The enforced idleness of state prison convicts has led some of the large manufacturers and dealers to seriously consider the advisability of giving employment to some of them in the different branches of their literary establishments.

Mr. Bok recently purchased a quantity of “Just Among Ourselves” goods, but found them to be inferior in quality to the samples from which they were ordered, so he refused to accept them, and they were subsequently sold at a reduced rate to Mr. Peter Parley, who is now editing the Sunday supplement of the “New York Times.” The Harpers have[Pg 341] been more successful, having had more experience in this peculiar line. It is an open secret that the ten acres of historical and other foreign matter contracted for two or three years ago and signed with the nom de plume “Poultney Bigelow” are really the work of a gang of long-term men in the Kings County Penitentiary, while fully half their poetry comes from the same institution.

Not long ago, however, the long-termers, hoping by working overtime to secure a little money for themselves, prepared and offered to the proprietors of the Franklin Square foundry a short story, which those discerning publishers were compelled to decline because they did not like its moral. The story is as follows, and is called:

CAFé THROWOUT;
OR, THE HEY RUBE’S DREAM.

It was a cold, blustering night in the very heart of the bitter month of January,[Pg 342] and the stranger who entered the front door of the Café Throwout, on Sixth Avenue, let in after him a fierce gust of wind that brought a chill to the two men who were seated at a table in the corner, engaged in earnest conversation, and caused the bartender—the only other occupant of the room—to look up quickly from the sporting paper which engrossed his attention and closely scan the face of the newcomer.

“Gimme a hot apple toddy, an’ put a little nutmeg on the top of it,” said the newcomer as he dropped into an arm-chair by the stove and stretched out his hands to catch some of the genial warmth.

The bartender silently prepared the drink, and the two men in the corner continued their conversation, but in lowered tones and with less eagerness than before, for both of them were sharply watching the new arrival. It was a[Pg 343] strange pair to find in a Tenderloin bar-room, and it was not easy to conceive of two men, differing so widely in appearance and manner, having anything in common. The elder of the two wore a black broadcloth suit of clerical cut, deaconish whiskers of iron-gray, a white lawn tie, and a mouth so devoid of expression that its owner was perfectly safe in exposing it without the precautionary covering of beard or mustache. His companion looked as if he might have come in that very afternoon, in his best clothes, from some point midway between Rochester and Elmira. He wore a checked suit of distinctly provincial cut, a cloth cap similar to those worn by rustic milkmen on cold mornings, a high, turn-down collar, and no cravat, and, for ornament, a rather conspicuous bit of jewelry, which might have been an heirloom known to the family as “gran’pa’s buzzom pin.”

[Pg 344]As the bartender handed the hot drink to the man beside the stove, the clergyman whispered in a low voice to his companion, “I wonder what his graft is!”

“Graft—nothing!” retorted the other; “there’s one of him born every hour—didn’t I tell you? Look at the roll he’s flashing up! He handles money as if he’d never heard of the Café Throwout before.”

It was true. The newcomer, in paying for his drink, had drawn from his pocket a large roll of greenbacks, displaying them as carelessly as if he had been in a banking house instead of in one of the most famous resorts for smart people that the Tenderloin precinct contains.

Of course by this time the reader has discovered that the man in clerical garb and his companion of provincial aspect were “smart” people, each working his[Pg 345] own particular graft with skill and success. The faces of both brightened when their eyes fell upon the newcomer, who was a sucker of the kind sometimes sent by a beneficent Providence to his afflicted people in times of drought.

The elder of the two men was known to those who contributed to the orphan asylum that he conducted in Dreamland as the Rev. Willi............