The first prisoner sentenced was a young white man, convicted several days before of manslaughter.  The deed was done in the heat of passion, under circumstances of great provocation, during a quarrel about a woman.  The prisoner was admonished of the sanctity of human life, and sentenced to one year in the penitentiary.

The next case was that of a young clerk, eighteen or nineteen years of age, who had committed a forgery in order to procure the means to buy lottery tickets.  He was well connected, and the case would not have been prosecuted if the judge had not refused to allow it to be nolled, and, once brought to trial, a conviction could not have been avoided.

“You are a young man,” said the judge gravely, yet not unkindly, “and your life is yet before you.  I regret that you should have been led into evil courses by the lust for speculation, so dangerous in its tendencies, so fruitful of crime and misery.  I am led to believe that you are sincerely penitent, and that, after such punishment as the law cannot remit without bringing itself into contempt, you will see the error of your ways and follow the strict path of rectitude.  Your fault has entailed distress not only upon yourself, but upon your relatives, people of good name and good family, who suffer as keenly from your disgrace as you yourself.  Partly out of consideration for their feelings, and partly because I feel that, under the circumstances, the law will be satisfied by the penalty I shall inflict, I sentence you to imprisonment in the county jail for six months, and a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of this action.”

“The jedge talks well, don’t he?” whispered one spectator to another.

“Yes, and kinder likes ter hear hisse’f talk,” answered the other.

“Ben Davis, stand up,” ordered the judge.

He might have said “Ben Davis, wake up,” for the jailer had to touch the prisoner on the shoulder to rouse him from his stupor.  He stood up, and something of the hunted look came again into his eyes, which shifted under the stern glance of the judge.

“Ben Davis, you have been convicted of larceny, after a fair trial before twelve good men of this county.  Under the testimony, there can be no doubt of your guilt.  The case is an aggravated one.  You are not an ignorant, shiftless fellow, but a man of more than ordinary intelligence among your people, and one who ought to know better.  You have not even the poor excuse of having stolen to satisfy hunger or a physical appetite.  Your conduct is wholly without excuse, and I can only regard your crime as the result of a tendency to offenses of this nature, a tendency which is only too common among your people; a tendency which is a menace to civilization, a menace to society itself, for society rests upon the sacred right of property.  Your opinions, too, have been given a wrong turn; you have been heard to utter sentiments which, if disseminated among an ignorant people, would breed discontent, and give rise to strained relations between them and their best friends, their old masters, who understand their real nature and their real needs, and to whose justice and enlightened guidance they can safely trust.  Have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you?”