"Even if the little enterprise meets with disaster, the reflection that I did my best for the young couple will be a great consolation to me when I am serving my bit of time in Wormwood Scrubbs. It will cheer me up. The jailers will cluster outside the door to listen to me singing in my cell. My pet rat, as he creeps out to share the crumbs of my breakfast, will wonder why I whistle as I pick the morning's oakum. I shall join in the hymns on Sundays in a way that will electrify the chaplain. That is to say, if anything goes wrong and I am what I believe is technically termed 'copped.' I say 'if,'" said Psmith, gazing solemnly at his companion. "But I do not intend to be copped. I have never gone in largely for crime hitherto, but something tells me I shall be rather good at it. I look forward confidently to making a nice, clean job of the thing. And now, Comrade Threepwood, I must ask you to excuse me while I get the half-nelson on this rather poisonous poetry of good old McTodd's.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
For the uninformed, Wormwood Scrubbs is a prison London for adult males. Oakum is a preparation of tarred fibers used in shipbuilding.
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