The number expected to come to Canada and the States is estimated by some as high as 100,000. The rest of Europe will probably send to the States 75,000 more. • New York Herald, summer 1845 • Becoming a policeman of the Sixth Ward of the city of New York was an unwelcome surprise to me. It’s not the work I imagined myself doing at twenty-seven, but then again I’d bet all the other police would tell it the same, since three months ago this job didn’t exist. We’re a new-hatched operation. I suppose I’d better say first how I came to need employment, three months back, in the summer of 1845, though it’s a pretty hard push to talk about that. The memory fights for top billing as my ugliest. I’ll do my best. On July eighteenth, I was tending bar at Nick’s Oyster Cellar, as I’d done since I was all of seventeen years old. The squared-off beam of light coming through the door at the top of the steps was searing the dirt into the planked floor. I like July, the way its particular blue had spread over the world when I’d worked on a ferryboat to Staten Island at age twelve, for instance, head back and mouth full of fresh salt breeze.
