Dave Ranney | Page 7

check, and I hunted as much as any one, but it could not be found. Mother did not know much about banks in those days, but some one told her about a week after that she ought to 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 was, that as a profession engineering was not for me. I knew that to take it up I needed a good education, and that I did not have. I didn't like the trade, anyway, and didn't care whether I worked or not. That is the reason I lost my job.
One afternoon my employer sent me up Newark Avenue for a suit of clothes that had been made to order. He told me to get them and bring them back as soon as I could. I must say right here that my employer was a good man, and he took quite a liking to me. Many a time he told me he would make a great engineer out of me. I often look back and ask myself the question, "Did I miss my vocation?" And then there comes a voice, which I recognize as God's, saying, "You had to go through all this in order to help others with the same temptations and the same sins," and I say, "Amen."
After getting the clothes I went back to the building where I worked--No. 9 Exchange Place, Jersey City--and found the door locked. I waited around for a while, for I thought my employer wanted his clothes or he would not have sent me for them. Finally I got tired of waiting, and after trying the door once more and finding it still locked, I said to myself, "I'll just put these clothes in the furniture store next door and I'll get them to-morrow morning." I left them and told the man I would call for