Читать книгу The New York Tombs Inside and Out!. Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison онлайн

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One of the most scholarly men that I ever knew came from a little town in Massachusetts. He was so exceptionally bright that had he put his native talents and energies into an effort to keep the Ten Commandments, instead of aiming continually to plunder his fellow men, he might have been a Morgan or a Rockefeller. The man of whom I speak began life as a school teacher, then a clerk in the office of a country attorney. After this he became a full-fledged lawyer, and drifted into politics.

From politics he went into crime, and soon became an expert forger and swindler on a large scale, and as a rule he always worked for “big game.” As a confidence man he had a shrewd way of getting hold of millionaires and fleecing them.

A most noted and clever crook some time ago came to grief in an effort to impersonate an English earl. This man had a charm of manner about him and other polished ways that would have given him a place in any society. But he used all his cleverness and scholarship only to make for himself a criminal career of the most romantic character. He was afterwards sent to Sing Sing Prison, where he became the first editor of the Star of Hope, and a regular “mogul” among the inmates because of his scholarly attainments. It was said that he wrote sermons for an ignorant chaplain now no longer there.