o' prayehs,
niggah, fo' yo' time--has--come!'

"Billy he don't want hit nobody, but this-heah Gawge he drunk, an' Billy
_have_ t' hit 'im. Well, suh, what you think this Gawge done? He go have
Billy 'rested. _Yes_, suh! But you can't tell Judge Crutchfield nothin'.
Next mo'nin' in p'leece co't he say to Billy: 'I fine you twenty-five
dollahs, fo' hittin' this old gray-haihed man.' Yes, _suh_! 'at 's a way
Judge Crutchfield is. Can't tell _him_ nothin'. He jes' set up theh on
de bench, an' he chaw tobacco, an' he heah de cases, an' he spit, an'
evvy time he spit he spit a fine. Yes, _suh_! He spit like dis: 'Pfst!
Five dollahs!'--'Pfst! Ten dollahs!'--'Pfst! Fifteen dollahs!'--just how
he feel. He suttinly is some judge, 'at man."

Encouraged by this account of police court justice as meted out to the
Richmond negro, my companion and I did visit Justice Crutchfield's
court.

The room in the basement of the City Hall was crowded. All the benches
were occupied and many persons, white and black, were standing up. Among
the members of the audience--for the performance is more like a
vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious
tribunal--I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which
was playing in Richmond at the time--these doubtless drawn to the place
by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia
Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model
for his exceedingly amusing monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however,
told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G.
Brown, of Newport News, hold court.

At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage,
were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes;
while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark,
sat the judge--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy,
peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless
divination.

"William Taylor!" calls a court officer.

A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice. He is a sad
spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon's plaster. The
judge looks at him over his glasses. The hearing proceeds as follows:

COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)--Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.)

JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Sunday drunk--Five dollars.

It is over.

The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar. He is a short, wide
negro, very b