"He's a house-builder, ma'am. He's one of the best workmen, ma'am, and they don't like to let him go. He gets three dollars a day, and now he has the whole care of the childer." "What did you come in here for, Allen?" "Shoplifting, ma'am." "With your husband earning three dollars a day you had no excuse; that was enough to keep you comfortably." "So it would, ma'am, if I had been contented. I don't know what made me,--I got a hankering for it. It was eighteen years ago, I was going out to buy me a silk dress, and one of my comrades went with me. I stood looking at a piece of silk, and was going to buy it. She touched my shoulder, 'don't buy that till we look in another store!' When we got out she showed me a piece of silk that she had under her shawl. She got it while I was looking at the other. After that we used to go together." "Did you ever get caught before?" "Yes, ma'am; I was in here seven years ago." "And for eighteen years you have followed that wicked life, constantly, and never got caught but twice." "I never stole from the poor. It was from those that could well afford to spare it. I always took the richest of silks and satins and velvets and linens. Sometimes I had seven or eight hundred dollars' worth at a time." There was an exhibition of pride in her statement. The larger the crime, the more honorable, she thought. A strange code of honesty, but a very common one, it would be found, if the practical principles of every person were subjected to analysis. "But you had no right to the goods; you paid nothing for them." "It is the way they do. If a rich customer goes into one of those big stores, they ask him a big price. If a poorer one comes in, and they think he knows what a thing is worth, they don't ask him so much. What is that but stealing?" "Their doing wrong does not make it right for you to do wrong. What did you do with what you took?" "Sometimes I used it, and sometimes I sold it at people's doors. I went out West a great many times with a lot." "What did you intend to do with your money?" "Buy a big house, and live in the fashion, when the childer get up." "Do you think you would enjoy a house bought with money got in that way?" "Most of the big houses are bought with money got in that way. I know many a person as has carried on the business for years, and got rich by it." "The business of shoplifting! then the crime has become dignified into a business." Rather a liberal translation of the example set, I thought. "Did your husband know what you were doing?" "Yes, ma'am." "Did he approve of it?" "No, ma'am; he always warned me, and sometimes forbid me. But as soon as he was off to his work, I would shift my clothes and go out. I hurried back, and got them shifted again before he came home; and he wouldn't know it till I had got a great many pieces." "Does he turn against you now?"