406. Midnight Exploration

Midnight Exploration

Seventh Night

Luk_10:30 : ’93A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.’94

This attack of highwaymen was in a rocky ravine, which gives to robbers a first-rate chance. So late as 1820, on that very road, an English traveler was shot and robbed. This wayfarer of the text not only lost his money and his apparel, but nearly lost his life. His assailants were not only thieves, but assassins. The scene of this lonely road from Jerusalem to Jericho is repeated every night in our great cities’97men falling among thieves, getting wounded, and left half dead. In this series of Sabbath morning discourses on the night-side of city life, as I have recently explored it, I have spoken to you of the night of pauperism, the night of debauchery and shame, the night of official neglect and bribery, and now I come to speak to you of the night of theft, the night of burglary, the night of assassination, the night of pistol and dirk and bludgeon. You say, what can there be in such a subject for me? Then you remind me of the man who asked Christ the question, ’93Who is my neighbor?’94 and in the reply of the text, Christ is setting forth the idea that wherever there is a man in trouble, there is your neighbor; and before I get through this morning, I will show you that you have some very dangerous neighbors, and I will show you also what is your moral responsibility before God in regard to them.

I said to the chief official, ’93Give me two stout detectives for this night’92s work’97men who are not only muscular, but who look muscular.’94 I said to these detectives before we started on our midnight exploration, ’93Have you loaded pistols?’94 and they brought forth their firearms and their clubs, showing that they were ready for anything. Then I said, ’93Show me crime; show me crime in the worst shape, the most villainous and outrageous crime. In other words show me the worst classes of people to be saved by the power of Christ’92s Gospel.’94 I took with me only two officers of the law, for I want no one to run any risk in my behalf, and, having undertaken to show up the lowest depths of society, I felt I must go on until I had completed the work. One of the officers proposed to me that I take disguise lest I be assailed. I said, ’93No; I am going on a mission of Christian work, and I am going to take the risks, and I shall go as I am.’94 And so I went.

You say to me, ’93Why did you not first look after the criminal classes in Brooklyn?’94 I answer, it was not for any lack of material. Last year, in the city of Brooklyn, there were nearly twenty-seven thousand arrests for crime. Two hundred burglaries. Thirteen homicides. Twenty-seven highway robberies. Forty thousand lodgers in the station-houses. Three hundred and thirty-six scoundrels who had their pictures taken for the Rogues’92 Gallery, without any expense to those who sat for the pictures! Two hundred thousand dollars’92 worth of property stolen. Every kind of crime, from manslaughter to chicken stealing. Indeed, I do not think there is any place in the land where you can more easily get your pocket picked, or your house broken into, or your signature counterfeited, or your estate swindled, than in Brooklyn; but crime here is on a comparatively small scale, because we are a smaller city. The great depots of crime for this cluster of cities are in New York. It is a better hiding-place, the city is so vast, and all officers tell us that when a crime is committed in Jersey City, or is committed in Brooklyn, the villain attempts immediately to cross the ferry. While Brooklyn’92s sin is as enterprising as is possible for the number of inhabitants, crowd one million people on an island, and you have a stage and an audience on which and before whom crime may enact its worst tragedies.

There was nothing that more impressed me on that terrible night of exploration than the respect which crime pays to law when it is really confronted. Why do those eight or ten desperadoes immediately stop their blasphemy and their uproar and their wrangling? It is because an officer of the law calmly throws back the lapel of his coat and shows the badge of authority. The fact is that government is ordained of heaven, and just so far as the police officer does his duty, just so far is he a deputy of the Lord Almighty. That is the reason one inspector of New York sometimes goes in and arrests four or five deperadoes. He may be a man of comparatively slight stature, yet when one is backed up by omnipotent justice he can do anything. I said, ’93What is this glazed window, and who are these mysterious people going in and then coming out and passing down the street, looking to the pavement, and keeping a regular step until they hear a quick step behind them, and then darting down an alley?’94 This place, in the night of our exploration, was what the Bible calls ’93a den of thieves.’94 They will not admit it. You cannot prove it against them, for the reason that the keeper and the patrons are the acutest men in the city. No sign of stolen goods, no loud talk about misdemeanors, but here a table surrounded by three or four persons whispering; yonder a table surrounded by three or four more persons whispering; before each man a mug of beer or stronger intoxicant. He will not drink to unconsciousness; he will only drink to get his courage up to the point of recklessness, all the while managing to keep his eye clear and his hand steady. These men around this table are talking over last night’92s exploit; their narrow escape from the basement door; how nearly they fell from the window-ledge of the second story; how the bullet grazed the hair. What is this bandaged hand you see in that room? That was cut by the window-glass as the burglar thrust his hand through to the inside fastening. How did that man lose his eye? It was destroyed three years ago by a premature flash of gunpowder in a store lock. Who are these three or four surrounding this other table? They are planning for tonight’92s villainy. They know just what hour the last member of the family will retire. They are in collusion with the servant, who has promised to leave one of the back windows open. They know at what time the man of wealth will leave his place of dissipation and start for home, and they are arranging it how they shall come out of the dark alley and bring him down with a slungshot.

