I T would not be a hopeful sign of the further triumph of the good principle over the evil if the devil’s agents could shew us many examples where they have beaten us, and been enabled to slide clean off the scale. Since my first volume was published, I have been twitted with cases where we have been at fault. I don’t deny that there are some, and I will give one or two, of which I have something to say. In the meantime, I have consolation, not that I have contributed much to the gratifying resu

H OWEVER assiduously I have plied my vocation, I have never thought that I was doing the good which our masters expect of us in stopping the sliders on the slippery scale of criminal descent. They only commence again, and when they slide off altogether others rise to run the same course. If I have taken credit for a diminution, I suspect that Dr Guthrie has had more to do with it than I. Sometimes I have had qualms from a conviction that I have been hard on many who could scarcely be said to be

T HERE are apparently two reasons that influence some of our Edinburgh gentry in locking up their houses and ticketing a window with directions about keys when they go to the country. The first is, that they save the wages of a woman to take charge of the house; and the second, that they may tell their less lucky neighbours that they are able to go to the country and enjoy themselves. No doubt they trust to the watchfulness of a policeman, forgetting that the man has no more than two eyes and tw

I T may be naturally supposed that we detectives are not much given to sadness. It is, I suspect, a weakness connected with me, a tendency to meditate on the vanity of human wishes; and I should be free from the frailty, insomuch as there has been less vanity in my wishes to apprehend rogues than in the case of most other of the artistes of my order. Yet am I not altogether free from the weakness. We have a natural wish to see our friends happy around us, and this desire is the source of my litt

I F the Conglomerates of our old town are troubled with many miseries, as the consequences of their privations and vices, it is certain the whole squalid theatre they play their strange parts in, is the scene of more incidents, often humorous, nay romantic—if there can be a romance of low life—than can be found in the quiet saloons of the higher grades in the new town. The observation indeed is almost so trite, that I need not mention that while in the one case you have nature overlaid with the

I DOUBT whether the good philanthropical people are even yet quite up to all the advantages of ragged schools. The salvation of society from a host of harpies is not the main chance; neither is it that the poor wretches are sold into the slavery of vice and misery before they know right from wrong. There’s something more. I have a suspicion that society loses often what might become its sharpest and most intelligent members in these half-starved youngsters, whose first putting out of the hand is

Y OU will have perceived that among my mysteries I have never had anything to do with dreams or dream-mongers. My dreams have been all of that peep-o’-day kind when a man is “wide awake” as they say, and “up to a thing or two.” Not to say that I disbelieve in dreams when they have a streak of sunlight in them, as all veritable ones have. Nor is the strange case I am about to relate free from the suspicion that the dream which preceded a terrible act, was just a daylight feeling reflected from so

T HERE are certain duties we perform of which we are scarcely aware, and which consist in a species of strolling supervision among houses, which, though not devoted to resetting, are often yet receptacles of stolen goods, through a means of the residence there of women of the lowest stratum of vice and profligacy. Though we have no charge against the house at the time, and no suspicion that it contains stolen property, we claim the privilege of going through it on the ostensible pretence that we

D O you know any one within the circle of your experience who is utterly renounced to himself—what is called a money-grub or hunks, eternally yearning for money, so as to deserve the address of Burns: “Fie upon you, coward man, that you should be the slave o’t?” If there’s any tear about that man’s eye, depend upon’t it’s only a thinnish rheum; and as for anything like a response in the ear to the cry of pity, the drum will as soon crack at the singing of a psalm. Such a character is the result

H OW different are the estimates people form of mankind! Some say that the world is just very much as you take it—the old notion that truth is just as you think it. If you wear a rough glove, you may think all those you shake hands with are rough in the palms; and if you wear a soft one, so in the other way; and no doubt if you grin in a glass, you will get a grin in return—if you smile, you will be repaid with a smile. All very well this in the clever way; but I’ve a notion that there are depth

I T is almost a peculiarity of the thief that he is in his furtive appetite omnivorous. Everything that can be reduced to the chyle of money is acceptable to him. While others have predilections, he has absolutely none. It is not that he is always, however, or even often in need, and therefore glad to seize whatever comes in his way. I have known instances where he was by no means driven to his calling by necessity, and yet not only was the passion to appropriate strong in him, but he was at sam

