“I could steal, take, and carry away,” he continued, smiling, “fifty thousand dollars’ worth of plunder⁠—rugs, furs, paintings, statuary, and such junk in thirty days, if I wanted to make a pack horse of myself. But just imagine trying to dispose of it. There’s where you ‘sup with sorrow’ as the poet says, Kid. Take nothing you can’t put in your coat pocket. You’ve got to watch yourself like a fat man on a diet. The smallest trifle will upset you, and you’ll have leisure to repent your carelessness. When you get your new suit from the tailor’s, take all the tags out of it, and when you buy a hat don’t let the hatter stamp your name on the sweatband. You don’t know what house you might lose it in.

“I know thieves so conceited and foolish that they have their names in their hats and monogrammed pocket handkerchiefs, and neat little notebooks with all their friends’ addresses and phone numbers carefully noted. That’s the type of thief that calls the police ‘a bunch of chumps,’ and goes to jail crying, ‘Somebody snitched.’