Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/170

 a little

kid could crawl through. And I says, ‘No, I gotter report down to th’ Judge, and I told him that I’d cut out swipin’ and when I got a chanct I’d do a good thing. Now is my chanct,’ I says. ‘ I won’t swipe th’ shovel,’ I says, ‘ and you mustn’t,’ I says to them. Now I ain’t goin’ to snitch on who the fellers was because they says ‘All right, we won’t swipe the shovel.’ And I went ’round and I ast Mr. Putnam to borrow us the shovel, and he said he would. So we got the shovel on th’ square. But, Judge, if I hadn’t done that they would have swiped the shovel, wouldn’t they ? ”

“Yes, John,” said the Judge. “They would have swiped the shovel, and if you ever swiped anything in your life, you have more than made up for it by doing the right thing this time.”

Another case of “making good” was that of Eli Carson. Eli told at a meeting how his news gang down in the Post alley were going to swipe a box of cherries off’n Wolf Londoner’s grocery store.” “I says it wasn’t square,” said Eli, “and the other kids, they all allowed it wasn’t either. Texas was th’ kid that said first to swipe th’ cherries; and he thought afterwards it was best not to do it. And I wanted to tell you, Judge, that I had done a good thing, but Texas he didn t want me to. But by and by Texas c