Amusing Ruffians

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 130, 26 February 1887, Page 7

Amusing Ruffians

The playful humour of thieves and burgJare has often formed a subject for the ordinary narration of popular novelists. Lytton'e ruffians have always a refined jocularity concealed about their composition : the rascals whom Dumas had painted in such vivid colours can crack a joke aa well as a head ; and Dickens's villains are hardly ever af bo low a type as to be unable to appreciate o humorous situation. Mr Quilp enjoyed himself greatly when he returned to lite and found his disconsolate widow bewailing his loss : Fagin crackled with genuine mirth as he taught his apprentices to pick pockets, and the Artful l)odger is the very embodiment of Arab wit. Fiction, however, has never come up to truth in this respect. There is still wanting among popular novels a parallel to the northern rogue who broke out of prison, and sarcastically wrote upon the door of his cell, " Rooms to l^t ;" and the delicate irony of the gentlemen who last week absconded with £600 from a railway carnage is unmatched. By a skilful tranference they replaced the bag of sovereigns which they appropriated by an identical article containing a quantity oi iron nuts. The stroke of satire there is on the surface. "What did the thieves mean but that they ware giving the police a particularly hard nut to crack !