Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 694

"King of the Crooks," Chapter I and II By Jo Pierce (author of "Five Points Phil," "Bob o' the Bowery," etc.)

Spicy Jim, a fourteen-year-old umbrella mender from Bond Street, encounters the absent-minded Professor Hannibal Jones on Washington Square in New York City. Jones hires Jim to help with archaeological work examining pre-Columbian mounds and artifacts, promising better wages than umbrella repair. Jim meets Jones's niece Bertha and views the professor's museum on Rivington Street, which contains three skeletal remains and various relics (pottery, arrowheads, stone vessels) excavated from burial mounds. Jim accepts the position. The story shifts when unpleasant visitors intrude—OCR degrades significantly in the final section, but plainly introduces conflict to the narrative. The serial combines street-urchin realism with archaeological adventure.