Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: "Dainty noses to the wind, their beautiful eyes wide and alert."] POLICE!!! BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS ILLUSTRATED BY HENRY HUTT NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1915 TO LOUISE JOCELYN All the pretty things you say, All the pretty things you do In your own delightful way Make me fall in love with you, Turning Autumn into May. Every day is twice as gay Just because of you, Louise! Which is going some, you say? In my dull, pedantic way I am fashioning my lay Just because I want to please. Just because the things you say, Just because the things you do In your clever, charming way Make me fall in love with you. That is all, my dear, to-day. R.W.C. _Christmas, 1915._ FOREWORD Give me no gold nor palaces Nor quarts of gems in chalices Nor mention me in Who is Who I'd rather roam abroad with you Investigating sky and land, Volcanoes, lakes, and glacial sand I'd rather climb with all my legs To find a nest of speckled eggs, Or watch the spotted spider spin Or see a serpent shed its skin! Give me no star-and-garter blue! I'd rather roam around with you. Flatten me not with flattery! Walk with me to the Battery, And see in glassy tanks the seals, The sturgeons, flounders, smelt and eels Disport themselves in ichthyic curves-- And when it gets upon our nerves Then, while our wabbling taxi honks I'll tell you all about the Bronx, Where captive wild things mope and stare Through grills of steel that bar each lair Doomed to imprisonment for life-- And you may go and take your wife. Come to the Park[1] with me; I'll show you crass stupidity Which sentences the hawk and fox To inactivity, and locks The door of freedom on the lynx Where puma pines and eagle stinks. Never a slaver's fetid hold Has held the misery untold That crowds the great cats' kennels where Their vacant eyes glare blank despair Half crazed by sloth, half dazed by fear All day, all night, year after year. To the swift, clean things that cleave the air To the swift, clean things that cleave the sea To the swift, clean things that brave and dare Forest and peak and prairie free, A cage to craze and stifle and stun And a fat man feeding a penny bun And a she-one giggling, "Ain't it grand!" As she drags a dirty-nosed brat by the hand. [Footnote 1: Central Park, filthiest, cruellest and most outrageous of zoological exhibitions.] PREFACE