Certainly I did not realize my fate when I was a kid of ten, filled with contempt for my virtuous and obscure family! I was overflowing with spirits and arrogance, and began to play "hooky" so often that I practically quit school about this time.
It was then, too, that we moved again, this time to Cherry Street, to the wreck of my life. At the end of the block on which we lived was a corner saloon, the headquarters of a band of professional thieves. They were known as the Old Border Gang, and among them were several very well-known and successful crooks. They used to pass our way regularly, and boys older than I (my boy companions always had the advantage of me in years) used to point the famous "guns" out to me. When I saw one of these great men pass, my young imagination was fired with the ambition to be as he was! With what eagerness we used to talk about "Juggy," and the daring robbery he committed in Brooklyn! How we went over again and again in conversation, the trick by which Johnny the "grafter" had fooled the detective in the matter of the bonds!
We would tell stories like these by the hour, and then go round to the corner, to try to get a look at some of the celebrities in the saloon. A splendid sight one of these swell grafters was, as he stood before the bar or smoked his cigar on the corner! Well dressed, with clean linen collar and shirt, a diamond in his tie, an air of ease and leisure all about him, what a contrast he formed to the respectable hod-carrier or truckman or mechanic, with soiled clothes and no collar! And what a contrast was his dangerous life to that of the virtuous laborer!
The result was that I grew to think the career of the grafter was the only one worth trying for. The real prizes of the world I knew nothing about. All that I saw of any interest to me was crooked, and so I began to pilfer right and left: there was nothing else for me to do. Besides I loved to treat those older than myself. The theatre was a growing passion with me and I began to be very much interested in the baseball games. I used to go to the Union grounds in Brooklyn, where after the third inning, I could usually get admitted for fifteen cents, to see the old Athletics or Mutuals play. I needed money for these amusements, for myself and other boys, and I knew of practically only one way to get it.