Austin Bidwell

“ To-day the plains of Germany and France bear a million of armed men, ranged face to face, with only the Rhine between, eagerly awaiting the signal to pour a deadly rain on each other. And for what?
The last face that I saw at the Cologne station was that of Amstel, lit up with smiles as he waved his hand in adieu. Sitting cozily in the corner of the carriage, eager to see all that was to be seen, I found, as all tourists do, much to charm and delight. But my thoughts were on the bonds I had to sell, and I was glad enough when at 5 o'clock our train drew into the depot at Frankfort. ”

“ There were a hundred thousand men in London who would answer any description the bank could have given of Noyes, Mac and George had never appeared in the transaction, and I, the F.A. Warren they were looking for, was living quietly with my young wife in a lovely isle in the tropic sea.
Surely then, these three high-toned financiers still had the game in their own hands. They had nothing to fear. They had wealth. There was no clue to their identity and the world was before them—a world which lays her treasures and pleasures at the feet of him who commands wealth. ”

“ Godliness with contentment is undoubtedly great gain. Contentment alone without the godliness is no poor thing, and was I not content? Few, indeed, of all the thousands who have toiled in that torturing prison house have ever been or are likely ever to be so content as I was. [Pg 456]
How true it is that happiness is altogether relative, and that it is divided much more evenly among men than we are willing to believe! A mere respite from an intolerable position, a single book to keep the mind from cracking, transformed gloom and misery into light and at least comparative happiness. ”

“ All London was astir, and had put on holiday attire, while I, now a poor weed drifting to rot on Lethe's wharf, was on my way to Newgate.
Newgate! Then it had come to this! The Primrose Way wherein I had walked and lived delicately at the expense of honor, ended here!
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," was written by one Paul. The wisdom of many was here and condensed in the wit of one, and one with the shrewdest insight into things and a practical knowledge of human history. ”

“ My only relief at that moment was the thought that George and myself had not as yet compromised ourselves, and could, in the event of Mac's arrest, manage to save him, either by bribery or a rescue.
Without appearing to do so, I watched that dingy, mottled door leading into the private office until every crack and seam in it was photographed indelibly on my brain.
In the trying periods of one's life, when the heart and soul are on the rack, how strangely trifling details of the objects about one will be noticed and remembered. ”

“ But there, in the very instant of our overwhelming defeat, standing in the dark mouth of the stone conduit leading from the Old Bailey to the dungeons of Newgate, by virtue of the high resolve we made, we conquered Fate at her worst, and by our act in establishing a secret bond of sympathy in our separation dropped the bad, disastrous past, and starting on new things planted our feet on the bottom round of the ladder of success, feeling that, with plenty of faith and endurance, Fortune, frown as she might now, must in some distant day turn her wheel and smile again. ”

“ I about to wed a pure-souled woman, who thought me an angel of goodness, and about to fly with my plunder and bride to Mexico. My two companions were returning to London to continue carrying out a giant scheme of fraud against a great moneyed institution, but there we were, with $100,000 in plunder at our feet, sitting under the stars, listening to the dash of the waves, and talking not at all like pirates and robbers, but much more like crusaders setting out on a crusade, or like pilgrims going on a pilgrimage. ”

“ More experience would have taught me that every one who forsook the path of honor not only thought the same, but had a purpose to even everything up some day and make restitution. And to-day there is not a criminal but who, at the start, looks forward to the time when he will no longer war against society, but will go out and come in at peace with all men. But when one comes to think of it, what a fool's game is that of a man who fights against society! ”

“ I took a long walk on the beach to think over the situation. I was alarmed over the arrest of Noyes, which I knew ought not to have occurred if the proper precautions had been taken, but I concluded that at the worst his arrest only meant for him a brief incarceration.
I knew that no human power and no fear could ever make him betray us. Two things never entered my calculations at all; that is, that my right name would ever transpire, or that George and Mac would ever, by any possibility, be brought into question for the fraud. ”

“ The short-time men, those with seven or ten year sentences, could face the prospect hopefully. To them the day would come when the prison gate must swing back and the path to the world be open once more. But no such hope cheers the long-timers, the men with twenty years and life, who quickly learn how great the proportion is of their number who find relief only in the box smeared with black which incloses what is left of them in the grave. ”

“ At Saratoga last August I saw her sitting on the balcony of the United States Hotel—fat, wrinkled, vulgar-looking, covered with diamonds. Nemesis appears to have postponed her visit to the lady. Her life from her own standpoint has been a tremendous success. She has been philosopher enough to appreciate what an immense factor mere eating and drinking is in the sum of human enjoyment. Born with a cold heart, a constitution of iron, and the digestion of an ostrich, happily for her peace of mind she was absolutely without imagination. ”

