Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/205



“As I stepped across the cell, he drew himself up with an odd touch of dignified pride peculiar to him. He was only a little boy, hunted and run to earth like a wolf, cuffed and kicked and flung into a dark cell prior to being railroaded through the court to the reformatory, but he was staunch and ‘game’ still to his comrades.

“‘I ain’t no snitch,’ he flung out before I had said a dozen words.

“‘Good for you,’ I told him. ‘There’s always good in a fellow that won’t snitch on his chums.’

“He looked at me, greatly surprised but still suspicious. He asked me who I was. I told him. ‘Are they going to try me in your Court?’ he asked. I answered that he would probably be tried in the criminal court. ‘They’ll send me up, all right,’ he said with conviction. ‘Would you?’ he demanded. ‘I’d give you a square deal,’ I told him. He sneered in my face.”

Not a very promising beginning, was it? The Judge did not give up. He called again on the boys, and again and again. He told them the truth. He told them he was labouring to have them tried in his Court, and why. He talked about his Court, and what it meant; how it was opposed, and why. He had no secrets; he kept nothing back. He discussed crime, his view of it, the police view of it, the world’s. He didn’t