* * * *

Judge Kiah Rodgers already figures in a story, and here we give his
address to a delinquent when he presided at a Court in Louisiana.
"Prisoner, stand up! Mr. Kettles, this Court is under the painful
necessity of passing sentence of the law upon you. This Court has no
doubt, Mr. Kettles, but what you were brought into this scrape by the
use of intoxicating liquors. The friends of this Court all know that if
there is any vice this Court abhors it is intoxication. When this Court
was a young man, Mr. Kettles, it was considerably inclined to drink, and
the friends of this Court know that this Court has naterally a very high
temper; and if this Court had not stopped short off, I have no doubt,
sir, but what this Court, sir, would have been in the penitentiary or in
its grave."

There was a strong sense of duty to humanity, as well as seeing justice
carried out, in the Californian sheriff after an interview with a
self-confessed murderer, who desired to be sent to New York to be tried,
when he addressed the prisoner: "So your conscience ain't easy, and you
want to be hanged?" said the sheriff. "Well, my friend, the county
treasury ain't well fixed at present, and I don't want to take any
risks, in case you're not the man, and are just fishing for a free
ride. Besides, those New York Courts can't be trusted to hang a man. As
you say, you deserve to be killed, and your conscience won't be easy
till you are killed, and as it can't make any difference to you or to
society how you are killed, I guess I'll do the job myself!" and his
hand moved to his pocket; but before he could pull out the revolver and
level it at the murderer, that conscience-stricken individual was down
the road and out of killing distance.

Like the sailor who objected to his captain undertaking the double duty
of flogging and preaching, prisoners do not appreciate the judge who
delivers sentence upon them and at the same time admonishes them in a
long speech. After being sentenced a Californian prisoner was thus
reproached by a judge for his lack of ambition:

"Where is it, sir? Where is it? Did you ever hear of Cicero taking free
lunches? Did you ever hear that Plato gamboled through the alleys of
Athens? Did you ever hear Demosthenes accused of sleeping under a
coal-shed? If you would be a Plato, there would be a fire in your eye;
your hair would have an intellectual cut; you'd step into a clean shirt;
and you'd hire a mowing