Finally, Mr. Eaton undertook, single-handed, to reform the police judiciary. He prepared a bill creating the civil magistrates to take the place of the police justices and reforming in many particulars the methods of procedure. This law is regarded as a great improvement upon the previous police judiciary, but the bill became a law only after a protracted struggle with the old police justices, a struggle which Mr. Eaton maintained alone, relying upon the merits of the measure which he advocated. The consensus of opinion of legal authorities is that the new law effected radical reforms of great importance in these inferior courts of criminal jurisprudence in New York City. [Sidenote: Mental Traits of Dorman B. Eaton] If we may estimate Mr. Eaton’s mental traits by the laws which he drafted in the interests of municipal reform, we can readily conclude that he had a remarkable genius for constructive legislation. Though he was compelled to weave into the very woof of those laws, extraordinary powers, which he acknowledged were of vital importance to their efficiency, and yet would be a menace to the public, if the laws were administered by unscrupulous persons, he succeeded in so guarding those powers that these laws have been in operation upwards of a quarter of a century; and, while those who have from time to time been called to administer them have not always had the best reputation for intelligence and civic virtue, yet there has at no time been any complaint of injustice in their execution, nor has there been any serious lapse in their vigorous enforcement. To-day, as a generation ago, they are accomplishing the full measure of usefulness for which they were designed by their author. Standing now at the close of a life so largely devoted to the service of his fellow-men and consecrated to the amelioration of human suffering, and where we may, in some slight degree, estimate the vast and ever-increasing fruition of its labors, how sublime it appears! Monuments and memorials can but faintly symbolize its greatness and perpetuate its enduring force. Mr. Eaton’s own thought of true fame once was expressed to me thus: “I ask only to be remembered as one who in his sphere of life’s duties endeavored to improve the conditions of human life around him.” VII THE OCCULT POWER OF FILTH [Sidenote: Filth Diseases]