" Exactly so! My sergeant was of the same
stamp. Those dens, daily association with them, had stamped him.
Then and there I resolved to wipe them out, bodily, if God gave me
health and strength. And I put the book away quick and never saw
it again. I do not know till this day who the sergeant was, and I
am glad I do not. It is better so.
Of what I did to carry out my purpose, and how it was done, I must
tell hereafter. It was the source and beginning of all the work
which justifies the writing of these pages; and among all the things
which I have been credited with doing since it is one of the few in
which I really bore a strong hand. And yet it was not mine which
finally wrought that great work, but a stronger and better than
mine, Theodore Roosevelt's. Even while I was writing this account
we together drove in the last nail in the coffin of the bad old
days, by persuading the Charter Revision Commission to remove from
the organic law of the city the clause giving to the police the
care of vagrants, which was the cause of it all. It had remained
over in the Charter of the Greater New York in spite of our protests.
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