ths later one of the
special ways of getting off the force. It was still simpler. Going "on
pass" to Colon to spend a little evening, Marley neglected to leave his
No. 38 behind in the squad-room, according to Z. P. rules. Which was
careless of him. For when his spirits reached that stage where he
recognized what sport it would be to see the "Spigoty" policemen of
Bottle Alley dance a western cancan he bethought him of the No. 38.
Which accounts for the fact that the name of Marley can no longer be
found on the rolls of the Z. P. But all this is sadly anticipating.

Obviously, you will say, a force recruited from such dissimilar sources
must be a thing of wide and sundry experience. And obviously you are
right. Could a man catch up the Z. P. by the slack of the khaki riding
breeches and shake out their stories as a giant in need of carfare
might shake out their loose change, then might he retire to some sunny
hillside of his own and build him a sound-proof house with a swimming
pool and a revolving bookcase and a stable of riding horses, and cause
to be erected on the front lawn a kneeling-place where publishers might
come and bow down and beat their foreheads on the pavement.

There are men in the Z. P. who in former years have played horse with
the startled markets of great American cities; men whose voices will
boom forth in the pulpit and whisper sage councils in the professional
in years to come; men whom doting parents have sent to Harvard--on whom
it failed to take, except on their clothes--men who have gone down into
the Valley of the Shadow of Death and crawled on hands and knees
through the brackish red brook that runs at the bottom and come out
again smiling on the brink above. Careers more varied than Mexican
sombreros one might hear in any Z. P. squad-room--were not the Z. P. so
much more given to action than to autobiography.

They bore little resemblance to what I had expected. My mental picture
of an American policeman was that conglomerate average one
unconsciously imbibes from a distant view of our city forces, and by
comparison with foreign,--a heavy-footed, discourteous, half-fanatical,
half-irreligious clubber whose wits are as slow as his judgment is
honest. Instead of which I found the Z. P. composed almost without
exception of good-hearted, well set up young Americans almost all of
military training. I had anticipated, from other experiences, a
constant bickering and a general striving to make