The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860. Various
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There, being charged with the burglary, Jacoub at once admitted it, and told the whole story. The prince, honoring him for his honor, at once took him into his service, and employed him with entire confidence in whatever of important or delicate he had to do that needed a man of truth and courage; and Jacoub from that beginning went up step by step, till he himself became prince of a province, and then of many provinces, and finally king of a mighty realm. He had soul enough, according to Carlyle's idea, not to need salt; but, for all that, the salt saved him.
Another king of Persia, Khurreem Khan, was not ashamed to admit, with a crown on his head, that he had once been a thief, and was wont to recount of himself what in these days we should call a case of conscience. Thus he told it:—
"When I was a poor soldier in Nadir Shah's camp, my necessities led me to take from a shop a gold-embossed saddle, sent thither by an Afghan chief to be repaired. I soon afterward heard that the owner of the shop was in prison, sentenced to be hanged. My conscience smote me. I restored the stolen article to the very place whence I had removed it, and watched till it was discovered by the tradesman's wife. She uttered a scream of joy, on seeing it, and fell on her knees, invoking blessings on the person who had brought it back, and praying that he might live to have a hundred such saddles. I am quite certain that the honest prayer of the old woman aided my fortune in attaining the splendor she wished me to enjoy."
These are variations upon the general theme of thievery. They all tend to show that it is, at the least, unsafe to take the fact of a man's having committed a certain crime against property as a proof per se that he is radically bad or inferior in intellect. "Your thief looks in the crowd," says Byron,
"Exactly like the rest, or rather better,"—
and this, not because physiognomy is false, but the thief's face true. Of a promiscuous crowd, taken almost anywhere, the pickpocket in it is the smartest man present, in all probability. According to Ecclesiasticus, it is "the heart of man that changeth his countenance"; and it does seem that it is to his education, and not to his heart, that man does violence in stealing. It is certainly in exact proportion to his education that he feels in reference to it, and does or does not "regret the necessity."
And, indeed, that universal doctrine of contraries may work here as elsewhere; and it might not he difficult to demonstrate that a majority of thieves are better fitted by their nature and capacity for almost any other position in life than the one they occupy through perverse circumstance and unaccountable accident. Though mostly men of fair ability, they are not generally successful. Considering the number of thieves, there are but few great ones. In this "Rogues' Gallery" of the New York Police Commissioners we find the face of a "first-rate" burglar among the ablest of the eighty of whom he is one. He is a German, and has passed twenty years in the prisons of his native land: has that leonine aspect sometimes esteemed a physiognomical attribute of the German, and, with fair enough qualities generally, is without any especial intellectual strength. Near him is another "first-rate,"—all energy and action, acute enough, a quick reasoner, very cool and resolute. Below these is the face of one whom the thief-takers think lightly of, and call a man of "no account." Yet he is a man of far better powers than either of the "first-rates,"—has more thought and equal energy,—a mind seldom or never at rest,—is one to make new combinations and follow them to results with an ardor almost enthusiastic. From some want of adaptation not depending upon intellectual power, he is inferior as a thief to his inferiors.
This man was without a cravat when his picture was taken, and his white shirt-collar, coming up high in the neck, has the appearance of a white neckerchief. This trifle of dress, with the intellectual look of the man, strikes every observer as giving him a clerical appearance. The picture strongly resembles—more in air, perhaps, than in feature—the large engraved portrait of Summerfield. There is not so much of calm comprehensiveness of thought, and there are more angles. Thief though he be, he has fair language,—not florid or rhetorical, but terse and very much to the point. If bred as a divine, he would have held his place among the "brilliants" of the time, and been as original, erratic, or outré as any. What a fortune lost! It is part of the fatality for the man not to know it, at least in time. Even villany would have put him into his proper place, but for that film over the mental vision. "If rogues," said Franklin, "knew the advantages attached to the practice of the virtues, they would become honest men from mere roguery."
Many of the faces of this Rogues' Gallery are very well worth consideration. Of a dozen leading pickpockets, who work singly, or two or three together, and are mostly English, what is first noted is not favorable to English teaching or probity;—their position sits easily upon them. There is not one that gives indication of his having passed through any mental struggle before he sat down in life as a thief. Though all men capable of thought, they have not thought very deeply upon this point. One of them is a natural aristocrat,—a man who could keep the crowd aloof by simple volition, and without offense; nothing whatever harsh in him,—polite to all, and amiable to a fault with his fellows.
There would be style in everything he did or said. He is one to astonish drawing-rooms and bewilder promenades by the taste and elegance of his dress. Upon that altar, doubtless, he sacrificed his principles; but the sacrifice was not a great one.
"'Tis only at the bar or in the dungeon that wise men know a felon by his features." Another English pickpocket appears to have Alps on Alps of difference between him and a thief. Good-nature prevails; there is a little latent fire; not enough energy to be bad, or good, against the current. He has some quiet dignity, too,—the head, in fine, of a genial, dining Dombey, if such a man can be imagined. Face a good oval, rather full in flesh, forehead square, without particular strength, a nose that was never unaccompanied by good taste and understanding, and mouth a little lickerish;—the incarnation of the popular idea of a bank-president.
The other day he turned to get into an omnibus at one of the ferries, and just as he did so, there, it so happened, was a young lady stepping in before him. The quiet old gentleman, with that warmth of politeness that sits so well upon quiet old gentlemen in the presence of young ladies, helped her in, and took a seat beside her. At half a block up the street the president startled the other passengers by the violent gesticulations with which he endeavored to attract the attention of a gentleman passing down on the sidewalk; the passengers watched with interest the effect or non-effect of his various episodes of telegraphic desperation, and saw, with a regret equal to his own, that the gentleman on the sidewalk saw nothing, and turned the corner as calmly as a corner could be turned; but the old gentleman, not willing to lose him in that manner, jumped out of the 'bus and ran after, with a liveliness better becoming his eagerness than his age. In a moment more, the young lady, admonished by the driver's rap on the roof, would have paid her fare, but her portmonnaie was missing. I know not whether the bank-president was or was not suspected;—
"All I can say is, that he had the money."
Look closer, and beneath that look of good-humor you will find a little something of superciliousness. You will see a line running down the cheek from behind each nostril, drawing the whole face, good-humor and all, into a sneer of habitual contempt,—contempt, no doubt, of the vain endeavors and devices of men to provide against the genius of a good pickpocket.
It was said of Themistocles, that
"he, with all his greatness, Could ne'er command his hands."
Now this man is a sort of Themistocles. He is a man of wealth, and can snap his fingers at Fortune; can sneer that little sneer of his at things generally, and be none the worse; but what he cannot do is, to shake off an incubus that sits upon his life in the shape of old Habit severe as Fate. This man, with apparently all that is necessary in the world to keep one at peace with it, and to ease declining life with comforts, and cheer with the serener pleasures, is condemned to keep his peace in a state of continual uncertainty; for, seeing a purse temptingly exposed, he is physically incapable of refraining from the endeavor to take it. What devil is there in his finger-ends that brings this about? Is this part of the curse of crime,—that, having once taken up with it, a man cannot cut loose, but, with all the disposition to make his future life better, he must, as by the iron links of Destiny, be chained to his past?
There is a Chinese thief-story somewhat in point here. A man who was very poor stole from his neighbor, who was very rich, a single duck. He cooked