Part 17 (2/2)
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The judge s.h.i.+fted the quid in his cheek, blew his nose, and resumed:
”How difficult it is, then, for me to determine the precise measure of your punishment! Knowing that the quality of mercy is not strained, and that as we forgive so shall we be forgiven, how painful it is for me to draw the line between undue leniency and the demands of outraged law!
Considering, I say, all these things, that are so much in your favor--your youth, your happy home, where the holiest influences are shed upon your path, where parental love covers you with its most gracious benediction, where your devoted mother lies stricken with anguish at the sin of her idolized son, where your aged father has his gray hairs brought down in sorrow to the grave, where you have been nurtured and admonished and taught to do right--”
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”Certainly he can't intend to give me more than one month,” said Busby to the tipstaff.
”Considering that this is your first offence; that your conduct hitherto has been that of an honest young man, and that the lesson you have learned from this bitter and terrible experience will sink deeply into your heart; that you have opening out to you in the possible future a life of usefulness and honor, with a prospect of redeeming this single error and winning for yourself a respected name--”
”He can't decently give me more than twenty days after that,” suggested Busby.
The judge, after wiping the moisture from his eyes and borrowing a morsel of tobacco from the prosecuting attorney, continued:
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”In view of all these extenuating circ.u.mstances, in view of the fact, fully recognized by this court, that justice is not revengeful, but exercises its highest prerogative in leading the fallen to reformation and moral improvement--in view, I say, of the fact that you are in the very spring-time of your existence, with the vista of the future opening out with alluring brightness before you and giving promise of higher and better things--in view of those sorrowing parents the child of whose prayers you are; of that mother who guided your infant steps and cared for you with the yearning tenderness of maternal love, of that venerable father who looks upon you as the staff of his old age; considering, too, that this is your first misstep from the path of duty--”
”Two weeks as sure as death!” exclaimed Mr. Busby, joyfully, to the officer beside him.
”The path of duty,” continued the judge, ”and that up to the moment of the commission of the deed you had been above suspicion and above reproach,--in view of all this,” remarked the judge, ”I have thought it my duty, minister of the law though I am, and bound though I am by my oath to vindicate the insulted majesty of that law--”
”If he gives me more than one week, I will never trust signs again,”
murmured Busby.
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”I say that although I am bound to administer justice with an impartial hand, I feel it to be inc.u.mbent upon me in this particular instance, in consequence of these extenuating circ.u.mstances, to mete it out so that, while the law will be vindicated, you may be taught that it is not cruel or unkind, but rather is capable of giving the first generous impulse to reformation.”
”He certainly means to let me off altogether,” exclaimed Busby.
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”In view, then, of these mitigating circ.u.mstances of your youth, your previous good character, your happy prospects, your afflicted parents and your own sincere repentance, the sentence of the court is: That you, George Was.h.i.+ngton Busby, the prisoner at the bar, do pay seventy-five cents rest.i.tution money and the costs of this trial, and that on Sat.u.r.day next you be whipped with twenty lashes on the bare back, well laid on; that you be imprisoned for six months in the county jail, and that you wear a convict's jacket in public for one year after your release. Sheriff, remove the prisoner from the court.”
Then the judge beamed a mournful but sympathetic smile upon Busby, secured the loan of another atom of tobacco, spat on the floor and called up the next case.
Mrs. Adeler, you laugh and say that I have indulged in gross exaggeration in reproducing the sentence. Not so. I tell you that I have known a boy of thirteen to have that condemnation, couched in almost precisely those words, hurled at him from the bench of the New Castle court-house because he stole a bit of iron said to be worth seventy-five cents. And I was present among the spectators in the jail yard when the sheriff lashed the lad until he writhed with pain. It was infamous--utterly infamous. I cannot, perhaps, justly accuse the judge who imposed the sentence upon the boy of indulging in the lecture which has just been quoted. That, as I have said, may be attributed to a magistrate who lived ten centuries ago. But the sentence is genuine, and it was given recently. I do not blame the judge. He acted under the authority of statutes which were created by other hands. But the law is savagery itself, and the humane men of this State should sweep it from existence.
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CHAPTER XIV.
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