one of those tickets in advance, a peterman similar to me in height and familiarly known as "Beets"—I am not sure of the spelling, perhaps an "a" appertained—who had affected the monastic in earlier revels. He was, fortunately, a taciturn individual; so nobody expected me to talk much; and nobody talked much to me.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when we arrived, so the ball was already rolling; "the thieves' ball," the papers dubbed it afterwards; yet, of the three hundred persons in the hall at the hour of the swiftest rolling, not fifty actually were thieves. Not fifty were either thieves or worse; not if you counted both sexes, the shoplifters and lay "wires", along with the "guns" and "gervers."
So much I had gathered from Jerry during the afternoon. The actual go-getter in any society is in the small minority; he, or she, supports a host of hangers-on; it is only the armchair dreamer who flatters himself that he who holds him up, who blows his safe, who forges his name, must be a fugitive, hiding and cowering between his sallies forth with gat, with "soup" or with pen. Of course, the gunman or the gerver goes about his business, keeps his hours,
