own life as nothing when his
duty was at stake.

During his two years' service, he and his fellow Commissioners singled
out more than a hundred men for special mention because of some feat of
heroism. Two cases which he describes in his "Autobiography" are typical
of the rest. One was that of an old fellow, a veteran of the Civil War,
who was a roundsman. Roosevelt noticed one day that he had saved a woman
from drowning and called him before him to investigate the matter. The
veteran officer was not a little nervous and agitated as he produced his
record. He had grown gray in the service and had performed feat after
feat of heroism; but his complete lack of political backing had kept him
from further promotion. In twenty-two years on the force he had saved
some twenty-five persons from drowning, to say nothing of rescuing
several from burning buildings. Twice Congress had passed special
acts to permit the Secretary of the Treasury to give him a medal for
distinguished gallantry in saving life. He had received other medals
from the Life Saving Society and from the Police Department itself. The
one thing that he could not achieve was adequate promotion, although his
record was spotless. When Roosevelt's attention was attracted to him,
he received his promotion then and there. "It may be worth mentioning,"
says Roosevelt, "that he kept on saving life after he was given his
sergeantcy."

The other case was that of a patrolman who seemed to have fallen into
the habit of catching burglars. Roosevelt noticed that he caught two
in successive weeks, the second time under unusual conditions. The
policeman saw the burglar emerging from a house soon after midnight and
gave chase. The fugitive ran toward Park Avenue. The New York Central
Railroad runs under that avenue, and there is a succession of openings
in the top of the tunnel. The burglar took a desperate chance by
dropping through one of the openings, at the imminent risk of breaking
his neck. "Now the burglar," says Roosevelt, "was running for his
liberty, and it was the part of wisdom for him to imperil life and
limb; but the policeman was merely doing his duty, and nobody could
have blamed him for not taking the jump. However, he jumped; and in this
particular case the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the unrighteous. The
burglar had the breath knocked out of him, and the 'cop' didn't. When
his victim could walk, the officer trotted him around to the station
house." When