are men of
experience, intelligence, and energy. These qualities are indispensable
to success in their profession. It requires an unusual amount of
intelligence to make a good Detective. The man must be honest,
determined, brave, and complete master over every feeling of his nature.
He must also be capable of great endurance, of great fertility of
resource, and possessed of no little ingenuity. He has to adopt all
kinds of disguises, incur great personal risks, and is often subjected to
temptations which only an honest man can resist. It is said that the
Detective's familiarity with crime is in itself a great temptation, and
often leads him from the path of right. However this may be, it is
certain that a member of the New York force committing an act savoring of
dishonesty is punished by immediate expulsion from his post.

The Detectives have a special department assigned them at the Police
Head-quarters in Mulberry street. There they may be found when not on
duty, and the Chief, when not in his office, is always represented by
some member of the corps. They are kept quite busy. The strangers who
visit the city throw an immense amount of work upon the Detectives.
These people often get drunk over night, and frequent houses of bad
repute, where they are robbed. They naturally invoke the aid of the
police in seeking to recover their property. Frequently, by making a
plain statement of their cases, they recover their money or valuables,
through the assistance of the Detectives. Sometimes the stolen property
cannot be regained at all. These people, as a rule, refuse to prosecute
the thieves, and declare their determination to submit to the loss rather
than endure the publicity which would attend a prosecution. Thus the
Detectives are forced to compound felonies. The injured party refuses to
prosecute, and the Detective knows that to make an arrest in the case
would simply be to take trouble for nothing. Consequently, if the
plunder is returned, the thief is allowed to escape without punishment.

None but those whose duty it is to search out and punish crime, can tell
how much the administration of justice is embarrassed, how much the
officers of the law are hampered, and how greatly their labors are
increased by the refusal of respectable persons to prosecute criminals.
These refusals are not confined to those who seek to avoid such an
exposure as is mentioned above. Merchants and bankers who have been
r