If I had had time to wait and see, I might have observed a bit of child life also worthy of a Paton or a Faed; for just as I was hurrying down, in came rushing the playmates, all with wondering eyes to see Phemy (I ascertained her name afterwards) standing naked within a few minutes after she had left their play. Do you think they would ever forget that sight all their born days? But I had another sight in view more interesting to me—even one in wolf-life, with some difference in expression and tints—the grandmammas with the canines and long claws, so formidable to the Ridinghoods. Nor was I disappointed. I had set my trap so well that I had no need of the candy-bait. The instant the constables had seen what was going on, they had laid hold of the other Joice and Robina Finnie, and the three who had been engaged, having seen their dear sisters in custody, turned down New Street, up which they had gone a few steps, and were seized by me and another constable from behind. Meanwhile the cries of the little nude, mixed with those of her tiny sisterhood, brought a crowd, who, instantly ascertaining the cause of all the uproar, showered their indignation on the culprits with a severity that excluded even Irish humour. Nay, so furious were the hen-mothers, that unless we had taken good care of our sparrow-hawks, there would that day have been more stript than Phemy and her brother-victim of the Watergate; nor would I have answered for discolorations or broken bones. But care was also taken of the tender chicken, who, rolled up in a shawl, became in the midst of the crowd a little heroine, honoured with more endearing epithets and sympathetic condolences than would perhaps ever fall to her portion again.
At the top of the street we collected our prisoners, and marched them gallantly up the Canongate and High Street. One likes to possess the favour of the female part of the people, and this day I got as much of the incense of hero-worship as if I had stopped a massacre of the innocents. I am not sure if some males, too, much given to baby-love, did not glugger with reddened gills in anger at the spoilers of their wives’ darlings; all which was no doubt heightened by the impression then in the public mind, produced by the repeated accounts of the instances of this nefarious traffic. The prisoners had even during the previous part of that day committed four strippings of the same kind besides those I had witnessed.
It was not long till I ascertained that I had been wrong in my original conjecture, and that the whole of these thefts had been perpetrated by a gang. During their confinement, and when we expected that they would hold out in their denial of guilt, it was quite a scene to witness the identifications. The witnesses were, of course, the little victims themselves, on whose minds the features of the women had been so indelibly impressed, especially where, like the case of Phemy, “the shurt was a good un,” that they not only knew them, but screamed with terror the moment they were brought before them. And to the women, no doubt, they were of that kind of terrible infants so well described by the French, the more by reason, perhaps, that among that people the children have more strange things to see than in our decent country. From searches we got the evidence of the little wardrobes themselves, chiefly through pawns, shewing the immense extent of their assiduous labours. Nor had it been an unprofitable traffic to them; many of the dresses were taken from well-dressed youngsters in the new town, and you have only to buy those things to know what money it costs to rigg out a little man or woman in our day, when the children are taught pride and a love of finery with the supping of porridge. But, after all, it came out that we didn’t need these evidences. The vagabonds broke down in the end under the accumulation of proof, and admitted to I do not know how many strippings. They each got eighteen months’ imprisonment, and the community was relieved from the cold-blooded and unfeeling practice of child-stripping for a long period afterwards.
The Tobacco-Glutton.
IT is almost a peculiarity of the thief that he is in his furtive appetite omnivorous. Everything that can be reduced to the chyle of money is acceptable to him. While others have predilections, he has absolutely none. It is not that he is always, however, or even often in need, and therefore glad to seize whatever comes in his way. I have known instances where he was by no means driven to his calling by necessity, and yet not only was the passion to appropriate strong in him, but he was at same time regardless of the kind of prey. Yes; it would seem as if his passion sprang out of an inverted view of property, so that the word “yours” incited him to change its meaning. As a certain valorous bird becomes ready for war the moment a brother of the same species is placed opposite to him on the barn-floor, so the regularly-trained “appropriator” gluggers and burns to be at a “possessor,” as representing in his person some actual commodity. As a consequence of this strange feeling I have found, however unlikely it may appear, that thieves have really nothing of the common sense of property—that is, love to it—after they obtain it. Unless for the supply of a want, they often treat what they have stolen as if they not only did not care for it, but absolutely wished it out of their possession,—not from fear of being detected by its presence, but for some loathing not easily accounted for. I have a case, however, of a real predilective artiste, the more curious that it stands in my books almost alone.
The way in which I became acquainted with Peter Sutherland was singular enough. I was, in April 1837, walking in the Meadows, where I have more than once met wandering stagers whom I could turn to account of my knowledge of mankind. I came up to a young man very busy sending from a black pipe large clouds of tobacco smoke. Always on the alert to add to my number of profiles, I felt some curiosity about this lover of the weed, and going up to him, I made my very usual request for a light.
“By all means,” said he, as he drew out his matchbox (and matches were then dear, sometime after Jones’s monopoly) and struck for me what I wanted; “and I can fill your pipe too,” said he, “for I like a smoker.”
“Very well,” said I, as I handed him my pipe, which was not out of the need of a supply; “I like a smoke, though I cannot very well tell why.”
“Why, just because, like me, you like it,” said he laughing; “it makes one comfortable. I deny the half of the rhyme—
‘Tobacco and tobacco reek,
It maks me weel when I’m sick;
Tobacco and tobacco reek,
When I’m weel it maks me sick.’