and drank beer from a battered tin pail.

The question of labor involved in transporting the pail,

empty, to the saloon across the street, and returning it, full,

to the alley back of the feed-store was solved by the presence

of admiring and envious little boys of the neighborhood who

hung, wide-eyed and thrilled, about these heroes of their

childish lives.

Billy Byrne, at six, was rushing the can for this noble

band, and incidentally picking up his knowledge of life and

the rudiments of his education. He gloried in the fact that

he was personally acquainted with "Eddie" Welch, and that

with his own ears he had heard "Eddie" tell the gang how

he stuck up a guy on West Lake Street within fifty yards

of the Twenty-eighth Precinct Police Station.

The kindergarten period lasted until Billy was ten; then

he commenced "swiping" brass faucets from vacant buildings

and selling them to a fence who ran a junkshop on Lincoln

Street near Kinzie.

From this man he obtained the hint that graduated him

to a higher grade, so that at twelve he was robbing freight

cars in the yards along Kinzie Street, and it was about this

same time that he commenced to find pleasure in the feel of

his fist against the jaw of a fellow-man.

He had had his boyish scraps with his fellows off and on

ever since he could remember; but his first real fight came

when he was twelve. He had had an altercation with an

erstwhile pal over the division of the returns from some

freight-car booty. The gang was all present, and as words

quickly gave place to blows, as they have a habit of doing

<<BackPagesTo menuNext>>