In the Introduction to his history of "The Last of the Mulberry-Street Barons," in the May Century, Mr. Jacob A. Riis, author of "How the Other Half Lives," tells a rather grewsome, but very amusing anecdote of a fellow-reporter attached to Police Headquarters in Mulberry street, New York.

      There had been a feud of long standing between the reporters in Mulberry street, and, in conse­quence, news was plentiful. There were mutual scores to be paid off, and we paid them off in the coin of the realm. The coin of Mulberry street was murder, fire and sudden death (we had passed the stage of boxing-gloves and did not speak as we passed by), and it went a long way. I do not mean, of course, that we murdered or burned up one another, but these things were the staples of our daily work as police reporters; and when we were "out" the precinct returns received an extra sifting, with the result that many a grain of newspaper wheat that would otherwise have escaped was rescued from the dust-bin.

      We had our specialties in this contest of wits. One was distinguished as a sleuth. He fed on detective mysteries as a cat on a chicken-bone. He thought them out by day and dreamed them out by night, to the great exasperation of the official detective with whom their solution was a commercial, not in the least an intellectual affair. They solved them on the plane of the proverbial lack of honor among thieves, by the formula, "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

      Another came out strong on fires. He knew the history of every house in town that ran any risk of being burned; knew every fireman and could tell within a thousand dollars, more or less, what was the value of the goods stored in any building in the dry goods district, and for how much they were insured. If he couldn't, he did anyhow, and his guesses often came near the fact, as shown in the final adjustment. He sniffed a firebug from afar, and knew without asking how much salvage there was in a bale of cotton after being 24 hours in the fire. He is dead poor follow. In life he was fond of a joke, and In death the joke clung to him in a way wholly unforeseen. The firemen in the next block, with whom he made his headquarters when off duty, so that he might always be within hearing of the gong, wished to give some tangible evidence of their regard for the old reporter, but, being in a hurry, left it to the florist, who knew him well to choose the design. He hit upon a floral fire-badge as the proper thing and thus it was that when the company of mourners was assembled, and the funeral service in progress, there arrived and was set upon the coffin, in view of all, that triumph of the florist's art, a shield of white rose with this legend written across it in red immortelles: "Admit within fire lines only." It was shocking but irresistible. It brought down even the house of mourning.