ways, and always betrayed pleasure when he found me quick to detect
the sentimental or mawkish taint in literature or life. I breathed a
manly, robust, and bracing atmosphere in his company, and when I
reflect upon what were my proclivities to folly during this
impressionable period, I thank my stars for such a father.

There was abundant quiet and seclusion in Rock Park, and had my father
been able to do any writing, he could hardly have found a retreat more
suitable. The tradesmen called early at the houses in the Park, their
wagon-wheels making no sound upon the unpaved street, and the two
policemen, who lived in the stone lodges, kept the place free from
beggars and peddlers. These policemen, pacing slowly along in their
uniforms, rigid and dignified, had quite an imposing aspect, and it
was some time before we children discovered that they were only men,
after all. Each had a wife and children, who filled to overflowing the
tiny habitations; when their blue coats and steel-framed hats were
off, they were quite humble persons; one of them eked out his official
salary by mending shoes. After following with awe the progress along
the sidewalk of the officer of public order, stalking with solemn and
measured gait, and touching his hat, with a hand encased in a
snow-white cotton glove, to such of the denizens of the Park as he
might encounter, it was quite like a fairy-tale transformation to see
him squatting in soiled shirt-sleeves on his cobbler's bench, drawing
waxed thread through holes in a boot-sole. I once saw one of them, of
a Sunday afternoon, standing at ease in the doorway of his lodge, clad
in an old sack-coat which I recognized as having been my father's. I
am constitutionally reverent of law and order; but the revelation of
the domestic lives of these policemen gave me an insight, which I have
never since lost, into the profound truth that the man and the officer
are twain.