Waterbury Democrat., 1901-01-04
STORY OF A PENCIL.
It Contains a Moral for Thieves and
 Honest People,

It ContalnS a AOfal TOT InleNeS ana
 Honest People.
 "Of all the fool things that a man in my business can do,'' said the re- tired burglar to a New York Sun re- porter, ''the very foolest of all is carrying about with him something that he's picked up in the course of his work. l used to think that writ ing letters and leaving them behind, something by which a man might some day be identified, was the most fool thing of all; but I am satisfied now that carrying something around is still worse. l realized this when something I was carrying got me into trouble.
 II always carried a leadpencil in my pocket, and I lost this pencil, somehow, one day and the same night picked up another from a desk in a mans library and just tucked it in my pocket. I wanted a pencil and just took this one, and thought no more about it. 1 carried that pencil 1 guess three or four months, sharpen ing it occasionally, and so gradually wearing it down. The last time l ever used it was in a railroad station where I'd just seen a big express wagon drive up with a couple of boxes that caught my eye, as maybe containing things that I'd like to have, both going to the same town, not very far out, and l thought may be I'd run out there some night, and look through these houses. l don't believe in luck, but l sort O had a notion that I'd find something very good in those two houses. and 1 liked the idea of getting the clew to them in that way. So l goes into the wait ing-room of the station again and just puts down those addresses before I forgets 'em; writing 'em down at one end of desk that was there, by the window of the telegraph office.
 ''I'd put the piece of paper that I'd made the memorandum on in my pocket, and was just putting away the pencil, when a man that had stepped up to write a telegraph, and found no pencil on the desk there, turns to me-he'd seen me writing and says: Will you kindly lend me your pencil for a minute?' And of course I handed it over to him with out the slightest hesitation. and then I stands there and looks the other way so as not to seem to be looking while he was doing his writing. And I thought he was writing a pretty long telegraph and I was just about to turn around and look, when I feels 0 hand on my shoulder which I couldn't very we'll mistake. and look iEg around l found as 1 expected that it was a. policeman that was clawin' me, and my friend there, that I'd lent the pencil to, was standing alongside of him pointing at me, and saying:
 '.I charge this man with burglary
 Quite a change in the situation? We'll, I should say so. And all through that pencil. That pencil was just a plain, common, simple pencil of good quality, with nothing remark able about it at all except that across the flat end of the head of the pencil, the end not used, there were eight little straight lines, four in each di- rection, crossing at right angles, and making a sort of d plaided effect, pretty we'll faded now, but still per fectly visible. And this pencil be- longed to the man that had borrowed it of me there in the station. Makes you laugh to think of my luggin' around something that was marked? it does me, now. Well, it was easy enough to prove that the house had been robbed, and that the pencil I had came from it. And it interested me, little bit, too, to see how easy they were able to prove the marking on the pencil. This mans little daughter made it. and she swore to it without any sort of doubt or quib- ble. She'd sat down one day at her fathers desk, and marked those lines on the end of the pencil with a pen, just for fun.
 "Of course there was no sort of actual proof that I stole it, but there was proof that I had it in my posses sion. I said I found it; but I ain't much more of liar than George Washington was; and when I do try 'ying make the bunglin'est work of it you ever heard of. That's the kind of job made of it, this time; and of course they knew, you know. But they give me only year. Still that was enough to learn me that lesson, anyhow. I never, after that, carried about with me anything that I'd gathered in, any longer than it was necessary to dispose of it. I may have other tricks, now, just as fool ish, but that one dropped right then.''
 An escaped lunatic wahiled away his time in Racine. Wis, by taking the ss3r{l -eArvice exas1a3n1ti0u IneiQ&ntaI-