All grafters of any original calibre are super-sensitive, to a point very near insanity. Laudanum Joe thought I had reference to his dress, which was very bum.
"Joe," I said, "I never judge a man by his clothes, especially one that I know."
"Jimmy," he said, "the truth is I can't stand another long bit in stir. I do a little petty pilfering that satisfies my wants—a cup of tea, plenty of booze, and a little hop. If I fall I only go to the workhouse for a couple of months. The screws know I have seen better days and I can get a graft and my booze while there. If I aint as prosperous as I was once, why not dream I'm a millionaire?"
Some grafters who have been prosperous at one time fall even lower than Laudanum Joe. When they get fear knocked into them and can't do without whiskey they sink lower and lower. Hungry Bob is another example. I grafted with him as a boy, but when I met him on the Bowery after my second bit I hardly knew him, and at first he failed to recognize me entirely. I got him into a gin-mill, however, and he told how badly treated he had been just before we met. He had gone into a saloon kept by an old pal of his who had risen in the world, and asked him for fifteen cents to buy a bed in a lodging-house. "Go long, you pan-handler (beggar)," said his old friend. Poor Bob was badly cut up about it, and talked about ingratitude for a long time. But he had his lodging money, for a safe-cracker who knew Hungry Bob when he was one of the gayest grafters in town, happened to be in the saloon, and he gave the "bum" fifteen cents for old times sake.
"How is it, Bob," I said to him, "that you are not so good as you were?"
"You want to know what put me on the bum?" he answered. "Well, it's this way. I can't trust nobody, and I have to graft alone. That's one thing. Then, too, I like the booze too much, and when I'm sitting down I can't get up and go out and hustle the way I used to."
Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort for sailors and hard-luck grafters in the lower Bowery, when a Sheenie I knew came in.
"Hello, Jim," he said.
"How's graft, Mike?" I replied.
"Don't mention it."