Does that sound like justice to you?  It does to me; it does to the eight million women in the world who have learned to think in human terms.

CHAPTER VII

BREAKING THE GREAT TABOO

At the threshold of that quarter of old New York called Greenwich Village stands Jefferson Market Court.  Almost concealed behind the towering structure of the Sixth Avenue Elevated, the building by day is rather inconspicuous.  But when night falls, swallowing up the neighborhood of tangled streets and obscure alleyways, Jefferson Market assumes prominence.  High up in the square brick tower an illuminated clock seems perpetually to be hurrying its pointing hands toward midnight.  From many windows, barred for the most part, streams an intense white light.  Above an iron-guarded door at the side of the building floats a great globe of light, and beneath its glare, through the iron-guarded door, there passes, every week-day night in the year, a long procession of prodigals.

The guarded door seldom admits any one as important, so to speak, as a criminal.  The criminal’s case waits for day.  The Night Court in Jefferson Market sits in judgment only on the small fry caught in the dragnet of the police.  Tramps, vagrants, drunkards, brawlers, disturbers of the peace, speeding chauffeurs, licenseless peddlers, youths caught red-handed shooting craps or playing ball in the streets,—­these are the men with whom the Night Court deals.  But it is not the men we have come to see.

[Illustration:  MISS MAUDE E. MINER]

The women of the Night Court.  Prodigal daughters!  Between December, 1908, and December, 1909, no less than five thousand of them passed through the guarded door, under the blaze of the electric lights.  There is never an hour, from nine at night until three in the morning, when the prisoners’ bench in Jefferson Market Court is without its full quota of women.  Old—­prematurely old, and young—­pitifully young; white and brown; fair and faded; sad and cynical; starved and prosper ous; rag-draped and satin-bedecked; together they wait their turn at judgment.

Quietly moving back and forth before the prisoners’ bench you see a woman, tall, graceful, black-gowned.  She is the salaried probation officer, modern substitute for the old-time volunteer mission worker.  The probation officer’s serious blue eyes burn with no missionary zeal.  There is no spark of sentimental pity in the keen gaze she turns on each new arrival.

When the bench is full of women the judge turns to her to inquire:  “Anybody there you want, Miss Miner?”

Miss Miner usually shakes her head.  She diagnoses her cases like a physician, and she wastes no time on incurables.

Once in a while, perhaps several times in the course of a night, Miss Miner touches a girl on the arm.  At once the girl rises and follows the probation officer into an adjoining room.  If she is what she appears, young in evil, if she has a story which rings true, a story of poverty and misfortune, rather than of depravity, she goes not back to the prisoners’ bench.  When her turn at judgment comes Miss Miner stands beside her, and in a low voice meant only for the judge, she tells the facts.  The girl weeps as she listens.  To hear one’s troubles told is sometimes more terrible than to endure them.