This is his attitude toward the world at large. He puts on a bold front, and, as he himself says, "nerves" the thing through. In the bosom of his hang-out, however,--and this is where we ought to study his ethics,--he is a very different man. His code of morals there will compare favorably with that of any class of society; and there is no class in which fair dealing is more seriously preached, and unfair dealing more severely condemned. The average criminal will stand by a fellow-craftsman through thick and thin; and the only human being he will not tolerate is the one who turns traitor. The remorse of this traitor when brought to bay by his former brethren I have never seen exceeded anywhere. It was my fate some years ago, while living with tramps, to be lodged in a jail where one of the prisoners was a "State's evidence" witness. He had been released from prison by promising to tell tales on an old man,--who was supposed to be the main culprit in the crime in question,--and was lodging in the jail until the trial was over. Unfortunately for him, some of the prisoners had known him prior to this episode in his career; and they sent him to Coventry so completely that his life in the jail became unbearable, and he almost died ere he could give his testimony. At night we could hear him groaning in his sleep as if he were undergoing the most fearful torture, and in the daytime he slunk around the corridors like a whipped dog. He lived to give his evidence in the trial, and was released from durance; but a few days later he was found dead by his own hand. When the inmates of the jail heard of his fate they relented a little in their hatred of him; but the final opinion was that suicide was the best solution of the problem.
It is thought by criminologists that the good fellowship of the criminal is due to self-preservation and the fear that each man will hang separately if all do not hang together. They maintain that his good feeling is not genuine and spontaneous emotion, and that it is immaterial what happens to a "pal" so long as he himself succeeds. This is not my experience in his company. He has never had the slightest intimation that I would return favors that he did me; and in the majority of instances he has had every reason to know that it was not in my power to show him the friendliness he wanted. Yet he has treated me with an altruism that even a Tolstoi might admire. At the hang-out I have been hospitably entertained on all occasions; and I have never met a criminal there who would not have given me money or seen me through a squabble, had I needed his assistance and he was able to give it. This same comradeship is noticeable in all his relations with men who are in the least connected with his life and business; and it is a notorious fact that he will "divvy" his last meal with a pal. To have to refuse the request of one of his fellows, or to do him an unkindness, is as much regretted by the criminal as by any one else; and I have never known him to tell me a lie or to cheat me or to make fun of me behind my back.