OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN.
Round goes the wheel forever. Another sun rose up, not a moment hurried
or belated by the myriads of life-and-death issues that cover the earth
and wait in ecstasies of hope or dread the passage of time. Punctually
at ten Justice-in-the-rough takes its seat in the Recorder's Court,
and a moment of silent preparation at the desks follows the loud
announcement that its session has begun. The perky clerks and smirking
pettifoggers move apart on tiptoe, those to their respective stations,
these to their privileged seats facing the high dais. The lounging
police slip down from their reclining attitudes on the heel-scraped and
whittled window-sills. The hum of voices among the forlorn humanity that
half fills the gradually rising, greasy benches behind, allotted to
witnesses and prisoners' friends, is hushed. In a little square, railed
space, here at the left, the reporters tip their chairs against the
hair-greased wall, and sharpen their pencils. A few tardy visitors,
familiar with the place, tiptoe in through the grimy doors, ducking
and winking, and softly lifting and placing their chairs, with a
mock-timorous upward glance toward the long, ungainly personage who,
under a faded and tattered crimson canopy, fills the august bench of
magistracy with its high oaken back. On the right, behind a rude wooden
paling that rises from the floor to the smoke-stained ceiling, are the
peering, bloated faces of the night's prisoners.
The recorder utters a name. The clerk down in front of him calls it
aloud. A door in the palings opens, and one of the captives comes
forth and stands before the rail. The arresting officer mounts to the
witness-stand and confronts him. The oath is rattled and turned out like
dice from a box, and the accusing testimony is heard. It may be that
counsel rises and cross-examines, if there are witnesses for the
defence. Strange and far-fetched questions, from beginners at the law
or from old blunderers, provoke now laughter, and now the peremptory
protestations of the court against the waste of time. Yet, in general,
a few minutes suffices for the whole trial of a case.
"You are sure she picked the handsaw up by the handle, are you?" says
the questioner, frowning with the importance of the point.
"Yes."
"And that she coughed as she did so?"
"Well, you see, she kind o'"--
"Yes, or no!"
"No."
"That's all." He waves the prisoner down with an air of mighty
triumph, turns to the recorder, "trusts it is not necessary to,"
etc., and the accused passes this way or that, according to the fate
decreed,--discharged, sentenced to fine and imprisonment, or committed
for trial before the courts of the State.
"Order in court!" There is too much talking. Another comes and stands
before the rail, and goes his way. Another, and another; now a ragged
boy, now a half-sobered crone, now a battered ruffian, and now a painted
girl of the street, and at length one who starts when his name is
called, as though something had exploded.
"John Richling!"
He came.
"Stand there!"
Some one is in the witness-stand, speaking. The prisoner partly hears,
but does not see. He stands and holds the rail, with his eyes fixed
vacantly on the clerk, who bends over his desk under the seat of
justice, writing. The lawyers notice him. His dress has been laboriously
genteel, but is torn and soiled. A detective, with small eyes set close
together, and a nose like a yacht's rudder, whisperingly calls the
notice of one of these spectators who can see the prisoner's face to the
fact that, for all its thinness and bruises, it is not a bad one. All
can see that the man's hair is fine and waving where it is not matted
with blood.
The testifying officer had moved as if to leave the witness-stand, when
the recorder restrained him by a gesture, and, leaning forward and
looking down upon the prisoner, asked:--
"Have you anything to say to this?"
The prisoner lifted his eyes, bowed affirmatively, and spoke in a low,
timid tone. "May I say a few words to you privately?"
"No."
He dropped his eyes, fumbled with the rail, and, looking up suddenly,
said in a stronger voice, "I want somebody to go to my wife--in Prieur
street. She is starving. This is the third day"--
"We're not talking about that," said the recorder. "Have you anything to
say against this witness's statement?"
The prisoner looked upon the floor and slowly shook his head. "I never
meant to break the law. I never expected to stand here. It's like an
awful dream. Yesterday, at this time, I had no more idea of this--I
didn't think I was so near it. It's like getting caught in machinery."
He looked up at the recorder again. "I'm so confused"--he frowned and
drew his hand slowly across his brow--"I can hardly--put my words
together. I was hunting for work. There is no man in this city who
wants to earn an honest living more than I do."
"What's your trade?"
"I have none."
"I supposed not. But you profess to have some occupation, I dare say.
What's your occupation?"
"Accountant."
"Hum! you're all accountants. How long have you been out of employment?"
"Six months."
"Why did you go to sleep under those steps?"
"I didn't intend to go to sleep. I was waiting for a friend to come in
who boards at the St. Charles."
A sudden laugh ran through the room. "Silence in court!" cried a deputy.
"Who is your friend?" asked the recorder.
The prisoner was silent.
"What is your friend's name?"
Still the prisoner did not reply. One of the group of pettifoggers
sitting behind him leaned forward, touched him on the shoulder, and
murmured: "You'd better tell his name. It won't hurt him, and it may
help you." The prisoner looked back at the man and shook his head.
"Did you strike this officer?" asked the recorder, touching the witness,
who was resting on both elbows in the light arm-chair on the right.
The prisoner made a low response.
"I don't hear you," said the recorder.
"I struck him," replied the prisoner; "I knocked him down." The court
officers below the dais smiled. "I woke and found him spurning me with
his foot, and I resented it. I never expected to be a law-breaker.
