e woman. She is silent.

"What do you work at?"

"Housework, your Honor."

"Always housework; it is surprising how many houseworkers come before
me." She smiles a sickly smile.

"Take her record. Next case," says the judge. Outside it is a cold
sleeting night in early March.

"Witnesses in case of Nellie Farrel," calls the clerk.

Nellie Farrel stands before the desk beside a policeman; she is tall
with fair waving hair. She must have been pretty once; even now there
is a delicate line of throat and chin. But her eyes are hard and on
her cheeks there are traces of paint that has been hastily rubbed off.
She looks thirty; she is probably not more than twenty.

A callow youth, who seems preternaturally keen, swears that on
Thirteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place the woman
stopped and spoke to him; and he tells his story as though it were
learned by rote.

"Do you know the officer who made the arrest?" the judge asks him.

"I do." A suspicion arises that there may be an interest between the
witness and the policeman.

A dark-haired, smooth-faced woman who is standing by the prisoner
says: "Your Honor, she's my sister. I'm a respectable woman, my
husband is a driver. I have three children. It's disgrace enough to
have the likes of her in the family. If you'll give her another
chance I'll take her home with me; my husband is here and he's
willing." The accused looks down piteously.

"Discharged on probation," says the judge, and the family go out.

"That's the third time that's happened to her," whispers a clerk.
"Every time the sister comes up like a good one."

A horrible old woman with straggling gray hair, shrivelled neck, and
claw-like hands grasps a black shawl about her flat chest. "Mary,"
says the judge, "thirty days on the island for you."

"Oh, your Honor, your Honor, not the workhouse. Oh, God, not the
workhouse," and she is borne out screaming and fighting and invoking
Christ to her aid. The judge turns and says in explanation, "an old
case, an example of what they all may come to."

A dark-haired little French woman is brought in with crimson lips,
bold black eyes, and expressive hands. A detective testifies that he
went with her into a tenement house on Seventeenth Street west of
Sixth Avenue. Charge: Violation of the Tenement House Law.

"Qu'importe," says the woman. "I go in ze street. I am arrested. I
stay in ze house. I am arrested. I take ze room. I am arrested.
Cha