“I have written the foregoing for the Rev. J. J. Munro, Chaplain of the City Prison, New York City. Interested for my spiritual welfare he won my confidence and gratitude by his sincerity and the spirit of helpfulness that dominates him. He is doing a noble work at the prison and cannot be too highly commended, and the good people of the city should earnestly and generously aid him that he may be enabled to extend his noble, Christian work in behalf of the fallen and the neglected who, if properly befriended, may be restored to honest and useful lives. “E. S. S.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IX THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CROOK How A Young Life Was Wrecked The writer of the following sketch received a sentence of twenty-three years imprisonment. He is a bright and brainy criminal. It is the general opinion that had he used his talents and business sagacity along honest lines he would have been a different man to-day. He has brains in abundance, but he uses them wrongly. Let him tell his own story. “My father and mother as well as all my relatives on both sides of the family were exceptionally well connected and highly respected in the community. My father in his best days had plenty of money. My earliest recollection of my father was as a railroad manager, always full of business—seldom at home except for meals or on Sundays. After the New England road changed hands and became part of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, he lost his job. This was a calamity to my father as it compelled him to begin over again, which at his time of life was a very serious task. I was then ten years of age, and although unable to take in the situation fully, I knew something was wrong.