a quiet
talk with him in which he satisfied himself that the man was entirely
innocent. The man had served his time, turned over a new leaf, and was
leading an honest, decent life. Two months later the superintendent
caused the arrest of four yeggmen, all of whom were convicted and are
now serving fifteen years each for the crime.

Thus, the reader will observe that there are just a few more
real detectives still left in the business-if you can find them.
Incidentally, they, one and all, take off their hats to Scotland Yard.
They will tell you that the Englishman may be slow (fancy an American
inspector of police wearing gray suede gloves and brewing himself a dish
of tea in his office at four o'clock), but that once he goes after a
crook he is bound to get him--it is merely a question of time. I may add
that in the opinion of the heads of the big agencies the percentage of
ability in the New York Detective Bureau is high--one of them going
so far as to claim that fifty per cent of the men have real detective
ability--that is to say "brains." That is rather a higher average than
one finds among clergymen and lawyers, yet it may be so.

CHAPTER VII. Women in the Courts

AS WITNESSES

Women appear in the criminal courts constantly as witnesses, although
less frequently as complainants and defendants. As complainants are
always witnesses, and as defendants may, and in point of fact generally
do become so, whatever generalizations are possible regarding women in
courts of law can most easily be drawn from their characteristics as
givers of testimony. Roughly speaking, women exhibit about the same
idiosyncrasies and limitations in the witness-chair as the opposite sex,
and at first thought one would be apt to say that it would be fruitless
and absurd to attempt to predicate any general principles in regard to
their testimony, but a careful study of female witnesses as a whole will
result in the inevitable conclusion that their evidence has virtues and
limitations peculiar to itself.

The ancient theory that woman was man's inferior showed itself in the
tendency to reject, or at least to regard with suspicion, her evidence
in legal matters.

"The following law," says W. M. Best, "is attributed to Moses by
Josephus: 'Let the testimony of women not be received on account of the
levity and audacity of their sex'; a law which looks apocryphal, but
which, even if genuine, could not have been of universal application