Well, well! the fashions of society obtain among thieves as well as the principles. A shop lifter ranks in a higher grade than a house thief.
I talked with Allen some time, and tried to show her that whatever others might do was no excuse for her in wrong doing. At last she admitted it; but wound up by saying,—
"Ise got such an itching in my fingers for it, I couldn't help taking the things."
The patience which is required to inculcate right principles, where wrong ones have been practiced for half a century, is incalculable. But it does not come in comparison with that which is exercised towards us by the long-suffering Father of our spirits.
XVIII.
CALLAHAN AGAIN.
I stood by the mush-boiler, one morning, calculating the probabilities of having that delicacy well cooked by eleven o'clock, so that a second edition might be issued before night, when I heard the cry out in the prison,—
"Callahan is coming! Callahan is coming! they've had an awful row at the shop!"
I had some idea of what a row with Callahan meant. I had been told that she had snatched the Master's wig from his head, torn it in bits, and scattered it to the winds; that she had pulled the Deputy's watch from his pocket, and stamped it beneath her feet; that she had ripped their coats open with her fingers, and scratched their faces like a cat. I had heard that she gloried in being the worst tempered woman in the shop, in being stronger than a man, and bragged that it took two to confine her. To me she had always been respectful and obedient, even when in solitary.
Once, when I saw her speak while marching into prison, I "admonished" her.
"Callahan, you know it is against the rules to talk when you are coming in; you won't do it again?"