Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/249



had the wine-room keeper, Baker, arrested. He tried him in the Juvenile Court, and sent him up for sixty days.

“The girl I kept on probation,” he says, “and I was talking to her one day — the day before Christmas—when I was told that a boy, Paul Baker, wanted to see me. Putting the girl in a side room, I had the boy in. He was a handsome, wholesome little fellow, and he came up to my table, halting, but with a frank look on his face.

“‘Judge,’ he said, ‘you put my papa in jail, but everybody says that you like boys and do all you can to help a boy. So I came to ask you to let my father come home for Christmas.’”

He began to cry, and the Judge spoke.

“Yes, I like boys,” he said, “and I like men, too. Do you think I dislike your father ? Not a bit! I was sorry to put him in jail. And did it never occur to you that it wasn’t I that put him in jail ? It was the Law. And the Law is right. Do you know what your father did?”

The boy knew. “Well, I like little girls as well as I like boys, and you know that wine- rooms are bad places for little girls. This little girl and her mother, they are suffering just as you and your father are suffering; all because he broke the law.”

The Judge sent for the girl, and he introduced