. Now, it so happened that the cashier of the bank was to take his vacation during the following week, and in consequence he was getting to his work ahead of time, and on this particular morning reached the bank at five-thirty o'clock. Fifteen minutes later, the local police and population were scouring the surrounding country, the "Front Offices" of New York, Philadelphia and other big cities were being notified, and a net, so to speak, was drawn tightly around the scene of the "touch" from which there was no escape. It all ended by Bandy and Mindin being caught while trying to "cache" the safes in a wood near to the scene of the breakdown. The third man had disappeared with the currency. Mindin tried to scare the pursuing Jerseymen by shooting, but got filled with buckshot in consequence.
Bandy absolutely refused to "peach" on his pals. He was bullied, coaxed, threatened, prayed over, offered immunity and in other ways tempted to tell. It turned out afterwards that the cause of all this effort on the part of the police was that somehow or other they had got a hint that Sandy Hope was mixed up with the job, and they wanted him the worst way on account of the Kansas City affair. In other words, they were willing to let a "peter-man" go for the sake of getting a man-killer. Bandy stood it out, though, and was finally sentenced to seven years in prison.
Not long before I last left for Europe, I happened into a prosperous, hybrid sort of store in a pretty town about an hour's ride from New York. It was one of those shops where you can buy nearly everything, from stationery to Japanese ware, with tobacco, candy and dress goods in between. Behind the counter, with a blue apron covering his comfortable paunch and the capital O legs, from which he got his "monacher," was Bandy himself.
Now, the etiquette of the Under World doesn't permit of one pal even recognizing another in the everyday world unless the "office" is given and such a recognition is desired—and safe. Hence, while I knew that Bandy knew me and he knew that I knew it, I gave no sign of that fact. Yet as he passed me the pack of cigarettes for which I had asked, my forefinger tapped the back of his hand twice, which, in the sign language of the Under World, is equivalent to "I want to chin with you." Bandy coughed a slight, guttural cough and gave a hardly noticeable jerk of his head toward the rear of the store. He had replied that he was willing to "chin" and that the room at the back was all right for that purpose. Whither we went when the other customer in the place had been served and had departed.
I needn't tell about the reminiscences we exchanged. I will come direct to that part of our conversation which had to do with his exhibition of crook "honor" on the lines related.
"You certainly wouldn't 'beef,'" I said tentatively. "Many a man fixed like you were would have let his clapper loose all right. And the newspapers did you proud. 'Twas a fine front you put up, and the gang ought to be proud of you."
"Proud nothing!" said the reformed crook, impatiently. "And seems to me, Cig., that you've caught the patter of those nutty newspaper guys who is always stinging the dear public about guys who never go back on pals, because they're built that way and all the rest of such guff."
He stopped disgustedly.
"Here's the straight of it. Up to the time that we frisked a joint in Chi that happened to be owned by the brother of a cop, we—the four of us—was doing well and had a lot of fall money [large reserve sum for use in case of emergencies]. Well, the gang agreed that if one of us was copped out, the others would look out for his piece of fall money, and, what was more, while he was put away, he should get a share of one-eighth of all touches, which same could be sent to his wife or kids, as the case might be. That was good enough, wasn't it?"
I nodded and Bandy went on.
"That was the reason why I didn't turn mouthpiece. Another was," he smiled grimly, "that it was quite clearly understood that any one of us who opened his mouth to the police once, wouldn't do so twice. Sandy Hope, I mind me, was fond of announcing this fact in a kind of casual way. Not that we mistrusted each other, but it was well for everybody to know that the man who tried any stalling off would have his light put out just as soon as it could be arranged."
"But," I said, "supposing that the crowd didn't keep its word—got away with the fall-money and the percentage on the touches while you were in jail?"
"In that case," answered Bandy, without a moment's hesitation, "all bets would be off. The gentleman in custody would make a cry that would be heard in every detective bureau in America. There would be an immediate decrease in the population of crooks. Why, I know enough about Sandy to get his neck——" he stopped suddenly.
"And was this, too, understood by the gang?"
Bandy shifted uneasily on his seat.
