The curiosity of the public to know all about Peace and his life need not be regarded with too despondent an eye.
If any adventurous and high-spirited youth sees anything to admire in our hero’s career he will do well to remember that the grandest successes of a criminal course are at the best but wretched failures.
Peace had probably a far smoother life than most offenders of equal activity.
Yet he spent some considerable part of his time in prison, and in the full noontide of his prosperity hardly reaped as much fruit from his misapplied talents as those talents would have yielded in any honest walk of life.
Peace’s strongly marked preference for the revolver was fatal to the picturesque development of his talents.
The truth is, that the particular offender had no special affection for blood-shedding.
Strong as were the fascinations of a criminal life, he chiefly had an eye to business.
In the heat of passion, or with a view to save himself, he was thoroughly unscrupulous about taking life, but he was not anxious to compromise himself by any needless slaughter.
Yet for coolness, promptitude, and self-reliance he has seldom been surpassed.
He never suffered himself to be betrayed into any acts of overwhelming fatuity and oversight such as those which have often led the most skilful to their ruin.