"Just look at the effect this sort of business has had on our politics! We Americans are dead. New ideas, discussion of fundamental political principles are fomenting everywhere but here. A Paris cab-driver thinks more about the theory of government than our congressman. We Americans sit back—our feet on the table—puff out our chests and say 'complete and absolute liberty for all time was decreed by the fathers in 1789.' How many men do you know who ever seriously questioned that proposition? How many Americans really believe that it takes 'eternal vigilance' to be free? No. Our Constitution is the most glorious document penned by man. It's final—it's stagnant and stinking!
"If we don't revolutionize our education, we'll rot or give up democracy. It's a clear choice. A national Tammany Hall and dizzy Roman decadence or Neo-aristocracy with restricted suffrage and hare-brained experiments in human stock breeding. If we don't learn to educate in a truer way, if we don't manage to kill this folly of finality, it's a choice between physiological decay and eugenics.
"I'm getting out of everything else—can't see anything but education. No more personal charity, no more checks to shoddy philanthropies. All the money I can lay my hands on goes into a trust fund to finance an educational insurrection. It's the only revolution I'm interested in.
"I tried to write about it. But—hell—people won't take me seriously. I knew somebody would giggle if I talked, so I ground out an article. I found a man in the club laughing over it—said it was 'clever.' Well—I've put what I think about it in my will. Perhaps they won't laugh when they read that."
As I said I am not sure whether Norman gave me my ideas, or whether he voiced conclusions which were forming already in my mind. At least I owe him their concrete shape.
My work in the Tombs took on a new visage. I began to think of it as something to communicate. I went about it with the feeling of a showman or a guide. There was always someone at my shoulder, to whom I tried to explain the essentials back of the details. The routine which had begun to be mechanical was revivified. I began thinking out my book. What I wanted to do was to draw a picture of the complex phenomena of crime and to contrast with it the dead and formal simplicity of our Penal Code, to show its hopeless inadequacy. I began work on a section devoted to "Theft." From my notes and my daily experience, I tried to show the kind of people who steal, the motives which drive them to it, the means they develop towards their end, petty sneak thieves, swindle promoters, bank robbers, pickpockets, fraudulent beggars, defaulting cashiers. The reality of theft is an infinitely more tangled thing than one would suppose from reading the meagre paragraphs in our statutes which deal with "Larceny." The book grew slowly. I felt no hurry. Now and then I published sections in the magazines—"Stories of Real Criminals."
III
It was when I was getting close to thirty-five that I first saw the name: Suzanne Trevier Martin—attorney and counsellor at law. We had heard rumors of women lawyers from the civil courts. But I think she was the first to invade the Tombs. It was Tim Leery, the doorman, of Part I, who called my attention to her.
"Say," he greeted me one morning about noon, "There's a fee-male lawyer here today—looking for you. And say—she's a peach!"
I do not know why I thought he was joking. I suppose I shared the comic paper idea that most professional women were pop-eyed and short-haired. Anyhow it was a definite surprise when I caught sight of her. Leery was pointing me out to her.