"he, with all his greatness,
Could ne'er command his hands."
Now this man is a sort of Themistocles. He is a man of wealth, and can
snap his fingers at Fortune; can sneer that little sneer of his at
things generally, and be none the worse; but what he cannot do is, to
shake off an incubus that sits upon his life in the shape of old Habit
severe as Fate. This man, with apparently all that is necessary in the
world to keep one at peace with it, and to ease declining life with
comforts, and cheer with the serener pleasures, is condemned to keep
his peace in a state of continual uncertainty; for, seeing a purse
temptingly exposed, he is physically incapable of refraining from the
endeavor to take it. What devil is there in his finger-ends that brings
this about? Is this part of the curse of crime,--that, having once
taken up with it, a man cannot cut loose, but, with all the disposition
to make his future life better, he must, as by the iron links of
Destiny, be chained to his past?
There is a Chinese thief-story somewhat in point here. A man who was
very poor stole from his neighbor, who was very rich, a single duck. He
cooked and ate it, and went to bed happy; but before morning he felt
all over his body and limbs a remarkable itching, a terrible irritation
that prevented sleep. When daylight came, he perceived that he had
sprouted all over with duck-feathers. This was an unlooked-for
judgment, and the man gave himself up to despair,--when he was informed
by an emanation of the divine Buddha that the feathers would fall from
him the moment he received a reproof and admonition from the man whose
duck he had stolen. This only increased his despair, for he knew his
neighbor to be one of the laughter-loving kind, who would not go to the
length of reproof, though he lost a thousand ducks. After sundry futile
attempts to swindle his neighbor out of the needed admonition, our
friend was compelled to divulge, not only the theft, but also the means
of cure, when he was cured.
And this good, easy man, who is wealthy with the results of
pocket-picking;--that well-cut black coat, that satin waistcoat, that
elegantly-adjusted scarf and well-arranged collar, they are all
duck-feathers; but the feather that itches is that irreclaimable
tendency of the fingers to find their way into other people's pockets.
Pity, however, the man who cannot be at ease till he has received a
reproof from every one whose pocket he has picked through a long life
in London and in New York city.
The amount of mental activity that gleams out upon you from these walls
is something wonderful; evidence of sufficient thinking to accomplish
almost any intellectual task; thought-life crowded with what
experience!
The "confidence" swindlers are mostly Americans,--so that, the
pickpockets being mostly English, you may see some national character
in crime, aside from the tendency of races. The Englishman is
conservative,--sticks to traditions,--picks and plods in the same old
way in which ages have picked and plodded before him. Exactly like the
thief of ancient Athens, he
"walks
The street, and picks your pocket as he talks
On some pretence with you";
at the same time, with courage and self-reliance admirably English,
risking his liberty on his skill. The American illuminates his practice
with an intellectual element, faces his man, "bidding a gay defiance to
mischance," and gains his end easily by some acute device that merely
transfers to himself, with the knowledge and consent of the owner, the
subtile principle of property.
This "confidence" game is a thing of which the ancients appear to have
known nothing. The French have practised it with great success, and may
have invented it. It appears particularly French in some of its
phases,--in the manner that is necessary for its practice, in its wit
and finesse. The affair of the Diamond Necklace, with which all the
world is familiar, is the most magnificent instance of it on record. A
lesser case, involving one of the same names, and playing excellently
upon woman's vanity, illustrates the French practice.
One evening, as Marie Antoinette sat quietly in her _loge_ at the
theatre, the wife of a wealthy tradesman of Paris, sitting nearly
_vis-à-vis_ to the Queen, made great parade of her toilet, and seemed
peculiarly desirous of attracting attention to a pair of splendid
bracelets, gleaming with the chaste contrast of emeralds and diamonds.
She was not without success. A gentleman of elegant mien and graceful
manner presented himself at the door of her _loge_; he delivered a
message from the Queen. Her Majesty had remarked the singular beauty of
the bracelets, and wished to inspect one of them more closely. What
could be more gratifying? In the seventh heaven of delighted vanity,
the tradesman's wife unclasped the bracelet and gave it to the
gentleman, who bowed himself out, and left her--as you have doubtless
divined he would--abundant leisure to learn of her loss.
