Some of the small boys, however, who did not share in the booty grew jealous and told my father what was doing. The result was that a certain part of my body was sore for weeks afterwards. My feelings were hurt, too, for I did not know at that time that I was doing anything very bad. My father, indeed, accompanied the beating with a sermon, telling me that I had not only broken God's law but had robbed those that loved me. One of my brothers, who is now a policeman in the city service, told me that I had taken my ticket for the gallows. The brother I had robbed, who afterwards became a truckman, patted me on the head and told me not to do it again. He was always a good fellow. And yet they all seemed to like to have me play about the streets with the other little boys, perhaps because the family was large, and there was not much room in the house.
So I had to give up the till; but I hated to, for even at that age I had begun to think that the world owed me a living! To get revenge I used to hide in a charcoal shed and throw pebbles at my father as he passed. I was indeed the typical bad boy, and the apple of my mother's eye.
When I couldn't steal from the till any more, I used to take clothes from my relatives and sell them for theatre money; or any other object I thought I could make away with. I did not steal merely for theatre money but partly for excitement too. I liked to run the risk of being discovered. So I was up to any scheme the older boys proposed. Perhaps if I had been raised in the wild West I should have made a good trapper or cow-boy, instead of a thief. Or perhaps even birds' nests and fish would have satisfied me, if they had been accessible.
One of my biggest exploits as a small boy was made when I was eight years old. Tom's mother had a friend visiting her, whom Tom and I thought we would rob. Tom, who was a big boy, and some of his friends, put me through a hall bed-room window, and I made away with a box of valuable jewelry. But it did me no good for the big boys sold it to a woman who kept a second-hand store on Division Street, and I received no part of the proceeds.
My greatest youthful disappointment came about four weeks later. A boy put me up to steal a box out of a wagon. I boldly made away with it and ran into a hall-way, where he was waiting. The two of us then went into his back-yard, opened the box and found a beautiful sword, the handle studded with little stones. But the other boy had promised me money, and here was only a sword! I cried for theatre money, and then the other boy boxed my ears. He went to his father, who was a free mason, and got a fifty cent "stamp." He gave me two three-cent pieces and kept the rest. I shall never forget that injustice as long as I live. I remember it as plainly as if it happened yesterday. We put the sword under a mill in Cherry Street and it disappeared a few hours later. I thought the boy and his father had stolen it, and told them so. I got another beating, but I believe my suspicion was correct, for the free mason used to give me a ten cent stamp whenever he saw me—to square me, I suppose.
When it came to contests with boys of my own size I was not so meek, however. One day I was playing in Jersey, in the back-yard of a boy friend's house. He displayed his pen-knife, and it took my fancy. I wanted to play with it, and asked him to lend it to me. He refused, and I grabbed his hand. He plunged the knife into my leg. I didn't like that, and told him so, not in words, but in action. I remember that I took his ear nearly off with a hatchet. I was then eight years old.
About this time I began to go to Sunday School, with what effect on my character remains to be seen. One day I heard a noted priest preach. I had one dollar and eighty cents in my pocket which I had stolen from my brother. I thought that each coin in my pocket was turning red-hot because of my anxiety to spend it. While the good man was talking of the Blessed One I was inwardly praying for him to shut up. He had two beautiful pictures which he intended to give to the best listener among the boys. When he had finished his talk he called me to him, gave me the pictures and said: "It's such boys as you who, when they grow up, are a pride to our Holy Church."
A year later I went to the parochial school, but did not stay long, for they would not have me. I was a sceptic at seven and an agnostic at eight, and I objected to the prayers every five minutes. I had no respect for ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination in the slightest, partly because I learned at an early age to see the hypocrisy of many good people. One day half a dozen persons were killed in an explosion. One of them I had known. Neighbors said of him: "What a good man has gone," and the priest and my mother said he was in heaven. But he was the same man who had often told me not to take money from the money-drawer, for that was dangerous, but to search my father's pockets when he was asleep. For this advice I had given the rascal many a dollar. Ever after that I was suspicious of those who were over-virtuous. I told my mother I did not believe her and the priest, and she slapped my face and told me to mind my catechism.
Everything mischievous that happened at the parochial school was laid to my account, perhaps not entirely unjustly. If a large firecracker exploded, it was James—that was my name. If some one sat on a bent pin, the blame was due to James. If the class tittered teacher Nolan would rush at me with a hickory stick and yell: "It's you, you devil's imp!" and then he'd put the question he had asked a hundred times before: "Who med (made) you?"
I was finally sent away from the parochial school because I insulted one of the teachers, a Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing him whenever he studied his catechism, which I believed he already knew by heart. This brother's favorite, by the way, was a boy who used to say his prayers louder than anybody else. I met him fifteen years afterwards in state's prison. He had been settled for "vogel-grafting," that is, taking little girls into hall-ways and robbing them of their gold ear-rings. He turned out pretty well, however, in one sense, for he became one of the best shoe-makers in Sing Sing.