The following telegram appeared in the newspapers yesterday morning:

I have seldom been in a court roomⒶtextual note therefore my interest in the forms and aspects and impressivenesses which prevail in courts of justice has not been staled by use. There was a fine dignity and order about the proceedings of this Danbury court. They were formal, precise and venerable with age, for they have come down to us with our blood out of English ancient days. The lawyers did not make speeches, they merely talked and in low and respectful voices. The judge never raised his voice but said what he had to say quietly, calmly, judicially. In the beginning there was an incident: when the jury had been polled, and were ready for business, a bushy-headed, truculent-looking animal from the criminal haunts of New York rose and bowed to the judge: I knew by the look of him that he was there to defend the burglars, and I thought I knew by the look of him that he had been a burglar himself in happier days. He addressed the court most respectfully, and called attention to the fact that the two accused men were under guard of three deputy sheriffsⒶtextual note and he suggested that this great show of force could give the jury the impression that his clients were desperate men and in that way could prejudice the jury against them; he closed by requesting that the force of deputy sheriffsⒶtextual note be reduced. [begin page 277] Of course the jury had been sent out of the room while this appeal was being made. In response to the appeal, an appeal which was of the cheap East Side clap-trapⒶtextual note order, and was intended to impress the burglars, not the court, the judge said reposefully,

“lt is presumable that the sheriffⒶtextual note knows his business and if he thinks a strong force necessary that is his affair. Call the jury back.”

It made the house smile to see that missing link snuffed out, quiet and effective fashion, but it took the precaution to smile behind its hand and as privately as it could.

Before our case was called an incident occurred which carried me back thirty-five years and brought vividly before me, out of some long-forgotten corner in my memory, a scene in an English court. The thing that stirred this old memory to life was this; a trial was being concluded, and the prisoner was about to be sentenced, a humbly clad young woman twenty-five or thirty years old. Apparently she had no friends with her, she sat in the prisoner’sⒶtextual note box forlorn and melancholy. She had been convicted of a small theft, and was to go to prison for it. When she stood up with the tears running down her face to receive sentence, I perceived with a sort of shock that I had seen the essentials of this sorrowful picture before, and at once my memory transported me to Warwick in England, across an ocean and thirty-five yearsⒺexplanatory note of time all in a moment. It was a court of assizeⒶtextual note. The court roomⒶtextual note was much like this Danbury one, the officials had fine intelligent faces like these Danbury officials, the English judge like the Danbury judge was a man with humanity and intellectuality writ large in his face. But the English court had one advantage over this American court, in that its formalities got an added emphasis and impressiveness from the judge’s scarlet robe, the official costumes of the sheriff and his subordinates, from the rods of the ushers—things which appeal powerfully to the human race, compel its respect, and are of as high value in a democracy as they are in the monarchies. In the English court there was plenty of color, in the American court there was none, all was monotonous gray there. In the English court the prisoner at the bar was a meek and melancholy and humbly dressed young woman of thirty-five or perhaps forty, with a face and bearing which indicated that hers had been a hard and unhappy life. She never raised her face nor looked about her, but sat with her head bowed and her thoughts busy, perhaps, with her troubles and her shame. In sentencing her the judge spoke so pityingly and so gently and so kindly that all the house was moved. In closing his preliminary remarks he said in substance this:

“Yours is a distressing case and calls rather for compassion than for censure. You have uttered counterfeitⒶtextual note coin, and this is a high crime under the law, but you did not do it of your own volition, you were forced to it by a brutal husband and his criminal comradeshipⒶtextual note. Morally it may be claimed for you that you are innocent; but technically you are guilty and the law cannot discriminate. The court has dealt by you with such generosity as was at its command; it has carefully concealed from the jury the fact that you have suffered before for the kind of offence of which you have just been adjudged guilty so that your past history might not imbueⒶtextual note the minds of the jury with a prejudice against you. Once before in the same cruel circumstances that compelled you to commit the present crime you committed its like and suffered for it a long imprisonment. It is my [begin page 278] duty now, and a most painful one it is, to sentence you to fourteen years’Ⓐtextual note imprisonment at hard labor.”

The woman broke into sobs and lamentations and moanings and beseechings and still crying and still lamenting was led from the place leaving behind her no heart that was untouched and no face that did not exhibit strong emotion, the judge’s most of all.

Yesterday the trial of the burglars was concluded. I was not present and had no desire to be there, for according to my gospel the burglars were not guilty. They obeyed the law of their temperament, and the compulsions of their birth, their training, their associations and their circumstances. They had nothing to do with their birth, they did not create their temperaments, they had nothing at all to do with arranging their circumstances, their environment, their associations, these being all compulsory and not avoidable. For its protection societyⒶtextual note must restrain burglars, thieves, maniacs and natural murderers. This cannot be avoided, the men themselves are guilty of nothing, it is temperament, environment, association and circumstances that commit the crime but as these are things which cannot be called into court and tried and punished, societyⒶtextual note is obliged to try and punish the unfortunates whose ill luckⒶtextual note has given them the ill luckⒶtextual note of standing for these elusive and ungraspable criminals and of doing penance for them by proxy.

The burglars pleaded guilty and one of them was condemned to four years in the penitentiary on the single count of burglary, the other was condemned on two counts, burglary and shooting with intent to kill, and he goes to prison for nine yearsⒺexplanatory note.