"You make me weary—honest you do, Cig. What's the matter with you? You know just as well as I do that every gang of crooks knows just what I've been telling you. If it weren't true, what's to keep them from squealing every time they get arrested?"
In this last sentence Bandy summed up the whole question of honor among thieves, and for this reason I have told the foregoing at some length. The repentance of a thief rarely, if ever, includes restitution. This statement anyhow applies to the veterans. With the younger men it is somewhat otherwise, and then usually through the administrations of the prison chaplain. But after having served a prison term for the first time the young crook adopts the sophistry and cynicism of his elders in crime. The only time that a thief feels regret for his misdeeds is when the latter has been fruitless, or when the proceeds have been lost to him.
What I have said about crooks not peaching on each other does not apply to the professional stool-pigeon, or "mouthpiece," who, by the way, is part and parcel of every police force in every city and town in this country and abroad. But these fellows can hardly be classed as genuine crooks, at least in the great majority of instances. They are rather the Pariahs of the Under World—hated, despised and tolerated for precisely the same reason that curs are allowed to roam through the streets.
It goes without saying that as long as the "mouthpiece" forms an integral part of the police system of civilization, so long will there be a real, although not admitted, alliance between the Powers that Prey and the Powers that Rule, with an incidental weakening and demoralization of the latter.
Finally, there are times and seasons in which the Under World of its own volition gives up an offender. But these occasions are rare, and only when it is felt that the individual must be sacrificed for the good of the community. Usually there is a political pact in these rare happenings.
[JOSIAH FLYNT—AN APPRECIATION]
By Alfred Hodder
What first struck me was his prodigality in talk. He scattered treasures of anecdote and observation as Aladdin of the wonderful lamp orders his slave to scatter gold pieces. The trait is not common amongst men of letters; they are the worst company in the world; they are taking, not giving; if they have not a notebook and a pencil brutally before you in their hands, they have a notebook and pencil agilely at work in their heads; your pleasure is their business; the word that comes from their lips is but a provocative to gain one more word from you; the smile that answers your smile is but a grimace; and their good stories, until they have been published, are locked behind their lips like books in a safe-deposit box. Flynt had no safe-deposit box for his good stories, and no gift for silence; the anecdotes in his books are amazing; the details of just how he got them are still more amazing; he never learned to use up his material, to economize, and he was more amazing than his material.
He invited me the night I met him to go with him on one of his wanderings. A Haroun-al-Rashed adventure it seemed to me. I closed with the offer at once and asked how I should dress. I had an idea that I must wear a false beard and at least provide myself with a stiletto and a revolver, and be ready to use them. "Why, you will do just as you are," he said. "I shall go just as I am." He did not know it, but he did not tell the truth. He did not change his clothes, but at the first turn into side streets he changed his bearing, the music of his voice, his vocabulary. I could scarce understand one word in five. He was a finished actor; Sir Richard Burton, of course, was his ideal; always in the Under World he passed unsuspected; always from the start of our tramping together he had to explain me. I could never pick up the manner, and indeed was too amused to try; his habit was to explain me in whispers as a dupe, and I had once to rescue him from a fight brought on because he would not consent to sharing with his interlocutor the picking of my pockets. I had more than once to rescue him; he had the height and body of a slim boy of fourteen, but just to see what the beast would do he would have teased my lord the elephant, and he took a drubbing as naturally as any other hardship.
A finished actor, I have written; and an actor knowing to his fingertips many parts. One instance must suffice. I figured usually—I have said it—as a dupe. I was on this night cast for the part of an accomplice, and he for the part of a bold, bad breaker of safes and doors and windows. The character was conceived in an instant. An instant before we were two very tired, very quiet men, strolling home through the Bowery in a bitter, drizzling rain at three o'clock in the morning.
"Say, mate, what's the chanst for a cup o' coffee?"
The speaker was a fully togged out A. B. for the service of the U. S., and on his cap were the letters Oregon. To me the disguise was perfect. He did a bit of the sailor's hornpipe on that slippery, glistening pavement where the rain fell and froze under electric lights.
"The chances are good," said Flynt; and he led the way into a house near by.