No sign of desperation in this room of thieves, and yet how many false keys, how many ugly pocket-knives, how many brass knuckles, how many revolvers! A few vulgar pictures on the wall, and the inevitable bar. Rum they must have to rest them after the exciting marauding. Rum they must have before they start on the new expedition of arson and larceny and murder. But not ordinary rum. It is poisoned four times. Poisoned first by the manufacturer; poisoned secondly by the wholesale dealer; poisoned thirdly by the retail dealer; poisoned fourthly by the saloon-keeper. Poisoned four times, it is just right to fit one for cruelty and desperation. These men have calculated to the last quarter of a glass how much they need to take to qualify them for their work. They must not take a drop too much nor a drop too little. These are the professional criminals of the city, between twenty-three and twenty-four hundred of them, in this cluster of cities. They are as thoroughly drilled in crime as, for good purposes, medical colleges train doctors, law colleges train lawyers, theological seminaries train clergymen. These criminals have been apprentices and journeymen; but now they are boss workmen. They have gone through the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes of the great university of crime, and have graduated with diplomas signed by all the faculty of darkness. They have no ambition for an easy theft, or an unskilled murder, or a blundering blackmail. They must have something difficult. They must have in their enterprise the excitement of peril. They must have something that will give them an opportunity of bravado. They must do something which amateurs in crime dare not do. These are the bank robbers, about sixty of them in this cluster of cities’97men who somehow get in the bank during the daytime, then at night spring out upon the watchman, fasten him, and have plenty of time for opening the strongest safe. These are the men who come in to examine the directory in the back part of your store while their accomplices are in the front part of the store engaging you in conversation, then dropping the directory and investigating the money drawers. These are the forgers who get one of your canceled checks and one of your blank checks, and practice on the writing of your name until the deception is as perfect as the counterfeit check of Cornelius Vanderbilt, indorsed by Henry Keep, in 1870, for seventy-five thousand dollars, which check was immediately cashed at the City Bank. These are the pickpockets, six hundred of them in this cluster of cities, who sit beside you in the stage and help you pass up the change! They stand beside you when you are shopping, and help you examine the goods, and weep beside you at the funeral, and sometimes bow their heads beside you in the house of God, doing their work with such adroitness that your affliction at the loss of the money is somewhat mitigated by your admiration of the skill of the operator! The most successful of these are females, and, I suppose, on the theory that if a woman is good she is better than man, and if she is bad she is worse. She stands so much higher up than man that when she falls she falls further. Some of these criminals, pickpockets and thieves, also take the garb of clergymen. They look like doctors of divinity. With coats buttoned clear up to the chin, and white cravated, they look as if they were just going to pronounce the benediction, while they are all the time wondering where your watch is, or your portemonnai is.

A thousand of the professional criminals do nothing but snatch things. They go in pairs, one of them keeping your attention in one part of the store, the other doing a lively business in another part of the store. At one end of the establishment the proprietor is smiling graciously on one who seems to be an exquisite lady, while in another part of the same establishment a roll of goods is taken up by a copartner in crime and put in a crocodile pocket, large enough to swallow everything. These professional criminals are the men who break in the windows of jewelry stores and snatch the jewels, and before the clerks have an opportunity of knowing what is the excitement are a block away, looking innocent, ready to come back and join in the pursuit of the offender, shouting with stentorian voice, ’93Stop, thief!’94 You wonder whether these people get large accumulation. No. Of the largest haul they get only a fifth or a sixth or a seventh part. It is the receiver of stolen goods that gets the profits. If these men during the course of their lives should get fifty thousand dollars they will live poor and die poor, and be poor to all eternity.

