I was lucky money.  I kept on the move.  Sometimes I changed hands twenty times a day.  I saw the inside of every business; I fought for my owner’s every pleasure.  It seemed that on Saturday nights I never missed being slapped down on a bar.  Tens were always slapped down, while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded.  I got in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could.  Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart peddler’s jeans.  I thought I never would get in circulation again, for the future department store owner lived on eight cents’ worth of dog meat and onions a day.  But this peddler got into trouble one day on account of having his cart too near a crossing, and I was rescued.  I always will feel grateful to the cop that got me.  He changed me at a cigar store near the Bowery that was running a crap game in the back room.  So it was the Captain of the precinct, after all, that did me the best turn, when he got his.  He blew me for wine the next evening in a Broadway restaurant; and I really felt as glad to get back again as an Astor does when he sees the lights of Charing Cross.

A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway.  I was alimony once, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes.  They were bragging about the busy times there were in Ossining whenever three girls got hold of one of them during the ice cream season.  But it’s Slow Moving Vehicles Keep to the Right for the little Bok tips when you think of the way we bison plasters refuse to stick to anything during the rush lobster hour.

The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good thing with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to buy a stack of blues.

About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk’s and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot of other notes and rolled us into what is termed a “wad” among the money tainters.

“Ticket me for five hundred,” said he to the banker, “and look out for everything, Charlie.  I’m going out for a stroll in the glen before the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff.  If anybody finds the roof in their way there’s $60,000 wrapped in a comic supplement in the upper left-hand corner of the safe.  Be bold; everywhere be bold, but be not bowled over.  ’Night.”

I found myself between two $20 gold certificates.  One of ’em says to me: 

“Well, old shorthorn, you’re in luck to-night.  You’ll see something of life.  Old Jack’s going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburg steak.”

“Explain,” says I.  “I’m used to joints, but I don’t care for filet mignon with the kind of sauce you serve.”

“’Xcuse me,” said the twenty.  “Old Jack is the proprietor of this gambling house.  He’s going on a whiz to-night because he offered $50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said his money was tainted.”