The front of the house was as unlighted as respectability demands a house should be at three o'clock in the morning; but there was a dim light at a side door. We went in under the dim light and found music and dancing, and little tables at which we could be served with almost anything except coffee. The "Oregon" took "Whisky straight—Hunter's if you've got it."
"Out at the Philippines?" asked Flynt.
"Sure thing."
"Came round the Cape?"
"Did I? Say, I'll tell you about that."
"Battle of Santiago?"
The sailor was in the midst of the battle of Santiago when Flynt smiled and said quietly:
"Have you seen the Lake Shore push yet?"
To me, at that time, the words were pure enigma, but the color faded out of the sailorman's cheeks, and he dropped back in his chair and said:
"Hell, partner, who are you?"
The rest of the dialogue was swift; I could not follow it; I could only memorize.
"Where did you get those duds?"
"Bought 'em for nine dollars at No. — Bowery."
"What is the lay work?"
"About four per. But the war's played out here; I'm going to shift up State. Where did you get your duds?"
"Just got out."
"Thought your hands looked white. Where did you do your time?"
"Joliet."
"Joliet!—why, I did five years there myself."
And they fell to discussing wardens. Flynt knew the names of the wardens.
"Say, have you got anything on?"
"A little job to-night uptown."
"Can't you put me next?"
"It's my friend's."
This with a nod toward me. The little job uptown was mine. Never having heard before of the little job uptown I declined to put any one next; and we gave the sailorman coin to do a hornpipe for the sitters, and left, presumably, to do the little job. We left in an odor of sanctity, almost of reverence; we were supposed to be accomplished cracksmen, and in high fortune; princes and millionaires of the Under World.
A finished actor—I come back to that—and the streets were his stage, and the first chance word his cue. In a house he was not at home; when he put on the uniform he must wear at dinner, he put off his memory, his experience, his wit. His anecdotes, his good stories, lived in his "business suit," and refused to wear a Prince Albert or a Tuxedo even, and waved him farewell at the mere sight of a crush-hat. Make no mistake; the anecdotes were as clean as what he has published; but he was to the end a boy; he was shy; and except on his own stage he was shy to the point of silence or of stammering. He knew books; the books dealing with the Under World he knew rather well; but I fancy he never read them except when he was ill. His book was the men in the street; any man, in any street; policemen, cabby, convict, or men of gentle breeding; him he would read from dawn to dawn very shrewdly and gaily, so long as the tobacco was good; and if the tobacco was not good he would still read. I have given one instance of his getting under a man's guard, of his turning him inside out and inspecting him, not unkindly. It was his habit to get under the guard of everyone he met, to turn them inside out, and inspect them, not unkindly. He talked to any one, every one, who gave him an opening; but the man who got the first hearing was the vagabond. In our strollings we never passed one without a halt, and an interview, and copy. "They are all friends, humbugs," he said philosophically; "I have been one of them myself." But he always gave generously for his means, and though he had begun by censuring me for giving, for giving in ignorance, he expected me always also to give.
Again, one anecdote must serve for many. The scene was Fifth Avenue, two blocks north of Washington Square. The petitioner was a well-set-up, firm-built Englishman, clean-shaven, aged twenty-five, who said to me:
"I beg your pardon?"
"Yes?" I said and halted.
"It's rather beastly, but I need a drink and I haven't a penny—not a sou."
I said "Diable," and put my hand into my pocket. The man's clothes, accent and bearing presumed so much that if he needed a drink he needed food. At once Flynt intervened. What was said I do not know; the two stepped aside; but presently there was laughter from both Flynt and my beggar; and we three sat at table later, and told tales, and flushed one another's secrets. My beggar was a gentleman ranker out on a spree (it is Kipling of course), damned to all eternity, but his guard once broken he was amusing, and Flynt knew the trick to break his guard.
"Why, after I was dropped from the service, and it came to selling my wife's jewels, I had rather beg than that, and I cannot get work," he said simply. "They say my clothes are too good. What the deuce is the matter with my clothes? But begging is not so bad; I make a good thing of it."
