Certainly the Gerry Society has its faults; but since its organization young boys who have gone wrong but are not yet entirely hardened, have a much better show to become good citizens than they used to have. That Society did not exist in my day; but I know a good deal about it, and I am convinced that it does a world of good; for, at least, when it takes children into its charge it does not surround them with an atmosphere of social crime.
While in the Tombs I experienced my first disillusionment as to the honor of thieves. I was an impulsive, imaginative boy, and that a pal could go back on me never seemed possible. Many of my subsequent misfortunes were due to the treachery of my companions. I have learned to distrust everybody, but as a boy of fifteen I was green, and so the treachery I shall relate left a sore spot in my soul.
It happened this way. On a May day, about two months before I was arrested, two other boys and I had entered the basement of a house where the people were moving, had made away with some silverware, and sold it to a Christian woman in the neighborhood for one twentieth of its value. When I had nearly served my ten days' sentence for assault, my two pals were arrested and "squealed" on me. I was confronted with them in the Tombs. At first I was mighty glad to see them, but when I found they had "squealed," I set my teeth and denied all knowledge of the "touch." I protested my innocence so violently that the police thought the other boys were merely seeking a scape-goat. They got twenty days and my term expired forty-eight hours afterwards. The silverware I stole that May morning is now an heirloom in the family of the Christian woman to whom I sold it so cheap.
If I had always been as earnest a liar as I was on that occasion in the Tombs I might never have gone to "stir" (penitentiary); but I grew more indifferent and desperate as time went on; and, in a way, more honest, more sincerely a criminal: I hardly felt like denying it. I know some thieves who, although they have grafted for twenty-five years, have not yet "done time"; some of them escaped because they knew how to throw the innocent "con" so well. Take Tim, for instance. Tim and I grafted together as boys. He was not a very skilful pickpocket, and he often was on the point of arrest; but he had a talent for innocence, and the indignation act he would put up would melt a heart of stone. He has, consequently, never been in stir, while I, a much better thief, have spent half of my adult life there. That was partly because I felt, when I had once made a touch, that the property belonged to me. On one occasion I had robbed a "bloke" of his "red super" (gold watch), and made away with it all right, when I carelessly dropped it on the sidewalk. A crowd had gathered about, and no man really in his right mind, would have picked up that super. But I did it, and was nailed dead to rights by a "cop." Some time afterwards a pal asked me why the deuce I had been so foolish. "Didn't the super belong to me," I replied, indignantly. "Hadn't I earned it?" I was too honest a thief. That was one of my weaknesses.