"In the city?" he asked.
"No," I replied, "in the country."
"I cautioned you," said Dan, "against taking such chances. There's no dough in these country churches. If you want to try lone ones on a Sunday take in some swell church in the city."
The following Sunday I went to a fashionable church and got a few leathers, and afterwards went to all the swell churches in the city. I touched them, but they could not touch me. I heard all the ministers in Philadelphia, but they could not move me the way that country evangelist did. They were all artificial in comparison.
Shortly after my poetical experience in Philadelphia I made a trip up New York State with Patsy, Dan and Joe, and grafted in a dozen towns. One day when we were on the cars going from Albany to Amsterdam, we saw a fat, sleepy-looking Dutchman, and I nicked him for a clock as he was passing along the aisle to the end of the car. It took the Dutchman about ten minutes after he had returned to his seat to blow that his super was gone, and his chain hanging down. A look of stupid surprise spread over his innocent countenance. He looked all around, picked up the end of his chain, saw it was twisted, put his hand in his vest pocket, then looked again at the end of the chain, tried his pocket again, then went through all of his pockets, and repeated each of these actions a dozen times. The passengers all got "next," and began to grin. "Get on to the Hiker," (countryman) said Patsy to Joe, and they both laughed. I told the Dutchman that the clock must have fallen down the leg of his underwear; whereupon the Reuben retired to investigate, searched himself thoroughly and returned, only to go through the same motions, and then retire to investigate once more. It was as good as a comedy. But it was well there were no country coppers on that train. They would not have cared a rap about the Dutchman's loss of his property, but we four probably should have been compelled to divide with them.
Grafters are a superstitious lot. Before we reached Buffalo a feeling came over me that I had better not work in that town; so Joe, Dan and an English grafter we had picked up, named Scotty, stopped at Buffalo, and Patsy and I went on. Sure enough, in a couple of days Joe wired me that Scotty had fallen for a breech-kick and was held for trial. I wired to Mr. R——, who got into communication with Mr. J——, a Canadian Jew living in Buffalo, who set the wires going. The sucker proved a very hard man to square, but a politician who was a friend of Mr. J—— showed him the errors of his way, and before very long Scotty returned to New York. An English Moll-buzzer, a girl, got hold of him and took him back to London. It was just as well, for it was time for our bunch to break up. We were getting too well-known; and falls were coming too frequent. So we had a general split. Joe went to Washington, Patsy down East, Scotty to "stir" in London and I stayed in Manhattan, where I shortly afterwards met Big Jack and other burglars and started in on that dangerous graft. But before I tell about my work in that line, I will narrate the story of Mamie and Johnny, a famous cracksman, whom I met at this time. It is a true love story of the Under World. Johnny, and Mamie, who by the way is not the same as Blonde Mamie, are still living together in New York City, after many trials and tribulations, one of the greatest of which was Mamie's enforced relation with a New York detective. But I won't anticipate on the story, which follows in the next chapter.
CHAPTER V.
Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds.
Johnny met Mamie when he was sixteen. At that time he was looked up to in the neighborhood as one of the most promising of the younger thieves.
He was an intelligent, enterprising boy and had, moreover, received an excellent education in the school of crime. His parents had died before he was twelve years old, and after that the lad lived at the Newsboys' Lodging House, in Rivington Street, which at that time and until it ceased to exist was the home of boys some of whom afterwards became the swellest of crooks, and some very reputable citizens and prominent politicians. A meal and a bed there cost six cents apiece and even the youngest and stupidest waif could earn or steal enough for that.
Johnny became an adept at "hooking" things from grocery stores and at tapping tills. When he was thirteen years old he was arrested for petty theft, passed a night in the police station, and was sent to the Catholic Protectory, where he was the associate of boys much older and "wiser" in crime than he. At that place were all kinds of incurables, from those arrested for serious felonies to those who had merely committed the crime of being homeless. From them Johnny learned the ways of the under world very rapidly.