Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/100

 rible without being at all interesting—so horrible indeed that sometimes after he got into bed, if he had worked too hard or smoked too much, some of the faces and facts he had met during the day would not keep out of the way long enough for him to get to sleep, and he had to sleep because he was obliged to begin work again at nine o'clock in the morning.

He had studied sociology and he had travelled a little, and so he had supposed he knew about how bad human nature could get; but it is one thing to read in big books, by a comfortable study-table, with a pipe in your mouth, about degeneracy and crime and the per cent. of criminals, and quite another to be daily brought face to face with the scum of humanity and be obliged to mingle with it and ask questions and have it turn its eyes upon you, and let you see in side; worst of all, to realize that these are fellow human beings, and that there is very little to be done about it.

One day a big, burly policeman was shoving an aged, bellowing female into the pen. She had been sentenced to ten days on the