Police!!!

Police!!!

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Police!!!, by Robert W. Chambers
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Title: Police!!!
Author: Robert W. Chambers
Illustrator: Henry Hutt
Release Date: June 6, 2006 [EBook #18515]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: "Dainty noses to the wind, their beautiful eyes wide and
alert."]

POLICE!!!
BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
ILLUSTRATED BY HENRY HUTT
NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1915

TO LOUISE JOCELYN

All the pretty things you say, All the pretty things you do In your own
delightful way Make me fall in love with you, Turning Autumn into
May.
Every day is twice as gay Just because of you, Louise! Which is going
some, you say? In my dull, pedantic way I am fashioning my lay Just
because I want to please.
Just because the things you say, Just because the things you do In your
clever, charming way Make me fall in love with you. That is all, my
dear, to-day.
R.W.C.
Christmas, 1915.

FOREWORD
Give me no gold nor palaces Nor quarts of gems in chalices Nor
mention me in Who is Who I'd rather roam abroad with you
Investigating sky and land, Volcanoes, lakes, and glacial sand I'd rather
climb with all my legs To find a nest of speckled eggs, Or watch the
spotted spider spin Or see a serpent shed its skin! Give me no
star-and-garter blue! I'd rather roam around with you.

Flatten me not with flattery! Walk with me to the Battery, And see in
glassy tanks the seals, The sturgeons, flounders, smelt and eels Disport
themselves in ichthyic curves-- And when it gets upon our nerves Then,
while our wabbling taxi honks I'll tell you all about the Bronx, Where
captive wild things mope and stare Through grills of steel that bar each
lair Doomed to imprisonment for life-- And you may go and take your
wife.
Come to the Park[1] with me; I'll show you crass stupidity Which
sentences the hawk and fox To inactivity, and locks The door of
freedom on the lynx Where puma pines and eagle stinks. Never a
slaver's fetid hold Has held the misery untold That crowds the great
cats' kennels where Their vacant eyes glare blank despair Half crazed
by sloth, half dazed by fear All day, all night, year after year.
To the swift, clean things that cleave the air To the swift, clean things
that cleave the sea To the swift, clean things that brave and dare Forest
and peak and prairie free, A cage to craze and stifle and stun And a fat
man feeding a penny bun And a she-one giggling, "Ain't it grand!" As
she drags a dirty-nosed brat by the hand.
[Footnote 1: Central Park, filthiest, cruellest and most outrageous of
zoological exhibitions.]

PREFACE
On a beautiful day in spring as I was running as hard as I could run
pursued by the New York police and a number of excited citizens, my
mind, which becomes brilliantly active under physical exhilaration,
began to work busily.
I thought about all sorts of things: I thought about hard times and
financial depression and about our great President who is in a class all
alone with himself and soon to become extinct; I thought about art and
why there isn't any when it's talked about; I thought of
macro-lepidoptera, of metagrammatism, monoliths, manicures, and

monsoons.
And all the time I was running as fast as I could run; and the faster I ran
the more things I thought about until my terrific pace set my brain
whizzing like a wheel.
I felt no remorse at having published these memoirs of my life--which
was why the police and populace were pursuing me, maddened to
frenzy by the fearless revelation of mighty scientific truths in this little
volume you are about to attempt to read. Ubicumque ars ostentatur,
veritas abesse videtur!
I thought about it clearly, calmly, concisely as I fled. The maddened
shouts of the prejudiced populace did not disturb me. Around and
around the Metropolitan Museum of Art I ran; the inmates of that
institution came out to watch me and they knew at a glance that I was
one of them for they set up a clamor like a bunch of decoy ducks when
one of their wild comrades comes whirling by.
"Police! Police!" they shouted; but I went careering on uptown, afraid
only that