Another thing the dope did was to make me laugh at everything. It was fun for me to graft, and I saw the humor of life. I remember I used to say that this world is the best possible; that the fine line of cranks and fools in it gives it variety. One day I had a good laugh in a Brooklyn car. Tim, George and I got next to a Dutchman who had a large prop in his tie. He stood for a newspaper under his chin, and his stone came as slick as grease. A minute afterwards he missed his property, and we did not dare to move. He told his wife, who was with him, that his stone was gone. She called him a fool, and said that he had left it at home, in the bureau drawer, that she remembered it well. Then he looked down and saw that his front was gone, too. He said to his wife: "I am sure I had my watch and chain with me," but his wife was so superior that she easily convinced him he had left it at home. The wisdom of women is beyond finding out. But I enjoyed that incident. I shall never forget the look that came over the Dutchman's face when he missed his front.
I was too sleepy those days to go out of town much on the graft; and was losing my ambition generally. I even cared very little for the girls, and gave up many of my amusements. I used to stay most of the time in my furnished room, smoking hop. When I went out it was to get some dough quick, and to that end I embraced almost any means. At night I often drifted into some concert hall, but it was not like the old days when I was a kid. The Bowery is far more respectable now than it ever was before. Twenty years ago there was no worse place possible for ruining girls and making thieves than Billy McGlory's joint on Hester Street. About ten o'clock in the morning slumming parties would chuckle with glee when the doors at McGlory's would be closed and young girls in scanty clothing, would dance the can-can. These girls would often fight together, and frequently were beaten unmercifully by the men who lived on them and their trade. Often men were forcibly robbed in these joints. There was little danger of an arrest; for if the sucker squealed, the policeman on the beat would club him off to the beat of another copper, who would either continue the process, or arrest him for disorderly conduct.