Those Who Have Come Back (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914. Excerpt: ... II THE UNMAKING OF A BANK BURGLAR No man is born a bank burglar. At the same time one can usually understand the operation of the processes by which he becomes one; but with Richard Watson the greatest difficulty appears to be to understand the processes by which he ceased to be one. Watson's father died when he was little more than an infant; consequently his mother, who was a graduate of Wellesley College and a refined and capable woman, became his chief asset in life, but unfortunately she also died while her boy was young--fourteen years of age--leaving the child heir to a nice property and a group of avaricious relatives who, considerately--for themselves--put young Dick away in a private institution for bothersome boys, while a guardianship made drakes and other things of the estate. s But the important element at this juncture was not the dissipation of the estate, since young Watson himself ultimately completed that process with the same effectiveness that a housemaid flicks away that final trace of sweeping which refuses to be either cogged or cozened into the dust-pan. The really important thing was the manner in which this institution, reformatory in name but not in character, dissipated the morals of young Dick. The influences in it were mostly bad; the instructions and some of the instructors were bad; the discipline was capricious and cruel; the food was coarse, scant and illy-prepared. Hypocrisy was the only diet of which there seemed ever too much, and Dick Watson proved no rules by making himself an exception. He walked in the front gates a reasonably good boy. He sneaked out the back way at midnight three years later with cunning and deceit ingrained in his soul--so much so, indeed, that when he was captured and returned he bettered the ...