Crossword-Solution: KLEPTOMANIACS 13 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 23

You used to call persons who stole, evidently without any rational motive, kleptomaniacs, and when the case was clear deemed it absurd to punish them as thieves.

The latter disease has gained notoriety in this country, and nearly every large store has agents to watch the apparently growing number of kleptomaniacs.

These days I find it incumbent on me to turn washer-woman occasionally, and, halting at the first little stream in this valley, I take upon myself the onerous duties of Wall Lung in Sacramento City, having for an interested and interesting audience two evil-looking kleptomaniacs, buffalo-herders dressed in next to nothing, who eye my garments drying on the bushes with lingering covetousness.

There are certainly Russian fools who dream about India, German fools who dream about Canada and South America, British fools who dream about Africa and the East; aggressionists in the blood, people who can no more let nations live in peace than kleptomaniacs can keep their hands in their own pockets.

But perhaps the confidence in the protective power of Greek designations lately reached its climax, in an attempt to save thieves from punishment by calling them kleptomaniacs.