Such a man will take the other side of the street when he sees a
gang ahead spoiling for a fight, and where he does go he will carry
the quiet assumption of authority that comes with the consciousness
of a right to be where he is. That usually settles it. There
was perhaps another factor in my case that helped. Whether it was
my slouch hat and my spectacles, or the fact that I had been often
called into requisition to help an ambulance surgeon patch up
an injured man, the nickname "Doc" had somehow stuck to me, and I
was supposed by many to be a physician connected with the Health
Department. Doctors are never molested in the slum. It does not
know but that its turn to need them is coming next. No more was
I. I can think of only two occasions in more than twenty years of
police reporting when I was in actual peril, though once I was very
badly frightened.
One was when a cry of murder had lured me down Crosby Street into
a saloon on the corner of Jersey Street, where the gang of the
neighborhood had just stabbed the saloon-keeper in a drunken brawl.
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