I thought that I could mystify him finally, and so I pronounced a verse from Genesis in Hebrew. But he was equal to the emergence.
“I’ve got it,” he exclaimed, with a note of exultation; “he’s a Sheeny!” And free to go I walked down the corridor, feeling that I had come rather badly out of that encounter.
None of us, I think, resented much the action of the officer. The policemen understand us perfectly, and in a certain broad, human sense we know them for our friends. I have been much impressed with this quality of natural bonhomie in the relation of the police officers to the vagrant and criminal classes. It seems to be the outcome of sturdy common sense and genuine knowledge and human sympathy. It would be difficult, I fancy, seriously to deceive an average officer of good experience. He may not know his man personally in every case, but he knows his type, and he takes his measure with admirable accuracy. He is not far misled by either his virtue or his vice. He knows him for a human being, even if he be a vagrant or a criminal, and he has come by practical experience to a fair acquaintance with human limitations in these spheres of life.
The sympathy of which I have spoken is conspicuously innocent of sentimentality. It comes from a saner source, and is of a hardier fibre. Unfortunately it lays open a way of corruption to corrupt men on the force, but it is the basis, too, of high practical efficiency in the difficult task of locating crime and keeping it within control. And it has another value little suspected, perhaps. I have met more than one workingman at work who owed his job to the friendly aid of a policeman, who had singled him out from the ranks of the unemployed as being worthy of his help. And this sort of timely succor is bounded, I judge, only by the limits of opportunity. Certainly I shall never forget the kindness of an officer who had evidently grown familiar with me on the streets, and who to my great surprise stopped me suddenly one day with the question:
“Ain’t yous got a job yet?”
“No,” I said, as I stood looking up in deep admiration of his height and breadth and ruddy, wholesome face and generous Irish brogue.
“Well, that is hard luck,” he went on. “There isn’t many jobs ever at this season of the year, but just yous come around this way now and again, and I’ll tell yous, if I hears of anything.”
That was only a day or two before I found work, and when I had a chance to tell him of my success, his pleasure seemed as genuine as my own.
Sunday morning was all that Clark and I could wish. To the pallor of the earliest dawn was added a soft, white muffling of snow. It lay almost untracked over the filthy streets and upon the pavements, and in dainty cones it capped the fence-palings, and roofed in pure white the sheds and flat-cars in the railway station yard.