Chapter Five

132Before me lies a mountain of "clippings" from the "Commercial Advertiser" of the time when I was connected with it. The clippings contain a portion of the reports and articles that I wrote then for the newspaper.

Once I spent a whole Sunday at a "Home" (an old-age home) for old ship captains, somewhere on Long Island. I chatted with them, put questions to them about their experiences of bygone days, their voyages, their interesting adventures. I listened to countless interesting things and became acquainted with a few characters.

With one of the old ship captains I talked for a long while. He asked me to visit him again, and some few weeks later, on a Sunday, I came there a second time. He took me off to a good friend of his, not far from the "Home." It was at the shore of the Long Island Sound, and they took me to go sailing on a tiny little yacht.

It was around four o'clock in the afternoon, and the day was a fine one — the sky tenderly blue and the blue sea calm as a mirror. A stretch of blue water was full of133white "catboats" (sailing skiffs). The hundreds of sails looked from afar like a host of white summer birds. We sailed about for a good while. The sun began to set. A part of the sky had glowed fiery red, and a part had kindled with golden flames. All around it was quiet and half-dark.

In such a moment it seems to you that what you see in the sky is like a glimpse of the heavens beyond — a scene from the other world.

I pointed this out to my companions. I waxed lyrical about the host of catboats that looked like white summer birds upon the still blue water; and pointed again to the flaming sky.

They merely answered that it was "really beautiful." I saw that they preferred to keep silent, and I too fell quiet.

A little later the captain spoke up to me:

— You must be very religious, isn't that so?

— What makes you say that? — I asked.

— Because you think a great deal about the other world.

I tried to explain to him that when I say the beautiful evening sky looks to me like a scene from the other world, it is only a fancy; that it merely presents itself to me that way. But I saw that he did not understand what I meant. He held to his own view, that I was very pious and often thought about God and the other world.

Once I met with a group of sailors who had lost their ship at sea, in a storm, and had barely saved themselves alive. The story of their peril was interesting not only because of the facts, but also because of the manner in which they re-134told it. A few of the sailors were interesting fellows.

Another group of seamen, who had saved themselves from a sinking ship, were accused of not having done their duty while the passengers sought rescue from death. The sailors denied the accusations, defended themselves, cursed, hurled sharp little words. I had a conversation with them. In the course of it I drew them out about their personal lives and heard from them several little tales of the richest human interest.

One evening I spent at a "cakewalk"^* in Madison Square Garden. The Negroes have a singular artistic sense. In their bearing, too, they are very musical; to a beautiful melody they respond. It is also easy to work upon them with dramatic or tenderly sentimental effects. To feeling-filled little songs and to hearty laughter they are as susceptible as children; and as regards graceful lines, or movements, they have a keen sense.

135of when it was, and the scene captivated me. The next morning I depicted it in the newspaper.

One of the great, beautiful ships that travel by day over the splendid Hudson from New York to Albany had been rebuilt and much enlarged. And I was sent to describe the first voyage of the enlarged ship.

The Hudson is truly one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. I described it, and my feuilleton was afterward reprinted in the newspapers published in all the towns and townlets that lie along the Hudson.

Once Steffens said to me that someone had told him of an interesting little town in New Jersey.

— It is about an hour and a half from New York. — Yet there are old people there who have never once been to New York. — he explained.

I went over there and found a little town that gave the impression as though it had remained frozen in time since Washington's day. I spent a full day and night there, and afterward described it with its old-fashioned characters.

Almost the same impression was made upon me by the little town of Port Washington, Long Island. Today it has a fair-sized population and is almost a part of New York. But then it was cut off from the railway that goes there. It too had some quaint characters. Finally, in the summer of 1898, when I was working at the "Commercial Advertiser," a little stretch of railroad was built that joined Port Washington to the great city.

136The little town held a great festival, which I attended. People gathered from the surrounding townlets and from many farms. There was a procession with music, a genuinely American banquet for several hundred people, with genuinely American speeches and recitations.

One speaker, an 82-year-old farmer, read his speech in rhyme. His voice was very weak. But at each rhyme he shouted the rhyming word out with all his might. So one heard nothing more than the rhymes.

As waitresses at the long tables served all the women and girls of Port Washington. Quaint small-town witticisms flew about. It seemed to me that the scene was taking place in the 16th or 17th century.

