What first struck me was his prodigality in talk. He scattered treasures of anecdote and observation as Aladdin of the wonderful lamp orders his slave to scatter gold pieces. The trait is not common amongst men of letters; they are the worst company in the world; they are taking, not giving; if they have not a notebook and a pencil brutally before you in their hands, they have a notebook and pencil agilely at work in their heads; your pleasure is their business; the word that comes from their lips is but a provocative to gain one more word from you; the smile that answers your smile is but a grimace; and their good stories, until they have been published, are locked behind their lips like books in a safe-deposit box. Flynt had no safe-deposit box for his good stories, and no gift for silence; the anecdotes in his books are amazing; the details of just how he got them are still more amazing; he never learned to use up his material, to economize, and he was more amazing than his material.

He invited me the night I met him to go with him on one of his wanderings. A Haroun-al-Rashed adventure it seemed to me. I closed with the offer at once and asked how I should dress. I had an idea that I must wear a false beard and at least provide myself with a stiletto and a revolver, and be ready to use them. "Why, you will do just as you are," he said. "I shall go just as I am." He did not know it, but he did not tell the truth. He did not change his clothes, but at the first turn into side streets he changed his bearing, the music of his voice, his vocabulary. I could scarce understand one word in five. He was a finished actor; Sir Richard Burton, of course, was his ideal; always in the Under World he passed unsuspected; always from the start of our tramping together he had to explain me. I could never pick up the manner, and indeed was too amused to try; his habit was to explain me in whispers as a dupe, and I had once to rescue him from a fight brought on because he would not consent to sharing with his interlocutor the picking of my pockets. I had more than once to rescue him; he had the height and body of a slim boy of fourteen, but just to see what the beast would do he would have teased my lord the elephant, and he took a drubbing as naturally as any other hardship.

A finished actor, I have written; and an actor knowing to his fingertips many parts. One instance must suffice. I figured usually—I have said it—as a dupe. I was on this night cast for the part of an accomplice, and he for the part of a bold, bad breaker of safes and doors and windows. The character was conceived in an instant. An instant before we were two very tired, very quiet men, strolling home through the Bowery in a bitter, drizzling rain at three o'clock in the morning.

"Say, mate, what's the chanst for a cup o' coffee?"

The speaker was a fully togged out A.B. for the service of the U.S., and on his cap were the letters Oregon. To me the disguise was perfect. He did a bit of the sailor's hornpipe on that slippery, glistening pavement where the rain fell and froze under electric lights.

"The chances are good," said Flynt; and he led the way into a house near by.

The front of the house was as unlighted as respectability demands a house should be at three o'clock in the morning; but there was a dim light at a side door. We went in under the dim light and found music and dancing, and little tables at which we could be served with almost anything except coffee. The "Oregon" took "Whisky straight—Hunter's if you've got it."

"Out at the Philippines?" asked Flynt.

"Sure thing."

"Came round the Cape?"

"Did I? Say, I'll tell you about that."

"Battle of Santiago?"

The sailor was in the midst of the battle of Santiago when Flynt smiled and said quietly:

"Have you seen the Lake Shore push yet?"

To me, at that time, the words were pure enigma, but the color faded out of the sailorman's cheeks, and he dropped back in his chair and said:

"Hell, partner, who are you?"

The rest of the dialogue was swift; I could not follow it; I could only memorize.

"Where did you get those duds?"

"Bought 'em for nine dollars at No. — Bowery."

"What is the lay work?"

"About four per. But the war's played out here; I'm going to shift up State. Where did you get your duds?"

"Just got out."

"Thought your hands looked white. Where did you do your time?"

"Joliet."

"Joliet!—why, I did five years there myself."

And they fell to discussing wardens. Flynt knew the names of the wardens.

"Say, have you got anything on?"

"A little job to-night uptown."

"Can't you put me next?"

"It's my friend's."

This with a nod toward me. The little job uptown was mine. Never having heard before of the little job uptown I declined to put any one next; and we gave the sailorman coin to do a hornpipe for the sitters, and left, presumably, to do the little job. We left in an odor of sanctity, almost of reverence; we were supposed to be accomplished cracksmen, and in high fortune; princes and millionaires of the Under World.

A finished actor—I come back to that—and the streets were his stage, and the first chance word his cue. In a house he was not at home; when he put on the uniform he must wear at dinner, he put off his memory, his experience, his wit. His anecdotes, his good stories, lived in his "business suit," and refused to wear a Prince Albert or a Tuxedo even, and waved him farewell at the mere sight of a crush-hat. Make no mistake; the anecdotes were as clean as what he has published; but he was to the end a boy; he was shy; and except on his own stage he was shy to the point of silence or of stammering. He knew books; the books dealing with the Under World he knew rather well; but I fancy he never read them except when he was ill. His book was the men in the street; any man, in any street; policemen, cabby, convict, or men of gentle breeding; him he would read from dawn to dawn very shrewdly and gaily, so long as the tobacco was good; and if the tobacco was not good he would still read. I have given one instance of his getting under a man's guard, of his turning him inside out and inspecting him, not unkindly. It was his habit to get under the guard of everyone he met, to turn them inside out, and inspect them, not unkindly. He talked to any one, every one, who gave him an opening; but the man who got the first hearing was the vagabond. In our strollings we never passed one without a halt, and an interview, and copy. "They are all friends, humbugs," he said philosophically; "I have been one of them myself." But he always gave generously for his means, and though he had begun by censuring me for giving, for giving in ignorance, he expected me always also to give.

Again, one anecdote must serve for many. The scene was Fifth Avenue, two blocks north of Washington Square. The petitioner was a well-set-up, firm-built Englishman, clean-shaven, aged twenty-five, who said to me:

"I beg your pardon?"

"Yes?" I said and halted.

"It's rather beastly, but I need a drink and I haven't a penny—not a sou."

I said "Diable," and put my hand into my pocket. The man's clothes, accent and bearing presumed so much that if he needed a drink he needed food. At once Flynt intervened. What was said I do not know; the two stepped aside; but presently there was laughter from both Flynt and my beggar; and we three sat at table later, and told tales, and flushed one another's secrets. My beggar was a gentleman ranker out on a spree (it is Kipling of course), damned to all eternity, but his guard once broken he was amusing, and Flynt knew the trick to break his guard.

"Why, after I was dropped from the service, and it came to selling my wife's jewels, I had rather beg than that, and I cannot get work," he said simply. "They say my clothes are too good. What the deuce is the matter with my clothes? But begging is not so bad; I make a good thing of it."

At the moment the point I wish to make is that Flynt knew his vagrant in the open. He had a profound contempt for the books written by frock-coated gentlemen who have academic positions, and say "sociology," and measure the skulls and take the confessions of the vagrant in captivity. Skull for skull he believed there was small difference between that of the first scamp and the first minister of the Gospel. I set that down for what it is worth as his opinion. The confessions of a vagrant in captivity are always, he said, false. This I fancy is almost true.

I had chose a passably dreary seminary course in Harvard in which all the literature of criminology had been got up and reported. I myself had looked into some of the books—too many—some is too many. Five minutes of Flynt's talk turned my books into a heap of rubbish. Five hours' stroll with him made me forget that the rubbish heap existed. At his best, and it was at his best that I knew him, he was what he wished to be—the foremost authority among those who knew him in the side streets.

He had paid for his knowledge—paid with his person. "Old Boston Mary" I believe to be in part fiction; I could never surprise the little man into a confession; but he has lain on the trucks of a Pullman and in the blinding cinders and dust seen his companion lose grip from sheer weariness, and go—to meet Boston Mary. He had tightened his own grip, and been sorry. He could do no more.