YOU CAN'T WIN, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED

by Jack Black

had become a snapper-up of small things, a tapper of tills, a street-door sneak thief, a prowler of cheap lodging houses, and at last a promising burglar in a small way.

neglected my studies and prayers to rove about in fancy with such heroes as Jimmy Hope, Max Shinburn, and "Piano Charlie," famous "gopher men," who tunneled under banks like gophers and carried away their plunder after months of dangerous endeavor.

There was a busy spot, that corridor in the city prison! Officers hurrying in and out, lawyers haggling at the desk about releases for prisoners, "fixers," hawk-eyed and rapacious, lurked about, cheap bail bondsmen coining misery, ignorance, and crime into thick nickels and thin dimes, and on the long bench by the wall sat a thin, wrinkled, poorly dressed woman of fifty holding a boy's hand in hers.

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.'

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. If he is feeling good, he takes one to make him feel better, and if he is feeling neither very bad nor very good he takes a jolt "just to get himself straightened around."

Each day the bums drank more and ate less. The cooks were drunk and would prepare no food. The fiery alcohol had done its work. 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.

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 already knew I was lost, but his solemn face and melancholy voice conveyed to me, as he probably intended, the full force and effect of my predicament. He made me feel like one buried alive; his measured words sounded to me like cold clods dropping on my coffin. I wasn't taken out of my cell and "sweated" or third-degreed, or beaten up. That looked bad for me. The more a prisoner is questioned the less they know; the less he is questioned the more they know. If he is not questioned at all they know it all, or enough. My captors asked me no questions; they knew enough.

"Better get counsel," he snapped. "A defendant that tries his own case has a fool for a lawyer."

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 mail box as an apology from Necessity to Opportunity.