literature; nor, indeed, does it aspire to any such distinction. We notice it, in passing, as giving us a glimpse into that world within the world, over whose surface we walk every day, scarcely conscious of its existence; and we accept also the opportunity to make due and honorable mention of the services of that class of men through whose sagacity, integrity, and steadfastness the rest of us are enabled to become sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights. It is well occasionally to recollect how far the safety and order of the city depend upon a brave, vigilant, and trustworthy police, that a due recognition of the fact may serve both as acknowledgment for the past and increased security for the future.
The brief chronological sketch at the beginning of the book furnishes many curious and interesting facts of old as well as new time, some of which we should, on the whole, be rather glad to forget. Without confessing that we were sinners above others, we yet are not so clean given over to mutual admiration as to take special pleasure in learning that Hugh Bowett was banished for maintaining that he was free from original sin, (though in our day we generally find such saints disagreeable enough to deserve banishment,)—nor that Oliver Holmes was whipped for being a Baptist,—nor that William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson were hung on the Common as Antinomians and heretics,—nor that a Frenchman, who was suspected of setting a fire near the dock, which consumed eighty buildings, was sentenced to stand in the pillory, to have both ears cut off, pay charges of court, give five hundred pounds bonds with sureties, and stand committed till sentence was performed. We must also suspect the early English traveller, Mr. Ward, of a little Old-Country prejudice, when he writes of Boston,—"The buildings, like their women, are neat and handsome; and their streets, like the hearts of their men, are paved with pebbles. They have four churches, built with clapboards and shingles, and supplied with four ministers,—one a scholar, one a gentleman, one a dunce, and one a clown. The captain of a ship met his wife in the street after a long voyage, and kissed her, for which he was fined ten shillings. What a happiness, thought I, do we enjoy in Old England, where we can not only kiss our own wives, but other men's, without a danger of penalty!" Unquestionably Boston was no place for Mr. Ward, and Mr. Ward not at all the man for Boston. Yet, with an occasional blemish and many a casualty, the record is also one of good works and alms-deeds.
Reading the Police Recollections is like peering down through a crevice into some subterranean cavern, where an intense convulsive activity prevails without ceasing, day and night. The actors seem scarcely to be men and women, but such puppets as dance on electric machines, of movements too swift and sudden for human beings, too reckless, eccentric, and apparently inconsequent for moral beings. A certain phenomenal life they have, a fitful flare of gusty, fierce existence, and then the instant flicker and fading into extinction. Yet the philanthropist remembers, with a sigh, that these are living souls, children of the same Father as himself, amenable to the same laws, accountable at the same judgment-seat; and the practical question bears down upon him with ever-increasing force, How shall these outcasts of society be brought into the Father's house?
More hopeless than the Pariahs are the Brahmins of our heathenism,—those miserable men whose corrupt lives are glossed over with a varnish of respectability. Church, assembly, and drawing-room see the outer surface; the police know the under side, and a sorry side it seems too often to be. The solid man of Boston bears himself loftily to wife, child, and neighbor; but the bluecoat on the corner perceives a shameful secret of crime and guilt lurking under the fair outward seeming. These are the spots in our feasts of charity.
There are kind hearts for sorrow, as well as sharp eyes for crime, among our policemen, as many a deed of charity and humanity bears witness; and their varied duties bring them into contact with human nature in its oddest manifestations. At a large fire they were obliged to carry out by main strength "an old lady weighing nearly two hundred pounds, very much against her will. . . . . When told that her life was in danger, she replied, 'It is all bosh that ye tell me. Has not my landlord repeatedly told me that the house was insured?' Kitty Quadd was very much delighted that her trunk had been found. 'It's not the value of me clothing, Sir, but it's me character that's there,—me character it is'; and, hurrying her hand into the pocket of an old dress, as she lifted it from the trunk, she drew forth a dirty piece of paper with much apparent satisfaction. 'This is it, an' sure enough it's safe it is, and it's yerself that