Early the next morning, however, an officer from the department of
police called at this lady's house. The night before, a thief had been
arrested leaving the theatre, and on his person were found many
valuables,--among others, a splendid bracelet. Being penitent, he had
told, to the best of his recollection, to whom the articles belonged,
and the lady called upon was indicated as the owner of the bracelet. If
Madame possessed the mate to this singular bracelet, it was only
necessary to intrust it to the officer, and, if it were found to
compare properly with the other, both would be immediately sent home,
and Madame would have only a trifling fee to pay. The bracelet was
given willingly, and, with the stiff courtesy inseparable from official
dignity, the officer took his leave, and at the next _café_ joined his
fellow, the gentleman of elegant mien and graceful manner. The
bracelets were not found to compare properly, and therefore were not
returned.
These faces are true to the nationality,--all over American. They are
much above the average in expression,--lighted with clear, well-opened
eyes, intelligent and perceptive; most have an air of business
frankness well calculated to deceive. There is one capacious,
thought-freighted forehead. All are young.
No human observer will fail to be painfully struck with the number of
boys whose faces are here exposed. There are boys of every age, from
five to fifteen, and of every possible description, good, bad, and
indifferent. The stubborn and irreclaimable imp of evil nature peers
out sullenly and doggedly, or sparkles on you a pair of small
snake-eyes, fruitful of deceit and cunning. The better boy, easily
moved, that might become anything, mercurial and volatile, "most
ignorant of what he's most assured," reflects on his face the pleasure
of having his picture taken, and smiles good-humoredly, standing in
this worst of pillories, to be pelted along a lifetime with
unforgetting and unforgiving glances. With many of these boys, this is
a family matter. Here are five brothers, the youngest very young
indeed,--and the father not very old. One of the brothers,
bright-looking as boy can be, is a young Jack Sheppard, and has already
broken jail five times. Many are trained by old burglars to be put
through windows where men cannot go, and open doors. In a row of
second-class pickpockets, nearly all boys, there is observable on
almost every face some expression of concern, and one instinctively
thanks Heaven that the boys appear to be frightened. Yet, after all,
perhaps it is hardly worth while. The reform of boy thieves was first
agitated a long while since, and we have yet to hear of some
encouraging result. The earliest direct attempt we know of, with all
the old argument, _pro_ and _con_, is thus given in Sadi's "Gulistan."
Among a gang of thieves, who had been very hardly taken, "there
happened to be a lad whose rising bloom of youth was just matured. One
of the viziers kissed the foot of the king's throne, assumed a look of
intercession, and said,--
"'This lad has not yet even reaped the pleasures of youth; my
expectation, from your Majesty's inherent generosity, is, that, by
granting his life, you would confer an obligation on your servant.'
"The king frowned at this request, and said,--
"'The light of the righteous does not influence one of vicious origin;
instruction to the worthless is a walnut on a dome, that rolls off. To
smother a fire and leave its sparks, to kill a viper and take care of
its young, are not actions of the wise. Though the clouds rain the
water of life, you cannot eat fruit from the boughs of a willow.'
"When the vizier heard this, he applauded the king's understanding, and
assented that what he had pronounced was unanswerable.
"'Yet, nevertheless,' he said, 'as the boy, if bred among the thieves,
would have taken their manners, so is your servant hopeful that he
might receive instruction in the society of upright men; for he is
still a boy, and it is written, that every child is born in the faith
of Islam, and his parents corrupt him. The son of Noah, associated with
the wicked, lost his power of prophecy; the dog of the Seven Sleepers,
following the good, became a man.'
"Then others of the courtiers joined in the intercession, and the king
said,--
"'I have assented, but I do not think it well.'
