"Kleptomania," the delicate term of modern coinage from the old Greek, which is used to signify a passion for thieving under peculiar circumstances, and is mostly used when the thief is a person of some importance and of moneyed means, so that the lust for gain is not supposed to be his prompter to the "offence against the statute in such cases made and provided," indicates a moral "dereliction" which not only attacks the wakeful subject, but sometimes infuses itself into the dreams of sleepers. Many women in a state of pregnancy are said to be liable to this disease, so to term it, who, in any other state, would be horrified at the bare mention of the crime of theft. They exhibit great adroitness in their man[oe]uvres when under the influence of the disease, and possess a boldness, too, of which, in their strictly "right minds," they would be utterly incapable. Such establishments as Stewart's great retail dry goods store expend large sums of money yearly in the employment of detectives to watch the customers, to see that they do not slyly purloin such goods as they may easily secrete in carpet-bags, in their pockets, under shawls, or under their dresses, and so on. Not a small number of these would-be thieves are kleptomaniacs, and mostly women suffering under diseases peculiar to the sex, or women in a state of pregnancy, whose blood is more or less driven in unusual quantities into the head, and stirs there passions and desires which they never so feel at other times. The philosophy of this thing would be a pleasant matter of study, and falls legitimately enough into the line of a detective's life to investigate; but here is not the place for its discussion at any great length. I may run some risk in the narration of this tale, of trespassing upon the feelings of some persons who might prefer that I say nothing about it; for the facts were known to a large circle of highly-respectable people, mostly relatives of the "chief person of the drama," who would, perhaps, prefer that the matter should rest in peace, and go out in oblivion by and by. But I will endeavor to be delicate and courteous enough, in the avoidance of names, and in my general descriptions, to offend no one of those relatives who may read this.