James M'Levy

“ I had been simply false to my experience, while Mary Anne remained true to her heartless craft. Yes, I saw the young hopeless extract from Mrs Kerr’s pocket something, doubtless the ten shillings, and hand it to M‘Guire, whereupon they all three hurried away down the High Street.
My energy was roused in a moment, sharpened by the cruelty of this most heartless robbery. My course was, to myself, clear, though not, perhaps, what you might imagine. I have always had a horror of being seen rushing along the street, like Justice under hysterics flying after a victim. ”

“ It is in such a scene, enacted in a close room, sometimes with the light extinguished, and the actors doing their work in the dark, that we can form an adequate idea of the true furor of robbery. Even a listener at the door would hear only the bodily contortions—the deep breathing—the muttered vengeance—all a deep bass to the stifled treble of a woman’s passion grasping at gold. ”

“ We don’t wonder so much at the hunks as hate him. But in regard to the brick-moulded thief, who seldom comes within the range of ordinary observation, you are apt to think that he is not so hard-hearted after all. You give him some credit for generosity,—nay, when he is picking your pocket, you lay to his charge more necessity than will. Yet there never was a harder-hearted wretch than a regular thief. He is as destitute of pity as of honesty, and will steal as readily the shilling from under the poorhouse pensioner’s pillow as the ring from the finger of my lady. ”

“ It is almost always the result of a personal gibe; for there is no real friendship to restrain them, and their art is a deadly fly that kills at the first leap. They seem to find some relief from the tearing devil within, by tearing their brother devils without; and though it is done under the semblance of fun, it is as cruel and wicked as they can make it. But then the very cruelty in the personality gets applause; the laugh rings, and every one has his turn to be quizzed and gibed—the bearing of which, again, is a kind of stern virtue among them. ”

“ Her pockets were turned out, but with the exception of a scent-bottle, a white handkerchief, and some brown pawn-tickets, nothing was found there. All round the pavement the light of the lantern shewed nothing in the shape of the valuable bit of paper, and there was no sympathiser to whom she could have handed it.
“You must be under a delusion,” said the policeman.
“Impossible!” cried the youth. “There are as many folds in a woman’s dress as there are loops and lies in her mind. March her up.”
To all which Jean replied with her ordinary laugh of consummate self-possession, if not impudence. ”

“ Yet withal there is something curious about Nature’s manœuvres, in fencing as she does to conceal the cancer-spots on her favourites, just as if she were so fond of her few beauties that she will cling to them to the last, supporting their charms even amidst the blight of vice. Of Margaret I must speak otherwise,—a strong, burly wench, with little to attract, but capital hands at a grip, or what is not exactly the same, a gripe, and a tilt where ferocity stands against self-preservation. ”

“ Lang had almost immediately the best dressed of the gambolers in her motherly hand, and the bit of sugar-candy was working its charm; so true it is that there is awaiting every one a bait at the end of the standing line, stretched out in the waters of life, about which we are always swimming and flapping our tails, passing and repassing without ever dreaming of the hook. Ay, there are big fish intent upon large enterprises among the deeper places, who will snap at the dead worm even in the midst of living gold-fish. ”

“ Two or three of the children of the Happy Land were with them, all engaged in drinking and laughing, no doubt at the excellent drama that had just ended, and upon which they thought that the green curtain had been drawn for ever, for it is not very often that the slain hero makes his appearance again at our Office; and there can be no question that sometimes it is as prudent to pocket shame as it is to put a gold sovereign into your purse, with the difference, that while the one ought to remain, the other should come out for the benefit of society. ”

“ Mary Anne was so well known about the High Street, that she couldn’t pass without the observation of the loungers in that crowded resort of the poor. A few passing hints, like dots in a line, led me along till I came to Toddrick’s Wynd, at the head of which I paused, and casting a glance down with my advantage of a good eye for a long wynd, I saw one of those little clots of human beings, generally so interesting to me, in proportion as they shew an interest among themselves. ”

“ 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 depths of depravity not to be gauged in this short plumb way, just as there are heights of perfection not to be got at by our own estimates of ourselves. ”

“ Next morning, after having partaken of a Highland breakfast from poor Janet, which could only be calculated by the professions of eternal friendship uttered by a Gael, Donald went forth to see the craft which in some cheap berth was to transport him to the land of gold; and, to be sure, it was not long till he saw the vessel lying alongside of the quay. No doubt she was to be honoured in her freight. It was not every day the Britannia carried a M‘Beath with seven pounds in his pocket, a seven-pound watch in his fob, and a chest of tools, which was to cut his way to fortune. ”

“ I have heard of music that drew stones—mine drew bricks. Shields and Preger fixed their eyes wildly upon me; and the women, who knew nothing of the meaning of M‘Levy’s music, first shot out into a yell of laughter, and then, rising, began, in the madness of their drunkenness, to dance like so many furies, keeping time, so far as they could, to the tune of the instrument. ”

“ For my part, I don’t know what human nature is, except just so far as I see it, and I never saw much consistency in it. The attempt to be firm, against the nervousness produced by his week’s drunkenness, seemed to give way, as if suddenly let loose by the opening of some unseen aperture, and the effort to say something strong was changed into a kind of hysterical laugh—something like the cackle of a goose, and dying away into loud breathings. ”

