My moral health was far worse, too, than it had been on my first term. Then I had made strong efforts to overcome the opium habit, and laid plans to give up grafting. Then I had some decent ambitions, and did not look upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas on the second term, I had grown to take a hopeless view of my case. I began to feel that I could not reform, no matter how hard I tried. It seemed to me, too, that it was hardly worth while now to make an effort, for I thought my health was worse than it really was and that I should die soon, with no opportunity to live the intelligent life I had learned to admire through my books. I still made good resolutions, and some effort to quit the hop, but they were weak in comparison with the efforts I had made during my first term. More and more it seemed to me that I belonged in the under world for good, and that I might as well go through it to the end. Stealing was my profession. It was all I knew how to do, and I didn't believe that anybody was interested enough in me to teach me anything else. On the other hand, what I had learned on the Rocky Path would never leave me. I was sure of my knowledge of the technique of graft, and I knew that a sucker was born every minute.
CHAPTER XII.
On the Outside Again.
My time on the second bit was drawing to a close. I was eager to get out, of course, but I knew way down in my mind, that it would be only to graft again. I made a resolution that I would regain my health and gather a little fall-money before I started in hard again on the Rocky Path.
On the day of my release, Warden Sage called me to his office and talked to me like a friend. He did not know that I was a second timer, or he might not have been so kind to me. He was a humane man, and in spite of his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced good things into Sing Sing. He improved the condition of the cells and we were not confined there so much as we had been before he came. On my first term many a man staid for days in his cell without ever going out; one man was confined twenty-eight days on bread and water. But under Mr. Sage punishments were not so severe. He even used to send delicacies to men chained up in the Catholic Chapel.
I should like to say a good word for Head Keeper Connoughton, too. He was not generally liked, for he was a strict disciplinarian, but I think he was one of the best keepers in the country. He was stern, but not brutal, and when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton was very kind. He was not deceived by the fake lunatics, and used to say: "If you go to the mad-house, you are liable to become worse. If you are all right in the morning I will give you a job out in the air." Although Mr. Connoughton had had little schooling he was an intelligent man.
I believe the best thing the community can do to reform criminals is to have a more intelligent class of keepers. As a rule they are ignorant, brutal and stupid, under-paid and inefficient; yet what is more important for the State's welfare than an intelligent treatment of convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long ones, for when the criminal is broken down in health and made fearful, suspicious and revengeful, what can you expect from him? However, in the mood I was in at the end of my second term, I did not believe that anything was any good as a preventive of crime. I knew that when I got on the outside I wouldn't think of what might happen to me. I knew that I couldn't or wouldn't carry a hod. What ambition I had left was to become a more successful crook than I had ever been before.
Warden Sage gave me some good advice and then I left Sing Sing for New York. I did not get the pleasure from going out again that had been so keen after my first bit. My eye-sight was failing now, and I was sick and dull. My only thought was to get back to my old haunts, and I drank several large glasses of whiskey at Sing Sing town, to help me on my way. I intended to go straight home, as I felt very ill, to my father and mother, but I didn't see them for several days after my return to New York. The first thing I did in the city was to deliver some messages from my fellow convicts to their relatives. My third visit for that purpose was to the home of a fine young fellow I knew in stir. It was a large family and included a married sister and her children. They were glad to hear from Bobby, and I talked to them for some time about him, when the husband of the married sister came home, and began to quarrel with his wife. He accused her of having strange men in the house, meaning me. The younger brother and the rest of the family got back at the brother-in-law and gave him better than they got. The little brother fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder". The police surrounded the house and took us all to the station-house in the patrol wagon. And so I spent the first night after my return in confinement. It seemed natural, however. In the morning we were taken before the magistrate, and the mother and sister testified that I had taken them a message from their boy, and had committed no offense. The brother-in-law blurted out that he had married into a family of thieves, and that I had just returned from Sing Sing. I was discharged, but fined five dollars. Blessed are the peacemakers,—but not in my case!
I passed the next day looking for old girls and pals, but I found few of them. Many were dead and others were in stir or had sunk so far down into the under world that even I could not find them. I was only about thirty-two years old, but I had already a long acquaintance with the past. Like all grafters I had lived rapidly, crowding, while at liberty, several days into one. When I got back from my second bit the greater part of my life seemed to be made up of memories of other days. Some of the old pals I did meet again had squared it, others were "dead" (out of the game) and some had degenerated into mere bums.
There are several different classes of "dead ones":
1. The man who has lost his nerve. He generally becomes a whiskey fiend. If he becomes hopelessly a soak the better class of guns shun him, for he is no good to work with. He will not keep an engagement, or will turn up at the place of meeting too late or too early. A grafter must be exactly on time. It is as bad to be too early as too late, for he must not be seen hanging around the place of meeting. Punctuality is more of a virtue in the under world than it is in respectable society. The slackest people I know to keep their appointments, are the honest ones; or grafters who have become whiskey fiends. These latter usually wind up with rot-gut booze and are sometimes seen selling songs on the Bowery.