go to the bank and stop payment on the check. That sounded good to
mother, and she said, "Dave, you and I will go to the bank and stop
payment on that check." I was in it for fair this time. The only chance
I had was in the teller not recognizing me.

We went to the bank, and mother told the teller about the
lost--stolen--check, and for him to see that it wasn't paid. He said,
"All right, madam, I'll not pay it if it is not already paid." He looked
over the books and brought back the lost check. I had stood in the
background all this time. Then my mother asked him whom he paid it to.
He said it was hard for him to recall just then, "But I think I paid it
to a boy," he said. "Yes, it was a boy, for I recollect that he had as
dirty a face and hands as ever I saw." Mother pulled me up in front of
him and told him to look at me and see if I was the boy. He looked at me
for a minute or so--it seemed to me like an hour--then said, "No, that
is not the boy that cashed the check, nothing like him. I am sure I
should know that boy." In after years, when I was lined up in front of
detectives for identification for some crime, identified or not, I
always thought of a dirty face being a good disguise.

On the way home from the bank mother asked me all sorts of questions
about boys I knew; if they had dirty faces and so on, but I did not
know any such boys, so the check business died out. She little thought
that her own boy was the thief, and she blamed my cousin, who was
boarding with us at the time.

My grandfather was still with us, and he had quite a sum of money saved.
He wanted some money, and he and I went to the bank and he drew out
fifty dollars in gold. There was a premium on gold at that time, and he
received two twenty-dollar gold-pieces and one ten. Well, that night he
lost one of the twenty-dollar gold-pieces and never found it. There was
a hot time the next morning, for he was sure he had it when he went to
bed. My father was blamed for that, so you see the innocent suffer for
the guilty.

I had quite a time with the money while it lasted, went out to the old
Bowery Theatre, and had a good time in general. I little thought then
that in after years I would be sitting on the old Bowery steps, down
and out, without a cent in my pocket and without a friend in the world.

LOSING A POSITION

I was a boy of fourteen at this time, working in a civil engineer's
office for three dollars per week, but I knew, young as I