Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again | Page 9

go for a doctor, now, you bet you had."
The officer delivered a sudden rap on our man's knuckles with his club,
that sent him scampering and howling among the sleeping forms on the
flag-stones, and an answering burst of laughter came from the half
dozen policemen idling about the railed desk in the middle of the
dungeon.
But there was a putting of heads together out there presently, and a
conversing in low voices, which seemed to show that our man's talk
had made an impression; and presently an officer went away in a hurry,
and shortly came back with a person who entered our cell and felt the
bruised man's pulse and threw the glare of a lantern on his drawn face,
striped with blood, and his glassy eyes, fixed and vacant. The doctor
examined the man's broken head also, and presently said:
"If you'd called me an hour ago I might have saved this man, may be
too late now."
Then he walked out into the dungeon and the officers surrounded him,
and they kept up a low and earnest buzzing of conversation for fifteen
minutes, I should think, and then the doctor took his departure from the
prison. Several of the officers now came in and worked a little with the
wounded man, but toward daylight he died.
It was the longest, longest night! And when the daylight came filtering
reluctantly into the dungeon at last, it was the grayest, dreariest, saddest
daylight! And yet, when an officer by and by turned off the sickly
yellow gas flame, and immediately the gray of dawn became fresh and
white, there was a lifting of my spirits that acknowledged and believed
that the night was gone, and straightway I fell to stretching my sore
limbs, and looking about me with a grateful sense of relief and a
returning interest in life. About me lay the evidences that what seemed
now a feverish dream and a nightmare was the memory of a reality
instead. For on the boards lay four frowsy, ragged, bearded vagabonds,
snoring-- one turned end-for-end and resting an unclean foot, in a
ruined stocking, on the hairy breast of a neighbour; the young boy was

uneasy, and lay moaning in his sleep; other forms lay half revealed and
half concealed about the floor; in the furthest corner the gray light fell
upon a sheet, whose elevations and depressions indicated the places of
the dead man's face and feet and folded hands; and through the dividing
bars one could discern the almost nude forms of the two exiles from the
county jail twined together in a drunken embrace, and sodden with
sleep.
By and by all the animals in all the cages awoke, and stretched
themselves, and exchanged a few cuffs and curses, and then began to
clamour for breakfast. Breakfast was brought in at last--bread and
beefsteak on tin plates, and black coffee in tin cups, and no grabbing
allowed. And after several dreary hours of waiting, after this, we were
all marched out into the dungeon and joined there by all manner of
vagrants and vagabonds, of all shades and colours and nationalities,
from the other cells and cages of the place; and pretty soon our whole
menagerie was marched up-stairs and locked fast behind a high railing
in a dirty room with a dirty audience in it. And this audience stared at
us, and at a man seated on high behind what they call a pulpit in this
country, and at some clerks and other officials seated below him--and
waited. This was the police court.
The court opened. Pretty soon I was compelled to notice that a culprit's
nationality made for or against him in this court. Overwhelming proofs
were necessary to convict an Irishman of crime, and even then his
punishment amounted to little; Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians had
strict and unprejudiced justice meted out to them, in exact accordance
with the evidence; negroes were promptly punished, when there was
the slightest preponderance of testimony against them; but Chinamen
were punished always, apparently. Now this gave me some uneasiness,
I confess. I knew that this state of things must of necessity be
accidental, because in this country all men were free and equal, and one
person could not take to himself an advantage not accorded to all other
individuals. I knew that, and yet in spite of it I was uneasy.
And I grew still more uneasy, when I found that any succored and
befriended refugee from Ireland or elsewhere could stand up before that
judge and swear, away the life or liberty or character of a refugee from
China; but that by the law of the land the Chinaman could not testify
against the Irishman. I was really and truly uneasy, but still