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"What," he demanded, "might her particular crime be; murder, shoplifting, treason " "If her brother had to leave this country," interrupted Garland, "she'd leave with him. And the people don't want that. Her pull is the same as old man Goddard's. Everybody loves him and everybody loves her.
I understood that something dreadful must have happened, but I did not care, since, as I fondly supposed, it did not concern me. I pushed out past Alexander Abraham who was looking as guilty as if he had been caught burglarizing and came face to face with the man who had sprung from the buggy. It was old Dr. Blair, from Carmody, and he was looking at me as if he had found me shoplifting.
Not the slightest clew to the murder could be found for several weeks, and the mystery seemed to be impenetrable. At length a rumor reached the ear of the committee that a prisoner in the jail at New Bedford, seventy miles from Salem, confined there on a charge of shoplifting, had intimated that he could make important disclosures.
Mackintosh bestowed upon him a knowing wink. "Sounds like a nom de plume," he chuckled. "What was your line?" "I don't understand." "What did you serve time for? Shoplifting?" "Oh, no," said the other calmly. "Burglarizing?" With more respect in his tones. "What do you think?" queried the caller in the same mild voice. "Not ferocious-looking enough for that lay, I should have thought.
He was in that state of semi-hysterical exhaustion in which revelation of one's intimate troubles to the first comer seems natural. "She's gone and got arrested," he wailed. Mayme's face became grave and practical. "That's different," said she. "What's her lay?" "Lay? I don't know " "What's her line? What's she done to get pinched?" "Shoplifting. At the special night sale of the Emporium."
"Yes yes," said the Poor Boy, "they accused her of shoplifting and it wasn't she at all." "Damn them," said Tinker. "By all means," said the Poor Boy. "But what about her?" His eyes twinkled. Mr. Tinker blushed and beamed. "She's given up her rooms." "What!" exclaimed the Poor Boy. "And we're going to move to the little house on the corner."
"Put five shillings in the box for swearing, Mr B . You fine other people," said the major. "Here is my other confederate, Lord Windermear." "Carbonnell," said Lord Windermear, "what is all this?" "Nothing, my lord, except that our friend Newland is taken up for shoplifting, because he thought proper to run after a pretty woman's carriage; and I am accused by his worship of being his confederate.
They live in the streets, sleep in hallways, alleyways, anywhere, a prey to the first evil-disposed man that meets them. It is a common sight to see children on the streets in all parts of the metropolis boys and girls aged from five to fifteen years, selling papers, shoplifting, stealing, and, worse. Have they parents? Who knows, who inquires, who cares? Some of them are very pretty girls, too.
But when one finds non-theists repudiating the name of Atheist with as much moral indignation as though they had been accused of shoplifting, one cannot help the suspicion that the heat displayed is not unconnected with some lurking fear of the "respectabilities." It does seem that while many may have outgrown all fear of the God of orthodoxy, the fear of the god of social pressure remains.
When an elevator falls down in an office-building and somebody is injured, the headlines ring to heaven. A similar catastrophe in a department store is considered of hardly sufficient human interest to publish. The name and shame of a woman caught shoplifting in a department store can seldom be kept out of the papers.
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