The Man in Court | Page 2

to administer: Laws which are as absurd, as farcical, and as impracticable as the plot of the lightest musical comedy.
At first the visitor can hardly understand what is going on. A pale-faced man is in the witness chair, on his left a bedraggled little woman is standing before and below the judge, her eyes just level with the top of the desk. Clerks are coming with papers to be signed: "commitments," "adjournments," "bail bonds"; others are trying to engage his attention. In the meanwhile the case proceeds.
"I inform you," says the judge to the woman, "of your legal rights, you may retain counsel if you desire to do so and your case will be adjourned so that you may advise with him and secure witnesses, or you may now proceed to trial. Which will you do?"
She murmurs something. She is pale-faced with sullen eyes, drooping mouth, an over-hanging lip. A sad red feather droops in her hat.
"Proceed," says the judge; and to the policeman who is called as a witness, "You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth mm-mm-mm--you are a plain-clothes man attached to the 16th Precinct detailed by the central office, what about this woman?"
"At the corner of Fifteenth Street and Irving Place," says the witness, "between the hours of 10:05 and 10:15 this evening I watched this woman stop and speak to three different men. I know her, she has been here before your Honor."
"What do you say?" the judge asks the woman. She is silent.
"What do you work at?"
"Housework, your Honor."
"Always housework; it is surprising how many houseworkers come before me." She smiles a sickly smile.
"Take her record. Next case," says the judge. Outside it is a cold sleeting night in early March.
"Witnesses in case of Nellie Farrel," calls the clerk.
Nellie Farrel stands before the desk beside a policeman; she is tall with fair waving hair. She must have been pretty once; even now there is a delicate line of throat and chin. But her eyes are hard and on her cheeks there are traces of paint that has been hastily rubbed off. She looks thirty; she is probably not more than twenty.
A callow youth, who seems preternaturally keen, swears that on Thirteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place the woman stopped and spoke to him; and he tells his story as though it were learned by rote.
"Do you know the officer who made the arrest?" the judge asks him.
"I do." A suspicion arises that there may be an interest between the witness and the policeman.
A dark-haired, smooth-faced woman who is standing by the prisoner says: "Your Honor, she's my sister. I'm a respectable woman, my husband is a driver. I have three children. It's disgrace enough to have the likes of her in the family. If you'll give her another chance I'll take her home with me; my husband is here and he's willing." The accused looks down piteously.
"Discharged on probation," says the judge, and the family go out.
"That's the third time that's happened to her," whispers a clerk. "Every time the sister comes up like a good one."
A horrible old woman with straggling gray hair, shrivelled neck, and claw-like hands grasps a black shawl about her flat chest. "Mary," says the judge, "thirty days on the island for you."
"Oh, your Honor, your Honor, not the workhouse. Oh, God, not the workhouse," and she is borne out screaming and fighting and invoking Christ to her aid. The judge turns and says in explanation, "an old case, an example of what they all may come to."
A dark-haired little French woman is brought in with crimson lips, bold black eyes, and expressive hands. A detective testifies that he went with her into a tenement house on Seventeenth Street west of Sixth Avenue. Charge: Violation of the Tenement House Law.
"Qu'importe," says the woman. "I go in ze street. I am arrested. I stay in ze house. I am arrested. I take ze room. I am arrested. Chantage--Blackmail. C'est pour rire."
Who are these women who are brought in a crowd together? One of them older than the rest is a foreigner plainly dressed in black silk with a gold chain. She does not seem particularly evil, but rather respectable. The others are in long cloaks or waterproofs hastily donned and through which are glimpses of pink stockings. They have hair of that disagreeable butter color which speaks of peroxide. There has been a raid on a west-side street of a house of ill repute. Some testimony is given and the older woman, the "Madam" is held in bail for the action of the Grand Jury while the rest are held for further evidence. The judge tells us there will probably not be enough testimony and they will be released in the morning. But unless bail is found