What I wanted to say was
that it struck me as worth comment that after you ceased being Police
Commissioner, you never again talked of the impoverished boyhood of
America. And yet you were a very successful Commissioner, were you
not?"
Enoch looked from Diana out over the balcony rail to the fountain that
twinkled in the little park.
"One of the most difficult things in public life," he said slowly, "is
to hew straight to the line one laid out at the beginning."
"I should think," Diana suggested, "that the difficulty would depend on
what the line was. A man who goes into politics to make himself rich,
for example, might easily stick to his original purpose."
"Exactly! But money of itself never interested me!" Here Enoch
stopped with a quick breath. There flashed across his inward vision
the picture of a boy in Luigi's second story, throwing dice with
passionate intensity. Enoch took a long sip of water, then went on.
"I wanted to be Police Commissioner of New York because I wanted to
make it impossible for other boys to have a boyhood like mine. I don't
mean that, quite literally, I thought one man or one generation could
accomplish the feat. But I did truly think I could make a beginning.
Miss Allen, in spite of the beautiful fights I had, in spite of the
spectacular clean-ups we made, I did nothing for the boys that my
successor did not wipe out with a single stroke of his pen, his first
week in office.
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