I have spoken of the theatrical illusion which the proceedings of the
court produced; but it often seemed to me also like a school where bad
boys and girls were brought up for punishment. They were, indeed, like
children, those poor offenders, and had a sort of innocent simplicity
in their wickedness, as good people have in their goodness. One case
came up on the occasion of my last visit, which I should like to report
verbatim in illustration, but it was of too lurid a sort to be treated
by native realism; we can only bear that sort when imported; and
undoubtedly there is something still to be said in behalf of decency,
at least in the English language. I can only hint that this case was
one which in some form or other has been coming up in the police
courts ever since police courts began. It must have been familiar to
those of Thebes three thousand years ago, and will be so in those of
cities which shall look back on Boston in an antiquity as hoary. A
hard-working old fool with a month’s pay in his pocket and the lost
soul with whom he carouses; the theft; the quarrel between the lost
soul and the yet more fallen spirit who harbored her and traded at
second hand in her perdition as to who stole the fool’s money,--what
stale materials! Yet I was as much interested as if this were the first
case of the kind, and, confronted with the fool and the lost soul and
the yet more fallen spirit, I could not feel that they were--let me
say it in all seriousness and reverence--so very bad. Perhaps it was
because they stood there reduced to the very nakedness of their shame,
and confessedly guilty in what human nature struggles to the last to
deny--stood there, as a premise, far past the hope of lying--that they
seemed rather subjects for pity than abhorrence. The fool and the lost
soul were light and trivial; they even laughed at some of the grosser
facts; but that yet more fallen spirit was ghastly tragical, as bit by
bit the confession of her business was torn from her; it was torture
that seemed hideously out of proportion to any end to be attained; yet
as things are it had to be. If then and there some sort of redemption
might have begun!
The divine life which is in these poor creatures, as in the best and
purest, seemed to be struggling back to some relation and likeness to
our average sinful humanity, insisting that if socially and publicly
we denied it we should not hold it wholly outcast in our secret
hearts, nor refuse it our sympathy. Seeing that on their hopelessly
sunken level their common humanity kept that symmetry and proportion
which physical deformity shows, one could not doubt that a distorted
kindliness and good-nature remained to them in the midst of their
depravity: the man was like a gray-headed foolish boy; the two women
as simple and cunning as too naughty children. It could be imagined
that they had their friendly moments; that in extremity they might care
for each other; that even such a life as theirs had its reliefs from
perdition, as in disease there is relief from pain, and no suffering,
out of romance, is incessant. They had certainly their decorums, their
criterions. On their plane, everything but the theft and the noisy
quarrel was of custom and for granted; but these were misdemeanors
and disgraceful. Like another hostess of the sort, the fallen spirit
was aggrieved at these. “Do you think I keep thieves in my house?...
The tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before.... I’ll no
swaggerers.... There comes no swaggering here.... I will bar no honest
man my house, nor no cheater; but I do not love swaggering.” This is
the sum of what she said that she had said in rebuke of the lost soul;
that thieving and that swaggering, they incensed her, and roused in her
all the instincts of a moral and respectable person. Humanity adjusts
itself to all conditions, and doubtless God forsakes it in none, but
still shapes it to some semblance of health in its sickness, of order
in its disorder, of righteousness in its sin.
I dare say that it was not a wholesome feeling, this leniency that
acquaintance with sinners produces. There is much to be urged on
that side, and I would like to urge it in considering the effect of
daily attendance at the police court upon these spectators whom I have
tried to study for the reader’s advantage. I must own that the trial
at which I have hinted did not affect them seriously, and I doubt
if they psychologized upon it. They craned their necks forward and
gloated on those women with an unmistakably obscene delight. If they
were not beyond being the worse for anything, they were the worse for
that trial. Why were they present? Theoretically, perhaps to see that
justice was done. But if justice had not been done, how could they
have helped it? The public shame seemed purely depraving both to those
who suffered it and to those who saw it; and it ought to have been no
part of the punishment inflicted. It was horrible, and it sometimes
befell those who were accused of nothing, but were merely there to be
tortured as witnesses. The lawyer who forced that wretched hostess
to confess the character of her house used no unfair means, and he
dealt with her as sparingly as he might; yet it was still a shocking
spectacle; for she was, curiously enough, not lost to shame, but most
alive to it, and, standing there before that brutal crowd, gave up
her name to infamy, with atrocious pain and hate; her face was such
a visage as hell-fire might flash into sight among the newly damned,
but such as our familiar and respectable sunlight would do well not to
reveal to any eyes but magistrates’ and priests’. Till one has seen
such a thing it is incredible that it should be, and then incredible
that it should possibly be of daily occurrence. It was as if the
physicians in charge of a public hospital should permit that rabble
to be present at a clinique for some loathsome disease, to see that
there was no malpractice. If the whole trial could have taken place
with closed doors, and with none present but the parties, the lawyers,
and the court, what possible harm could have been done? I think none
whatever, and I am so sure of this that I would not only have all the
police trials secret, but I would never have another police report in
print--after this! Then the decency of mystery, and perhaps something
of its awe, would surround the vulgar shame and terror of the police
court, and a system which does no good would at least do less harm than
at present.