You Can’t Win quotes

I am now librarian of the San Francisco Call.

Do I look like one? I turn my chair so I can look in the mirror. I don’t see the face of a librarian. There is no smooth, high, white forehead. I do not see the calm, placid, composed countenance of the student.

My nose is not long, not sharp. Nevertheless it is an inquisitive nose. My mouth is large—one corner of it is higher than the other and I appear to be continually sneering.

I do not scowl, I do not sneer; yet there is something in my face that causes a man or woman to hesitate before asking to be directed to Dr. Gordon’s church.

I can’t remember a time that any woman, young or old, ever stopped me on the street and asked to be directed.

advancement here and there, always leading a well-ordered, quiet, studious life, until he finally places me in the respectable and responsible position of librarian of a metropolitan newspaper.

That’s the way it should have been, but wasn’t.

The course I followed from that convent school to this library desk, if charted on a piece of paper, would look like the zigzag line that statisticians use to denote the rise and fall of temperature or rainfall or fluctuations of business.

The course I followed from that convent school to this library desk, if charted on a piece of paper, would look like the zigzag line that statisticians use to denote the rise and fall of temperature or rainfall or fluctuations of business.

Every turn I made was a sharp one, a sudden one.

In years I cannot remember making one easy, graceful, rounded turn.

who has a home and its influences until he gathers some kind of a working philosophy that helps him to face the world.

There is no substitute for the home and the mother.

It may not mean much to the average chap to have a friend say: “John, I want you to meet my mother.” To me it means more than I can put on paper.

I see hop joints, wine dumps, thieves’ resorts, and beggars’ hangouts.

Crime followed by swift retribution in one form or another.

I had very few glasses of wine as I traveled this route. I rarely saw a woman smile and seldom heard a song.

I had very few glasses of wine as I traveled this route.

I rarely saw a woman smile and seldom heard a song.

In those twenty-five years I took all these things, and I am going to write about them.

In those twenty-five years I took all these things, and I am going to write about them.

And I am going to write about them as I took them⁠—with a smile.

I spent much time about the barns and stables with Thomas, the coachman.

I was an expert listener, a rare talent, inherited from my father, no doubt.

Thomas was a ready talker. This is a combination that never fails to make firm and lasting friendships, and we became friends.

I did not think it over then, but I know now I was not given it because I said “please” or my prayers—I got it because I had told the Superior the nice things the postmaster said.

“Please” is a good word in its place; but it does not get one appointed to anything.

It has a proper place in a small boy’s vocabulary. And it is also much used by a certain class of prisoners and supplicants who are always “pleasing” somebody and are never pleasant to anybody.

but it does not get one appointed to anything. It has a proper place in a small boy’s vocabulary. And it is also much used by a certain class of prisoners and supplicants who are always “pleasing” somebody and are never pleasant to anybody.

Your capable beggar on the street does not say “please.”

He rips off his spiel in such exact and precise language that he gets your dime without it. You so admire his “art” that you do not miss the “please.” His is an art.

Your capable beggar on the street does not say “please.” He rips off his spiel in such exact and precise language that he gets your dime without it. You so admire his “art” that you do not miss the “please.” His is an art.

He omits the “please” because he knows you do not use it except when you want the mustard.

Looking back, it seems to me that our life in the convent was not properly balanced. We had none of the rough, boisterous times so dear to the small boy, no swimming, baseball, football. We were a little too cloistered, too quiet, too subdued.

“You appear to be the only real sucker in the bunch. By God! Those coppers are fierce. They’ll leave you here till you rot.

I’ve always said a copper is a copper till you cut his head off.

”

“Out you go,” said the detective, “and the next time you get jammed up say something before you get thrown in.

Holler before you’re hurt; that’s my motto.

”

Do you know why? Because every one of them means a different man. Do you want me to tell you about it; what a tough time I’ve had? But you wouldn’t understand it. You’re only a kid, like I was a couple of years ago.”

Her story, new to me then, was as old as man’s duplicity and woman’s inherent desire to be loved and protected.

Betrayed and deserted, fearing to face her family, she stole enough of her father’s money to take her to the city and into a hospital where her baby was born. “And,” she continued, “I was glad when it died, it was a girl.