At the moment the point I wish to make is that Flynt knew his vagrant in the open. He had a profound contempt for the books written by frock-coated gentlemen who have academic positions, and say "sociology," and measure the skulls and take the confessions of the vagrant in captivity. Skull for skull he believed there was small difference between that of the first scamp and the first minister of the Gospel. I set that down for what it is worth as his opinion. The confessions of a vagrant in captivity are always, he said, false. This I fancy is almost true.
I had chose a passably dreary seminary course in Harvard in which all the literature of criminology had been got up and reported. I myself had looked into some of the books—too many—some is too many. Five minutes of Flynt's talk turned my books into a heap of rubbish. Five hours' stroll with him made me forget that the rubbish heap existed. At his best, and it was at his best that I knew him, he was what he wished to be—the foremost authority among those who knew him in the side streets.
He had paid for his knowledge—paid with his person. "Old Boston Mary" I believe to be in part fiction; I could never surprise the little man into a confession; but he has lain on the trucks of a Pullman and in the blinding cinders and dust seen his companion lose grip from sheer weariness, and go—to meet Boston Mary. He had tightened his own grip, and been sorry. He could do no more.
[JOSIAH FLYNT—AN IMPRESSION]
By Emily M. Burbank
In "My Life," Josiah Flynt says, "I have spoken of Arthur Symons' interest in my first efforts to describe tramp life. I think it was he and the magazine editors who abetted me in my scribblings, rather than the university and its doctrines of 'original research.'... His (Symons') books and personal friendship, are both valuable to me, but for very different reasons. I seldom think of Symons the man, when I read his essays and verses, and I only infrequently think of his books, or of him as a literary man at all, when we are together."
Josiah Flynt not only greatly admired Arthur Symons, the distinguished Englishman, as poet, master of prose, and critic, but had an affectionate regard for him, one expression of which was his use of the nickname, "Symonsky." While Flynt's guest in Berlin, Symons had some difficulty in persuading a letter-carrier that a communication from London was for Arthur Symons, Esq., and not for some Herr Symonsky! The Slavic twist to the name amused Flynt, who seized upon it. His shy, affectionate nature found an outlet in renaming close friends.
After one of his visits to London, I asked Flynt if he had seen much of Symons.
"Symonsky put me up, you know," he replied; then with a quick, side glance and a smile, as he lighted a cigarette, "but, to be perfectly frank, when I went to bed, he was getting up!"
Here we have defined in a sentence the difference between the two men. Their natures, like their lives, were never parallel; they only just touched one another's imaginations in passing!
Flynt was then studying London's Under World—the great city's blackest corners and darkest ways; while Symons, as it chanced, was seldom out of the lime-light circle of London concert halls, preparatory to writing his "London Nights."
Both men were the sons of clergymen, and launched in life's calmest, safest waters, at about the same time, though on opposite sides of the Atlantic. It was their own volition which led them to take to life's high seas. Symons went from his small town to London, which, in spite of continental sojourns, has remained his permanent mooring. Flynt took to the "open" at an early age, and tied up in whatever harbor the storm drove him. American by blood and birth, he felt at home in Russia, Germany, France, or the British Isles, if given the Mask of No Identity.
One of the swiftest currents of London life flows down the Strand. There, Josiah Flynt, in what disguise he chose, could do his "work," and, when he would, step over the sill of the old Temple and find a welcome from his friend, who had chambers in Fountain Court, that silent square of green, which slopes to the Thames, and is kept fresh and cool by its jets of water and great shade trees. Symons lived in the building to the right, after entering the Court, and up a winding flight of old stone steps.
It was in these bachelor quarters of his (he has since married and moved away) that I first saw Symons, the year after Flynt's "Tramping with Tramps" had appeared in the Century Magazine. I had been invited, through a mutual friend, for tea, one cool afternoon in June, and we sat on an immense tufted sofa, before the grate, while our host stood, back to the fire, and talked of other people's work.
