"Did you fall?" inquires the judge sharply.
"N—n—no," admits the complainant.
"Defendant discharged," announces the magistrate.
"Get out of here, all of you," orders the officer at the bridge. "Get along, now!"
The explanation, as the reader already guesses, is simply that by a time-honored trick the girl has been persuaded by an oily-tongued trickster to exchange her own earrings for his worthless ones. This she has done quite voluntarily. She has then hurried home only to find that her newly acquired gems are paste. The family goes into a paroxysm of anger and lamentation. The nearest lawyer is consulted, who, of course, agrees to secure the return of the earrings. They pay him a five-dollar fee, the defendant is sought for and arrested, and in her eagerness to see him punished and to obtain her property the victim swears away her own case. Probably had she told the truth the defendant could have been "held" for grand larceny by false pretences.
These proceedings may no sooner be concluded than perchance a giant negro is brought in charged with assault. A dozen officers bring him manacled to the bar, while a crowd of reporters follow and gather on each side, notebook in hand. It appears that the prisoner suddenly ran out of a saloon, drew a revolver and began an indiscriminate shooting. The "reserves" were called out and three policemen now lie dangerously wounded in the hospital. He is held for examination, pending a possible inquest by the coroner.
Meantime a lank youth from New Jersey listens vacantly while an officer accuses him of abandoning a horse which has suddenly expired while harnessed to the defendant's truck wagon. He pays a fine and vanishes. Two young Irish-Americans, mutually damaged, are arraigned for "disorderly conduct." They, too, are fined, being already substantially punished—by each other. A man accused of "Sunday selling" follows a woman who tells a pitiful tale of how her husband has abandoned her and her five little ones. Later in the day the husband is found and ordered to pay her ten dollars per week. Two retail milk dealers charged with adulteration or "keeping a cow in an unhealthy place," a band of pickpockets who have been caught "working" a horse-car, a woman accused of "soliciting," and a bartender who has allowed a "slot machine" to be left upon the premises, give place to a vociferous store-keeper who has caused the arrest of a very stout man for the larceny of four pairs of trousers. He explains loudly that the defendant (who weighs at least 325 pounds) came into the store, asked to see some "pants," and while the clerk was not looking stuffed four pairs of these articles inside his waistband and made his escape. The complainant not only identifies the defendant with absolute certainty but goes so far as to state with equal positiveness that the accused now has on the very trousers into which he stuffed the stolen property. Four pairs identical in size and material with those alleged to have been purloined are produced and marked in evidence. The fat man indignantly denies having been in the store at all. The reporters are interested.
"Gentlemen," says the judge, "I appoint you a committee to conduct the defendant to my private room for the purpose of determining whether or not you can stuff these articles of apparel inside his waistband."
The reporters, followed more slowly by the perspiring defendant, make their way to a back room, from which they presently emerge to announce through their spokesman that it would be impossible to thrust any object, much less four pairs of trousers, inside the band of the defendant's trousers.
In the interim the judge has been settling matrimonial difficulties, giving all sorts of gratuitous legal advice, acting as arbitrator over the question of the mutual use of the "landings" on the stairs in tenement houses, issuing warrants, and endeavoring to find an opportunity to continue the hearing in a complicated "false label" case. In this last several rather well-known attorneys are retained, who stand about disgustedly while the more immediate business of the court is being attended to. In most cases, however, the lawyers are hardly likely to add to the general reputation of the profession for ability.