The San Francisco police are the handsomest and most-willing-to-flirt
policemen in the United States, if not in the world. What a surly lot,
the New York policemen. They treat one as though he were a blackguard
for merely asking some direction.
“What car shall I take for the New Jersey Central Ferry?” we ask.
“Zippity-ip,” he snaps, moving off.
“What did you say?” we ask in timid desperation.
“Zippity-ip,” he yells, shaking his fist at us.
But ask a San Francisco policeman the way and how different. He will
take your arm and smile down at you and even go away with you chatting
all the time--“Stranger here? Well, you’ll never go back East again.”
And somehow after that you never do.
Of course, the San Francisco police are many things beside being
handsome and willing to flirt. But these are important qualifications
which, up to this time, have never had their place in journalism. Ah,
many a Raleigh and Don Quixote in the roster of the S. F. police.
A policeman is all things to all people. What a policeman is depends
upon what we are. To those who are fast, either in reputation or
driving, he is a limb of the law to be either evaded or cajoled. To
the small boy he is a hero to aspire to become when grown. To the
public-spirited citizen of the reforming order he is a piece of
community linen to be periodically washed in public with a great hue in
the papers about graft expose. To almost anybody in the dead of night
with burglars prowling about, he is a friend to be called--in case one
has a nickel handy.
But to the great army of women who are hopelessly respectable, the
policeman is something quite different. And what we women think of the
police is important. We pay taxes, we vote and we cross the street. We
like our policemen to be handsome and cavalier and, again I say, the S.
F. police are both. Any fine day they will make a funeral procession out
of the motor traffic to escort a nice woman across Market street.
It goes without saying and is an unwritten law that policemen should be
Irish. I enjoy Greeks in classic literature or in restaurants, but not
as policemen. There is a saying in the city that when Greek meets Greek
they go together to get a job on the Market Street Railways. But when
they get upon the police force, I for one, shall move to the country.
Policemen should always be Irish.
And handsome. This is a woman’s reason, but listen: O men, are they not,
I ask, a part of the civic beauty of the city? Is it not important that
these animated equestrian statues should be gallant men upon noble and
spirited horses? And who is more imperial in the pictorial life of the
city than the officer on the Lotta Fountain pedestal by the raising of
whose sceptered hand the life of the city moves or stays. Yes, policemen
should be handsome and gallant. It is written.