The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1885-01-30
MODERN HAWKSHAWS.
TIE Requisites for q Successful Career az
Detective.

Taper ltLlSS Il SuAAilOO b"S S
my choice of a profession, remarked a
detective at one of the city agencies
yesterday.
What are the requisites of a good
detective? ?" asked a reporter who had
been listening to his stories.
"Fearlessness, GOODNESS and self-con-
troll. Without these a man can
be a perfect detective, for though
he may be useful in some branches
of the business he can never at
tain to the highest eminence in
| all of them. He must also have strong
p~erceptfve faculties, and that power of
generalization which will enable him to
lump at once to correct conclusions.
Memory is n of his most important
essentials. One sight of a face must
imprint it so indelibly upon his recol-
lection that he can never forget 1t, and
he must remember not only the face it
self, but the time, place and circum-
stances with which it is associated. A
memory of faces alone is not sufficient.
The detective must have a strong mem
orv for names, numbers and dates al
we'll. He must be intelligent and there
is no knowledge of any kind that may
not some time be of value to him In his
profession. His eyesight and hearing
should be Of the best and he should oul-
tivate a power of observation which
will enable him TO carefully note,
without seeming to do SO, every
thing by which he is surrounded.
sTAaBA AMI REAL DETECTIVES.
Detectives in real life are very
different from those In novels and plays.
The latter are represented as wearing
various DISCUSSES. such as wigs, false
whiskers, ETC., which they suddenly
| pull off at the most unexpected no.
ments, thereby revealing their identity.
Dion Boucicault, in one Of his plays,
represents a detective who is quite a
young man as making himself up for
quite an elderly gentleman of mor
than 60 and going about in broad day
light, holding conversations with peo-
| pie who know him well in propria per-
sona without discovery. Charles Reade
and Wilkie Collins do the same thing
in some of their novels. This is simply
nonsense. 1t is utterly impossible for
the most skillful hair worker to make
up a wig or a set of false whIskers that
cannot be detected as false when worn,
and every theat9e-goer knows that the
most skillful artists in make up can
not put upon their faces the lines and
wrinkles which indicate age In such q
way as 30 deceive, even when aided by
the glamor OF the footlights. No de-
tective in real life ever attempted to
wear any such disguise. Detectives on
the stage are usually debonair indi-
viduals, In neat suits and mutton-chop
whiskers. In real life there is nothing
distinctive in the deep appearance and
manner of detectives any more than
there is in those of lawyers or mer-
chants. For nv own part, 1 am more
frequently taken for q swell-to-do'
farmer than anything else.o
"How do men become detectives?"
"They don't become; they have q
natural gift in that direction. Detec-
tives, like poets, are born, not made.
Many Of them begin as amateurs. For
instance, something occurs in their
own lives which causes them to turn
detective for their own purposes. They
work up the case successfully; they
find they like the work and they en-
bark In it as a business. You know
that is the way Allan Pinkerton began.
He lived IN the far west, and having
horses stolen from him on several occa-
sions he traced outthe thieves in every In
stance, brought them to Justice and re-
covered his property.
"Yon would be surprised to find how
clever koIaa amateur detectives are. /
know q young Chestnut street merchant
who would make one OF the greatest of
all detectives il he would follow the
business. He wanted to find out the
whereabouts and antecedents of q young
fellow whom he suspected in a certain
manner. He employed detectives, but
they could discover nothing. Finally
he began to look into the matter him.
self, and, although the man he was
after had left the city and covered up
his tracks, I'm blest ii he didn't find
out everything there was to find. He
discovered the address of a girl on Race
street to whom the man had been paying
attentions.
He called on her, represented himself
az q lawyer, said that her lover would
inherit a fortune If his identity could
he established, and in order to do that
he'd have to have some specimens of his
hand writing, and he persuaded her to
let him have two Of the love letters the
fellow had written her. That was as
neat a piece of detective work as / ever
heard Of.
HE LACKED sELF-CoNTRoL.
1T often happens that a man fails to
be q good general detective throughthe
lack Of some n quality. Thus, / en-