The same Police Department held a regatta on the Harlem River on the twenty-ninth of August, 1878, for which there were many entries; yet out of them all with one or two exceptions, there was no performance which was not of the most commonplace character, unworthy of an average freshman crew, and this though many of the rowers were burly, heavy men. One of the single-scullers actually did not know how to back his boat over some fifty feet of water, and, after four ineffectual endeavors, had to be told how to do so from the referee's boat. Now place the whole force abreast on a broad common, or in half a dozen lines, and set them to run a mile at no racing pace; at no such gait even as John Ennis went in March, 1879, when, after 474 miles of walking and running in one single week, he ran his 475th mile in six minutes eleven seconds, but let them go at even a horse-car pace; and if five hundred get over even half the distance it will be a surprise, while of those who do, many stand a good chance to feel the effects for days, if not for life. We asked the best known police captain in New York city, the president of the old Police Athletic Club, whether he thought one-half of the whole twenty-five hundred could run a mile at any pace which could actually be called a run. After deliberating a little, he said he did not think they could. One of the most successful athletes on the force, in reply to the same question, said: "I'll bet my neck against a purse that not one-third of them can do it." Another, a magnificent-looking man, standing over six feet three in height, and weighing upward of two hundred and fifty, not only strongly inclined to the same opinion, but, when urged to tell how successful he himself would probably be in such a trial, he gave, with a little sudden color in his cheeks, substantially as follows, this most interesting incident from his own experience: Standing in a rear room on the main floor of the station-house of the ---- Precinct, he heard a scream. Going quickly to the street, a lady told him that she had been robbed of her pocket-book, while a young person gliding gracefully, and, as the sequel proved, quite fleetly, around the corner, lent force to the statement. Away went the engine of the law, his mighty form bending to the work, with his best foot foremost. Turning up one of the broad avenues, the one hundred and twenty-five feet or so of the thief's start had now shrunk to seventy-five, and, as the two sped on at a grand pace, "All and each that passed that way Enjoyed the swift 'pursuit.'"