of hand to account, and went into the "green goods business." His
success in this venture was so great that he made the best dollar bills
ever put upon the market, and he boasts legitimately that in the game
he "never lost a man." Presently he discovered that there was a quicker
profit in stolen bonds. "From my first venture in this bond-smashing
business," to quote his own simple words, "in 1862 up to 1870, I made
more money than in any branch of industry I was ever engaged in."
"Branch of industry" is admirable, and proves that Moore had a proper
appreciation of his craft. But bond-smashing compelled a perfect
knowledge of locks and bolts, and in this knowledge, as has been said,
Moore was supreme. At the end of his career, when he had hung his arms
upon the wall, and retired to spend a green old age at Boston, it was
to his treatment of Yale and Lillie locks that he looked back with the
greatest pleasure. But no exploit flattered his vanity more easily than
the carrying off from the Bank at Concord--the Concord of Emerson and
Hawthorne--of some three hundred thousand dollars. That he purchased
his freedom by an ample restitution mattered nothing to the artist. His
purpose was achieved, his victory won, and if his victims came by their
own again, he at least had the satisfaction which comes of a successful
engagement.

Of this adventure he writes with more enthusiasm than he is wont to
show. He wishes his readers to understand that it was not a sudden
descent, but the culmination of five months' steady work. He had watched
the bank until he knew the habits of its manager and the quality of its
locks. He "was satisfied from all he saw that by hard persistent work
the bank could be cleaned out completely." It was on a July day in 1867
that the scheme first took shape in Moore's mind. He had stopped at
noon at the hotel at Concord for food, and saw the cashier of the bank
returning from his dinner.

The bank had been closed during his absence [thus he tells his simple
story], and he now unlocked the street door and left the key in the
lock. I followed him upstairs and saw him unlock the outer and inner
doors of the vault, and also the door of the burglar-box. I presented a
hundred-dollar note and asked to have it changed. Being accommodated, I
left the place, observing as I went out that the lock on the street
door was a heavy one of the familiar tumbler variety, and that it had a
wooden back.

Thus the train was laid