that if the proprietors did not close them they would be arrested by the police and prosecuted for an infraction of the State law. As pastor of the Park Avenue Methodist Church, New York City, I preached a sermon on that Sunday morning, asking the people of our church and Methodists generally, and the ministers and members of all denominations, Protestant, Catholic and Hebrew, and the citizens who were members of no church but loved law and order, to stand behind Mr. Roosevelt in his effort to compel the lawdefying and crime-breeding saloons to close on Sunday. Sure enough, some of the liquor dealers who had always been stronger than the law and authorities considered the threat a joke and kept open. And, of course, the Commissioner, strong in intellect and of determined will, was in dead earnest and not joking, and put six thousand policemen on the job of detecting and arresting these lawbreakers. He scared the brewers, distillers and saloon-keepers, till they fairly shivered and their teeth chattered.

me;

On the Monday morning following I went down to the police headquarters to see Commissioner Roosevelt. I said to him, "Mr. Roosevelt, you do not know I never met you; I saw you once. It was at the National Republican Convention in Chicago which named James G. Blaine for the Presidency and John A. Logan for the vice-presidency. You were in the New York delegation, in the group with George William Curtis, who was working for the nomination of Senator Edmunds for the presidency. You had on a little straw hat and were not so fleshy as you are now. You were young and had not been long out of Harvard, .but you were one of the notables of the convention and you were pointed out to me as such. I did not speak to you, nor have I seen you since that day.

I have come down this morning to introduce myself to you, and to congratulate you on your courage in determining to close the Sunday saloons. The city has waited for twenty-five years for the coming of such a man. It ought not to be counted a heroic thing for a man to keep his oath solemnly made and to earn his salary by the discharge of his official duty, but the moral sense of the community is so low through the polluting influence of the liquor dealers, and their collusion with corrupt officials, that a man is counted a hero who dares keep his oath to enforce the law or earn his salary by so doing. I will stand by you till the last hour in the day; you are in a fight for the people and for God, and I belong in it and am proud to have such a leader. Our church will stand by you, too. In my sermon yesterday morning I asked all good people to sustain you in this crusade."

The Commissioner said: "I saw what you said in your pulpit in the report of this morning's papers, and thank you very much."

"I am only one," I continued, "and an humble one at that, but you may count on me to stand with you on the front of the firing line. Whenever you shoot your big gun down here in Mulberry Street, just listen and you will hear its echo in the crack of a little finebored pistol on the corner of Park Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street, and that pistol will be in my hand and I will be shooting at the thing at which you aim."

He said enthusiastically: "You're the stuff! I am looking for you as much as you are looking for me"; and, taking my hand warmly, he added, "I will stand with you in the fight till the end." Then he continued: "Do you know that you are the first man whose opinion I count of any value who has com

mended my action? Do you see those letters and telegrams on that table? There are perhaps fifty of them. Every single one criticises me; some abuse me bitterly. These are some of the quotations from them: 'What an ass you are'; 'You are the biggest crank and fool in the world'; 'You have wrecked the Republican party'; 'You have killed yourself politically, you will never be heard from again'; You are the deadest political duck that ever died in a pond.

"Commissioner Roosevelt," I answered, "I do not believe a word of them. For every enemy you make you will gain ten friends. In the long run, the most popular thing a man can do politically is to do the right thing morally. You are not dead, but have just begun to live politically."

He answered with considerable feeling: "I have entered this fight with no idea of making friends or fearing enemies; that has nothing to do with the question. It is simply a question of duty. That law is on the statute books and I have taken an oath to enforce it with the rest," and looking up, he continued, "With the help of God, I intend to do so. Whether my course will bring friends or foes, promotion or relegation to the rear, does not enter an instant into my calculation. It is mine only to do present duty which is plain to me.

On taking his hand to leave, I said, "In your vision of righteousness and moral courage in pursuing it you are the stuff of which I think a good President could be made. I should like to vote for you for that office some day." And I did.

There was a memorable scene at the beginning of the fight, when the frenzied brewers, distillers, saloonkeepers and their hired representatives appeared at a hearing they had called before Mayor Strong, and

how bitterly they denounced Mr. Roosevelt, and how insolently they demanded a change in his policy or his removal. They said it was a cosmopolitan community, that the Sunday closing feature of the law had never been observed, and they insisted that the Mayor require the Commissioner instantly to stop his insane policy and give a "liberal" enforcement of the excise law.

When the liquor men had finished their say the Commissioner made his reply. He said: "Your Honor, these gentlemen have savagely attacked me and my policy of Sunday closing, and they have demanded of you that you require me to give a ‘liberal' enforcement of the excise law." With vehemence and biting sarcasm, he continued: "These men want me to enforce the law a 'little bit,' to enforce it a little, tiny bit. Your Honor, I do not know how to do such a thing and I shall not begin to learn now. I did not take an oath to enforce the law a tiny bit. The great Empire State did not put that law on the statute books to be enforced a tiny bit, and so long as I am at the head of the Police Department of the city I shall do all in my power to enforce the law honestly and fearlessly." The terrible assault of the liquor dealers and others of great influence scared Mayor Strong almost out of his wits, and the Commissioner had to brace up the Mayor's backbone with one hand while he hammered the saloons with the other.

The bitter opposition to the closing of the saloons by Commissioner Roosevelt and the intense hatred of the liquor men engendered by it, reached its climax in the threats of assassination, which were many and serious. My barber said to me when he wiped the powder off my face and let me go from the chair, "I want

to see you a moment if you can spare it, not out here where people can hear me, but in the back room where we can be to ourselves." I went with him and in a voice barely above a whisper and with a face such as one would wear at a funeral, he said, "I want to warn you of the danger you are in. You have been working with Mr. Roosevelt in closing the saloons on Sunday. It is the intention of the liquor people to kill him and to kill you. I hear the conversations that go on in my shop and I am told privately that this is not simply rumor, but that it is the settled determination to assassinate him and you." I replied, "I intend to stay in this fight with Roosevelt at any risk."

The next time I saw the new Police Commissioner I told of the warning from the barber, and he said, "Doctor, I get stacks of those threats every day. They put an infernal machine in my office the other day wound up to kill me; the boys discovered it in time and saved me. But I am not afraid of one of them singly or all of them together. There are gunmen in this city that would kill me and kill you for $100, and there are many that would put up the money, but bad men are miserable cowards. I am not afraid of one of them, and I will go down on the East Side as often as I please and as late at night as I care to, and I will be hunting them while they are hunting me, and I tell you, my friend, if I succeed in this task, my life and your life and the lives of our citizens will be far more secure and New York will be a safer and better city." He continued, "Doctor, life is a tragedy; there is a risk at every step of the way, and duty too. I shall do duty and leave the risk to God. It is only the weakling and the coward that halts at danger; it is the true man who scorns it and