My dear Sir—­Your letter came as a surprise, for I wasn’t expecting an answer.  The next day the book came, and I thank you for your ready sympathy and understanding.  I feel as though you and Mrs. Roosevelt would think I was hardly loyal to my husband and children; but knowing of no other way to bring the idea which was so strong in my mind to your notice, I told my personal story.  If it will, in a small measure, be the means of helping some one else by molding public opinion, through you, I shall be content.  You have helped me more than you know.  Just having you interested is as good as a tonic, and braces me up till I feel as though I shall refuse to be “laid on the shelf.” . . .  To think that you’d bother to send me a book.  I shall always treasure it both for the text of the book and the sender.  I read it with absorbing interest.  The mother was so splendid.  She was ideal.  The situations are so startlingly real, just like what happens here every day with variations.

——­ ——.

A narrative of facts is often more convincing than a homily; and these two letters of my correspondent carry their own lesson.

Parenthetically, let me remark that whenever a man thinks that he has outgrown the woman who is his mate, he will do well carefully to consider whether his growth has not been downward instead of upward, whether the facts are not merely that he has fallen away from his wife’s standard of refinement and of duty.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW YORK POLICE

In the spring of 1895 I was appointed by Mayor Strong Police Commissioner, and I served as President of the Police Commission of New York for the two following years.  Mayor Strong had been elected Mayor the preceding fall, when the general anti-Democratic wave of that year coincided with one of the city’s occasional insurrections of virtue and consequent turning out of Tammany from municipal control.  He had been elected on a non-partisan ticket—­usually (although not always) the right kind of ticket in municipal affairs, provided it represents not a bargain among factions but genuine non-partisanship with the genuine purpose to get the right men in control of the city government on a platform which deals with the needs of the average men and women, the men and women who work hard and who too often live hard.  I was appointed with the distinct understanding that I was to administer the Police Department with entire disregard of partisan politics, and only from the standpoint of a good citizen interested in promoting the welfare of all good citizens.  My task, therefore, was really simple.  Mayor Strong had already offered me the Street-Cleaning Department.  For this work I did not feel that I had any especial fitness.  I resolutely refused to accept the position, and the Mayor ultimately got a far better man for his purpose in Colonel George F. Waring.  The work of the Police Department, however, was in my line, and I was glad to undertake it.