In those bygone times when New York’s Chinatown was in its heyday—whatever a heyday is—there were three cronies among its habitués who were popular with newspaper reporters and others in search of local color. One was Blinky Britt and one was Honest John Clary, so called because once upon a time when Blinky went to sleep and his glass eye fell out of its socket and rolled across the floor Honest John picked it up and gave it back to him; and the third was Dingo Katz. Honest John was a barkeeper in a Doyers street saloon. Blinky was a lobby-gow, or messenger, for Chinese residents, and Dingo was a pickpocket, making a specialty of robbing women passengers on crosstown trolley cars. They were the Three Musketeers of the Oriental quarter. In an evil hour the law broke up the triumvirate. Dingo, while plying his profession, was arrested and lodged in the Tombs. At his trial he was found guilty, and the Judge sentenced him to three years at Sing Sing. Although the Underworld agreed that his friends had done all for him that it was humanly possible to do, it is said that an unreasonable rancor filled his soul on the morning when he was taken to prison. Some months later a journalist prowling through Chinatown looking for material happened upon Blinky Britt sitting in Nigger Mike Callahan’s bar. “Hello, Blinky,” he said; “when did you hear from your old sidekick, Dingo?” “Aw, say,” answered Blinky, “cheese on dat sidekick stuff. I’m off of dat Dingo for life.” “Why, I thought you two were pals,” said the newspaper man. “So did I t’ink we wuz pals,” said Blinky, “so did I t’ink so. But, say, lissen, bo, and lemme slip you de lowdown on dis Dingo. Like you knows already, Dingo he gits sloughed up fur moll-buzzin’ on a Canal street rattler. Well, it looks like de sneezers is got him nailed fur fair wid de goods. But all de same I’m de one dat goes to de bat wid de fall-money fur to hire him a swell mouthpiece to git him cleared. But it ain’t no use. A jury of twelve delicatesseners and the likes of dat dey t’rows de hooks into him and de old pappy-guy in the silk night-shirt on the bench hands him a t’reetime jolt at Warble-Twice-on-the-Hudson. “Well, w’en de poor nut is been up dere fur going on maybe two or t’ree weeks I says to myse’f dat it’s no more’n de act of a friend dat I should go to see him. So I rolls a come-on fur five iron men and I takes t’ree of dem front wheels and I buys some makin’s and some crullers and some sweet slum out of a candy shop and some soft scoffin’ out of a pie shop and one t’ing and another dat I knows Dingo likes, and, come a Sunday I gits on de rattler and I rides up dere to dat town of Boid Center and I walks up de road to de big stone hoosgow on de hill. Dere’s a bull in harness on de gate. See? So I says to dis here bull, I says, ‘Is dis visitors’ day?’ And he says, ‘It ’tis.’ So I says, ‘You pass de news to Dingo Katz dat his old pal, Blinky Britt, is come to see him.’