I found my friend in the pathway outside with the tankard between his hearty face and the sky.  When he had concluded his draught, he thanked me, smacked his lips, wiped his mouth with a large handkerchief, and hurried away, as, he said, “the inspector” would be along presently.  Just why the inspector would regard “ile” in the open air in view of the whole world less an evil than a tankard of mull and bitter in a public house I cannot say.  But it may be that as long as one is in the open one can still keep one eye on one’s duty.

I was hailed several days after this by my friend, who approached rapidly.  Well, I thought, he has been very useful to me, and three ha’pennies are not much.

“I have something for you,” said my friend, somewhat heated by his haste.

“You have?” I said.  “What is it?”

“It’s a rose,” replied my friend.

“A what?” I asked.

“A flower,” said my friend, recognising that we did not speak exactly the same language.  “You know what that is?”

“Oh, yes.  I know what a flower is,” I said.  “Where have you got it?”

“I have secreted it in the churchyard, sir,” he replied.  “I’ll fetch it directly?” he added, and was off.

When he returned through the gloaming he put the flower through my buttonhole.  “A lady dropped it out of her carriage,” he said; “and I thought of you when I picked it up.”  He stooped and smelled it.  “Hasn’t it,” he said, “a lovely scent?”

I had lived in New York a good while and I had somehow come to think of policemen rather as men of action than as poets.  But then in New York we do not dwell in a flower garden; we are not filled with a love of horses, dogs, and blossoms; and we do not all speak unconsciously a literary language.

My friend was very eager that I should let him “hear from” me upon my return to the States, and he particularly desired a postcard picturing a skyscraper.  So he gave me his address, which was: 

“W.  C. Buckington, P. C. B. Deyersan, Chelsea Police Station, King’s Road, Chelsea, S.W.”

In acknowledgment of my postcard I received a letter, which I think should not remain in the obscurity of my coat pocket.  I wish to submit it to public attention as a model of all that a letter from a good friend should be, and so seldom is!  There is an engaging modesty in so large a man’s referring to himself continually with a little letter “i.”  My correspondent tells me of himself, he gives me intimate news of the place of my recent sojourn, he touches with taste and feeling upon the great subject of our time, he conveys to me patently sincere sentiments of his good will, and he leaves me with much appreciation of his excellent nature and honest heart.  Occasional personal peculiarities in his style, deviations in unessential things from the common form, give a close personal touch to his message.  This is my friend’s letter: