Theodore Roosevelt: An AutobiographyRoosevelt, Theodore
History
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Roosevelt, Theodore
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
The third member of the trio, a tall, sinewy man with flaming red hair,
which rather added to the terror he inspired in evil-doers, was usually
stationed in a tough part of the city, where there was a tendency to
crimes of violence, and incidentally an occasional desire to harass
wheelmen. The officer was as good off his wheel as on it, and he
speedily established perfect order on his beat, being always willing to
"take chances" in getting his man. He was no respecter of persons,
and when it became his duty to arrest a wealthy man for persistently
refusing to have his carriage lamps lighted after nightfall, he brought
him in with the same indifference that he displayed in arresting a
street-corner tough who had thrown a brick at a wheelman.
Occasionally a policeman would perform work which ordinarily comes
within the domain of the fireman. In November, 1896, an officer who had
previously saved a man from death by drowning added to his record by
saving five persons from burning. He was at the time asleep, when he was
aroused by a fire in a house a few doors away. Running over the roofs
of the adjoining houses until he reached the burning building, he
found that on the fourth floor the flames had cut off all exit from an
apartment in which there were four women, two of them over fifty, and
one of the others with a six-months-old baby. The officer ran down to
the adjoining house, broke open the door of the apartment on the same
floor--the fourth--and crept out on the coping, less than three inches
wide, that ran from one house to the other. Being a large and very
powerful and active man, he managed to keep hold of the casing of the
window with one hand, and with the other to reach to the window of the
apartment where the women and child were. The firemen appeared, and
stretched a net underneath. The crowd that was looking on suddenly
became motionless and silent. Then, one by one, he drew the women out of
their window, and, holding them tight against the wall, passed them into
the other window. The exertion in such an attitude was great, and he
strained himself badly; but he possessed a practical mind, and as soon
as the women were saved he began a prompt investigation of the cause
of the fire, and arrested two men whose carelessness, as was afterward
proved, caused it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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