I can see him now, big, blond and very English, his hands deep in the pockets of his gray tweeds; an old, brown velveteen jacket, faded blue socks and soft tan slippers, harmonizing with his "stage-setting"—well mellowed by time. Books lined the walls, and a spinnet, on which Symons played, when alone, stood in one corner. He had prepared tea and elaborate sweets for us, and then forgot to offer them, so busy was he, talking of his friend, Christina Rossetti, whose poems he had just edited! When he spoke of Olive Schreiner, some one asked him if she was interesting, and I remember quite well Symons' reply: "I stood all one night listening to her talk!"
Even at nineteen, in his "Introduction to the Study of Browning," commended by Robert Browning himself, Symons had proved himself to be an artist, and he is always lyric. Flynt was never an artist in the same sense, in his literary work—and epic to the end! He knew and understood the ways of men, and had the gift of words; but when he wrote for publication, his imagination seemed chained to earth. It may be that he was too much "on the inside" to get his subject in perspective. Then, too, it must be remembered that Flynt was the tramp writing, not the literary man tramping.
Armed with ancestors of distinction, birth, training, education and the influence of cultured parents, he abhorred all social anchors and obligations. I remember his once saying to me, "My mother has sent me my books from Berlin. Her idea is to anchor me, I think, but I'll leave them boxed for a while, for I'm uncertain about my plans." He was "always a-movin' on!"
Flynt was not a great reader, yet he had a wide knowledge of books—gleaned one scarcely knew when. The child of book-loving parents, he started out in life with a valuable equipment—an innate respect for books and their authors. In every case, however, I think that his chief interest lay in the man, not his literary output. In spite of the sordid realism of his writings, the manner of his last years, and the regretted circumstances of his death, there was a poetic vein, which, like a single, golden thread, ran in and out, the warp and woof of his mind. This betrayed itself in conversations with intimates, and when discussing books of travel or their authors. Especially did Sir Richard Burton and George Borrow fire his imagination. "Lavengro" and its author were discussed during one of our last conversations.
The "white road" and the sea may have meant something to him as such, but to me he never spoke of either, except as highways; hence I conclude that as such only did they make their appeal to him. Man, not nature, attracted him, and it was always man in the meshes of civilization.
He was a victim to morbid self-consciousness, and this was one reason for his avoiding people of the class in which he was born. Give him a part in a play—he was gifted as an actor—the disguise of a vagabond, or whisky with which to fortify himself, and the man's spirit sprang out of its prison of flesh, like an uncaged bird.
This effect which whisky had upon him, led Flynt to give it as a reason for the "perpetual thirst" of some. He used to say, "Whisky makes it possible for me to approach men with a manner which ignores all class barriers. Pass the whisky and it's man to man—hobo, hod-carrier or king!"
Flynt was a slave to tobacco, which he preferred in the form of cigarettes. One never thinks of him without one, so no wonder he was called "Cigarette" in Trampdom!
His family thought that the too early use of tobacco stunted his growth, for, when seated, the upper part of his body, being broad and strong, suggested a larger man than he proved to be when on his feet. He stood not more than five feet three inches. He was naturally thin and nervous, with quick movements of the body, and an ever-changing expression of face—a face clean-shaven and rather boyish. None of his photographs give any idea as to his appearance, because the abiding impression received from him was produced by his magnetic personality and individual mannerisms, one of which was a way of dropping his head forward and looking up through frowning eyebrows. He decorated his speech with Russian, French or German words, thrown into a sentence haphazard, and spoke in a voice pitched low and used rhythmically. He had an impressionable, volatile nature, and seemed really to become one of the race which at the moment filled his mental vision.
Flynt's ethical code was that of the Under World, and, in some respects, superior to the one in use on the Surface of Life.
A prominent sociologist said recently, "Flynt had the field to himself; there is no one to take his place at present. Few men who live and know the life of the Under World, as he did, have his mental equipment. Many can retain the facts, but are unable to handle them as satisfactorily; then, too, to be friend and companion of tramps and criminals, and of men like Tolstoy and Ibsen, is to possess a wide range of octaves in human experience and mental grasp!"
Flynt's talent for languages enabled him to pick up the vernacular, even of underground Russia, in an incredibly short time.
As he says himself, Wanderlust, not the scientist's curiosity to verify theories, led him on to his well-merited distinction as criminologist, and down to his ultimate undoing, at the early age of thirty-eight.
