We went out with the watch, without paying for our drinks, and he said
to me: "Jim, I don't believe in paying a gin-mill keeper. If the powers
that be were for the people instead of for themselves they would have
such drinkables free on every corner in old New York." The next time
Buck asked me to have a drink I told him to go to a warm place in
the next world. Buck was good to his family. He was married and had a
couple of brats.
Many a man educates himself in stir, as was my case. Jimmy, whom I ran
up against one day on the street, is a good example. He had squared
it and is still on the level. When I saw him, after my second bit, he
was making forty dollars a week as an electrical engineer; and every
bit of the necessary education he got in prison. At one time he was
an unusually desperate grafter; and entirely ignorant of everything,
except the technique of theft. Many years ago he robbed a jewelry
store and was sent to Blackwell's Island for two years. The night of
the day he was released he burglarized the same store and assaulted
the proprietor. He was arrested with the goods on him and brought to
General Sessions before Recorder Smythe, who had sentenced him before.
He got ten years at Sing Sing and Auburn, and for a while he was one of
the most dangerous and desperate of convicts, and made several attempts
to escape. But one day a book on electricity fell into his hands, and
from that time on he was a hard student. When he was released from stir
he got a job in a large electrical plant up the State, and worked for
a while, when he was tipped off by a country grafter who had known him
in stir. He lost his job, and went to New York, where he met me, who
was home after my first term. I gave him the welcome hand, and, after
he had told me his story, I said: "Well, there is plenty of money in
town. Jump out with us." He grafted with me and my mob for a while,
but got stuck on a Tommy, so that we could not depend on him to keep
his appointments, and we dropped him. After that he did some strong arm
work with a couple of gorillas and fell again for five years. When he
returned from stir he got his present position as electrical engineer.
He had it when I met him after my second bit and he has it to-day. I am
sure he is on the level and will be so as long as he holds his job.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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