He stuck to his advertising job by day and spent his nights in the public libraries. He read every available technical volume treating on engraving. Then he went out and bought the tools of the engraver. Next he practiced until he became an engraver quite as clever as any man in the Government service. That’s likely to stagger you. There are folks who will not believe that. But here we have the records and the confession. In a moment I shall tell you facts that will indicate just how clever he really was.... He read chemistry and paper making until he was something of a magazine of information on the subject. He limited his chemistry to that part of the science that has to do with paper making. He read volumes on dyeing and struck up an acquaintance with a well-known printer in Boston. This printer did the better grade of work and was so amused by Wilken’s enthusiastic desire for knowledge on the subject that he permitted the young man to browse about his plant of nights watching the various processes. I merely mention all this detail to show you how, when Wilken set out to make his first counterfeit bill, he had mastered every phase of the complex industry. And all this studying took time, although not so much time as you would think. Certainly it was not more than a year. At any rate, he devoted himself for twelve months to the study of how to make a one-dollar bill. There is just one firm making bank note paper for the Government. That firm turns out this paper in one factory. Government inspectors are there to check up the product and there is never any surplus. The mints [Bureau of Engraving and Printing] consume it as it is turned out; or, rather, it is turned out as the mints need it. This mill is located in Dalton, Mass. The firm takes a certain amount of pride in it. Visitors are quite welcome, and there are guides to take callers through the plant. In one batch of visitors to this plant came Wilken. He was about 26 years old at the time. I am ready to believe that he could see more in a given time from a given point than any man I ever knew. He had two exceedingly sharp eyes and a retentive memory. He told me that he could read faster than most men he knew and collect more in his fast reading than the majority of his acquaintances could by attentive study. I don’t think he was boasting. His was a remarkable mind.... It seems as though he had been built by nature for the job. I have often wondered whether his talents would have been smothered by convention had he been kept in the straight and narrow path. The most commonplace man becomes sometimes the most startlingly original crook. The reformed crook, on the other hand, turns to honesty and becomes duller than ditch-water.