Among these professional criminals in our cities are the blackmailers’97those who would have you pay a certain amount of money or have your character tarnished. If you are guilty I have no counsel to give in this matter; but if you are innocent let me say that no one of integrity need ever fear the blackmailer. All you have to do is to put the case immediately in the hands of the chief of police, and you will be delivered from the menace. Depend upon it, however, that every dollar you pay to a blackmailer is toward your own everlasting enthralment. A man in a cavern fighting a tigress might as well consent to give the tigress his right hand, letting her eat it up, with the supposition that she would let him off with the rest of his body, as for you to pay anything to a blackmailer with the idea of getting your character left unassailed. The thing to be done is to have the tigress shot, and that the law is willing to do. Let me lay down a principle you can put in your memorandum books, and put in the front part of your Bible, and in the back part of your Bible, and put in your day-book, and put in your ledger’97this principle; that no man’92s character is ever sacrificed until he sacrifices it himself. But you surrender your reputation, your fortune, your home, and your immortal soul, when you pay a farthing to a blackmailer.

Who are these men in this room at Hook Dock, or at the foot of Roosevelt street? They are professional criminals. Under the cover of the night they go down through the bay, or up and down the rivers. Finding two men in a rowboat going to some steamer, or to one of the adjoining islands, they board the boat, rob the two men of their money, and, if they seem unreasonably opposed to giving up their money, taking their lives and giving them watery graves. These are the men who lounge around the solitary pier at night, and who clamber up on the side of the vessel lying at wharf, and, finding the captain asleep give him chloroform to help him sleep, and then knock the watchman overboard and take the valuables. Of this class were Howlett and Saul, who by twenty-one years of age had become the terror of the twenty-one miles of New York city water front, and who wound up their piracy by a murder on the bark Thomas Watson, and decorated the gallows, relieving the world of their existence.

But in all these dens of thieves we find those who excite only our pity’97people flung off the steeps of decent society. Having done wrong once, in despair they went to the bottom. Of such was that man who one day, in New York, stole a roll of goods, went to the station-house, said he was hungry, and asked to be sent to prison. Of such are those young men who make false entries in the account-book, resolved to ’93fix it up;’94 or who surreptitiously borrow from the commercial establishment, expecting to ’93fix it up;’94 but sickness comes or accident comes or a conjunction of unexpected circumstances, and they never ’93fix it up.’94

In disgrace they go down. Oh! how many, by force of circumstances, and at the start with no very bad intention, get off the track and perish. A gentleman one morning told me of an incident which occurred in a large commercial establishment, I believe the fourth in size in the whole country. The employer said to a young lady in the establishment, ’93You must dress better.’94 She said, ’93I cannot dress better; I get six dollars a week, and I pay four dollars for my board, and I have two dollars for dress and for my car-fare; I cannot dress better.’94 Then he said, ’93You must get it in some other way.’94 Well, I suppose she could steal, but that was not what he meant. I do not know how that incident affects you; but when it was told to me it made every drop of my blood, from scalp to heel, tingle with indignation. The fact is that there are thousands of men and women dropping into immorality and crime by force of circumstances, and by their destitution. Under the same kind of pressure you and I would have perished. It is despicable to stand on shore laughing at the shipwrecked struggling in the breakers when we ought to be getting out the rockets and the lifeboat and the ropes from the wrecking establishment. How much have you ever done to get this class ashore?

’93But,’94 says some one at this point in my discourse, ’93where does all this crime come from?’94 Let me tell you that New York is now paying for the political dishonesties committed ten years ago. Do you believe that the political iniquities of 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1871 could be enacted in any city without demoralizing the community from top to bottom? Look at the sham elections of 1868 and 1869. Think of those times when a criminal was auditor of public accounts, and honorable gentlemen in the legal profession were put out of sight by shyster lawyers, and some of the police magistrates were worse than the criminals arraigned before them, and when the most notorious thief since the creation of the world was a State Senator, holding princely levee at the Delavan House at Albany. Ah! my friends, those were the times when thousands of men were put on the wrong track. They said: ’93Why, what’92s the use of honest work when knavery declares such large dividends? What’92s the use of my going afoot in shoes I have to pay for myself, when I can have gilded livery sweeping through Broadway supported by public funds?’94 The rule was, as far as I remember it: Get an office with a large salary; if you cannot get an office with a large salary, get an office with a small salary, and then steal all you can lay your hands on, and call them ’93perquisites;’94 and then give subordinate offices to your friends, and let them help you on with the universal swindle, and get more ’93perquisites.’94 Many of the young men of the cities were then eighteen years of age. They saw their parents hard at work with trowel and yardstick and pen, getting only a cramped living, while these men who were throwing themselves on their political wits had plenty of money and no work. Do you wonder that thousands adopted a life of dissipated indolence? The years have passed; they are now in mid-life and in full swing of criminality. The putrid politics of those years sowed much of the crop which is now being harvested by the almshouse and the penitentiary.

