of
mine had fought and died for was the right of trial by jury. This was
my heritage, stained sacred by their blood, and it devolved upon me to
stand up for it. All right, I threatened to myself; just wait till he
gets to me.

He got to me. My name, whatever it was, was called, and I stood up.
The bailiff said, "Vagrancy, your Honor," and I began to talk. But the
judge began talking at the same time, and he said, "Thirty days." I
started to protest, but at that moment his Honor was calling the name
of the next hobo on the list. His Honor paused long enough to say to
me, "Shut up!" The bailiff forced me to sit down. And the next moment
that next hobo had received thirty days and the succeeding hobo was
just in process of getting his.

When we had all been disposed of, thirty days to each stiff, his
Honor, just as he was about to dismiss us, suddenly turned to the
teamster from Lockport--the one man he had allowed to talk.

"Why did you quit your job?" his Honor asked.

Now the teamster had already explained how his job had quit him, and
the question took him aback.

"Your Honor," he began confusedly, "isn't that a funny question to
ask?"

"Thirty days more for quitting your job," said his Honor, and the
court was closed. That was the outcome. The teamster got sixty days
all together, while the rest of us got thirty days.

We were taken down below, locked up, and given breakfast. It was a
pretty good breakfast, as prison breakfasts go, and it was the best I
was to get for a month to come.

As for me, I was dazed. Here was I, under sentence, after a farce of a
trial wherein I was denied not only my right of trial by jury, but my
right to plead guilty or not guilty. Another thing my fathers had
fought for flashed through my brain--habeas corpus. I'd show them. But
when I asked for a lawyer, I was laughed at. Habeas corpus was all
right, but of what good was it to me when I could communicate with no
one outside the jail? But I'd show them. They couldn't keep me in jail
forever. Just wait till I got out, that was all. I'd make them sit up.
I knew something about the law and my own rights, and I'd expose their
maladministration of justice. Visions of damage suits and sensational
newspaper headlines were dancing before my eyes when the jailers came
in and began hustling us out into the main office.

A policeman snapped a handcuff on my right wrist. (Ah, ha, thought I,
a new indignity. Just wait till I get out.) On