"I don't mean in quality. I mean in weight. What's the sense of wastin' a lot of strength holding a cigar in your mouth when it requires no effort at all to smoke a cigarette? Why, I got it all figured out scientifically. With the same amount of energy you expend in smokin' one cigar you could smoke between thirty and forty cigarettes, and being sort of gradual, you wouldn't begin to feel half as fatigued as if you—"
"Did I understand you to say 'scientifically', or was it satirically?"
"I'm tryin' to use common, every-day words, Mr. Shallop," said Mr. Smilk, with dignity, "and I wish you'd do the same."
"Ahem! Well, light up, Cassius. I think I'll smoke a cigar. When you get through with the matches, push 'em over this way, will you? Help yourself to those chocolate creams. There's a pound box of them at your elbow, Cassius. I eat a great many. They're supposed to be fattening. Help yourself." After lighting his cigar Mr. Yollop inquired: "By the way, since you speak so feelingly I gather that you are a paroled convict."
"That's what I am. And the worst of it is, it ain't my first offense. I mean it ain't the first time I've been paroled. To begin with, when I was somewhat younger than I am now, I was twice turned loose by judges on what they call 'suspended sentences.' Then I was sent up for two years for stealin' something or other,—I forgot just what it was. I served my time and a little later on went up again for three years for holdin' up a man over in Brooklyn. Well, I got paroled out inside of two years, and for nearly six months I had to report to the police ever' so often. Every time I reported I had my pockets full of loot I'd snitched durin' the month, stuff the bulls were lookin' for in every pawn-shop in town, but to save my soul I couldn't somehow manage to get myself caught with the goods on me. Say, I'd give two years off of my next sentence if I could cross my legs for five or ten minutes. This is gettin' worse and worse all the—"
"You might try putting your left foot in the right hand drawer and your right foot in the other one," suggested Mr. Yollop.
Mr. Smilk stared. "I've seen a lot of kidders in my time, but you certainly got 'em all skinned to death," said he.
Mr. Yollop puffed reflectively for awhile, pondering the situation. "Well, suppose you remove one foot at a time, Cassius. As soon it is fairly well rested, put it back again and then take the other one out for a spell,—and so on. Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all."
Smilk withdrew his left foot from its drawer and sighed gratefully.
"As I was sayin'," he resumed, "if we could only put some kind of a curb on these here tender-hearted boobs—and boobesses—the world would be a much better place to live in. The way it is now, nine tenths of the fellers up in Sing Sing never know when they'll have to pack up and leave, and it's a constant strain on the nerves, I tell you. There seems to be a well-organized movement to interfere with the personal liberty of criminals, Mr. Poppup. These here sentimental reformers take it upon themselves to say whether a feller shall stay in prison or not. First, they come up there and pick out some poor helpless feller and say 'it's a crime to keep a good-lookin', intelligent boy like you in prison, so we're going to get you out on parole and make an honest, upright citizen of you. We're going to get you a nice job',—and so on and so forth. Well, before he knows it, he's out and has to put up a bluff of workin' for a livin'. Course, he just has to go to stealin' again. It makes him sore when he thinks of the good, honest life he was leadin' up there in the pen, with nothin' to worry about, satisfactory hours, plenty to eat, and practically divorced from his wife without havin' to go through the mill. If my calculations are correct, more than fifty per cent of the crime that's bein' committed these days is the work of paroled convicts who depended on the law to protect and support them for a given period of time. And does the law protect them? It does not. It allows a lot of pinheads to interfere with it, and what's the answer? A lot of poor devils are forced to go out and risk their lives tryin' to—"