The beauty of her lie was that she just let it go with that plain, short “No!” She did not go into any long explanations or excuses, or blame it on anybody else.

It was a perfect lie, any way you look at it.

She lied to me and made me like it. My mind was much disturbed by this terrible story, so new to me, and a hundred plans came into it for helping her, but she seemed so independent, confident, and resourceful that I hesitated.

The beauty of her lie was that she just let it go with that plain, short “No!” She did not go into any long explanations or excuses, or blame it on anybody else. It was a perfect lie, any way you look at it.

She lied to me and made me like it.

My mind was much disturbed by this terrible story, so new to me, and a hundred plans came into it for helping her, but she seemed so independent, confident, and resourceful that I hesitated.

It was the first time I had been in court. We were all charged with vagrancy. When my name was called, I protested. I said, “Judge, you can’t call me a vagrant. I have twenty dollars down in the jail office.”

He looked at me as coldly and impersonally as if I had been a dish of parsnips.

“Fifteen days on the chain gang. Next case.”

He looked at me as coldly and impersonally as if I had been a dish of parsnips.

“Fifteen days on the chain gang. Next case.”

The feed of beans and salt pork was spread for us. She locked the door and, while we ate, this most unusual woman estimated the value of our loot, spread out on one end of the oilcloth-covered kitchen table where we sat.

Salt Chunk Mary put no acids on the watches, nor pried into the works.

She hefted the yellow ones with a practiced hand and glanced but once at the white ones.

I surveyed her as I ate. She was about forty years of age, hard-faced and heavy-handed. Her hair was the color of a sunburned brick, and her small blue eyes glinted like ice under a March sun.

She could say “no” quicker than any woman I ever knew, and none of them ever meant “yes.”

She went into the adjoining room and returned with a roll of bills. “Four hundred dollars, Smiler.”

The money was split three ways. The expert at the stir took his bit with bad grace, intimating that we got more than we were dividing, and that we were thieves. As we were leaving, Smiler said: “Goodbye, Shorty. Everything’s all right now, ain’t it?”

“Oh, sure,” he grouched. “Everything’s all right⁠—just like Denmark.”

“Kid, we’ll go up to that joint and give them a chance to win their money back,” said Smiler. “I feel lucky.”

We looked the spot over for several days and evenings. There was a servant girl about the place, but no children and no dogs. This was good. Children, particularly young ones, often need attention in the night, which interferes with the prowler.

Dogs, young or old, are the bane of the burglar’s life.

A dog inside a house where people are sleeping prohibits burglary, and the smaller he is, the louder he prohibits. So far as we could see, the place looked made to order for us. House burglars customarily work single-handed.

There was a servant girl about the place, but no children and no dogs. This was good. Children, particularly young ones, often need attention in the night, which interferes with the prowler. Dogs, young or old, are the bane of the burglar’s life.

A dog inside a house where people are sleeping prohibits burglary, and the smaller he is, the louder he prohibits.

So far as we could see, the place looked made to order for us. House burglars customarily work single-handed. Two men prowling about in a house in the dark are apt to get confused if anyone wakes up, and shoot each other. It has happened.

Still no sound came from the house. Next door I now heard a window thrown up and voices calling, a light appeared. It seemed an age since the shot was fired, yet it wasn’t three minutes.

Smiler was beyond my help. I must be off.

I was drenched with the blood that spurted from a wound in his neck. It was on my face and hands. My shirt front was saturated with it. My coat was dripping blood.

When we went into the undertaker’s I felt they were going to show me his body, but I couldn’t understand why. I learned later that some people are unnerved at the sudden sight of a gruesome corpse, and, weakening, talk.

It hurt me to look at Smiler, his smile forever gone, changed to a hideous, snarl-like grin, and a gaping hole in his throat.

I couldn’t think of anything else, so I said: “I want to see an attorney, please.”

By the time he is tried, convicted, and sentenced, he has learned from other prisoners just what the penitentiary is like and just what to do and what to expect.

You start doing time the minute the handcuffs are on your wrists.

The first day you are locked up is the hardest, and the last day is the easiest.

By the time he is tried, convicted, and sentenced, he has learned from other prisoners just what the penitentiary is like and just what to do and what to expect. You start doing time the minute the handcuffs are on your wrists.

