ne, and straightway I fell to stretching
my sore limbs, and looking about me with a grateful sense of relief
and a returning interest in life. About me lay the evidences that what
seemed now a feverish dream and a nightmare was the memory of a reality
instead. For on the boards lay four frowsy, ragged, bearded vagabonds,
snoring--one turned end-for-end and resting an unclean foot, in a
ruined stocking, on the hairy breast of a neighbour; the young boy was
uneasy, and lay moaning in his sleep; other forms lay half revealed and
half concealed about the floor; in the furthest corner the gray light
fell upon a sheet, whose elevations and depressions indicated the
places of the dead man's face and feet and folded hands; and through the
dividing bars one could discern the almost nude forms of the two exiles
from the county jail twined together in a drunken embrace, and sodden
with sleep.

By and by all the animals in all the cages awoke, and stretched
themselves, and exchanged a few cuffs and curses, and then began to
clamour for breakfast. Breakfast was brought in at last--bread and
beefsteak on tin plates, and black coffee in tin cups, and no grabbing
allowed. And after several dreary hours of waiting, after this, we
were all marched out into the dungeon and joined there by all manner
of vagrants and vagabonds, of all shades and colours and nationalities,
from the other cells and cages of the place; and pretty soon our whole
menagerie was marched up-stairs and locked fast behind a high railing
in a dirty room with a dirty audience in it. And this audience stared at
us, and at a man seated on high behind what they call a pulpit in this
country, and at some clerks and other officials seated below him--and
waited. This was the police court.

The court opened. Pretty soon I was compelled to notice that a culprit's
nationality made for or against him in this court. Overwhelming proofs
were necessary to convict an Irishman of crime, and even then his
punishment amounted to little; Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians had
strict and unprejudiced justice meted out to them, in exact accordance
with the evidence; negroes were promptly punished, when there was the
slightest preponderance of testimony against them; but Chinamen were
punished always, apparently. Now this gave me some uneasiness,
I confess. I knew that this state of things must of necessity be
accidental, because in this country all men were free and equal, and one
perso