MR. McEACHERN


At about the time when Jimmy's meditations finally merged themselves
in dreams, a certain Mr. John McEachern, Captain of Police, was
seated in the parlor of his up-town villa, reading. He was a man
built on a large scale. Everything about him was large--his hands,
his feet, his shoulders, his chest, and particularly his jaw, which
even in his moments of calm was aggressive, and which stood out,
when anything happened to ruffle him, like the ram of a battle-ship.
In his patrolman days, which had been passed mainly on the East
side, this jaw of his had acquired a reputation from Park Row to
Fourteenth Street. No gang-fight, however absorbing, could retain
the undivided attention of the young blood of the Bowery when Mr.
McEachern's jaw hove in sight with the rest of his massive person in
close attendance. He was a man who knew no fear, and he had gone
through disorderly mobs like an east wind.

But there was another side to his character. In fact, that other
side was so large that the rest of him, his readiness in combat and
his zeal in breaking up public disturbances, might be said to have
been only an off-shoot. For his ambition was as large as his fist
and as aggressive as his jaw. He had entered the force with the
single idea of becoming rich, and had set about achieving his object
with a strenuous vigor that was as irresistible as his mighty
locust-stick. Some policemen are born grafters, some achieve graft,
and some have graft thrust upon them. Mr. McEachern had begun by
being the first, had risen to the second, and for some years now had
been a prominent member of the small and hugely prosperous third