Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/251

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by any means as final. It was acquiesced in by all of us at the time, and has been supported by an unvarying series of data on the Monday mornings since then.

We submitted it to Henry Frisch, the police sergeant who had been detailed for duty in the mayor's office for many years, a dear and comfortable soul, who had served under several mayors, and had developed a philosophy of life that was a very Nirvana of comfort and repose. Long ago, so it seemed when he smiled indulgently on the discomfiture of blue Monday, he had given up humanity as a bad job; to him the race was utterly and irredeemably hopeless, and without the need of saying a word he could shake his honest head at the suggestion of a new reform with a motion that was eloquent of all negation. He was very tolerant, however, and made no argument in rebuttal, he simply refused to accept humanity on any general plane; regarding the race as a biological species merely, he would confide to you that his years of experience at that post and as a policeman who had paced his beat and afterward commanded a sergeant's squad, had convinced him that it was altogether depraved, dishonest and disgusting, but with any individual specimen of the species he was not that way at all. He was really kindness itself. The next minute, with tears in his eyes, he would go to any extremes to help some poor devil out of trouble. Unless it were reformers; for these he had no use, he said, and if his advice had been accepted he would have been permitted to expel them from the City Hall by their