’93But,’94 you say, ’93What is the practical use of this subject this morning? Have I any relation to it?’94 You have. In the last judgment you will have to give answer for your relation to it. Through all eternity you will feel the consequences of your relation to it. I could not waste my time, nor your time, in a discussion if there were not some practical significance to it. First of all, I give you a statistic which ought to make every office table and every counting-room desk and every money safe quake and tremble. It is the statistic that larcenies in New York city, directly and indirectly, cost that city six million dollars per year. There are all the moneys taken, in the first place. Then there are the prisons and the station-houses. Then there are the courts. Then there is the vast machinery of municipal government for the arraignment and treatment of villainy. Why the Court of Sessions and the police courts cost the city of New York about two hundred thousand dollars per year. The police force, directly and indirectly, costs the city of New York over two million dollars a year, and all that expenditure puts its tax on every bill of lading, on every yard of goods, on every parlor, every nursery, every store, every shop, every brick from foundation to capstone, every foot of ground from the south side of Castle Garden to the north side of Central Park, and upon all Brooklyn, and upon all Jersey City, for the reason that the interests of these cities are so interlocked that what is the prosperity of one is the prosperity of all, and what is the calamity of one is the calamity of all.

But I do not, this morning, address you as financiers. I address you as moralists and Christian men and women, who before God have a responsibility for all this turpitude and scoundrelism, unless in every possible way you try to stop it and redeem it. ’93Oh!’94 says some one in the house, ’93such criminals as those cannot be reformed.’94 I reply: Then you are stupidly ignorant of Christianity. Who was the man on the right-hand cross when Jesus was expiring? A thief’97a dying thief. Where did he go to? To heaven? Christ said to him: ’93This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.’94 In that most conspicuous moment of the world’92s history, Christ demonstrating to all ages that the worst criminal can be saved. Who is that man in the Fourth Ward, New York, preaching the Gospel every night of the week and preaching it all the year ’91round, and bringing more drunkards and thieves and criminals to the heart of a pardoning God than any twenty churches in Brooklyn or New York? Jerry McAuley, the converted river thief. That man took me to his front window one evening, and he said, ’93Do you see that grogshop over there?’94 I said, ’93Yes; I see it.’94 ’93Well,’94 he said, ’93I once was pitched out of that by the proprietor for being drunken and noisy. The grace of God has done a great deal for me. I was going along the street the other day and that man who owned that groggery then, and who owns it now, wanted a favor of me, and he called to see me. He did not call me Drunken Jerry; but he said Mister McAuley’97Mister McAuley!’94

Oh! if the grace of God could do as much for that man it can save any outcast. If not, then what is the use of Paul’92s address when he says, ’93Let him that stole, steal no more’94? I will tell you something’97I do not care whether you like it or not’97that at last, in heaven, there will be a multitude of converted thieves, pickpockets, gamblers, debauchees, murderers and outcasts, all saved by the grace of God, washed clean and prepared for glory. That exquisite out there gives a twitch to his kid glove, and that lady brings the skirt of her silk dress nearer her, as though she were afraid of having that truth tarnish her. ’93Why,’94 says some one in the house, ’93are you going to make heaven such a common place as that?’94 I do not make it common. God makes it common. It is the most common place in the whole universe. By that I mean they will come up from all classes and conditions, and from the very lowest depths of society, washed clean by the grace of God, and entering heaven.

