The fact is notorious, and easily demonstrated by the records of the police courts, that "a shop-lifter once, a shop-lifter always." It is a lamentable psychological idiosyncrasy that, despite the most earnest and apparently sincere resolutions to lead an honest life, the female shop-lifter, intent on making a legitimate purchase, is incapable of withstanding the temptation offered by a display of fancy articles. She will usually attempt to purloin some trinket or other and be caught again. Perhaps the leniency with which crimes of this character have been treated by the authorities has tended to increase the number of persons engaged in committing them. For, heartless as man is at times, he detests the idea of prosecuting a woman for the commission of a petty theft, when the end, for her, means the penitentiary. In very many, perhaps the majority of, cases he will be satisfied if his goods are recovered, and permit the thief to go unpunished. This is very frequently the case with that class of shop-lifters called, by courtesy, the "kleptomaniac,"--the wealthy lady who steals what she could easily have purchased. This is a phase of female character only accounted for upon the Christian hypothesis that her thieving propensities are a disease, while they are really a manifestation of the same base desires which actuate less fortunate women who expiate their misdemeanor in the penitentiary. Most of the rich kleptomaniacs are well known to the various store-keepers. A woman of this kind is watched from the moment she enters an establishment until she leaves it. Usually, a trusty employee or detective follows her from counter to counter, unobserved, noting all the articles purloined. When the fair and aristocratic thief enters her carriage and is driven to her palatial residence a bill of the goods so "lifted," addressed to the husband, follows her and, in nearly every case, is paid upon presentation and without questioning. Thus the transaction ends, until another visit from the lady occasions another bill. If the "blue-blooded" thief enters a store, however, where she is not known, and to the proprietor of which her "disease" is unsuspected, she often escapes with her "swag," like the unfortunate female who adopts stealing as a means of subsistence. There should be no distinction made between the wealthy and aristocratic female thief and her less fortunate sister, for the crime is the same in both cases; the only difference being that the latter cannot claim the possession of riches in extenuation of her guilt.