ss character
from green fields and rural simplicity to the company of felons in a
wretched cell. There being no witnesses against him at the trial, a
_nolle prosequi_ is found, and he goes free.

"This story is fiction, but it is not overdrawn. Such horrible things
do happen in these _fin-de-siecle_ days in a civilized country.

"In Scranton, only this week, a woman, Mrs. Nicotera, was released
after having been in custody since February 28th last, as a witness in
the Rosa murder case. She was confined with, her husband, who was also
a witness, in the Lackawanna county jail until her health broke down,
when she was removed to the Lackawanna hospital.

"On Tuesday she was released on her own recognizance. Her husband had
been given his liberty in a similar manner some weeks before. She was
thin and pale when she appeared in court, and had evidently passed
through severe suffering. Careful nursing will be required to restore
her to health.

"It would seem as if some means of meeting the ends of justice could
be devised without the necessity of subjecting innocent persons to a
felon's fate for simply being a chance witness of an affair that is to
be brought into the court."

In the editorial columns of a recent number of the Cleveland, Ohio,
"World" appeared the following:

"A DISGRACE TO CIVILIZATION."

"A heart-breaking story, founded on fact, in McCLURE's MAGAZINE
for the current month, is an arraignment of the nineteenth century
civilization that, considering its boasts of enlightenment and
decency, is as horrible an official crime as any that has given so
dark a stain to Russian treatment of innocence."

Following this is a long outline of Mr. Ward's story, and then the
article continues:

"It is impossible to conceive of more awful inhuman injustice than
this. But the story is not overdrawn. It has happened with variations
scores, if not hundreds, of times. It is occurring or liable to occur
this very day, not alone in Boston, but in Cleveland.

"At a meeting of the judges, a short time ago, Judge Lamson used the
following language:

"'The detention of innocent persons as witnesses is, under the best
of circumstances, bad. It is clearly the duty of the people of this
country or their representatives to see that the present disgraceful
method in vogue in the county jail is abolished. We have no right,
under any law, to place innocent persons on a plane with criminals. It
is nothing more or less than a