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Boldly Comes Justice: Sentient Not Silent

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Abhijit Naskar

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“It seemed like the time to mention Abilene, where Bill shot Mike Williams. Mike was the only man Bill ever killed by accident, to Charley's knowledge. He was a policeman--they'd had an election and the winners hired their nephews as policemen, after Bill had made the place safe to be a policeman--and it was the luck of things that when Phil Coe came after Bill in the street, Mike Williams came around a corner and Bill shot him through the head, thinking it was one of Phil Coe's brothers. Then he shot Phil. The newspaper wouldn't let it heal. It brought Mike Williams back from the dead every week, like a blood relative. The editor called him a fine specimen of Kansas manhood, and declared a "Crusade to Rid Abilene and the State of Kansas of Wild Bill and All His Ilk." Those were the exact words, because for a while after that Bill called him "Ilk." It wasn't the newspaper that got Bill and Charley out of Kansas, though. It was a petition. It was left with the clerk at the hotel where they stayed, three hundred and sixteen signatures asking Bill to leave, not a word of gratitude for what he'd done. He sat down in the lobby with the petition in his lap, running his fingers through his hair. He read every name--there were six sheets of them--and when he finished a sheet, he'd hand it to Charley and he'd read it too. It was the worst back-shooting Charley had ever seen; they even let the women sign. Bill shrugged and smiled, but some of the names hurt him. He thought he'd had friends in Kansas, and looking at the names he saw they were all afraid of him. What ran Wild Bill out of Abilene was hurt feelings.”

PolicemanNewspaperPetitionBack ShootingIlk
Book:Deadwood
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“A certain magistrate told somebody whom he was examining in court that he or she "should always be polite to the police." I do not know whether the magistrate noticed the circumstance, but the word "polite" and the word "police" have the same origin and meaning. Politeness means the atmosphere and ritual of the city, the symbol of human civilisation. The policeman means the representative and guardian of the city, the symbol of human civilisation. Yet it may be doubted whether the two ideas are commonly connected in the mind. It is probable that we often hear of politeness without thinking of a policeman; it is even possible that our eyes often alight upon a policeman without our thoughts instantly flying to the subject of politeness. Yet the idea of the sacred city is not only the link of them both, it is the only serious justification and the only serious corrective of them both. If politeness means too often a mere frippery, it is because it has not enough to do with serious patriotism and public dignity; if policemen are coarse or casual, it is because they are not sufficiently convinced that they are the servants of the beautiful city and the agents of sweetness and light. Politeness is not really a frippery. Politeness is not really even a thing merely suave and deprecating. Politeness is an armed guard, stern and splendid and vigilant, watching over all the ways of men; in other words, politeness is a policeman. A policeman is not merely a heavy man with a truncheon: a policeman is a machine for the smoothing and sweetening of the accidents of everyday existence. In other words, a policeman is politeness; a veiled image of politeness—sometimes impenetrably veiled. But my point is here that by losing the original idea of the city, which is the force and youth of both the words, both the things actually degenerate. Our politeness loses all manliness because we forget that politeness is only the Greek for patriotism. Our policemen lose all delicacy because we forget that a policeman is only the Greek for something civilised. A policeman should often have the functions of a knight-errant. A policeman should always have the elegance of a knight-errant.”

PolitenessPoliceman
Book:All Things Considered
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“It was the first time the chief of police, a kindly family man whose name was Hook, had ever been required to visit a girls' camp; his daughters had not gone in much for that sort of thing, and Mrs. Hook distrusted night air; it was also the first time that Chief Hook had ever been required to determine facts. He had been allowed to continue in office this long because his family was popular in town and the young men at the local bar liked him, and because his record for twenty years, of drunks locked up and petty thieves apprehended upon confession, had been immaculate. In a small town such as the one lying close to the Phillips Education Camp for Girls Twelve to Sixteen, crime is apt to take its form from the characters of the inhabitants, and a stolen dog or broken nose is about the maximum to be achieved ordinarily in the sensational line. No one doubted Chief Hook's complete inability to cope with the disappearance of a girl from the camp. 'You say she was going somewhere?' he asked Betsy, having put out his cigar in deference to the camp nurse, and visibly afraid that his questions would sound foolish to Old Jane; since Chief Hook was accustomed to speaking around his cigar, his voice without it was malformed, almost quavering. ("The Missing Girl")”

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Book:Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories
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