I HAVE already alluded to the subject of the flinty-heartedness of the fraternity among whom I have so long laboured, and I may illustrate the same feature by another case, which is calculated as well to shew a peculiarity somewhat better known—the elasticity of their enjoyments, if the rant and roar of their mirth can go by a name expressive of a heartfelt affection. Is there any reason in the world why thieves should not marry one with another? or rather, were we to bear in mind the words of t

N O kind of literature can be more detrimental to morals than that of which we have had some melancholy examples from the London press, where the colours that belong to romance are thrown over pictures of crime otherwise revolting. Nor is much required for this kind of writing,—a touch of fate calling for sympathy, or a dash of cleverness extorting admiration, will suffice. Shave the fellow’s head, and put a canvas jacket on him, and you have your hero as he ought to be. See M‘Pherson with the f

T HE sliding scale is so far applicable to us as well as to thieves. As the latter proceed from crime to crime, the less to the greater—in the scarlet tint from the lighter to the deeper, so we slide on from trace to trace till we get to the fountain. And there is this similarity, too, between the cases. Our beginnings are small, but they are hopeful, and as the traces increase, we get more energetic and bolder: so with the thieves; there is an achieved success which leads to the greater triumph

T HE coming round of extremes, so as to meet and disappear in each other’s ends, is a thing which all must have noticed, and why not I among the rest? I rather think that in my small way I couldn’t have done what I have done, if I hadn’t been a thinker , and so I have noticed the danger of overdoing things. Not only do strong passions, though good, land in the slough of evil, but overstretched prudence, cold and calculating, leads to a pretty considerable combustion. Yes, our old mother says, “W

A CERTAIN small critic once took it into his head to laugh at another critic for commencing a learned essay with the words, “We are all born idiots,” and the reason of the chuckle, though on the wrong side, was evident enough; and yet, methinks, the wise saying might have had a tail, to the effect, “and many of us live and die idiots.” At least I know that I have met many imbeciles,—ay, even of that absolute kind who will not be taught that pain is pain, so that I am obliged to differ with Solom

I HAVE often thought we are a little mole-eyed in social questions. How much were we to have paid the devil for our letting in mental food to the people, for the introduction of machinery, for giving up hanging poor wretches! and yet we have paid him nothing,—all movements coming to a poise. When I lay hold of a robber by the throat, we have a tussle, but it does not last long. Either he or I may be down; we don’t murder each other; the forces destroy themselves, and there’s peace. Where is all

T HE way by which the ranks of thieves and robbers are recruited is by the old teaching the young the figure system. Yes, there is a proselytism of evil as well as of good. Society is always straining after the making of parties, and while churches are working for members, the old thieves are busy enlisting the young. The advantage, I fear, is with the latter, for there’s something more catching in the example of taking another man’s property than that of praying for grace. Of course I am here l

I T is not often that I have had to deal with irregular criminals, by which I mean those that are not moulded and hardened in infancy and early youth, but who, from some inherent weakness of nature have, by the force of example, or the spur of unlawful gratifications, been precipitated—sometimes against the silent admonitions of their better genius—into a breach of the laws. I have said already that those whom Mr Moxey used to call “abnormals” are comparatively few, and it is not difficult to se

I T is only a state of civilisation that can produce so strange a relation as that between detectives and robbers. In any other condition of society it is inconceivable, for love is almost always mutual, and hatred reciprocal in rude states; and it is not very easy to conceive a condition where one party follows and seeks from a spirit of well-wishing, and another curses and flies from a spirit of hatred. If there is any one we wish to see more than another, it is a robber; and if there is any c

I BELIEVE that if any one were to look back upon his past life for the purpose of tracing out the most curious parts of it, he would find that they originated in the work of my old lady, Chance, and which is nothing more than something occurring just at the moment when it is unlooked for, but, being taken advantage of, turns out to be important. The great secret is to be able to seize the advantage, and this, as concerns my kind of work, lies in something like natural reasoning. If there’s anyth