I marvel at the mentality of the man who can sell a farthing's worth of drugs for three and sixpence. I don't blame the man; I merely marvel at him. What is his standard of truth? What does he imagine the purpose of life to be?
Poor fellow! I fancy he is a man born with a silver knife in his mouth, as Chesterton says in another context; either that, or he is born poor in worldly goods and in spirit. He is dumped down in an out-of-joint world where money and power are honoured, where honesty is never the best policy; the poor, miserable little grub realises that he has not the ability to earn money or power honestly; but he knows that people are fools, and that a knave always gets the better of a fool.
Our laws are really funny. I can swindle thousands by selling a nostrum, but if I sign Andrew Carnegie's name on a cheque I am sent to Peterhead Prison. Britain is individualistic to the backbone. The individual must be protected, but the crowd can look after itself. If I steal a pair of boots and run for it, I am a base thief; if I turn bookie and become a welsher I have entered the higher realms of sport, and I get a certain amount of admiration ... from those who didn't plunge at my corner. I have seen a cheap-jack swindle a crowd of Forfarshire ploughmen out of a month's earnings, but not one of them thought of dusting the street with him.
Honesty must be a relative thing. Personally I will "swick" a railway company by travelling without a ticket on any possible occasion; yet, when a cycle agent puts a new nut on my motor-bike and charges a shilling I call him a vulgar thief. Of course he is; there is no romance in making a broken-down motor-cyclist pay through the nose, but a ten mile journey without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a drab world.
I once saw an article on Railway Criminals in, I think, Tit-Bits. It pointed out that the men who are convicted of swindling the railway companies have well marked facial characteristics. I recollect going to the mirror at the time and saying "Tu quoque!"
In these days I had a firm belief in physiognomy; I believed that you had only to gaze into a person's eyes to see whether he was telling the truth or not. I am wiser now that I know Peter Young. Pete is ten, and he has a clear, honest countenance. To-night I found him tinkering with the valve of my back tyre.
"Who loosened that valve?" I demanded.
"Please, sir, it was Jim Steel," he said unblushingly, and he looked me straight in the eyes.