The officer was as good off his wheel as on it, and he
speedily established perfect order on his beat, being always willing to
"take chances" in getting his man. He was no respecter of persons,
and when it became his duty to arrest a wealthy man for persistently
refusing to have his carriage lamps lighted after nightfall, he brought
him in with the same indifference that he displayed in arresting a
street-corner tough who had thrown a brick at a wheelman.
Occasionally a policeman would perform work which ordinarily comes
within the domain of the fireman. In November, 1896, an officer who had
previously saved a man from death by drowning added to his record by
saving five persons from burning. He was at the time asleep, when he was
aroused by a fire in a house a few doors away. Running over the roofs
of the adjoining houses until he reached the burning building, he
found that on the fourth floor the flames had cut off all exit from an
apartment in which there were four women, two of them over fifty, and
one of the others with a six-months-old baby. The officer ran down to
the adjoining house, broke open the door of the apartment on the same
floor--the fourth--and crept out on the coping, less than three inches
wide, that ran from one house to the other.
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