ht, to the very last. You see I used
to watch him. Never gave 'imself time to eat; never had a penny in the
house. All went in rent and leather. How he lived so long I don't know.
He regular let his fire go out. He was a character. But he made good
boots."

"Yes," I said, "he made good boots."

And I turned and went out quickly, for I did not want that youth to know
that I could hardly see.
1911

THE GRAND JURY--IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME

Read that piece of paper, which summoned me to sit on the Grand Jury at
the approaching Sessions, lying in a scoop of the shore close to the
great rollers of the sea--that span of eternal freedom, deprived just
there of too great liberty by the word "Atlantic." And I remember
thinking, as I read, that in each breaking wave was some particle which
had visited every shore in all the world--that in each sparkle of hot
sunlight stealing that bright water up into the sky, was the microcosm of
all change, and of all unity.

PANEL I

In answer to that piece of paper, I presented myself at the proper place
in due course and with a certain trepidation. What was it that I was
about to do? For I had no experience of these things. And, being too
early, I walked a little to and fro, looking at all those my partners in
this matter of the purification of Society. Prosecutors, witnesses,
officials, policemen, detectives, undetected, pressmen, barristers,
loafers, clerks, cadgers, jurymen. And I remember having something of
the feeling that one has when one looks into a sink without holding one's
nose. There was such uneasy hurry, so strange a disenchanted look, a
sort of spiritual dirt, about all that place, and there were--faces! And
I thought: To them my face must seem as their faces seem to me!

Soon I was taken with my accomplices to have my name called, and to be
sworn. I do not remember much about that process, too occupied with
wondering what these companions of mine were like; but presently we all
came to a long room with a long table, where nineteen lists of
indictments and nineteen pieces of blotting paper were set alongside
nineteen pens. We did not, I recollect, speak much to one another, but
sat down, and studied those nineteen lists. We had eighty-seven cases on
which to pronounce whether the bill was true or no; and the clerk assured
us we should get through them in two days at most. Over the top of these
indictments I regarded my eighteen fellows. There