A Dime Novel Hero

There was recently arrested on suspicion in Boston a man with probablv the most reniarkable criminal record of any man now living. His name is Chauncey Johnson. He is nearly 70 years old. To look at him, Johnson has the face and head of a great financier. He has the shrewd, keen eye and long, sharp nose of acquisitiveness. A little change in the shuflle of the cards and he would have been a millionaire bank president or railroad director. As it is, he is the champion bank thief of the world, now tottering on his last legs, too old and docrepit to steal any more except in a very small way. He began his flashy career of crime as a cracker of safes and bank burglar. Early in his course, before his hand had become skillful in the robbing profession, he was arrested and sent to the penitentiary twice - five years each term. After leaving prison the second time he decided to change from burglar to bank sneak thief. He would watch a cashier's window till the official's eye was turned away a moment; then, like a flash of lightning, he would insert a long, slender hooked wire in through the screen and claw out bank bilis. He secured thousands of dollars in this way. Once he saw August Belmont purchase $28,000 worth of government bonds. He followed the banker to his office and grabbed the bonds, and made off with them while Belmont was changing his coat. Another time a New York woman drew $85,000 out of the bank. At the sidewalk, just as she was driving off in her carriage, a man in an ink stained coat with a pen behind his ear begged her pardon and asked for the package, telling her the cashier had made a mistake in counting. She gave up the tnoney. But the clerk with the pen behind his ear was Chauncey Johnson, who walked in the front door and coolly walked out the back way with the lady's fortune. He was never caught for this crime, but compromised with the owner of the money for $10,000, returning the rest to her. In all his strange career it was his boast that he never robbed a poor person and never struck a blow. He had iron nerve and courage and cunning that seemed superhuman. He has stolen over a million dollars and gambled it every cent away. He says he has sometimes lost at gatnbling $40,000 in a night. It was this passion that caused his downfan to begin. He was the child of respectable parents in New York, was well educated and had a good occupation. There was nothing to make him go wrong except purely and simply that he wanted to. He has sp?nt thirty-five years of his life in prisons. In 1878 he was getting old, and thence on became a common pocket book snatcher and petty thief. Now he has lost all his nerve and skill, and cannot even snatch pocket books any more. "There ought to be some place for him to go to," said the prison inspector. "I don't see what he can do for himself now; do you?" Who can answer?