The first day you are locked up is the hardest, and the last day is the easiest.

There comes a feeling of helplessness when the prison gates swallow you up—cut you off from the sunshine and flowers out in the world—but that feeling soon wears away if you have guts. Some men despair. I am sure I did not.

His head rose to a point from all four sides. The “Sanctimonious Kid,” one of my cellmates, once said of George: “

If you were to put a dime on the top of George’s head and start it sliding down the back it would fall inside his shirt collar; if you started it down his forehead it would wind up in his mouth, his lower jaw sticks out so far.

” His eyes were small and cunning. They looked as if they had been taken out, fried in oil, and put back. Dead, pale blue and expressionless, they gave no hint of the cunning, always-busy brain behind them.

if you started it down his forehead it would wind up in his mouth, his lower jaw sticks out so far.”

His eyes were small and cunning. They looked as if they had been taken out, fried in oil, and put back.

Dead, pale blue and expressionless, they gave no hint of the cunning, always-busy brain behind them. His nose wasn’t worth looking at, just a small knob of soft red flesh, long since collapsed and hanging like a pendant from between his eyes.

In the underworld one has good or bad character as in any other layer of society. The thief who pays off borrowed money, debts, or grudges has a good character among his fellows; and the thief who does the reverse has a bad character.

Thieves strive for good character and make as great sacrifices to keep it as men do anywhere else.

A burglar can have friends, but he has to pay his room rent or he will lose them, and they will despise him.

and the thief who does the reverse has a bad character. Thieves strive for good character and make as great sacrifices to keep it as men do anywhere else.

A burglar can have friends, but he has to pay his room rent or he will lose them, and they will despise him.

Because of this quality these three men had money in the prison office, sent them by friends at liberty.

This may seem strange, but it’s a fact.

The underworld beggars are the most reliable and trustworthy, the most self-sacrificing and the quickest to help of any class of people outside the pale of society.

Crippled, wounded thieves, fugitives and escaping prisoners, if they know what they are about, always turn to the beggars for aid and are never refused.

“Go down to the depot, kid, and get three tickets to Pocatello. We’ll all stay uptown till the train is ready to pull out. No good hanging around that depot, it’s lousy with bulls.”

Johnnie was a typical knight of the road. He believed that beds were for sick people in hospitals, that room rent was wild extravagance, and paying fare on the railroad nothing but ostentatious spending.

He protested.

“That’s the funny part of it,” said Johnnie.

“My hometown is twenty miles off the railroad and I always have to pay fare on the stage going in and out.”

Back at Pocatello we paid Mary the borrowed money, and spent some in her place for interest.

Thirty-eights,” and he named a certain standard make. “No other kind, remember. You heard what Soldier Johnnie said, and he knew what he was doing. I suppose you’ll go to the first hardware store for them, eh?” he said rather severely.

Those were the good, or bad, old days when any wild-eyed maniac could rush into a hardware store or pawnshop with money enough and buy a gun, guaranteed to kill a man a block away.

They would take the number of it, to be sure, in order to get witness fees if the gun worked properly. Today it’s a little more difficult to buy a gun in California.

The hardware store has the number of every gun. The hockshop man not only notes the number, but in most cases puts a mark on it for future reference.

Your hockshop man, kid, is the hangman’s handmaiden.

“You will get those guns in Chinatown at different places, one tomorrow morning and one in the evening. You have plenty of time, and the best way to spend it is in taking precautions against trouble.

You’ve got to watch yourself, kid. You know that old maxim, ‘eternal vigilance.’ You’ll have enough trouble come to you naturally and unavoidably—accidents that you cannot foresee—without advertising for it with a loud suit of rags.

Ninety-nine men out of a hundred are picked up through some peculiarity of dress and identified by the same.

You don’t want any funny hats, either, or loud ties.

“

The police are not chumps, kid; they are just lazy, that’s all.

If they worked as thoroughly at their business as I do at mine, I don’t know what would happen. They are human, and take the easy way. Somebody whispers to a dick.

he was asleep on the floor. I decided not to ask, but to wait till morning and find out for myself. Even at that age I had stumbled upon one truth, and that is,

The best way to get misinformed is to ask a lot of questions.

