Dickey: "Through their methods the county offices are rotten from the judge to the policeman."
Mull: "I agree with you."
Mickey: "Ah, wat's the matter wid Tammany? My old man never voted any other ticket. Neither did yours. When you get into stir you act like college professors. Why don't you practice what you spout? I always voted the Tammany ticket—five or six times every election day. How is it I never got a long bit?"
Mull: "How many times, Mickey, have you been in stir?"
Mickey: "This is the fourth, but the highest I got was four years."
Dickey: "You never done anything big enough to get four."
Mickey: "I didn't, eh? You have been hollering that you are innocent, and get twenty years for piracy. I only get four, but I am guilty every time. There is a big difference between that and twenty, aint it?"
Mull slapped Mickey on the back and said: "Never mind. You will get yours yet on the installment plan." Then, turning to me, Mull asked: "Jim, don't you think that if everything was square and on the level we'd stand a better chance?"
"No," I replied. "In the first place we have not reached the millennium. In the second place they would devise some legal scheme to keep a third timer the rest of his natural days. I know a moccasin who would move heaven and earth to have such a bill passed, and he is one of the crookedest philanthropists in America to-day. I am a grafter, and I believe that the present administration is all right. I know that I can stay out of prison as long as I save my fall-money. When I blow that in I ought to go to prison. Every gun who is capable of stealing, knows that if he puts by enough money he can not only keep out of stir but can beat his way into heaven. I'm arguing as a professional thief."
This was too much for Mickey, who said: "Why don't you talk United States and not be springing whole leaves out of a dictionary?"