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Ere long a rabble of street-walkers, beggars, pick-pockets, and loafers were stamping behind Rebecca, repeating her shrill appeals with coarse variations, and assailing her with jokes which, fortunately for her, were worded in terms which her New England ears could not comprehend.
The boys recruit the ranks of the pick-pockets, thieves, murderers, and "thugs" of the City; the girls become waiters in the concert saloons, or street walkers, and sink thence down to the lowest depths of infamy. Water street alone can show a thousand proofs of this assertion.
DAB-DAB was terribly upset when she found we were going away again without luncheon; and she made us take some cold pork-pies in our pockets to eat on the way. This was the week of the Assizes a business which happened every three months, when many pick-pockets and other bad characters were tried by a very grand judge who came all the way from London.
If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a fairy prince.
Why not, indeed; except that she had not exterminated her pirates of the public weal, her freebooters of the wilderness, her slippery fingered pick-pockets, who shouted "I am Uncle Sam," while they picked Uncle Sam's pockets?
She had heard that there were a great many pick-pockets in Boston, and a large part of that letter was to urge me to be very careful not to let anybody pick my pocket. Now I required to have something in my pocket before I could have it picked. So you must have salvation before you can work it out. When Christ cried out on Calvary, "It is finished!" He meant what He said.
Presidents, Senators, Honorables, Judges, Generals, Commodores, Governors, and the Ex's of all these, congregate here as thick as pick-pockets at a horse-race or women at a wedding in church.
It must, however, be allowed, that in all large towns, however great may be the vigilance of the police, there still must be abundance of the followers of Macheath. Perhaps Paris most abounds in sharpers who cheat with finesse, and London in the number of pick-pockets and robbers.
New kinds of crime, such as forgery, grand larceny, intricate swindling schemes, were doubled, while sneak thieves, drunkards, and pick-pockets decreased, and the proportion of educated criminals was greatly augmented.
Ah! if people but knew the excitement of these games of hide and seek which are played between the criminal and the detective, everybody would be wanting employment at the office of the Rue de Jerusalem. The misfortune is, that the art is becoming lost. Great crimes are now so rare. The race of strong fearless criminals has given place to the mob of vulgar pick-pockets.
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