“ The small cheque-books often kept by gentlemen in the names of their children with the Savings Bank, for the purpose of inducing habits of care and economy, were forged to the effect of abstracting such accumulations of the little daughters as £3 10s., and thereby—small sums and small sufferers—and then came the great feat on the great victim. How true a history of the progress of vice—the sliding scale of crime; fear leading passion to prey upon the weak and helpless, and passion throwing off fear, to rush headlong upon the strong! ”

“ No placating subtlety was of any use among that gang. They were up to every manœuvre. Sim himself, James M‘Culloch, John Anderson, Hector M‘Sally, James Stewart, Agnes Hunter, Sarah Jack, Christian Anderson, and Jane Walker, had been all too well accustomed to such blandishments as mine, to be thrown off their guard beyond the instant of the working of the first charm. They simply took me for a devil, who might seize their bodies for punishment, but could not insist upon their pledges to be his for ever. ”

“ It was the portrait of a young woman, not above twenty years of age, with long black ringlets—exceedingly beautiful, of course—they all are in the velvet-coated case; but as I am no despiser of a good face, I may admit she was really a fair creature,—ay, even as regards beauty, such a one as a man with more love than duty would even forge for. ”

“ Nor was Harvey limited to one department alone, being as well adapted and inclined for taking good money as for coining or uttering bad; so that viewing them as possessed of these three sources of income, we need not be astonished at their personal equipment. How little people know of the money that passes, like water over stones, through the hands of such gentry! The swell is talked of as a poor devil, with stolen finery, who lives merely in that sense from hand to mouth, which implies only freedom from want. ”

“ You are cheated—nay, fairly cheated. You can’t expect from such men that they should undertake not to deceive you. If they had no art, you would ruin them in five minutes, for all you would have to do (and you insist on the unfair privilege) is to watch the thimble under which your fortune lies and snatch it. There is, therefore, no pity due to the victims of these men’s deceptions, and this we can say with a thorough condemnation of the men themselves.
As soon as I understood the transaction, it was my duty to detect the right thimble, and I had no fear of deception. ”

“ How much of the vice they are forced to retain, and how much of the virtue they are compelled to lose, is one of the whispers which ought to reach the ears of the great.
At the time Dan left me, I was not in this grand way of thinking. Nay, to be very plain, I was laughing in my sleeve; because, in the first place, a detective is not a Methodist preacher; and in the second place, because I have a right to my fun as well as others; and in the third place, because I came to the conclusion that Dan Gillies had some reason for shaving his whiskers which ought to interest me. ”

“ We see these every day. Some are enveloped in a mountain of shining articles of tin,—others are surrounded with a whole forest of wicker-work in the shape of baskets and reticules,—others rejoice in a heap of black tin shovels,—many are devoted to kitchens, where they shew their white caps to the servants out of a basket neatly covered with a white towel,—the apple and orange troggars are everywhere, the red-herring female merchants being probably at the foot of the tree. Despising all these, Elizabeth was seldom burdened with more than a neat paper parcel. ”

“ Nay, it is scarcely possible to avoid the thought that they are not free agents, if they do not claim from our sympathy the character of victims. In truth I was getting muffish, if I did not soliloquise a bit about other climbers whose feet rested on the backs of such poor wretches, and who, by means not very different, get into high places, where they join the fashionable cry about philanthropy—yes, a philanthropy that helps the devil, by allowing him to brain the objects they attempt to benefit.
But a police-office soon takes the softness out of a man. ”

“ The nimble artistes were all at work at the same time—they were, in short, in a hurry of pocket-picking; and though myself cool enough, I was for an instant or two under the embarrassment of a choice to direct my vision from one to another, or to fix upon one. Miss Mary Smith was at the farther end—Evans busy helping a fat lady with her luggage—the little Beaumont deep among floating silks, and invisible. ”

“ We give a shudder, and fly to some other thought for relief. To a sufferer such as Wright, we can picture only one alternative—the total renunciation of the spirit to God; and how wonderfully the constitution of the mind is suited to this, the deepest remorse finding the readiest way where we would think it might be reversed. It is impossible to rid one’s-self of the conviction from this strange fact alone, that Christianity, which harmonises with this instinct, so to call it, comes from the God of the instinct. ”

“ Fix your eyes as you may, be suspicious even to certainty that the player is cheating you, I will defy you to detect the moment when, by the light if not elegant touch of the finger, your pea has been slipped from the right thimble to the wrong, or the right card to the wrong—yea, to the end, you could swear that no deception has been or could be practised upon you; and even when your watch is forfeited you could hardly think but that your misfortune lay on some defect in your power of penetration. ”

“ The Irish boys and girls were predominant, shouting their cries, among which “The snab and the hawker, hurra,” would not sound as an honour up-stairs. When I say Irish boys and girls, I mean to include adults of sixty, grim and shrivelled enough in all save the heart, which is ever as young and green as an urchin’s. Then who does not feel an interest in the evergreen of marriage, albeit its red berries are often full of bitterness and death? The young look forward to it, and the old back upon it—the one with a laugh, the other with a sigh ”

“ Yet I knew in my heart it was true. “Well,” said I, “Dan, I pity you. I have often thought that if that old villain David, and that old Jezebel Meg, who were your parents, had not corrupted you, you had heart and sense to be a good boy.”
“Ay, and it has often wrung my heart,” he replied, “when I have seen others who were born near me, though only in Blackfriars’ Wynd, respectable and happy, and I a criminal in misery by the chance of birth; but all this is of no use now. Then where’s Bess, poor wretch?”
“She’s in Leith jail.” ”