All the tales that fit into this scheme are picaresque. The smart
Harvard Freshman, expelled, turned adrift by his father, now a tramp,
next a jockey's attendant, then fortunate in crooked racing, and at last a
beggar, is the first picaroon. The second is the gloomy ex-medium,
Vango, haunted by the ghost of a dupe. The third is a cowboy, who in
order to win his sweetheart's favor enlists for service in the Philippines,
but being refused by the surgeons, allows the circulation of reports of his
heroism in battle, and is exposed and ruined.

The day's adventures of each are sufficiently melodramatic. The
Freshman smokes, on a wager, forty panatelas won from a slot machine,
gambles in Chinatown with the proceeds, is captured in a police raid,
but receives his thousand of winnings on being released from jail. The
medium falls from a ferryboat, clambers aboard a smuggler's launch,
assists a quadroon there in removing the corpse of her Chinese husband,
and secures his thousand for finding a clue to the murderers. The cow-
boy pursues to a Turkish bath and identifies by a tattoo mark the
missing husband of a vaudeville actress, and his thousand is won by
impersonating for this rogue the trustee of a large bequest.

Equally roguish are the tales to which each picaroon gives ear, from
the street-car conductor's story of cheating the company, or the Klon-
diker's tale of his strange squaw-wife, to the dermograph artist's recital
of a kidnapping, or the quadroon's account of opium smuggling, of
fights with highbinders, of Chinese theatrical life, and of the pursuit
of her father by detectives unjustly suspecting him of an outrage. The
vaudeville actress tells of elopement and Bohemian ways; her husband
describes his career in the Philippines, where flirtation with a Spanish
beauty led to his capture by insurgents and enforced desertion from
his regiment; and Coffee John explains his prosperity as the price of
his services in buying off from blackmail a swindling actress who stood
in the way of a rich young gentleman's marriage.

Unprofessional roguery is the occupation of all these amus-
ing folk, and the indulgent humor of the recital is quite in
the Continental tradition. But "The Picaroons" differs from
its far Spanish ancestors in discarding both satire and the ser-
vice of masters. Like all fictions of the Raffles group, it deals
only with episodes in the lives of its rascals, and subordinates
the realism of subject-matter to the romanticism of plot.

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