I was a problem to my father, running loose about the hotel while he was
at work, and finally he took me to a Catholic school one hundred miles
away. On that short trip my father and I got to be good friends, and I
think I was closer to him that day than on any other of our lives.
Father left that evening and told me to be good, mind the Sisters, and
study hard.
I fell into my groove in the school with other boys of my age. Our days
were passed pleasantly with our small studies, many prayers, and daily
attendance at mass. The food was coarse but wholesome.
I never went home at vacation time. I spent those days in exploring
near-by orchards, gardens, and fields, picking up fruit, vegetables, and
berries, and other things that help to take the edge off a small boy’s
appetite.
I spent much time about the barns and stables with Thomas, the coachman.
I was an expert listener, a rare talent, inherited from my father, no
doubt. Thomas was a ready talker. This is a combination that never
fails to make firm and lasting friendships, and we became friends. He
was a veteran of our Civil War, had been on the losing side, and came
out of it full of hatred, lead, and rheumatism. His heroes were not Lee
or Stonewall Jackson, but Quantrell, the guerrilla, Jesse and Frank
James, Cole and Bob Younger.
I never tired of listening to his war stories, and often found myself
piecing them together in the schoolroom when I should have been active
with my studies.
I believe I was the only boy at the school who never went away on
holidays and vacations to visit parents or relatives. The Sister
Superior, probably realizing that my life was a bit too drab, often gave
me the privilege of going to the village for mail and papers. This was
a rare treat, and much sought by all the boys. It meant a long walk, a
stroll down the village street, a chance to see people, maybe to buy a
fat sandwich, a bag of peanuts, or a bottle of pop—no small things in a
boy’s life. It also meant authority and responsibility, good things for
a boy. I looked forward to these journeys. I always had a little small
silver, for spending, from my father.
The time passed quickly and pleasantly enough. I learned many prayers,
practiced for singing in the church choir, and became an altar boy,
serving the priest at mass. I liked learning the prayers and the Latin
responses to the priest, but did not make much headway with my other
studies.
I liked the dear, simple old priest to whom I made my first confession,
and at times thought I would like some day to be a priest myself.
Between my admiration for old Thomas, the coachman, with his stormy
stories of the war, and my love for the quiet old priest, my mind was
always pulling me this way and that—whether I should become a priest,
or a soldier like Tommy, limping around with his short leg and his
rheumatism.
One day when I was waiting for the mail I heard a nice old lady ask the
postmaster whose boy I was.
He said, “That’s one of the boys from the convent. You can tell them a
block away. They are all perfect little gentlemen. They say ‘Please’ and
‘Thank you.’ I do not know how the Sisters do it, but they can surely
bring boys up. I wish I could do it with mine.”
When I returned with the mail I told the Superior what I heard the
postmaster say about her and her boys. She seemed very much pleased,
smiled, and said: “Boys are good when they are taught to say their
prayers and to fear God.” Shortly after, I was appointed “mailman.” I
went to the village every day after school. When the weather was fine I
walked; if it was bad, I rode in or on the coach with Tommy. This was
the first and only “appointment” of my life. I did not think it over
then, but I know now I was not given it because I said “please” or my
prayers—I got it because I had told the Superior the nice things the
postmaster said. “Please” is a good word in its place; but it does not
get one appointed to anything. It has a proper place in a small boy’s
vocabulary. And it is also much used by a certain class of prisoners and
supplicants who are always “pleasing” somebody and are never pleasant to
anybody.
Your capable beggar on the street does not say “please.” He rips off his
spiel in such exact and precise language that he gets your dime without
it. You so admire his “art” that you do not miss the “please.” His is an
art. He omits the “please” because he knows you do not use it except
when you want the mustard.
Looking back, it seems to me that our life in the convent was not
properly balanced. We had none of the rough, boisterous times so dear to
the small boy, no swimming, baseball, football. We were a little too
cloistered, too quiet, too subdued. There was no wrestling, no boxing,
no running and jumping and squabbling and shuffling and shouldering
about. Of course I learned all those later. But I learned them quickly,
too quickly—all in a bunch. That put me out of balance again. Those
exercises should have been mixed in with my studies and prayers.
