Lead Lives of Loneliness.
Even the “Successful” Criminal Realizes That He Can Have No True Friends.

Criminologists speak of the braggart vanity of the criminal. It is true of erotic offenders, perhaps. But the thief will tell of the number of times he has foiled the police merely by way of self-justification. He admits the premise that he was a fool ever to become a criminal, and be recounts his triumphs only to indicate to you that, at least, he is not an absolute idiot.

Also criminologists point out the childish vanity of the criminal who bedecks his person with jewels when he is prosperous. In this the criminal to no vainer than his honest brother. But jewels are about the only sort of property that he can safely possess, as was the case with the Jews in the old days when they were the driven race. The criminal may not with any safety become a bank depositor, and he is usually too much of a spendthrift to carry a roll of cash: but he finds that if he is arrested and can show some handsome diamond ornaments and a valuable watch, he will have no difficulty in securing a good lawyer and a bondsman, and will have a fighting chance for acquittal at his trial.

But always, be it understood, the crook is peering into the windows of the house of respectability with wistful eyes. “Al” Adams, with more than a million dollars earned from his despicable policy gambling, which robbed children of their pennies and caused starvation in tenement homes, found himself an enforced hermit in a crowded city. Even his family did not live with him. In a suite of rooms at the Ansonia, with a Japanese servant who had no personal feeling for him, the man lived alone. He craved human association. Sometimes he got it on false pretences from chance acquaintances. But be would shortly be identified, and again there was only utter loneliness for him. He shot himself dead.—Charles Somerville, in Everybody’s.