Nearly all my life has been spent in the company of unfortunate people, and while I never looked upon myself as an unfortunate, I was always accepted as one of them.

Your best friend would give you a surly answer if you were to ask him the time of day an hour after his watch had been stolen.

Ask any one-legged stranger how he lost his limb, and you will get something like this: “Well, you see, it was this way⁠—I got run over by a ferryboat.”

Of all the many friends I have made since I gave up my larcenous life, Shorty is one of the most respected and highly prized. His friends are legion, and in every state in the Union;

He flashed me a savage look; then remembering we were friends his eyes fell to his stumps and he said with a laugh,

“Oh, I was taller by two feet.”

That’s all one gets by asking questions that wake painful memories.

That Finnerty would peddle you chloride of lime if he happened to run out of morph.” This seemed to be a very rational reason for taking another shot, and they did.

Given a sufficient quantity of hop, no fiend is ever at a loss for a sound reason for taking a jolt of it.

If he is feeling bad he takes a jolt so he will feel good.

I laughed so loud that the desk officer thinking someone had gone hysterical, stood up sleepily and peered over his desk into the cell. The other bums stirred uneasily in their sleep. Mine was the only laugh there that night.

I could laugh then; I didn’t know anything about hop.

My companions didn’t seem hurt or offended because of my intimation that they had designs on my last four-bit piece. They fell to discussing their case and preparing a talk for the judge in the morning.

The biggest gamblers in town sat there nightly and there were thousands of dollars in sight. After many nights of careful checking, we were ready to go against it.

Robbery has none of the complications of burglary. It is simple as one, two, three. You get it or you don’t.

Sanc with a gun in his hand opened the door softly. I was behind him. The players, six of them, were in the midst of a big play. None looked up.

With the money I would have saved in a couple of years I could have bought land or lots that would have made me independent in ten years.

I think land hunger is inherited.

I had no desire then, nor have I now, to own land. The desire to possess land, whether inherent or acquired, appears to me to be a sure safeguard against a wasted, dissolute, harmful life.

After a few minutes I crawled over to it, and, pulling myself up, stretched out, more dead than alive.

If people can be corrected by cruelty I would have left that cell a saint.

St. Louis Frank, in another part of the jail, got a worse beating than I did.

He never spoke except when the bottle was passed to him. Then he would hold it aloft and in a dead, empty voice offer his unfailing toast.

“The stool pigeon is the coming race.”

“Kid,” said George, when I asked him about the cook. “He’s crazy as a bed bug and the best mulligan maker on the road. Montana Blacky is welcome at any bum camp anywhere, and he spends his life going from jungle to jungle.”

“Kid,” said George, when I asked him about the cook. “

He’s crazy as a bed bug and the best mulligan maker on the road.

Montana Blacky is welcome at any bum camp anywhere, and he spends his life going from jungle to jungle.”

The bums that could stand up were fighting or snapping and snarling at each other. Many lay on their backs helpless, glass-eyed and open-mouthed, while others crawled about on all fours like big spiders. No more laughter, songs or recitations.

Gloom settled over the camp and Tragedy waited in the wings for his cue to stalk upon the stage.

Just when the convention was about to close for the want of able drinkers, a fresh contingent of bums arrived from over the Oregon Short Line. They were brass peddlers and had a big assortment of “solid gold” wedding rings.

I sat on the side of my iron cot, wondering who had kicked over the bean pot. A rat-eyed trusty came down the corridor and stopped in front of George’s cell, directly across from mine. “What’s the trouble, old-timer?”

George looked at him coldly. “Oh, nothing much. I just bit a baby’s arm off.”

The trusty went away. Something told him to ask no more questions.

“When the town ‘bull’ interferes with you at night shoot at him, of course, and shoot at him first; but don’t hit him. He thinks you’re tryin’ to kill him and that’s enough. He’ll go after reinforcements and you get away.

If he shoots at you that’s just a common incident; if he hits you it’s a rare accident.

“You’re only beginning at this racket, Kid,” finished the veteran yegg. “Take my advice and be careful with your gun. It’s a good servant, but don’t let it become your master or it will hang you.”

“You’re only beginning at this racket, Kid,” finished the veteran yegg. “Take my advice and be careful with your gun.

