The fat pocketbook held no money, but was bulging with valuable personal papers. Looking through them I saw that their owner was one of the higher officials of the Canadian Pacific Railway. I realized there would be a terrific roar in the morning, and was on the point of burning the papers and destroying the pocketbook when the thought came to me that I could gain nothing by that, while I would be causing the owner an immense loss and no end of inconvenience. I secreted the pocketbook in the rear of the hotel, and went to bed trying to think up some safe way of returning it to the owner. No use in inflicting a profitless injury on him; and its return might take the sharp edge off his resentment. CHAPTER XVIII Discarding my cinder-burnt clothes for a new outfit the next day, I bought a ticket for Victoria, B.C. On my way to the boat that evening I dropped the fat pocketbook into a mail box, where I knew it would be found, then examined, and returned to the loser. When I first began stealing I had but a dim realization of its wrong. I accepted it as the thing to do because it was done by the people I was with; besides, it was adventurous and thrilling. Later it became an everyday, cold-blooded business, and while I went about it methodically, accepting the dangers and privations it entailed, I was fully aware of the gravity of my offenses. Every time I stole a dollar I knew I was breaking a law and working a hardship on the loser. Yet for years I kept on doing it. I wonder how many of us quit wronging others for the best reason of all—because it is wrong, and we know it. Any thief that can’t or doesn’t put himself in his victim’s place, in the place of the copper that pinches him, or in the place of the judge who sentences him, is not a complete thief. His narrow-mindedness will prevent him from doing his best work and also shut him off from opportunities to help and protect himself when he is laid by the heels. Nobody wants to live and die a criminal. They all hope to quit some day, usually when it’s almost too late. I will say right here to any thief who thinks of quitting that if he can put himself in the other fellow’s place he has something substantial to start on; and if he can’t do it, he’ll never get anywhere.