the jungle is to the hunter of big game, or the ice floe to the arctic explorer, or the desert to the Bedouin. My place is in the street—that maze of human purpose; it's my hunting ground—or was. And when the curiosity to know what was behind those inscrutable walls got too strong, or was mixed with the need of whatever there was to be found there, I went in and had a look round, and I seldom came out empty-handed.
Talk about crime! Faugh! I was a criminal, just as we all are; only when I got crowded a little I went after what I needed. I knew that if I made a false step or blundered the least bit they'd nab me and tuck me away for years and years where there'd be no more street or jungle or sea or desert, or freedom of any kind. And yet I risked it. Sometimes I think that many criminals take these risks merely because there is no other class that loves its liberty so much. Criminals are all gamblers, more or less; and, though I don't believe in such a thing as a "criminal class," I do believe in a class of gamblers. And I think that most of the real criminals—mind you, I'm not speaking of those silly, pitiful, weak honest folks who fall to a temptation because the payment on the car is due and the wife has run up a milliner's bill—the real criminal, the wolf of society, loves to play with the trap. He loves it just as another type, still higher in the scale of perversity, loves to gamble with his life—or another man with his fortune.
Well, the street was my passion; and when you've got that city-prowling in your blood there's no such place to gratify it as Paris or London. American