"They bred the youth in indulgence and affluence, and appointed an
accomplished tutor to educate him, and he became learned and gained
great applause in the sight of every one. The king smiled when the
vizier spoke of this, and said,--
"'Thou hast been nourished by our milk, and hast grown with us; who
afterwards gave thee intelligence that thy father was a wolf?'
"A few years passed;--a company of the vagrants of the neighborhood
were near; they connected themselves with the boy; a league of
association was formed; and, at an opportunity, the boy destroyed the
vizier and his children, carried off vast booty, and fixed himself in
the place of his father in the cavern of the robbers. The king bit the
hand of astonishment with the teeth of reflection, and said,--
"'How can any one make a good sword from bad iron? The worthless, O
Philosopher, does not, by instruction, become worthy. Rain, though not
otherwise than benignant, produces tulips in gardens and rank weeds in
nitrous ground.'"
Yet, notwithstanding Sadi and some other wise ones, here, as thieves,
are the faces of boys that cannot be naturally vicious,--boys of good
instincts, beyond all possible question,--and that only need a mother's
hand to smooth back the clustering hair from the forehead, to discover
the future residence of plentiful and upright reason. The face of a
boy, now in Sing Sing for burglary, and who bears a name which over the
continent of North America is identified with the ideas of large
combination and enterprise, is especially noticeable for the clear
eyes, and frank, promising look.
That tale of Sadi will do well enough when Aesop tells it of a
serpent;--he, indeed, can change his skin and be a serpent still; but
when the old Sufi, or any one else, tells it of a boy, let us doubt.
Think of the misery that may be associated with all this,--that this
represents! In this Gallery are the faces of many men; some are
handsome, most of them more or less human. It cannot be that they all
began wrongly,--that their lives were all poisoned at the
fountain-head. No,--here are some that came from what are called good
families; many others of them had homes, and you may still see some
lingering love of it in an air of settled sadness,--they were misled in
later life. Think of the mothers who have gone down, in bitter, bitter
sorrow, to the grave, with some of the lineaments we see around before
their mind's eye at the latest moment! Oh, the circumstances under
which some of these faces have been conjured up by the strong will of
love! Think of the sisters, living along with a hidden heart-ache,
nursing in secret the knowledge, that somewhere in the world were those
dear to them, from whom they were shut out by a bar-sinister terribly
real, and for whose welfare, with all the generous truth of a sister's
feeling, they would barter everything, yet who were in an unending
danger! Think of them, with this skeleton behind the door of their
hearts, fearful at every moment! Does it seem good in the scheme of
existence, or a blot there, that those who are themselves innocent, but
who are yet the real sufferers, whether punishment to the culprit fall
or fail, should be made thus poignantly miserable? We know nothing.
It is said in a certain Arabic legend, that, while Moses was on Mount
Sinai, the Lord instructed him in the mysteries of his providence; and
Moses, having complained of the impunity of vice and its success in the
world, and the frequent sufferings of the innocent, the Lord led him to
a rock which jutted from the mountain, and where he could overlook the
vast plain of the Desert stretching at his feet.
On one of its oases he beheld a young Arab asleep. He awoke, and,
leaving behind him a bag of pearls, sprang into the saddle and rapidly
disappeared from the horizon. Another Arab came to the oasis; he
discovered the pearls, took them, and vanished in the opposite
direction.
Now an aged wanderer, leaning on his staff, bent his steps wearily
toward the shady spot; he laid himself down, and fell asleep. But
scarcely had he closed his eyes, when he was rudely aroused from his
slumber; the young Arab had returned, and demanded his pearls. The
hoary man replied, that he had not taken them. The other grew enraged,
and accused him of theft. He swore that he had not seen the treasure;
but the other seized him; a scuffle ensued; the young Arab drew his
sword, and plunged it into the breast of the aged man, who fell
lifeless on the earth.
"O Lord! is this just?" exclaimed Moses, with terror.
"Be silent! Behold, this man, whose blood is now mingling with the
waters of the Desert, many years ago, secretly, on the same spot,
murdered the father of the youth who has now slain him. His crime
remained concealed from men; but vengeance is mine: I will repay."