“ Occasionally, one more resolute, dreading flight as much as detection, flung himself into schemes which, if they failed, meant the most hideous and utter ruin, but which, if they succeeded, rendered discovery impossible, and made his position more solid than ever before. One day, late in the sixties, in the parlor of a bank in Greenwich street, a gentleman was anxiously scanning the books of the establishment. He alone in all the institution knew of a secret which would horrify his brother officials and carry desolation to scores of homes, the first to suffer being his own. ”

“ Upon my arrival in London, walking into Mac's room—he being still in bed—I announced that I had in my pocket Rothschild's bill for £6,000, drawn on the London house. He flatly refused to believe me, but when he, and later George, saw the bill, they were forced to believe. I at once took it down to St. Swithin's lane, and, leaving it for acceptance, called the next day, when I found scrawled across it in thin, pale ink the mystic words "Accepted. Lionel Rothschild." ”

“ Stanley grasped my hand and said: "Of course you do; a man's a fool without it." Irving interjected: "Are you game to do us a favor and make ten thousand for yourself?" "But how?" I gasped. "Go to Europe and negotiate some stolen bonds we have, will you?"
For $10,000 to become accessory to a crime!
It was an appalling proposition, and I shrank from it with an aversion I could not conceal any more than he and his confederates could conceal their chagrin over the way I took it, and over the fact that their secret had been imparted to another. ”

“ But when they read the cable dispatches in the press about the bank forgeries, their bliss was ecstatic. Each in fancy saw himself decked out in a magnificent diamond pin and ring, spinning along Harlem lane behind a particularly fast pair in a stylish rig. This was their day vision. At night each saw himself in certain resorts ordering unlimited bottles, or seeing New York by gaslight at the rate of $100 a minute, and the Britishers paying for it all. But the lawyers and the Pinkertons between them played Irving and headquarters for fools and knaves. ”

“ Our firm history was the usual one of broker firms in that tumultuous arena—the Wall street of those days—commissions in plenty, a large income, but one's bank account never growing, for what was made by day in the wild excitement of shifting values was thrown away amid wilder scenes at night. Those, too, were, indeed, the flush times for the professional gambler; for men were not content unless they burned the candle at both ends. Day faro banks were open everywhere around the Exchange, and enormous sums were nightly staked in the uptown games. ”

“ Few books have so stirred my mind for years as the book by George Bidwell. Hearing of the book, prejudice immediately seized me against it. The history given by himself, to be interesting at all must be sensational, therefore disastrous to morals. So avowed prejudiced thought; and, determined to find fault, I began this remarkable history. It is impossible to find fault with the book, which is valuable and wonderfully absorbing. ”

“ Then it was that those gentlemen who work without the pale of the law discovered new prospects of wealth, and realized that even to crack a safe or vault of a private firm would be rewarded by a find of bonds that might amply repay all risks of robbery under police protection, while to execute a successful raid on a car or even an express delivery wagon on the street would mean wealth. To burglarize the vaults of a bank meant, if undetected, anything from opening a magnificent bar or hotel in New York to a steam yacht and Winter cruises in the tropics and Summer nights on the Mediterranean. ”

“ The system of the convict prison was enforced here, and with the same iron rigor. Strict silence was the rule along with the absolute exclusion of newspapers and all news of the outside world. The rules forbid any delicacy or books being furnished by one's friends from the outside. This iron system is as cruel as unphilosophical, for, pending trial, the inmates are more or less living in a perfect agony of mind, which drives many into insanity or to the verge of insanity, as it did me. ”

“ I have more than once heard governors express their disapproval of the starvation system and of the ferocity of treatment toward men who some day or other must go back to society.
Under such governors the new arrival speedily finds out that to a certain extent his comfort depends upon himself. No man can make a bad thing good or trick himself into believing that suffering is pleasure. If pain be not an evil, it is an exceedingly good imitation, and the wisest philosopher is just as restless under the toothache as the most perfect idiot. ”

“ Thus this Francois Blanc, with perfect equanimity, watched the thousand thousands of butterflies and moths of society scorch their wings in the terrific flame that glowed in his Casino, while he looked on, a cynical observer, despising the fools enraptured with roulette and fascinated with rouge-et-noir. [Pg 78]
But one thing he was not afraid of, and that was spending money. To compass his business ends he laid it out lavishly, and in the end he drew all Europe to Wiesbaden. Still broader and still deeper he laid the foundations of the fortune that ultimately grew to colossal proportions. ”