the district attorney begins where the police leave off, and
he merely supplements their labors and prepares for the actual
trial itself. But the press he has always with him, and from
the first moment after the crime up to the execution of the
sentence or the liberation of the accused, the reporters dog
his footsteps, sit on his doorstep, and deluge him with advice
and information.

Now a curious feature about the evidence "worked up" by
reporters for their papers is that little of it materializes
when the prosecutor wishes to make use of it. Of course,
some reporters do excellent detective work, and there are one
or two veterans attached to the criminal courts in New York
City who, in addition to their literary capacities, are
natural-born sleuths, and combine with a knowledge of criminal
law, almost as extensive as that of a regular prosecutor, a
resourcefulness and nerve that often win the case for
whichever side they espouse. I have frequently found that
these men knew more about the cases which I was prosecuting
than I did myself, and a tip from them has more than once
turned defeat into victory. But newspaper men, for one reason
or another, are loath to testify, and usually make but poor
witnesses. They feel that their motives will be questioned,
and are naturally unwilling to put themselves in an equivocal
position. The writer well remembers that in the Mabel Parker
case, where the defendant, a young and pretty woman, had
boasted of her forgeries before a roomful of reporters, it was
impossible, when her trial was called, to find more than one
of them who would testify--and he had practically to be
dragged to the witness chair. In point of fact, if reporters