Judge — July 16, 1921 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ay p ne i Np | ni \) N i iM The TRY to dodge, without avail. the peelers who would run me in; I spend my weary days in jail, where it is hard to sing and grin. There are so many laws, these times, a fellow has no chance, gadzooks; he’s thrown in jail for foolish crimes he didn’t know were on the books. And Justice is a hollow wheeze, a dismal joke that’s on the bum; inspectors hide behind the trees and pinch me when they see me come. Last month I bought a new sedan and took her out to tour a while; along the pike she bravely ran for fourteen-sixteenths of a mile. And then a speed cop, stern and dour, came from behind a near-by tree; “You hit up forty miles an hour,” he said, and left a writ with me. Next day he found my lenses wrong, and summoned me to court again; the judge put up a dance and song and touched me for twelve iron men. Next day I parked my gaudy boat beside a fireplug, in the town; a peeler came and By Warr Mason Illustration by RaLPpH BARTON got my goat, and Justice trimmed me good and brown. And then my cut-out made a noise that stirred the anger of the law; and now I’m herding with the boys in prison, with its moldy straw. They gathered all the coin I had in fines and costs and things like those; whate’er I did I got in bad, and merely multiplied my.woes. One day I bought a pint of hops, to make some yeast, the old-time way; and I was pinched by seven cops and hauled to prison in a dray. For hops, it seems, are sinful herbs that wretches use for making beer; the jurist sprung some moral blurbs, and said I'd stay in jail a year. I dug a tunnel from my cell, and on the corner made a speech; I stood and argued wildly well that Justice surely is a peach. “T pay my taxes like a man,” I cried in loud and ringing tones; “I live upon a frugal plan and try to save my hard- earned bones. I try to be a shining light, a grand example to the young; I strive to walk the path of right, and yet I’m always 13 Martyr being stung. I cannot breathe the night air in, but some inspector will exclaim, ‘The breath you drew smelled strong of gin, and I must camp upon your frame.’” And even as I made lament, the cops broke in upon my wail, and back to custody I went, and drew nine years for breaking jail. And here I sit and smoke my pipe, and old maids tell me, through the bars, the day’s at hand, the time is ripe, when pipes must go, and eke cigars. I think about our noble sires, who died that freedom might prevail; if they could come, on rubber tires, and see posterity in jail! Alas, that phantom caravan would see the costly freedom dead; the hoose- gow waits for every man whose nose may have a tint of red. The tolbooth stands with open doors to welcome and to gather in the criminal who rashly pours his forty drops of kickless gin. My skies are dark that once were blue, and wearily I go my ways; no matter what I chance to do, I draw ten dollars or ten days.