woman, saying: 'I had noticed her
before. As my eye wandered during the evening it had fallen several
times on her, crouched there among the back benches, and I remember I
thought how like a cave dweller she looked. I didn't connect her with
the case, any case. I didn't think of her in any human relationship
whatever. For that matter, I hadn't considered the larceny case in any
human way. And there's the point: I was a judge, judging 'cases'
according to the 'law,' till the cave dweller's mother-cry startled me
into humanity. It was an awful cry, a terrible sight, and I was
stunned. I looked at the prisoner again, but with new eyes now, and I
saw the boy, an Italian boy. A thief? No. A bad boy? Perhaps, but not
a lost criminal.

"'I called him back, and I had the old woman brought before me.
Comforting and quieting her, I talked with the two together, as mother
and son this time, and I found that they had a home. It made me
shudder. I had been about to send that boy to a prison among criminals
when he had a home and a mother to go to. And that was the law! The
fact that that boy had a good home; the circumstances which led him
to--not steal, but 'swipe' something; the likelihood of his not doing
it again--these were 'evidence' pertinent, nay, vital, to his case.

"'Yet the law did not require the production of such evidence. The
law? Justice? I stopped the machinery of justice to pull that boy out
of its grinders. But he was guilty; what was to be done with him? I
didn't know. I said I would take care of him myself, but I didn't know
what I meant to do, except to visit him and his mother at their home.
And I did visit them, often, and--well, we--his mother and I, with the
boy helping--we saved the boy, and today he is a fine young fellow,
industrious, self-respecting, and a friend of the Court.'"

So deep was the impression that this case made upon Judge Lindsey that
he could not keep from thinking about it. As he thought, he made up
his mind that boys and girls should not be tried in the same court
with grown people. He also concluded that in trying a boy the
important thing was not _what_ he had done, but _why_ he had done it.
To discover and remove the cause of the crime was of much greater
importance than punishing him after the crime had been committed.

Furthermore, he thought it very wrong to put a boy in a prison with
hardened criminals. He looked upon the prison not as a place where men
are made better but