Dodge reached New York a physical wreck.  How he was induced to tell the whole truth after he had pleaded guilty to the charge against him is a story in itself.  A complete reaction from his dissipation now occurred and for days his life was despaired of.  Jesse, too, was, as the expression is, “all in,” and the only persons who were still able to appreciate the delights of New York were the stalwart marshal and his boys, who for some time were objects of interest as they strolled along Broadway and drank “deep and hearty” in the cafes.  To the assistants in the District Attorney’s office they were heroes and were treated as such.

How Dodge finally testified against Hummel on the witness stand has already been told.  As they say downtown, if Jerome had never done anything else, he would have “made good” by locking up Abe Hummel.  No one ever believed he would do it.  But Jerome never would have locked up Hummel without Jesse.  And, as Jesse says with a laugh, leaning back in his chair and taking a long pull on his cigar, “I guess I would not do it again—­no, I would not do it again for all the money you could give me.  The wonder is that I came out of it alive.”  When the reader comes to think about it he will probably agree with him.

P. H. Woodward

Adventures in the Secret Service of the Post-Office Department*

* The author of the pages that follow was chief special agent of the Secret Service of the United States Post-Office Department during pioneer and romantic days.  The curious adventures related are partly from his own observation, and partly from the notebooks of fellow officers, operating in many sections of the Country.

The stories are true, although, of course, justice demands that in some cases persons and places be usually disguised under fictitious names.

The stories have interest not only for their exciting play of honest wits against dishonest, but also for the cautions they sound against believing things “too good to be true” from the pen of strangers.

There is a class of post-office thieves who make a specialty of rifling the registered letters that pass through their hands in transit on journeys of greater or less length.  Some of them have managed operations very shrewdly, in the evident belief that they had discovered an infallible method for doing the work and at the same time escaping detection.  Too late they generally learn by sad experience that no patents can be taken out for the protection of crime.

In this class of cases something tangible always remains to exhibit the peculiar style of workmanship belonging to each; and it would often surprise the uninitiated to learn how many traits of character, what indexes of habit and vocation, can be picked up by careful study of the minute points presented for inspection.  Unless, however, an agent cultivates a taste for thoroughness even to details and trifles that might at first view appear utterly insignificant, he will never succeed in interpreting the hieroglyphics.