the path of that duty.

Superhuman in wisdom, thrice blest in luck is the bluecoat who
conscientiously can live up to his own ideals, carry out the law as
written by his superiors without being sent to "rusticate with the
goats," or being demoted for stepping upon the toes of some of those
same superiors!

Officer Bobbie Burke betook himself to the Night Court to lodge his
complaint against Jimmie the Monk. The woman, Dutch Annie, sniveling
and sobbing, was lodged in a cell near the gangster before being
brought before the rail to face the magistrate.

Burke saw that they could not communicate with each other, and so hoped
that he could have his own story accepted by the magistrate. He stood
by the door of the crowded detention room, which opened into a larger
courtroom, where the prisoners were led one by one to the prisoner's
dock--in this case, a hand-rail two feet in front of the long desk of
the judge, while that worthy was seated on a platform which enabled him
to look down at the faces of the arraigned.

It was an apparently endless procession.

The class of arrests was monotonous. Three of every four cases were
those of street women who had been arrested by "plain clothes" men or
detectives for solicitation on the street.

The accusing officer took a chair at the left of the magistrate. The
uniformed attendant handed the magistrate the affidavits of complaint.
The judge mechanically scrawled his name at the bottom of the papers,
glanced at the words of the arraignments, and then scowled over the
edge of his desk at the flashily dressed girls before him. They all
seemed slight variations on the same mould.

Perhaps one girl would simulate some hysterical sobs, and begin by
protesting her innocence. Another would be hard and indifferent. A
third, indignant.

"What about this, officer?" the judge would ask. "Where did you see
this woman, what did you say, what did she say, and what happened?"

The detective, in a voice and manner as mechanical as that of the
judge, would mumble his oft repeated story, giving the exact minute of
his observations, the actions of the woman in accosting different
pedestrians and in her final approach to him.

"How many times before have you been arrested, girl?" the magistrate
would growl.

Sometimes the girls would admit the times; in most cases their memories
were defective, until the accusing officer would cite past history.
This girl had been arrested and paro