’93But,’94 say some people, ’93what am I to do?’94 I will tell you three things, anyhow, you can do. First, avoid putting people in your employ amid too great temptation. You can take a young man in your employ and put him in a position where nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of a thousand are that he will do wrong. Now, I say you have no right to do that. If you have any mercy on the criminal classes, and if you do not want to multiply their number, look out how you put people under temptation. In the second place, you can do this: You can speak a cheerful word when a man wants to reform. What chance is there for those who have gone astray? Here they are in the lowest depths of society, first of all, with their evil proclivities; then, with their evil associations. But suppose they conquer these proclivities, and break away from them. Now, they have come up to the door of society. Who will let them in? Will you? No; you dare not. They will go all around these doors of decent society, and find five hundred, and knock’97no admittance; and knock’97no admittance; and knock’97no admittance. Now, I say it is your duty as a Christian man to help these people when they want to come up and come back. There is a third thing you can do, and that is, be the staunch friends of prison reform associations, home missionary societies, children’92s aid societies, and all those beneficent institutions which are trying to save our cities. But perhaps I ought to do my own work now, leaving yours for you to do some other time. I will now do that work.

Very probably there is not in all this house one person who is known as a criminal, and yet I suppose there are scores of persons in this house who have done wrong. Now, perhaps I may meet their case healthfully and encouragingly when I tell them what I said to two young men. One young man said to me: ’93I have taken from my employer two thousand five hundred dollars in small sums, but amounting to that. What shall I do?’94 I said, ’93Pay it back.’94 He said, ’93I can’92t pay it back.’94 Then I said, ’93Get your friends to help you pay it.’94 He said, ’93I have no friends that will help me.’94 Then I said, ’93I will give you two items of advice: First, go home and kneel down before God and ask his pardon. Then, to-morrow morning, when you go over to the store, get the head men of the firm in the private office, and tell them you have something very important to communicate, and let the door be locked. Then tell the whole story and ask their pardon. If they are decent men’97not to say anything about their being Christians or not Christians’97if they are decent men they will forgive you and help you to start again.’94 ’93But,’94 he said, ’93suppose they don’92t?’94 ’93Then,’94 I said, ’93you have the Lord Almighty to see you through, and no man ever flung himself at Christ’92s feet but he was helped and delivered.’94 Another young man came to me and said, ’93I have taken money from my employer. What shall I do?’94 I said, ’93Pay it back.’94 ’93Well,’94 he said, ’93I took a very large amount’97I nearly paid it all back.’94 I said, ’93Now, how long before you can pay it all back?’94 ’93Well,’94 he said, ’93I can in two weeks, but my conscience disturbs me very much, and I want your counsel.’94 It was a delicate case. I said to him, ’93You are sure you can can pay it in two weeks?’94 ’93Yes; but,’94 he said, ’93suppose I die?’94 I said to him, ’93If you can pay that all up, every farthing of it, in two weeks, pay it, and God don’92t ask you to disgrace yourself or your family, and you won’92t die in two weeks. I see by the way you have been paying this up that you are going to be delivered. Ask God’92s pardon for what you have done, and never do so again.’94

It is very easy to be hard in making a rule, but I say the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of mercy, and wherever you find anybody in trouble, lend a hand to get him out. ’93Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.’94 You see, I am preaching a very practical sermon this morning. I know what are all the temptations of business life, and I did not come on this platform this morning to discourage anybody. I come to speak a word of good cheer to all the wandering and the lost, and I believe I am speaking it. The fact is, these cities are going to be redeemed. You know there is going to be another deluge. ’93Why,’94 you say, ’93I thought the rainbow at the end of the great deluge, and the rainbow after every shower, was a sign that there should never be a deluge again!’94 But there will be another deluge. It will rain more than forty days and forty nights. The ark that will float that deluge will be immeasurably larger than Noah’92s ark, for it will hold a quadrillion of passengers. It will be the deluge of mercy, and the ark that floats that deluge will have five doors’97one at the north to let in the frozen populations; one at the south to let in the sweltering and the sunburned; one at the east to let all China come in; one at the west, to let America in; one at the top, to let Christ, with all his flashing train of cherubim and archangel enter. And, as the rainbow of the ancient deluge gave sign that there would never be a deluge of destruction again, so the rainbow of this last deluge will give a sign that the deluge will never depart. ’93For the knowledge of God shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea.’94 Oh! ship of salvation, sail on. With all thy countless freight of mortals, steer for the eternal shore. The thunders of the last day shall be the cannonade that will greet you into the harbor. Church triumphant, stretch down your arms of light across the gangway to welcome into port Church militant. ’93Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage