True Stories of Crimes from the District Attorney's Office (Illustrated)

The narratives composing this book are literally true stories of crime.In a majority of the cases the author conducted the prosecutionshimself, and therefore may claim to have a personal knowledge ofthat whereof he speaks. While no confidence has been abused, noessential facts have been omitted, distorted, or colored, and theaccounts themselves, being all matters of public record, may beeasily verified.The scenes recorded here are not literature but history, and thecharacters who figure in them are not puppets of the imagination,but men and women who lived and schemed, laughed, sinned andsuffered, and paid the price when the time came, most of them,without flinching. A few of those who read these pages may profitperhaps by their example; others may gain somewhat in theirknowledge of life and human nature; but all will agree that there arebooks in the running brooks, even if the streams be turbid, andsermons in stones, though these be the hearts of men. If in someinstances the narratives savor in treatment more of fiction than offact, the writer must plead guilty to having fallen under the spell ofthe romance of his subject, and he proffers the excuse that, whereassuch tales have lost nothing in accuracy, they may have gained in thetruth of their final impression.ARTHUR TRAIN.CRIMINAL COURTS BUILDING,NEW YORK CITY,April 20, 1908.