Crime -- United States; Criminals -- United States
Edison finally reached the stage where he blessed work and was blessed by
it; and to-day, when crowding close to four-score-and-ten, "Work is
worship" with him, and none need expect his approbation who trains the
clock eye, while measuring commensurate labor with sand that has run.
Bogy, struck with an instinctive distaste for buckling to and blocking out
results agreeably with his bulking gifts, and periodically by an engulfing
wave of wanderlust, wouldn't plant himself and take root. He could both
"send" and "receive" faster than any man on earth. He was the best of
fellows when "lush"; but he couldn't control either the soles of his feet,
or the feet of his brain. Therefore 'twas Bogy in America in April, Canada
in July, England in October, and Australia in December.
Bogy, the personification of the aimless, senseless globe-trotter. Bogy,
distributing his precious belongings in bits about the globe. Bogy,
sensing not the least of responsibility unto himself, to man or his Maker,
to properly express princely attributes. Bogy, lighting like the butterfly
here for a sip, there for a sip, then making tangentially for other fields
and cheap sweets.
Writing the author about Bogy, Edison related: "I heard a funny one about
Bogy: One day he walked into the New York Produce exchange, and going to
the W. U. booth asked the loan of a dollar from the operator. Bogy said,
'I am Bogy; have you never heard of me?' The operator said 'No.' 'Well,'
says Bogy, 'you must be a helluvanoperator.'"
The last time the writer saw Bogy, he was down-and-out, unblushingly
"hitting" his home friends for petty largesse, the bulk of which went for
lager beer--his arch enemy.
Just why did beer poison Bogy's life? Because it nailed him to environment
that insidiously sapped his manhood, along with his mental and manual
skill. He shuffled from the subscriber for the last time a nerve-shattered
derelict. He had chosen one of scores of pikes over which young men travel
at a pace that kills pride in worthy work.
It wasn't in Bogy to take the final leap into a life of crime, He was
bigger than that at his littlest. Besides, he lacked nerve to accept the
gambler's chance at the game of predation. Further, his old friends
couldn't say one nay whose purse was open to all when, as he put it, he
was "in luck."
But Bogies there are, thousands of them, who, given but an added dash of
degenerate deviltry, are drawn as naturally to criminal shoals as needle
to magnet; shoals, many of which break from a treacherous undertow, many
more of which cannot be charted so as to arrest the serious attention of
up-coming lads, and some of which none can hope to avoid entirely, save by
the help of Him Who alone can fend all of the thrusts of temptation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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