A year later I went to the parochial school, but did not stay long, for they would not have me. I was a sceptic at seven and an agnostic at eight, and I objected to the prayers every five minutes. I had no respect for ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination in the slightest, partly because I learned at an early age to see the hypocrisy of many good people. One day half a dozen persons were killed in an explosion. One of them I had known. Neighbors said of him: "What a good man has gone," and the priest and my mother said he was in heaven. But he was the same man who had often told me not to take money from the money-drawer, for that was dangerous, but to search my father's pockets when he was asleep. For this advice I had given the rascal many a dollar. Ever after that I was suspicious of those who were over-virtuous. I told my mother I did not believe her and the priest, and she slapped my face and told me to mind my catechism. Everything mischievous that happened at the parochial school was laid to my account, perhaps not entirely unjustly. If a large firecracker exploded, it was James--that was my name. If some one sat on a bent pin, the blame was due to James. If the class tittered teacher Nolan would rush at me with a hickory stick and yell: "It's you, you devil's imp!" and then he'd put the question he had asked a hundred times before: "Who med (made) you?" I was finally sent away from the parochial school because I insulted one of the teachers, a Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing him whenever he studied his catechism, which I believed he already knew by heart. This brother's favorite, by the way, was a boy who used to say his prayers louder than anybody else. I met him fifteen years afterwards in state's prison. He had been settled for "vogel-grafting," that is, taking little girls into hall-ways and robbing them of their gold ear-rings. He turned out pretty well, however, in one sense, for he became one of the best shoe-makers in Sing Sing. Although, as one can see from the above incidents, I was not given to veneration, yet in some ways I was easily impressed. I always loved old buildings, for instance. I was baptized in the building which was until lately the Germania Theatre, and which was then a church; and that old structure always had a strange fascination for me. I used to hang about old churches and theatres, and preferred on such occasions to be alone. Sometimes I sang and danced, all by myself, in an old music hall, and used to pore over the names marked in lead pencil on the walls. Many is the time I have stood at night before some old building which has since been razed to the ground, and even now I like to go round to their sites. I like almost anything that is old, even old men and women. I never loved my mother much until she was an old woman. All stories of the past interested me; and later, when I was in prison, I was specially fond of history.