It’s a good servant, but don’t let it become your master or it will hang you.

”

He doesn’t do those things day after day, but day after day he takes chances and is proud that he can keep his end up and pay for the things he needs. All wrong, of course, but there it is.

If I had had brains enough to grease a griddle, I would have taken a hundred dollars from the boss Chinaman

in the matter of Chew Chee and gone off somewhere, got a job, and tried to do the right thing by myself and others. But no, I was a journeyman; I had served a long and careful apprenticeship;

Houses were built to be burglarized, citizens were to be robbed, police to be avoided and hated, stool pigeons to be chastised, and thieves to be cultivated and protected. That was my code; the code of my companions. That was the atmosphere I breathed.

“If you live with wolves, you will learn to howl.”

In my rambles about Vancouver, I met an acquaintance from Salt Lake. He and his wife were exiled from the Mormon city and could not return in safety till they got a “bunch of trouble fixed up.” He fell on my neck, saying:

The door opened to my touch, but when I went inside I found myself in a luxuriously furnished private car instead of a dead coach.

There are only three degrees of tough luck⁠—bad, worse, and worst.

When you reach the worst you have the satisfaction of knowing that if your luck changes it has to change for the better. I considered my Waterloo at the Chinese store the direst degree of bad luck.

Every time I stole a dollar I knew I was breaking a law and working a hardship on the loser. Yet for years I kept on doing it.

I wonder how many of us quit wronging others for the best reason of all⁠—because it is wrong, and we know it.

Any thief that can’t or doesn’t put himself in his victim’s place, in the place of the copper that pinches him, or in the place of the judge who sentences him, is not a complete thief.

I could not restore his peace of mind or his sense of safety and security. I could restore his papers, and, at some small risk, did. Had I been chased or suspected I would have thrown them away, or in the fire without a thought.

I took his property coolly, impersonally, as a picker removes the feathers from a fat goose.

I returned his papers as the last touch to a workmanlike job, as the cabinetmaker softly gives the last nail its last light tap.

Without waiting to walk out of my sight he grabbed the jailer by the arm and began pattering away in Chinook, pointing at me.

He didn’t spill the beans. He just kicked the pot over and put out the fire.

“To understand is to forgive,” it is said. I have long since forgiven the numberless, noisy stool pigeons that beset my crooked path because I don’t want any poison in my mind, but as yet I am unable to understand them.

He can’t see what’s going on behind him, and that’s where most of the goings-on are. Furthermore, he does not approach the subject with that impersonal, detached mental attitude so necessary to correct observing and reporting.

Mentally he is out of focus, and his perspective is blurred.

If I could go away to some lonely, desolate spot and concentrate deeply enough I might manage to put myself in the flogging master’s place and make a better job of reporting the matter.

Not in the way it was intended to, of course, but in a better way. I went away from the tripod with fresh confidence, with my head up, with a clear eye and mind, and sustained with a thought from the German, Nietzsche,

“What does not kill me strengthens me.”

After three days I was returned to my cell and assigned to work on the farm gang. Mr.

I had no trouble with fellow prisoners; the silent system and single cells prohibited that. There was no whispering, plotting, scheming, and snitching as there is where the congregate system prevails. The stool pigeon, so fostered and encouraged in American prisons, did not flourish there.

The silence obliterated him, made him unnecessary.

There was a little cloud on my mind that began to grow.

I had taken everything they had in the way of violence and could take it again. Instead of going away in fear, I found my fears removed.

The whipping post is a strange place to gather fresh confidence and courage, yet that’s what it gave me, and in that dark cell I left behind many fears and misgivings.

I got up and went my way with the thought that I had got more out of that prison and its keepers than they got out of me. I think the same today of every prison I went into.

I think the same today of every prison I went into. There were times when I thought I got a bit more punishment than was coming to me, but I don’t regret a minute of it now.

Each of us must be tempered in some fire.

Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it.

I never stepped in or out of a door without thinking of old George. Yet I kept it up for years, and quit it only because I got tired of playing the peon for crooked pawnbrokers and getting fifty-fifty from the professional fences.

The fences’ notion of fifty-fifty is to put a lead dollar in the Salvation Army tambourine and ask the lassie for fifty cents change.