"Beyond the East the sunrise,
Beyond the West the sea,
And the East and West the Wanderlust
That will not let me be."
While Flynt had most of the appetites, good and bad, possible to man, he was not a weak man, but a physically selfish one, strong in his determination to "enjoy." Condemned to an early death by the excessive use of stimulants, he agreed to write his "Life," did so, and then shut himself in his room in Chicago, to pass out—unafraid, unaccompanied, uncontrolled—a characteristic ending!
That Josiah Flynt has started on his long journey, that this world will see him no more, is impossible for his near friends to realize, so accustomed are they to his periodical disappearances and his unfailing return to their midst.
He who preferred the byways, the crooked winding paths, has at last struck the broad, straight road where there is no turning back. It is he who must wait for us now, as we push on, with his cheerful "Good luck! Be good! Don't forget me!" ringing in our ears, and in our hearts Stevenson's words:
"He is not dead, this friend, not dead,
But in the path we mortals tread,
Got some few trifling steps ahead,
And nearer to the end,
So that you, too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as, face to face, this friend
You fancy dead....
"Push gaily on, strong heart! The while
You travel forward, mile by mile,
Till you can overtake,
He strains his eyes to search his wake,
Or, whistling as he sees you through the break,
Waits on the stile."
(R. L. S.)
Flynt often talked of his death after disease fastened upon him, but always with an inconsequence as to what lay beyond the grave—not bravado, but the philosopher's acquiescence to the inevitable, whatever it be. He had great faith in the loyalty of friends who might survive him. "So-and-so will speak a good word for me, I know!" he would say. Separation, by geographical distances, never bothered him, yet he wrote but few letters. He seemed to get satisfaction out of his belief that he and his nearest friends communicated by thought transference: "The wires are always up!" Doubtless he passed out with the conviction that this would continue.
The man's spirit remained childlike in its tender, confiding quality, and pure, in spite of the fact that he dragged his poor body through the mire of life.
His generous nature and faithful friendship have set in motion currents which are eternal.
[A FINAL WORD][2]
By Bannister Merwin
To complete the story of Josiah Flynt's life is not an easy task. His later years were lived in the open, it is true, and the details of his movements were, in every case, known to at least one of his friends; but his own love of mystery and the delight that he found in mystifying others led him to conceal from one friend what he freely told to the next.
If all his friends could come together and compare notes, the result might be a consecutive account of what he did during those years. But alas! some of them are dead. Alfred Hodder, who knew more than most of us, died only a few weeks after Josiah.
"My Life," however, makes little pretense of being a complete biography in the accepted sense. Rather it is the disjointed record of those incidents which in their combined impression brought him most nearly to the understanding of himself. The mere facts of life did not seem very important to him; feeling was everything. And few men who have set out to write their own stories have been able to show themselves as truly as he has shown himself. That is because he was essentially a man of feeling—sensitive, proud, filled with sentiment—though only his close friends may have known this of him.
When he had nearly completed his "confession," as he liked to call it, he said to me one day: "I have given them my insides." He did indeed make the strongest kind of an effort to let the world see him as he honestly saw himself—and I think he saw himself more honestly than most men do, for he was free from self-exaltation. Always he was humble about his own limitations.
If anything is to be added to what he has written about himself, it should comprise those experiences which he would have been most likely to relate, had he lived to write more. And first, doubtless, he would have told something of his work in investigating "graft" in several of our larger cities. As far as I can find, he was responsible for the introduction of the word "graft" into book English. It was a word of the Under World, and he lifted it to the upper light. The articles in McClure's Magazine, in which he exposed police corruption, were also, if I am not mistaken, the first important examples of modern "muck-raking." They are still obtainable in printed form, and Josiah probably would have said little about them in his book. But he certainly would have related with relish the week's wonder of his escape from the New York police. When the article about "graft" in New York was published, the "Powers That Be" in the metropolis were loud in their denunciation of Josiah Flynt. They swore roundly that they would make it hot for him when they caught him, and the daily press announced that he was to be arrested and compelled to make good his statements. But Josiah Flynt had disappeared. The police did not find him, and it was some time before he came back to his old haunts.
