Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/137

 "The snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair, redeeming sins past and to come, Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery."

Then he laughed, and his chuckle died away on the wire. That expressed him; that was exactly what he would have done for a brother, exactly what he did do for many a brother, since he regarded all men as his brothers, and treated them as such if they would let him. He was always going down to the city prisons, or to the workhouses, and talking to the poor devils there, quite as if he were one of them, which indeed he felt he was, and as all of us are, if we only knew it. And he was working all the time to get them out of prison, and finally he and I entered into a little compact by which he paid the expenses incident to their trials—the fees for stenographers and that sort of thing—if I would look after their cases. Hard as the work was, and sad as it was, and grievously as my law partners complained of the time it took, and of its probable effect on business (since no one wished to be known as a criminal lawyer!), it did pay in the satisfaction there was in doing a little to comfort and console—and, what was so much more, to compel in one city, at least, a discussion of the grounds and the purpose of our institutions. For instance, if some poor girl were arrested, and a jury trial were demanded for her, and her case were given all the care and attention it would have received had she been