In the midst of plenty I found myself starving, and in self-defense turned to the more direct business of highway robbery. My experience with house burglary in the small hours of the night left me a nervous wreck and an opium smoker.

Yes, there, a block away, was the house I entered, plain in the moonlight. My eye followed the route I took from the house to the lot. I pulled up the tired horse, certain I was at the right spot; and I was.

But on top of the spot, directly on top of it, stood a long, wide, well-built, substantial, two-story frame building.

That hour when I saw the money was lost to me was probably the saddest of my life. I never got a greater shock. I am telling this story because it is an interesting incident, not to cause anybody misery or mirth.

I didn’t call them suckers or saps because they were different and worked for a living. They represented society. Society represented law, order, discipline, punishment.

Society was a machine geared to grind me to pieces.

Society was an enemy. There was a high wall between me and society; a wall reared by myself, maybe—I wasn’t sure. Anyway I wasn’t going to crawl over the wall and join the enemy just because I had taken a few jolts of hard luck.

With numb and freezing fingers I explored the little cups only to find them bare of coin. The compartments in the back gave up no fat bankroll.

The thing was as empty and as inviting as a new-dug grave.

This last blow was too much for my philosophy. Cursing the snow and sleet and every organic thing, I started back determined to go into Pete’s bedroom and search for his money. I was too late.

If business houses took as much precaution in protecting themselves from thieves as thieves do in protecting themselves from the police, the business of burglary and robbery would reach the vanishing point in no time.

Thieves are occasionally careless; businessmen are habitually so; both pay for their carelessness sooner or later.

In looking about for some worthwhile endeavor, I came upon an instance of carelessness on the part of a businessman that I never saw equaled in all my years of stealing.

This didn’t look just right to me, but what could I do?

I was only a poor, honest burglar in the hands of a highway lawyer.

He got us a copy of the testimony given the grand jury, and from it I learned what had caused our arrest—Spokane’s passion for gambling.

He sent word to me that the judge was adamant and nothing could be done. I saw my case was tough indeed when he couldn’t help me, and began planning a getaway.

I will not say there is honor among thieves. But I maintain that the thieves I knew had something that served as a good substitute for honor.

I thought over all my thief friends and at last chose one and sent for him. He got me saws, and I cut bars in my door.

County constables and town whittlers beat up the jungles, searched boxcars and brakebeams; city dicks explored the hop joints and hangouts for me and the reward offered, but I traveled safely as a first-class passenger on a first-class train.

No police officer who knows his business would think of looking in a Pullman sleeper or diner for a fugitive hop fiend yegg with a twenty-five-year sentence hanging on him.

Arriving safely at Vancouver, I took stock and found myself sick, weighing one hundred and ten pounds, with a ferocious hop habit, about ten dollars, and a big pistol—the gatherings of forty years.

Then came a foggy night. Necessity and Opportunity met, and I went away with a bundle of bank notes and some certified checks.

The checks went into the first mailbox as an apology from Necessity to Opportunity.

Then began the toughest battle of my life. Opium, the Judas of drugs, that kisses and betrays, had a good grip on me, and I prepared to break it.

Then began the toughest battle of my life.

Opium, the Judas of drugs, that kisses and betrays, had a good grip on me, and I prepared to break it.

The last words of my rescuer when he put me in the train rang in my ears:

This worry was always on my mind, and in a way it helped, because while I was thinking of that I was not thinking about the opium.

It was the small, still hours of the night that got me.

I had to get some sleep and strength for the next day. Every particle of opium I cut off my daily dose cut off just that much sleep. For years in the jail I had slept away all the time I could;

For years in the jail I had slept away all the time I could; I had slept ten or twelve or fourteen hours a day. Now I had to pay back all that sleep I had stolen from myself.

I put in twenty-three hours a day waiting for the twenty-fourth, when I could take my little jolt of hop.

Every day when the hour arrived I was tempted to take one more good jolt, so that I could have a decent night’s sleep and forget everything for a few hours.

I don’t believe in those radical cures.

It stands to reason you can’t cure in three days a habit that it took you five or ten years to build up.

I think any man can cure himself. He must first be cured mentally, he must want to be cured. If he doesn’t want to be cured, all the treatments in the world aren’t going to do it.