Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/124

 and society's gratitude. And whom does society reward so lavishly as her prosecutors?

However, that is not the strain I would adopt just now. I felt that very rage in myself at that moment, and straightway went and had Rheinhold arrested and haled before a judge in the Municipal Court, charged with the crime of neglecting his children. I can remember his wild and bewildered look as he was arraigned that morning. The information was read to him, and he moved his head in such instant acquiescence that the judge, looking down from his bench, asked him if he wished to plead guilty, and he said "Yes." It seemed then that the case was to be quite easily disposed of, and the prosecutor might feel gratified by this instant success of his work; and yet Rheinhold stood there so confused, so frightened, with the court-room loungers looking on, that I said:

"He doesn't understand a word of all you are saying."

And so the judge entered a plea of "not guilty."

I knew a young lawyer with rather large leisure, and I asked him to defend Rheinhold. He was glad to do so, and we empaneled a jury and went at what Professor Wigmore calls the "high-class sport." We became desperately interested of course, and for days wrangled according to the rules of the game over the liberty of the bewildered little German who scarcely knew what it was all about. Now and then he made some wild, inarticulate protest, but was of course promptly silenced by his own lawyer, or by the judge, or by the rules of evidence, which