ople.
The police force is hardly adequate to patrol the entire city. It
consists only of 589 men all told, and they are fine, manly looking
guardians of the law, always ready to do their duty, always courteous
to strangers, answering all questions intelligently. It is claimed,
moreover, that the criminal element of the country drifts to San
Francisco in the winter on account of the climate and also through the
attractions of the racetrack. The police also find that the places
where poker-games are played are a rendezvous for criminals. In 1887
and 1888 there was an outbreak of highway robbery, but the grand
jury acted promptly in the matter and the courts soon suppressed it.
Property and life therefore are jealously guarded in the City of the
Golden Gate, and bad characters who go thither to prey on the public
soon get their deserts. In this respect then San Francisco is a
desirable place in which to live.
One evening in company with a party of friends, Rev. Dr. Ashton of
Clean, N.Y., Rev. Dr. Reynold Marvin Kirby of Potsdam, N.Y., Rev.
Clarence Ernest Ball of Alexandria, Va., Rev. Henry Sidney Foster of
Green Bay, Wis., the Rev. William Barnaby Thorne of Marinette, Wis.,
and Doctor Robert J. Gibson, surgeon in the United States Army,
stationed at San Francisco, I visited the police headquarters,
situated on the east side of Portsmouth Square. This is a large
building of several stories with numerous offices. The chief in his
office on the main floor, on the right hand of the entrance, received
us courteously and assigned to us a detective according to an
arrangement previously made with Ashton. In the office were portraits
of police commissioners and the chiefs and others who had been
connected with the department for many years. Entering an elevator we
were soon on the topmost floor where were the cells in which prisoners
just arrested and waiting for trial were confined. The doors of the
cells, all of iron, were opened or closed by moving a lever. It was
now about 9:30 P.M., and officers were bringing in such persons as had
been arrested for theft, for assault and battery, for drunkenness and
other kinds of evil doing. Towards daybreak the cells are pretty well
filled, but now they were nearly empty. How true His words who knows
what is in man. "Men love darkness rather than light because their
deeds are evil!"
One young man who had killed another in a quarrel was pointed out to
us. The woman who loved him and
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