“Nay, nay,” said the other; “not so soon, my boy!” at the same time he twisted my collar, till I was well-nigh choked. Two other men came up, and each had some rude thing to say to me.
“Well, master Scrapegrace,” said one, “I guess you have seen Bridewell; so it will be as good as home to you.”
“It’s the very fellow I saw prowling about the streets last night,” said another: “his hang-dog look is enough to commit him.”
“Really,” said a third, “there’s a touch of the gentleman about the fellow; but there’s no rogue so bad as one that’s seen better days, and had a neddicashun.”
With this kind of conversation they amused themselves, while they pulled me rudely along, and at last lodged me in a watch-house. Here I was kept till morning, when I was taken to a prison called Bridewell, where were some fifty persons, of all ages and sexes, and wearing the various aspects of poverty, wretchedness, and crime. I could not endure to face them, so I slunk into a corner and sat down upon the floor. Burying my face in my hands, I gave myself up to despair.
I sat for two or three hours in utter desolation, thinking over my sad fortunes, and cut to the heart with a sense of the evils that surrounded me. At length a man came and told me that I was wanted. I followed him out, and was taken into a room full of people. I had never been in a court of justice before, and I certainly did not guess that this was a place that could bear such a title. I have seen a good deal of the world, and yet I am ready to declare that in no place, not even in the wilderness, among savages, is there a spot where men seem to me so rude, so ill-mannered, so unjust, so little humane, as in that place called a court of justice. The constable, the sheriff, the judge, and, above all, the lawyers, have the same heartlessness, the same disregard of the claims of one human being upon another.
I was hurried through the crowd, and placed in an elevated seat, surrounded with a railing, thus becoming the object upon which every eye was bent. The sense of my degradation, innocent as I was, overwhelmed me with confusion. One of the lawyers, called the city attorney, soon got up and stated to a sour and awful looking man, who it appeared was the judge, that the times were marked with fearful signs. “May it please your honor,” said he, “the good old days of purity are past; no longer are the young brought up in the way in which they should go, but they are either instructed to ridicule every law of God and man, or left to work out their own destruction. It is a time for justice to do her work; for the judge to assert the majesty of the insulted law. I now bring before you, sir, a young man of genteel appearance; one who has evidently seen and known better things; but who yet, we have reason to believe, is a hardened and practised villain.”
Having said this, the lawyer went on to state, that I entered a store the evening of the preceding day, and robbed the till or drawer of its money, amounting to several dollars; that I was soon pursued, and, while running, threw away the money; that I was speedily overtaken, lodged in the watch-house for the night, and then put in Bridewell. Here several witnesses were called, who testified to these facts. One of them, who had accompanied me to the watch-house, added, that he knew me perfectly well; that I was a thief and gambler by profession; that he had seen me some days before, at a little tavern, notorious as a gambling house, and that he had seen me playing at cards with two celebrated rogues. This he embellished with sundry particulars as to my looks and actions.
I was so unpractised in the ways of the world, so ignorant, and so utterly confounded at the strange events that came hurrying one after another, that I sat still, and heard all this with a kind of stupid wonder. I did not attempt to explain or deny anything. It all looked to me like a conspiracy—the countenance of judge, lawyer, and witness, bore an aspect coinciding with this idea, and I felt it to be in vain to resist. Though the whole story, save only the gambling scene, and my being taken in the street, was false, yet I said nothing, and my silence was taken as admission of my crime.
This examination was followed by a speech on the part of the lawyer, who evidently wished to have me convicted. I could not imagine why this man, whom I had never seen before, whom I never injured or offended, should be so anxious to prove me a thief, and to have me shut up in prison. I did not then know that a lawyer always wishes to succeed in any case he undertakes, right or wrong, because he is thought a better lawyer if he is able to succeed. I did not then know that if a lawyer has a bad case, he is particularly anxious to gain it, and makes all the greater efforts because he thereby shows his ingenuity and his art, and thus increases his reputation and gains practice.