DISTORTED MERCY.
is New Year's Eve. In a comfortable arm-chair by the fire sits the Metropolitan Magistrate. He smiles in self-complacency. He speaks:—
This year I have most faithfully fulfilled my duty; the spirit of sweet leniency has marked my every sentence—at least toward the more flagitious and inhuman offender. Thus have I, in place of punishing, won over to more virtuous ways; so may I doze the cheerful, self-admiring doze of virtue.
[He dozes. Gathering from the comfortable reflections of the fire and lamp thrown from the polished furniture, a radiant form shapes itself at his elbow. The Magistrate smiles in his sleep, in great content.
The Metropolitan Magistrate. Who art thou, visitant?
The Form. I am the Spirit of thy Leniency. I come to show thee how fair and flattering a result thy milder sentences—to wit, those passed upon the more outrageous culprits—have yielded. See! (Waves a wand.) This is he who came before thy judgment seat for—after repeated warning—selling milk from premises teeming with scarlet fever. Thou didst say, "It is the grossest, and most shocking case of brutal disregard for human life I ever heard!" and thereupon didst fine him half-a-crown—the minimum penalty.
M. Mag. (with affectionate interest). And since? How farest now, thou naughty one?
Milk Criminal. O most blessed Magistrate and sweet Your Worship, I fare most happily; for, most comfortably encouraged by your gracious leniency, I did redouble—nay, multiply an hundred times—mine efforts to disseminate disease; so that I may, without undue boasting, claim to be father of an epidemic that felled its hundreds. And further, in the doing of this I have heaped up a most goodly pile of gold. Give me your blessing, most sympathetic Your Worship!
M. Mag. (recoiling). Nay; mine intentions looked not toward so dire result! I cannot bless——
The Spirit. How, good Stipendiary? Dost thou now disown me, thine own Spirit? Thou must surely bless thy protégé, him who but carries out thy methods to their logical result! And see, I summon others of thy choice; this good butcher who hath sent unwholesome meat to London to feed the poor. Thou didst say of him, "A most inhuman, ill-conditioned knave and rascal; a constructive homicide! I will not imprison him, but fine him seven shillings." And again, see this good rough who kicked a constable nearly to death; thou saidst of him, "A miscreant unfit to live. A savage worse than any tiger! One shilling fine." Then finding he could not pay without foregoing his accustomed gin, thy heart relented, and thou didst discharge him. Then again, here have we this fair hawker who kicked his donkey's legs and so belaboured him with cudgels that he left no bone unbroken; thou saidst of him, "An act more horrible and sickening could scarce be perpetrated by a fiend!" Then, with a gentle caution, thou didst set him free.