Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/198



seized the window and brought it down with a slam and a bang. Then the boy came and sat down at my table.

“‘Judge,’ he said in a very simple, almost boyish way, ‘I’ll stay with you. I never had nobody talk to me like you. I’ll do anything you say for me to do.’ ”

So they talked. The Judge told the boy he might have to go to Buena Vista (the peniten- tiary), and they discussed that. And they discussed crime and the police, till it was time for Henry to go back to the jail. And then — the Judge sent him back alone, and he went back alone, and he took voluntarily his place behind the bars!

It “worked,” this “method” did, so the Judge adopted it as a method. It would strengthen the boys. He told the police that he proposed thereafter to trust all prisoners to go alone to Golden. The police laughed. It is said that they passed the word to put up a job on the Judge. At any rate, the next boy for Golden was Billy B., a chronic little runaway, and with the two policemen who brought him in came two reporters. The officers excused their double patrol by pointing to a brand-new shine-box which Billy carried as evidence that he meant to “skip.” That kid had given them a two