"But I, alas! grew up to a life of hardship and degradation. It would be impossible for persons in your sphere of life to understand what I now was obliged to suffer. Suitable employment I could not obtain, because I was the son of a burglar. With a father in the State prison, it was of no use for me to apply for employment at any respectable place of business. I laboured at one thing and another, sometimes engaging in the most menial employments. I also had been educated and brought up by my dear mother for a very different career. Sometimes I managed to live fairly well, sometimes I suffered. Always I suffered from the stigma of my father's crime, always in the eyes of the community in which I lived—a community, I am sorry to say, incapable, as a rule, of making correct judgments in delicate cases like these—I was looked upon as belonging to the ranks of the dishonest. It was a hard lot, and sometimes almost impossible to bear up under.
"I have spoken at length, ladies, in order that you may understand my true position; and I wish to say that I have never felt the crushing weight of my father's disgrace more deeply than I felt it last evening. This man," nodding toward the stout burglar, "came to me shortly after I had eaten my supper, which happened to be a frugal one, and said to me:—
"'Thomas, I have some business to attend to to-night, in which you can help me if you choose. I know you are a good mechanic.'
"'If it is work that will pay me,' I answered, 'I should be very glad to do it, for I am greatly in need of money.'
"'It will pay,' said he; and I agreed to assist him.
"As we were walking to the station, as the business to be attended to was out of town, this man, whose name is James Barlow, talked to me in such a way that I began to suspect that he intended to commit a burglary, and openly charged him with this evil purpose. 'You may call it burglary or anything else you please,' said he; 'property is very unequally divided in this world, and it is my business in life to make wrong things right as far as I can. I am going to the house of a man who has a great deal more than he needs, and I haven't anything like as much as I need; and so I intend to take some of his overplus,—not very much, for when I leave his house he will still be a rich man, and I'll be a poor one. But for a time my family will not starve.'
"'Argue as you please, James Barlow,' I said, 'what you are going to do is nothing less than burglary.'
"'Of course it is,' said he; 'but it's all right, all the same. There are a lot of people, Thomas, who are not as particular about these things as they used to be, and there is no use for you to seem better than your friends and acquaintances. Now, to show there are not so many bigots as there used to be, there's a young man going to meet us at the station who is greatly interested in the study of social problems. He is going along with us just to look into this sort of thing and study it. It is impossible for him to understand people of our class, or do anything to make their condition better, if he does not thoroughly investigate their methods of life and action. He's going along just as a student, nothing more; and he may be down on the whole thing for all I know. He pays me five dollars for the privilege of accompanying me, and whether he likes it or not is his business. I want you to go along as a mechanic, and if your conscience won't let you take any share in the profit, I'll just pay you for your time.'
"'James Barlow,' said I, 'I am going with you, but for a purpose far different from that you desire. I shall keep by your side, and if I can dissuade you from committing the crime you intend I shall do so; but if I fail in this, and you deliberately break into a house for purposes of robbery, I shall arouse the inmates and frustrate your crime.' Now, James Barlow," said he, turning to the stout man with a severe expression on his strongly marked face, "is not what I have said perfectly true? Did you not say to me every word which I have just repeated?"
The stout man looked at the other in a very odd way. His face seemed to broaden and redden, and he merely closed his eyes as he promptly answered:—