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[Illustration: JOSIAH FLYNT.]




NOTES OF AN
ITINERANT
POLICEMAN


By
JOSIAH FLYNT

AUTHOR OF "TRAMPING WITH TRAMPS"


[Illustration]


BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
_MDCCCC_




_Copyright, 1900_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY




INSCRIBED
TO
WILLARD ROPES TRASK




NOTE.


A number of the chapters in this book have appeared as separate papers
in the _Independent_, _Harper's Weekly_, the _Critic_, _Munsey's
Magazine_, and in publications connected with McClure's Syndicate; but
much of the material is new, and all of the articles have been revised
before being republished.




INTRODUCTORY.


For a number of years it had been a wish of mine to have an experience
as a police officer, to come in contact with tramps and criminals, as a
representative of the law. Not that I bore these people any personal
grudge, or desired to carry out any pet policy in dealing with them; but
I had learned to know them pretty intimately as companions in
lodging-houses and at camp-fires, and had observed them rather carefully
as prisoners in jails, and I was anxious to supplement this knowledge of
them with an inquiry in regard to the impression they make on the man
whose business it is to keep an official watch over them while they are
in the open. I desired also to learn more concerning the professional
offender than it had been possible for me to find about him in tramp
life. If one has the courage to go and live with professional criminals
as one of them, he can become even more intimate with them than in a
police force, but it is very difficult to associate with