Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/75



IFF a cop in de eye, if yer lookin' fer trouble, or t'row yerself under de cable, but don't youse ever give our Shanghai de stunt!" was a saying on the East Side long held to be oracular in its unchallenged wisdom. But the East Side in general and this same Shanghai Sharkey in particular had never heard a still older saying about giving a dog a bad name and then hanging it. The Shanghai Sharkey, like all small boys, had an honest and outspoken contempt for anything in the shape of proverb, parable, or text, which same smacked suspiciously of Sunday School and things hateful to the eyes of the urban ungodly, and were, therefore, religiously eschewed.

Yet it was the little germ of truth hidden in the core of that old platitude which made 63