originality of thought or action. It is even harder to find a detective who is not in this sense a dead one. I have the feeling, being a lawyer myself, that (for educational reasons probably) it is harder to find a live detective than a live lawyer. There are a few of both, however, if you know where to look for them. But it is easy to fall into the hands of the Philistines. The fundamental reason why it is so hard to form any just opinion of detectives in general is that (except by their fruits) there is little opportunity to discriminate between the able and the incapable. Now, the more difficult and complicated his task the less likely is the sleuth (honest or otherwise) to succeed. The chances are a good deal more than even that he will never solve the mystery for which he is engaged. Thus at the end of three months you will have only his reports and his bill—which are poor comfort, to say the least. And yet he may have really worked eighteen hours per day in your service. But a dishonest detective has only to disappear (and take his ease for the same period) and send you _his_ reports and _his_ bill—and you will have only his word for how much work he has done and how much money he has spent. You are absolutely in his power—unless you hire another _detective_ to watch _him_. Consequently there is no class in the world where the temptation to dishonesty is greater than among detectives—not even among plumbers, cabmen, butchers, and lawyers. (God knows the peril of all of these!) This, too, is, I fancy, the reason that the evidence of the police detective is received with so much suspicion by jurymen—they know that the only way for him to retain his position is by making a record and getting convictions, and hence they are always looking for jobs and frame-ups. If a police detective doesn’t make arrests and send a man to jail every once in a while there is no conclusive way for his superiors to be sure he isn’t loafing.