nough to do in this precinct to look after your own skin,
and round up the street holdups, or get singed at a tenement fire."

And so it went.

The worldly wisdom of his fellows was far from encouraging. Yet,
despite their cynical expressions, Burke knew that warm hearts and
gallant chivalry were lodged beneath the brass buttons.

There is a current notion among the millions of Americans who do not
know, and who have fortunately for themselves not been in the position
where they needed to know, that the policemen of New York are an
organized body of tyrannical, lying grafters who maintain their power
by secret societies, official connivance and criminal brute force.

Taken by and large, there is no fighting organization in any army in
the world which can compare with the New York police force for physical
equipment, quick action under orders or upon the initiative required by
emergencies, gallantry or _esprit de corps_. For salaries barely equal
to those of poorly paid clerks or teamsters, these men risk their lives
daily, must face death at any moment, and are held under a discipline
no less rigorous than that of the regular army. Their problems are
more complex than those of any soldiery; they deal with fifty different
nationalities, and are forced by circumstances to act as judge and
jury, as firemen, as life savers, as directories, as arbiters of
neighborhood squabbles and domestic wrangles. Their greatest services
are rendered in the majority of cases which never call for arrest and
prosecution. That there are many instances of petty "graft," and that,
in some cases, the "middle men" prey on the underworld cannot be denied.

But it is the case against a certain policeman which receives the
attention of the newspapers and the condemnation of the public, while
almost unheeded are scores of heroic deeds which receive bare mention
in the daily press. For the misdeed of one bad policeman the gallantry
and self-sacrifice of a hundred pass without appreciation.

There have been but three recorded instances of cowardice in the annals
of the New York police force. The memory of them still rankles in the
bosom of every member. And yet the performance of duty at the cost of
life and limb is regarded by the uniformed men as merely being "all in
the day's work." The men are anxious to do their duty in every way,
but political, religious, social and commercial influences are
continually erecting stone walls across