Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... MOUNTED JUSTICE TRUE STORIES OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE I THE COUGHLIN CASE Part I This story seems obliged to begin with a personal characterization of two living people -- of two simple, quiet citizens who, under normal conditions, would never incur public intrusion upon their private lives. But the intrusion has already been inflicted -- and in a shape so cruel, bringing with it so much that is false, that the initial step, now that truth is to be told, must be to define exactly with what manner of folk we deal. Mr. George H. Coughlin, of Norristown, Pennsylvania, is a young business man of a sort that America likes to claim -- well-bred, well-taught, well-plucked, kindly, honorable, reserved, and self-possessed. Mrs. Coughlin, his young wife, is of another good American type -- wholesome, sturdy, candid, cleareyed, cheerful, courageous, and stanchly controlled of nerve by a well-based self-respect. The Coughlins are in modest circumstances -- far from rich -- and live like their neighbors -- like the majority of reasonably prosperous young couples in suburbs and smaller towns. Norristown is their business centre and their winter home. But when summer draws on, instead of decamping to distant parts, they follow the example of many of their friends and move only a few miles away into one of a string of cottages on an airy, sightly ridge. There an unpretentious country club gives the several little households their centre of life, and a convenient tram makes good any lacks or defaults as to private cars. The Coughlins' cottage, just big enough for their little household, is the sort of comfortable, inexpensive thing that is built by the thousand in "homestead parks" all over the country. These latter points become properly...