Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/195



’round, I can’t help it. I just have to drop off th’ car.” The Judge gave him tickets over another route, and that night received word that the boy had “made it.”

Well, this practice of the Judge was begun on an impulse in this first, honest conflict with the police. They had caught two “dangerous young criminals,” boys with records for serious crimes and jail breaking, and the Judge, having found them in the cells, talked with them. One night the Judge telephoned to the warden to send over two of the boys. An officer brought one. “ I think,” the Judge says, “that the warden’s idea was that it was dangerous to send two at one time without handcuffs on them, and the police knew it offended me to have them come into my Court or my chambers with young fellows handcuffed.”

When the officer came in with the boy, he spoke in an undertone to the Judge, warning him that the prisoner was the “worst in the bunch,” and that every time he had brought him to that room, the boy had eyed the window with the fire-escape.

“ Better let me stay here,” said the officer. The Judge said he would take his chances. “All right,” said the officer, and he smiled, “but we shall have to hold you responsible. You know