I"-- He pressed his temples between his hands and was silent. The
men of the law at his back exchanged glances of approval. The case was,
to some extent, interesting.
"May it please the court," said the man who had before addressed the
prisoner over his shoulder, stepping out on the right and speaking very
softly and graciously, "I ask that this man be discharged. His fault
seems so much more to be accident than intention, and his suffering so
much more than his fault"--
The recorder interrupted by a wave of the hand and a preconceived smile:
"Why, according to the evidence, the prisoner was noisy and troublesome
in his cell all night."
"O sir," exclaimed the prisoner, "I was thrown in with thieves and
drunkards! It was unbearable in that hole. We were right on the damp
and slimy bricks. The smell was dreadful. A woman in the cell opposite
screamed the whole night. One of the men in the cell tried to take my
coat from me, and I beat him!"
"It seems to me, your honor," said the volunteer advocate, "the prisoner
is still more sinned against than sinning. This is evidently his first
offence, and"--
"Do you know even that?" asked the recorder.
"I do not believe his name can be found on any criminal record. I"--
The recorder interrupted once more. He leaned toward the prisoner.
"Did you ever go by any other name?"
The prisoner was dumb.
"Isn't John Richling the only name you have ever gone by?" said his new
friend: but the prisoner silently blushed to the roots of his hair and
remained motionless.
"I think I shall have to send you to prison," said the recorder,
preparing to write. A low groan was the prisoner's only response.
"May it please your honor," began the lawyer, taking a step forward; but
the recorder waved his pen impatiently.
"Why, the more is said the worse his case gets; he's guilty of the
offence charged, by his own confession."
"I am guilty and not guilty," said the prisoner slowly. "I never
intended to be a criminal. I intended to be a good and useful member of
society; but I've somehow got under its wheels. I've missed the whole
secret of living." He dropped his face into his hands. "O Mary, Mary!
why are you my wife?" He beckoned to his counsel. "Come here; come
here." His manner was wild and nervous. "I want you--I want you to go
to Prieur street, to my wife. You know--you know the place, don't you?
Prieur street. Ask for Mrs. Riley"--
"Richling," said the lawyer.
"No, no! you ask for Mrs. Riley? Ask her--ask her--oh! where are my
senses gone? Ask"--
"May it please the court," said the lawyer, turning once more to the
magistrate and drawing a limp handkerchief from the skirt of his dingy
alpaca, with a reviving confidence, "I ask that the accused be
discharged; he's evidently insane."
The prisoner looked rapidly from counsel to magistrate, and back again,
saying, in a low voice, "Oh, no! not that! Oh, no! not that! not that!"
The recorder dropped his eyes upon a paper on the desk before him, and,
beginning to write, said without looking up:--
"Parish Prison--to be examined for insanity."
A cry of remonstrance broke so sharply from the prisoner that even the
reporters in their corner checked their energetic streams of lead-pencil
rhetoric and looked up.
"You cannot do that!" he exclaimed. "I am not insane! I'm not even
confused now! It was only for a minute! I'm not even confused!"
An officer of the court laid his hand quickly and sternly upon his arm;
but the recorder leaned forward and motioned him off. The prisoner
darted a single flash of anger at the officer, and then met the eye of
the justice.
"If I am a vagrant commit me for vagrancy! I expect no mercy here! I
expect no justice! You punish me first, and try me afterward, and now
you can punish me again; but you can't do that!"
"Order in court! Sit down in those benches!" cried the deputies. The
lawyers nodded darkly or blandly, each to each. The one who had
volunteered his counsel wiped his bald Gothic brow. On the recorder's
lips an austere satire played as he said to the panting prisoner:--
"You are showing not only your sanity, but your contempt of court also."
The prisoner's eyes shot back a fierce light as he retorted:--
"I have no object in concealing either."
The recorder answered with a quick, angry look; but, instantly
restraining himself, dropped his glance upon his desk as before, began
again to write, and said, with his eyes following his pen:--
"Parish Prison, for thirty days."
The officer grasped the prisoner again and pointed him to the door in
the palings whence he had come, and whither he now returned, without a
word or note of distress.
Half an hour later the dark omnibus without windows, that went by the
facetious name of the "Black Maria" received the convicted ones from the
same street door by which they had been brought in out of the world the
night before. The waifs and vagabonds of the town gleefully formed a
line across the sidewalk from the station-house to the van, and counted
with zest the abundant number of passengers that were ushered into it
one by one. Heigh ho! In they went: all ages and sorts; both sexes;
tried and untried, drunk and sober, new faces and old acquaintances; a
man who had been counterfeiting, his wife who had been helping him, and
their little girl of twelve, who had done nothing. Ho, ho! Bridget Fury!
Ha, ha! Howling Lou! In they go: the passive, the violent, all kinds;
filling the two benches against the sides, and then the standing room;
crowding and packing, until the officer can shut the door only by
throwing his weight against it.
"Officer," said one, whose volunteer counsel had persuaded the reporters
not to mention him by name in their thrilling account,--"officer," said
this one, trying to pause an instant before the door of the vehicle, "is
there no other possible way to"--
"Get in! get in!"
Two hands spread against his back did the rest; the door clapped to like
the lid of a bursting trunk, the padlock rattled: away they went!