I may say here that the features of the performance followed one
another rapidly, as at a variety theatre, without any disagreeable
waits or the drop of a curtain. If I had anything to complain of it
was the swiftness of their succession. I was not yet habituated to
this, when I found the scene occupied by the two principal actors in
a laughable little interlude of Habitual Drunkenness. A powerfully
built, middle-aged Irishman, with evidences of coal-heaving thick
upon his hands and ground into his face to the roots of his hair, was
standing at one end of that long table, and listening to the tale of
the policeman who, finding him quarrelsomely and noisily drunk, and not
being able to prevail with him to go home, had arrested him. When he
finished, the judge said to the defendant, who had stood rolling his
eyes--conspicuous from the black around them--upon the spectators, as
if at a loss to make out what all this might be about, that he could
ask any questions he liked of the plaintiff.
“I don’t want to ask him anything, sor,” replied the defendant, like
one surprised at being expected to take an interest in some alien
affair.
“Have you ever seen the defendant drunk before?” asked the judge.
“Yes, your honor; I’ve seen him drunk half a dozen times, and I’ve
taken him home to keep him out of harm’s way. He’s an industrious man
when he isn’t in drink.”
“Is he usually disorderly when drunk?”
“Well, he and his wife generally fight when he gets home,” the
policeman suggested.
The judge desisted, and the defendant’s counsel rose, and signified
his intention to cross-question the plaintiff: the counsel was that
attorney of African race whom I have mentioned.
“Now, we don’t deny that the defendant was drunk at the time of his
arrest; but the question is whether he is an habitual drunkard. How
many times have you seen him drunk the past month?”
“About half a dozen times.”
“Seven times?”
“I can’t say.”
“Three times?”
“More than three times.”
“More than twice you will swear to?”
“Yes.”
“Now, I wish you to be very careful, please: can you state, under oath,
that you have seen him drunk four times?”
“Yes,” said the policeman, “I can swear to that.”
“Very good,” said the counsel, with the air of having caught the
witness tripping. “That is all.”
Aside from the satisfaction that one naturally feels in seeing any
policeman bullied, I think it did me good to have my learned colored
brother badger a white man. The thing was so long the other way, in
every walk of life, that for the sake of the bad old times, when the
sight would have been something to destroy the constitution and subvert
social order, I could have wished that he might have succeeded better
in browbeating his witness. But it was really a failure, as far as
concerned his object.
“The question, your honor,” the lawyer added, turning to the judge,
“is, what _is_ habitual drunkenness? I should like to ask the defendant
a query or two. Now, Mr. O’Ryan, how often do you indulge yourself in a
social glass?”
“Sor?”
“How often do you drink?”
“Whenever I can get it, sor.”
The audience appreciated this frankness, and were silenced by a
threatening foray of the cravatless officer.
“You mean,” suggested the attorney, smoothly, “that you take a drink of
beer, now and then, when you are at work.”
“I mane that, sor. A horse couldn’t do widout it.”
“Very good. But you deny that you are habitually intoxicated?”
“Sor?”
“You are not in the habit of getting drunk?”
“No, sor!”
“Very good. You are not in the habit of getting drunk.”
“I never get dhrunk whin I’m at work sor. I get dhrunk Saturday nights.”
“Yes; when you have had a hard week’s work. I understand that”--
“I have a hard wake’s worruk every wake!” interrupted the defendant.
“But this is a thing that has grown upon you of late, as I understand.
You were formerly a sober, temperate man, as your habits of industry
imply.”
“Sor?”
“You have lately given way to a fondness for liquor, but up to within
six months or a year ago you never drank to excess.”
“No, sor! I’ve dhrunk ever since I was born, and I’ll dhrink till I
die.”
The officer could not keep us quiet, now. The counsel looked down at
his table in a futile way, and then took his seat after some rambling
observations, amid smiles of ironical congratulation from the other
gentlemen of the bar.
The defendant confronted the judge with the calm face of a man who has
established his innocence beyond cavil.
“What is the reputation of this man in his neighborhood?” inquired the
judge of the policeman.
“He’s an ugly fellow. And his wife is full as bad. They generally get
drunk together.”
“Any children?”
“No, sir.”
The defendant regarded the judge with heightened satisfaction in this
confirmation of his own declaration. The judge leaned over, and said in
a confidential way to the clerk, “Give him six months in the House of
Correction.”
A wild lament broke from the audience, and a woman with a face bruised
to a symphony in green, yellow, and black thus identified herself as
the wife of the defendant, who stood vacantly turning his cap round in
his hand while sympathizing friends hurried her from the room. The poor
creature probably knew that if in their late differences she had got
more than she deserved, she had not got more than she had been willing
to give, and was moved by this reflection. Other moralists, who do not
like to treat woman as a reasonable being, may attribute her sorrow
to mere blind tenderness, or hysterical excitement. I could not see
that it touched the spectators in any way; and I suspect that, whatever
was thought of her escape from a like fate, there was a general
acquiescence in the justice of his. He was either stunned by it, or
failed to take it in, for he remained standing at the end of the table
and facing the judge, till the policeman in charge took him by the arm
and stood him aside.