I had struck a wrong note. Analogies are ticklish things to handle, for things which are alike in certain respects are apt to be quite different in other respects. His mind was intent on the differences. The sneak thief, he told me, is a vulgar fellow of no education. The forger and the check-raiser are experts. They are playing a game. Their wits are pitted against the wits of the men who are paid high salaries for detecting them. They belong to quite different spheres. If we are looking for analogies we should look up and not down.
“You wanted to know,” he said, “what was the difference between stealing and check-raising. Now, let me ask you a question. What’s the difference between check-raising and some of those big financial operations we’ve all been reading about? Suppose I have a check for five dollars, and I put my brains into it and I manipulate it so that I can pass it off for five hundred. I shove it in to the cashier and he takes it. Before he finds out his mistake, I have made myself scarce. What’s the difference between that transaction and what the ‘big fellows’ on the street are doing?” He mentioned several names that I had not thought of in that connection.
“The difference,” said I, “is—” Then it occurred to me that it was a subject to which I should give further thought. So we postponed the conversation till he should call again—which he never did.
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I may be doing injustice to my friend the forger, but he gave me the impression that he considered himself to be, on the whole, a rather admirable character. His proposed change of business seemed to be rather a concession to the prejudices of the legal profession than the result of any personal scruple. As he saw himself he was a man of idealistic temper whose ideals conflicted with social usage. Society was all the time getting into his way, and in the inevitable collisions he had usually the worst of it. He regretted this, but he bore no malice. By the time a man has reached middle life and accumulated a good deal of experience he takes the world as he finds it.
He had encased himself in a moral system which was self-consistent and which explained to his own satisfaction all that had happened to him. One thing fitted into another, and there was no room for self-reproach.
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Many attempts have been made to depict the character of an accomplished scamp. But Gil Blas and Roderick Random and Jonathan Wild the Great are after all seen from the outside. The author may attempt to do them justice, but there is a vein of irony that reveals a judgment of his own. They lack the essential element of incorrigibility, which is that the scamp does not suspect himself, has not found himself out.
No novelist has ever been able to give such a portraiture of a complacent criminal as was given a century ago in the autobiography of Stephen Burroughs.
Burroughs was the son of a worthy clergyman of Hanover, New Hampshire, and from the outset was looked upon as a black sheep. As a mere boy he ran away from home and joined the army, and then with equal irresponsibility deserted. He became a ship’s surgeon, a privateersman, then a self-ordained minister, a counterfeiter, a teacher of youth, a founder of libraries, and a miscellaneous philanthropist. He was a patriot and an optimist and an enthusiastic worker in the cause of general education. He was chock-full of fine sentiment and had a gift for its expression. He enjoyed doing good, though in his own way, and never neglected any opportunity to rebuke those who he felt were in the wrong. He had a desire to reform the world, and had no doubt of the plans which he elaborated. He was capable on occasions of acts of magnanimity, which, while not appreciated by the public, gave him great pleasure in the retrospect. The intervals between his various enterprises were spent in New England jails. These experiences only deepened his love of liberty, which was one of the passions of his life.