There was reason to think that the police were only "bluffing." There was also reason to think that Josiah would be able to "make good," if he were captured and examined by a police tribunal. Nevertheless he hid himself in obscure lodgings in Hoboken. An escaped criminal would not cover his tracks more carefully. The truth was that the opportunity for mystification appealed to him irresistibly. He exaggerated the necessity for concealment in order that he might enjoy to the full the sensation of being vainly hunted. For, as I have said, he always loved to make mystery. I have seen him, during a quite harmless expedition along a New York street by night, take elaborate precautions to avoid approaching strangers, on the assumption that they were "hold-up" men. Such avoidance of hypothetical dangers was to him a most fascinating game—a game which he was well qualified to play.
He found a melancholy and sentimental pleasure, too, in keeping himself in the background at times when such inaction was contrary to his happier desires. I remember that, in 1887, during the time when he was living in the Under World, after his escape from the reform school and before his appearance at his mother's home in Berlin, he made one brief and characteristic emergence which may throw light upon this trait in him. Josiah was my cousin. At that time the home of my family was in Detroit, Michigan, and one day Josiah put in an appearance at my father's office. He was ragged and unkempt, and uncertain in his account of himself. By his own story he was a detective engaged in an important case, and he asked for money enough to get him to some near city. My father tried to persuade him to go home with him to the house. The little vagabond refused, but he added: "I found out where you lived and went up and looked at the house, and I stood and watched the boys [my brother and myself] playing ball in the next lot." He had remained at the edge of the lot for some time, taking strange and wistful pleasure in his own forlornness.
Reference has been made by others to the fact that there was one romantic passion in Josiah's life. For years he worshiped from afar a girl who possessed grace, intelligence, and beauty, though so far as his friends know he never offered himself to her. In July, 1894, I was with him for a few days at his home in Berlin. He told me at that time that the girl he loved was on the continent, spending the summer at a mountain resort. He had come to the conclusion, he said, that it was time for him to go to her and declare himself. Accordingly, he did make a pilgrimage of many hundred miles to the place where she was staying, dreaming we may not guess what dreams along the way. It was many months before I saw him again. When he began to speak of the girl in the same old terms of distant adoration, I asked him about his journey of the preceding summer. "Well," he said, "I went there, and I saw her, but I didn't speak to her." "Did she see you?" I asked. "No," he answered. Again he had been the watcher by the wayside standing in shy self-effacement while the girl of his heart passed by.
A few years before his death Josiah, in what was undoubtedly an honest and serious determination to improve his health and his habits, went to Woodland Valley, in the Southern Catskills, and there had built for him a comfortable little "shack," on the grounds of a beautifully situated summer hotel. Different friends were with him during the time he spent in the mountains, but every now and again the call of the city became too strong for him to resist. While he was living at the "shack" he made a few of the conventional trips to the summits of near-by mountains, but his interest was usually centered in simply "getting to the top." The goal once reached he would enjoy for a few moments the pleasant sense of obstacles overcome, and then, after a casual glance at the "view," he would say: "Well, now let's go back." His real life at Woodland was his interest in the natives of the valley. He worked himself into close acquaintance with them, and sought to understand their point of view. Even after he had given up his shack, he still held to the valley as his place of refuge. He bought a little tract of land there and, to the time of his death, talked of building upon it a snug but permanent home.
Mr. Charles E. Burr, to whom Josiah so often refers in his narrative, supplies the story of an interesting period. I will quote him. "In the summer of 1904," he says, "I had some correspondence with Flynt, who was then in Berlin. The tone of his letters made me think that a few months in the Indian Territory, where rigid prohibition laws are enforced, would benefit him. I therefore offered him a position as car-trailer on the Southwest Division of the Saint Louis and San Francisco Railroad, with headquarters at Sapulpa, Indian Territory. The offer was accepted, and Flynt came to Sapulpa about the middle of August, by way of Galveston, Texas.
