or modify.

The visitor leaves the Night Court with a strange sense of having his
social values overthrown. He feels almost sympathetic with the women
whom he has seen. They may be offenders against morals and the social
order, but they are human beings over whom the waters of civilization
seem to sweep with relentless flood. The frightful waste of life and
energy seems inexcusable. And it is as though some mill dam had burst
and was flowing in a terrific torrent down a river bed along which a
few are drawn white and drowned.

The ordinary man knows that the women who go under are such a small
proportion of those who escape, that it seems either a ghastly joke or
a terrible tragedy. The whole paraphernalia of the court-room merely
accents the contrast between those who are caught and those who go
free.

But all criminal courts are always unpleasant. And humanity if seen
only in the setting of a criminal trial would be a discouraging
object. Turning to the more civil court, we find an almost equal
unfitness between the courts and modern conditions.

II

THE CIVIL COURT

In a twenty-four-story office building, on a smooth gliding elevator,
up seventeen stories, down a low-ceilinged corridor, past fireproof
doors labeled: "Clerk's Office," "Judge's Chambers," "Witness Room,"
we find the typical modern court. The old idea of a very
pseudo-classic courthouse on a placid village green to which the
neighboring county squires have ridden, and where the jail is in the
cellar and the town recorder in the attic, is fast disappearing. The
old courthouse in the city, of red sandstone with battlements and
turrets, minarets, and a clock tower, seems out of date.

The white marble palaces of the higher courts wherein broad stairways,
paneled mahogany, stained glass, and soft noiseless carpets giving an
air of repose and refined culture, are not altogether consistent with
the modern spirit. The man on the street does not understand whether
the marble statues on the roof are symbols of justice or late
presidents of the United States. The usual courthouse of twenty years
ago was a mixture of armory and Gothic church.

In the larger courthouses where there are many terms or parts in one
building, there is an air of confusion. Rotundas, corridors,
stairways, and elevators are constantly filled with a moving crowd of
lawyers waiting for their cases to be tried, clients who have had
appointments, witnesses who have been su