es to me; it does to the eight
million women in the world who have learned to think in human terms.

CHAPTER VII

BREAKING THE GREAT TABOO

At the threshold of that quarter of old New York called Greenwich
Village stands Jefferson Market Court. Almost concealed behind the
towering structure of the Sixth Avenue Elevated, the building by day is
rather inconspicuous. But when night falls, swallowing up the
neighborhood of tangled streets and obscure alleyways, Jefferson Market
assumes prominence. High up in the square brick tower an illuminated
clock seems perpetually to be hurrying its pointing hands toward
midnight. From many windows, barred for the most part, streams an
intense white light. Above an iron-guarded door at the side of the
building floats a great globe of light, and beneath its glare, through
the iron-guarded door, there passes, every week-day night in the year, a
long procession of prodigals.

The guarded door seldom admits any one as important, so to speak, as a
criminal. The criminal's case waits for day. The Night Court in
Jefferson Market sits in judgment only on the small fry caught in the
dragnet of the police. Tramps, vagrants, drunkards, brawlers, disturbers
of the peace, speeding chauffeurs, licenseless peddlers, youths caught
red-handed shooting craps or playing ball in the streets,--these are the
men with whom the Night Court deals. But it is not the men we have come
to see.

[Illustration: MISS MAUDE E. MINER]

The women of the Night Court. Prodigal daughters! Between December,
1908, and December, 1909, no less than five thousand of them passed
through the guarded door, under the blaze of the electric lights. There
is never an hour, from nine at night until three in the morning, when
the prisoners' bench in Jefferson Market Court is without its full quota
of women. Old--prematurely old, and young--pitifully young; white and
brown; fair and faded; sad and cynical; starved and prosper ous;
rag-draped and satin-bedecked; together they wait their turn at
judgment.

Quietly moving back and forth before the prisoners' bench you see a
woman, tall, graceful, black-gowned. She is the salaried probation
officer, modern substitute for the old-time volunteer mission worker.
The probation officer's serious blue eyes burn with no missionary zeal.
There is no spark of sentimental pity in the keen gaze she turns on each
new arrival.

When the bench is full of women the judge turns to her t