As a general thing I found that guns who had squared it and become prosperous had never been very successful grafters. Some of the best box-men and burglars in the business are now bar-tenders in saloons owned by former small fry among the dips. There are waiters now in saloons and concert halls on the bowery who were far cleverer thieves than the men who employ them, and who are worth thousands. Hungry Joe is an instance. Once he was King of confidence men, and on account of his great plausibility got in on a noted person, on one occasion, for several thousand dollars. And now he will beg many a favor of men he would not look at in the old days. A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive. I had always known that, but never realized it so keenly as I have since my return from the mad-house. Above everything else a grafter is suspicious, whether he has squared it or not--suspicious of his pals and of everybody else. When my old pals saw that I was not working with them, they wondered what my private graft was. When I told them I was on the level and was looking for a job, they either laughed or looked at me with suspicion in their eyes. They saw I was looking good (well-dressed) and they could not understand it. They put me down, some of them, as a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively that I am no longer with them, and most of them have given me the frosty mit. Only the bums who used to be grafters sail up to me in the Bowery. They have not got enough sense left even for suspicion. The dips who hang out in the thieves' resorts are beginning to hate me; not because I want to injure them, for I don't, but because they think I do. I told one of them, an old friend, that I was engaged in some literary work. He was angry in an instant and said: "You door mat thief. You couldn't get away with a coal-scuttle."