It looks sometimes like an awful waste of time to do anything—even of a humanitarian character for the average crook who tries to interest you in his welfare with a pack of lies. But I have never refused these people when I thought I could do them any good. I have worked for them in every possible way that I might win their confidence and thus lead them into a better life. I have learned by experience not to believe all a crook says or even a hundredth part of it. It don’t do to allow yourself to be caught napping by these gentry who think they have everything to gain and nothing to lose by a lie. Kahn, The Black-Hearted Syrian In the lower part of New York near the Battery, in the vicinity of Washington and Greenwich Streets, there is and has been for several years what is known as the Syrian colony. The few immigrants that come from Damascus, Beyrout and other parts of the Turkish Empire all seem to gather here. As it is contrary to the Koran for any of them to use liquor of any kind, or sell it, these Mohammedans are seldom in prison, yet they are lacking in saintly character as much as the Latin and Slavic nations of Europe. At the time of which I write there was a hotel or boarding house in the Syrian colony, kept by a widow named Lazarus. She spoke the English language very imperfectly. But she had in her employment an experienced hotel manager who attended to all her affairs whose name was Abirams. He had been in the country a number of years and could speak the English tongue fairly well. Everybody liked Abirams as he kept the house clean and sought to make it respectable. On one occasion a countryman named Kahn came with a young girl and tried to hire a room in the hotel for immoral purposes. Abirams positively refused to receive him or the woman. Words passed between them. Then he left the place swearing vengeance. It was afterwards learned that Kahn was a criminal of the deepest dye and would do anything to ruin an innocent man. Twice he had been saved from the gallows by turning King’s evidence in his own country. Since he came to America he was known to have sent many of his countrymen to prison for long terms on perjured evidence. He would do anything to save his own neck.