The Beloved Sinner
morning. The terrible and undeserved epithet, "blameless," has robbed great Arthur of his just meed of homage. The "Master Thief" enjoyed, and still enjoys, unmerited popularity.
I sometimes wonder what a man conscious of talent, like the Master Thief, would have thought if the simple criminologists of his day—who knew no subtler remedy than hanging—had confronted him with clinics, and laboratories, and pamphlets on the "disease of crime." I sometimes wonder how his able descendants, like the humorous rogues who stole the gold cup at Ascot; or the wag who slipped the stolen purses (emptied of their contents) into the pocket of the Bishop of Lincoln; or the redoubtable Raymond—alias Wirth—who stole a shipping of Kimberley diamonds and a Gainsborough portrait, feel about their pathological needs. "The criminal is a sick man, the prison is his hospital, and the judge who
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