cloaked and smothered in fine linen or sanctimonious hypocrisy; and, with a few dollars of his hard-earned good money (mixed with a generous sprinkling of the bogus he had gathered,) from one of the very 24th Street horse men who had first incidentally opened his youthful eyes to the facility with which this thing could be done, he bought and paid for a good stout cob of a horse; with which—and a liberal supply of fresh "coney," furnished him by parties in Houston Street, whom he found no difficulty in approaching, at that time—the young man went forth upon his first journey in a pilgrimage that has led to ruin wiser heads and stouter hearts than even this keen young Yankee then or subsequently possessed. But he was hopeful, spunky, cautious, and well informed; and he entered upon the prosecution of his new vocation, with zeal and determination of now to "make his pile."
At Mike O'Brien's, who was then in his prime, in New York, the young man made the acquaintance of the noted "Dock Young," afterwards convicted for robbing the U. S. mail coach on the highway in Maine, and who was sent to the State Prison there, for this offence. The boy's early education, after quitting the saloon, was thus obtained in the association of "cracksmen" "coney men," and their "pals." But he was unusually smart for his years—bright, intelligent, good looking and daring; and he soon made up his mind that the dealer in the "queer" rather than the "shover," was the party who piled his gains with the greatest ease and celerity. But the way up to this elevated position among the "coney" fraternity was a tortuous road, and one that he found "hard to travel," before he reached the apex of the then far-away hill-top to which he aspired. And so for more than a dozen years, he went and came as shover, circulator, boodle-carrier, or cracksman, before he came to be a wholesale dealer.
