Uncle Sam, Detective
By William Atherton DuPuy.
“May I ask you to close your eyes for a moment and conjure up the picture that is filed away in your mind under the heading, "detective"?
There! You have him. He is a large man of middle age. His tendency is toward stoutness. The first detail of him that stands out in your conception is his shoes. In stories you have read, plays you have seen, the detective has had square-toed shoes. You noticed his shoes that time when the house was robbed and a plain clothes man came out and snooped about.
These shoes are a survival of the days when the detective walked his beat; for the sleuth, of course, is a graduate policeman. He must have been a large man to have been a policeman, and he must have attained some age to have passed through the grades. Such men as he always put on flesh with age.
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1916. 247p.