"The duties assigned to him kept him on the road much of the time. Whenever the opportunity came, I saw to it that he made the acquaintance of interesting characters who lived in the Territory and in Oklahoma. Among them were several United States deputy marshals who were known as 'killers,' and he afterwards told me that he had got from these men a fairly complete account of the 'Apache Kid' and his numerous gun-fights. I once sent Flynt to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to interview the famous Apache, Geronimo, but the old chief was in a bad humor and would not talk.
"During September horses were stolen from a car at Okmulgee, Indian Territory, and Flynt and two United States marshals went with me in pursuit of the thieves.
"The trail led us into the heavily timbered Arkansas bottoms, long the home of the outlaws and 'cattle rustlers' of the Territory. At the end of a continuous forty-mile ride we found some of the stock, and Flynt, who was not accustomed to sitting a horse, then declared that he would rather die on the prairie than ride that broncho any farther. He drove back to Okmulgee with a rancher whom I employed to take the recovered horses.
"Later, Flynt became more accustomed to a saddle, and rode to many points of interest near Sapulpa. He once told me that he had made several trips to the home of a half-breed negro who lived near a ledge of rocks called 'Moccasin Tracks,' about five miles from Sapulpa. This half-breed had a bad record. The United States marshals had him 'marked,' and planned to 'get him' at the first opportunity, but Flynt said that he was a very interesting man to talk with.
"I left Sapulpa in October, and Flynt accompanied me to Chicago, where he remained until March. He was very proud of the certificate which was issued to him when he severed his connection with the Saint Louis and San Francisco.
"These certificates are commonly called 'Letters of Identification.' Flynt always referred to his as his 'Denty,' and he took much pleasure in showing it to his friends. He gave it to me a few days before his death and asked me to keep it for him."
From this "Denty" we get a rough description of Josiah Flynt as he was in 1904. "Age, thirty-five years. Weight, one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Height, five feet five inches. Complexion, light. Hair, light. Eyes, brown." It also gives as his "Reasons for leaving the service": "Resigned. Services and conduct entirely satisfactory."
In the autumn of 1905 the insurrectionary outbreaks in Russia were assuming such proportions that a serious revolutionary war was not improbable. Josiah secured a commission from a magazine to go to Russia and investigate the situation. His health was by no means good, and his temperate life in Oklahoma had had no permanently good effect upon his habits, but he set forth eagerly to do his work. He gathered much interesting material, and he wrote the required articles. He became very ill, however, and for a long time he lay at the point of death in a German hospital. When he returned to America for the last time, in the first warm days of 1906, he was broken, changed in his looks, a feeble shadow of himself. He told me then that, while he was so near death in Germany, the two thoughts that did more than anything else to get him on his feet again were his desire to see his mother and his determination to "make good" with his articles, which were not completed until his partial convalescence had begun. I had helped to get him that Russian commission, and it seemed to be ever in his mind that, since I had "stood for him"—that was the way he put it—he must not fail. From his bed of pain he dragged himself to "make good." Loyalty such as that was one of his strongest traits. I remember that once, while he was living in the Catskills, a distant relative sent a request for some money to help him out of a difficulty. Josiah came to New York by the first train he could get, and went to one of the savings banks in which he kept his funds. The relative received the money he needed. Before returning to Woodland Josiah told me of the errand which had brought him to New York. He added: "We must always stand by the family."
It was late in 1906 that Flynt began his last task. He was sent to Chicago by the Cosmopolitan Magazine to "write up" pool-room gambling. Unable to give to this work the old energy of investigation, he was helped to a creditable showing by people who had the information he desired. He must have known that he was near the end. In every letter that he wrote to me during those last weeks he referred again and again to his having seen "mother," or his expectation of spending the next day with "mother," or of his plan to "make a short trip with mother." All his love centered more and more closely in her as death approached him, though, indeed, for years his chief thoughts had been of her. She was spending those last weeks in a suburb of Chicago, and he especially welcomed the work that took him to Chicago, because it made it possible for him to see her often.
But when, about mid-January, 1907, he came down with pneumonia, he would not let his friends admit her to his room in the Chicago hotel. She was not to witness his suffering. He died at 7 p.m., on January 20, after two hours of unconsciousness.