hirteen
original States, but he knew all the officers of the twenty-second
police district by name, and he could distinguish the clang of a
fire-engine's gong from that of a patrol-wagon or an ambulance fully two
blocks distant. It was Gallegher who rang the alarm when the Woolwich
Mills caught fire, while the officer on the beat was asleep, and it was
Gallegher who led the "Black Diamonds" against the "Wharf Rats," when
they used to stone each other to their heart's content on the
coal-wharves of Richmond.

I am afraid, now that I see these facts written down, that Gallegher was
not a reputable character; but he was so very young and so very old for
his years that we all liked him very much nevertheless. He lived in the
extreme northern part of Philadelphia, where the cotton and woollen
mills run down to the river, and how he ever got home after leaving the
_Press_ building at two in the morning, was one of the mysteries of
the office. Sometimes he caught a night car, and sometimes he walked all
the way, arriving at the little house, where his mother and himself
lived alone, at four in the morning. Occasionally he was given a ride on
an early milk-cart, or on one of the newspaper delivery wagons, with its
high piles of papers still damp and sticky from the press. He knew
several drivers of "night hawks"--those cabs that prowl the streets at
night looking for belated passengers--and when it was a very cold
morning he would not go home at all, but would crawl into one of these
cabs and sleep, curled up on the cushions, until daylight.

Besides being quick and cheerful, Gallegher possessed a power of amusing
the _Press's_ young men to a degree seldom attained by the ordinary
mortal. His clog-dancing on the city editor's desk, when that gentleman
was up-stairs fighting for two more columns of space, was always a
source of innocent joy to us, and his imitations of the comedians of the
variety halls delighted even the dramatic critic, from whom the
comedians themselves failed to force a smile.

But Gallegher's chief characteristic was his love for that element of
news generically classed as "crime."

Not that he ever did anything criminal himself. On the contrary, his was
rather the work of the criminal specialist, and his morbid interest in
the doings of all queer characters, his knowledge of their methods,
their present whereabouts, and their past deeds of transgression often
rendered him a valuable ally to our police