"It vas a lie, your honor, chuge," urges Izzy. "Dot man vas a purglar. He ain't got no push-cart. Gif him ten years, chuge!"
The judge, who is wise in his generation, fines "the burglar" three dollars for disorderly conduct, to the intense disgust of Izzy.
"Tree dollars!" he cries with fine scorn. "Tree dollars for a purglar! I vould be a purglar myself for tree dollars!"
Very likely the next case will be that of a small merchant charged with obstructing the sidewalk with his boxes. He is let off with a warning or, if it be a second offence, with a small fine. Then a couple of boys will be brought in charged with "shooting craps," and on their heels a half-drunken driver who is accused by a little girl (having on an S.P.C.A. badge) of driving an overloaded horse. The crap boys are let go, but as the "cop" agrees with the little girl that the driver was abusing his horse the latter is "held" for Special Sessions.
While these matters are being attended to a great uproar is heard and a large crowd forces its way into the court-room. Above the clamor the wails of a young Jewess make themselves distinctly audible. The judge has just ordered the drunken driver locked up and is all ready to take up the new case. The defendant, a slick, pale-faced young Hebrew, loudly proclaims his innocence and demands an immediate hearing. No time is lost, for the parents of the girl have procured a lawyer who at once causes a charge of robbery to be entered. The girl, hysterically weeping, tells her story. Up to a certain point it is lucid enough. She had been walking along the street when a nice-looking young "feller" had accosted her and inquired the way to the nearest pawnbroker's. While they were conversing pleasantly upon this subject a second young gentleman had joined them and asked the first to purchase a pair of beautiful diamond earrings which he exhibited. This the other regretfully had explained he could not do, since he had no money (being even then on the way to the pawnbroker's). The diamonds had glistened and sparkled in the sunlight. The girl had asked to look at them and while she was doing so the owner had suggested that perhaps she might like to purchase them herself, giving as part of the consideration her own modest little baubles. This tempting offer she says she refused, on the ground that she did not know the young gentleman. She then rapidly states that the two set upon her, struck her, and that she "knew no more," until on recovering her senses she found that her own earrings had disappeared and that those of the stranger were in her ears.
"Hm!" says the magistrate; "and do you say that the defendant struck you?"
"Shure, your honor," replies the young lady.
"And that you fainted?"
"Shure, your honor."