One stormy day I came out of the post office and as usual handed up the
paper to Tommy, whose habit it was to glance at the headlines and return
it to me. This day, however, he found something that interested him. He
put the horses’ lines between his legs and crossed his knees on them. I
sat beside him on the box and shivered in the wind. He read on and on,
column after column, then turned to an inner page, fighting the paper in
the wind.
At last, and it seemed an hour, he folded it up carefully and returned
it to me. “Good news to-day, Tommy?” “No, boy, no good news. Bad news,
awful news, terrible news.” He spoke in an awed voice, a voice that
carried reverence. “Terrible news —Jesse James has been murdered,
murdered in cold blood and by a traitor.”
He fell silent and spoke to me no more that day. Later he told me many
things about Jesse James. He worshiped him, and like many other good
people of Missouri firmly believed that neither of the James boys ever
fired a shot except in defense of their rights.
I delivered the mail and hastened to tell the other boys that Jesse
James was dead, “murdered.” Many of the older boys knew all about him—he
was their hero, too—and the things they told me made me decide to get
the paper and read his story myself. The next day, strangely enough, I
passed the Superior’s office when she was out to lunch. The paper was
folded neatly, lying on some older papers on the corner of her neat
desk. I walked in and took it. I put it away carefully, but many days
passed before I got to the reading of it. I was so occupied with my
duties as altar boy, and so busy with preparing for my first communion
and learning new prayers, that the James boys and all other worldly
things had no place in my mind.
Those were intense days. I lived in another world.
At last I found time to read my paper. On my way for the mail I slowly
dug out the story of Jesse James’ life and death, word by word. How I
studied the picture of this bearded and be-pistoled hero! And the
sketches of his shooting and the house in which it was done. Then came
the story of his bereaved mother. How my boyish sympathy went out to
her, as she wept for her loss and told the story of the lifelong
persecution of her boys, Jesse and Frank, and how she feared that the
hunted fugitive, Frank James, would also be dealt with in the same
traitorous fashion. How I loathed the traitor, Bob Ford, one of the
James boys gang, who shot Jesse when his back was turned, for a reward!
How I rejoiced to read that Ford was almost lynched by friends and
admirers of Jesse, and had to be locked in the strongest jail in the
state to protect him from a mobbing. I finished the story entirely and
wholly in sympathy with the James boys, and all other hunted, outlawed,
and outraged men.
When I had done with the paper I passed it along to the other boys, who
read it and handed it about till it was finally captured by the
Superior. It was limp and ragged from usage. The Superior promptly
traced it back to me. When asked where I got it, I told her I had taken
it from her desk. I was lectured severely on the wrong of taking things
without asking for them. I told her I did not ask for it because I was
afraid she might refuse me. She said nothing, and did not offer to give
me any, from which I understood that we were not to have papers. I was
also relieved of my job as mailman. I was no longer to be trusted.
My teacher heard of my disgrace. She took me into her study, and we
talked the thing over. The loss of my job was nothing; I would be going
home soon, anyway. I must not feel bad about the lecture, I had done
nothing wrong. I would have returned the paper, only the other boys
wanted to read it. I discovered that she looked at it the same way I
did.
She asked me if I wanted more papers. I was on fire for papers and told
her so. She promised to get me one every day, and did. When I read it I
returned it to her.
The James boys’ story ran on for days and I followed it word for word,
sympathizing with the hunted fugitive, Frank, wishing I were old enough
and strong enough to find him and help him escape his pursuers and
avenge his brother’s death.
When that story was over I turned to other crime stories and read
nothing else in the papers. Burglaries, robberies, murders—I devoured
them all, always in sympathy with the adventurous and chance-taking
criminals. I reconstructed their crimes in my boyish mind and often
pictured myself taking part in them. I neglected my studies and prayers
to rove about in fancy with such heroes as Jimmy Hope, Max Shinburn, and
“Piano Charlie,” famous “gopher men,” who tunneled under banks like
gophers and carried away their plunder after months of dangerous
endeavor.
Looking back now I can plainly see the influence the James boys and
similar characters had in turning my thoughts to adventure and later to
crime.