The chief speaker was no longer a country bumpkin. He was Bourke Cockran, one of the most famous orators in America. He had his summer quarters in Port Washington; thus he had come not as a guest, but as one of their own. A speech was also given by the president of the railway (Long Island Railroad Company), but his two speeches did not lessen the impression of the old-fashioned atmosphere all around, for both spoke and bore themselves as though they had come up out of an entirely different world.

A few years before these lines were written, I happened to pass through Port Washington. It was impossible to recognize that little town in it. Everything is built up and blooming with life. Almost all of Long Island is like that.

137A great deal of interesting material was furnished by the war between the United States and Spain over the island of Cuba.

The city was full of unusual scenes. One heard new sounds; one saw new colors. Military music resounded. The flags of infantry, cavalry, and sailors fluttered. In the armories (barracks for the militia) recruits were drilled. With a certain hope and anxiety, relatives and friends gathered to take leave of the soldiers who were departing for the front.

To describe such scenes was my job.

Not far from New York, on Long Island, there was a camp where the recruits learned the military trade. In the armories they were drilled only as a preliminary. The real work of "breaking in" the recruit and making a war-soldier of him took place in the camps, and one of my assignments was in that camp on Long Island.

I spent a few days and nights there; watching how the "green" soldiers drilled on the parade grounds, how they cooked, how they ate, how they learned to shoot. I ate with them, slept with them in a tent, heard their tales and jokes.

The chauvinist spirit, which flared up so fiercely twenty years later when the country entered the World War, then barely "smoldered." Only a small138number of the soldiers with whom I spoke, whether in the camp or in the armories, showed any interest in the causes of the war. Many said openly that they were going because it was interesting — simply an adventure, a sport.

In the regimental camp I found an acquaintance: an Irish-American young man who had earlier served as a headwaiter (chief waiter) in a restaurant where I had often dined. When we got to talking, he told me quite simply that his occupation had become loathsome to him, and that the war was for him a way to pass the time.

A few of those who had enlisted to fight in the Philippine Islands declared to me even openly that they expected to find a good future for themselves there. America would take the islands; it was a rich region, and in American hands it would flourish. Thus, for a young American there would be good prospects there.

Wounded men began to arrive from the battlefields, from the fleet and from the army. The first to be brought over were marines, soldiers who serve aboard warships, not as sailors but as soldiers. The marines had fought the first battle. Compared with the bloody clashes of the World War this was a trifle; but at the time it was sensational news, and I received the assignment.

The wounded lay in the Navy Hospital in Brooklyn. I went over there, spoke with many of the marines, and listened to their accounts of the bloody encounter.

139One of the wounded was a young Jewish man from Pitt Street, by the name of Jacobs. He had borne himself bravely in the battle and had received a medal. When I entered the great corridor, I saw a tall, healthy fellow, with a Jewish face, dragging himself along on crutches, with a bandaged leg that hung in the air. That was Jacobs.

We had a long conversation, and he told me interesting details.

Later a large hospital ship arrived from the battlefields, with surgeons (military doctors), nurses, and so on. The ship had put in at Tompkinsville, Staten Island. I rode out to it on a small boat, and I spent a whole day aboard it.

I went from bed to bed, spoke with the wounded, and put various questions to them. First I asked each one:

— What did you feel when you found yourself under fire and the angel of death hovered about you?

When I had finished with this question and noted down all the answers, I went on to a second:

— What sound does a bullet make when you hear it fly through the air?

140many wounds. How the soul still held within him was incomprehensible, not only to me, but even to the doctors.

He was a blond, deathly-pale man of some thirty-odd years, with a yellow little beard, with half-extinguished blue eyes, with unusually white teeth. He spoke like an educated man.

He was from Canada, and had come specially to the United States with the purpose of taking part in the war. He had done so not because he was an idealist, not because he believed it was a struggle for a republic, for the liberation of Cuba — he explained — but quite simply: he had craved sensational experiences.

— Afraid of death? — he repeated my question in his weak but clear voice. — No such feeling have I. I am an atheist. I do not believe that there is a God, or that after death anything will happen. Therefore I have no fear of dying. There are many atheists in the world; but rarely is one of them deeply convinced that there is no God and no other world. I am such a one. Therefore I have no fear of death.

All this he uttered with measured words, in a feeble but distinct voice, and as he spoke he kept his blue eyes fixed upon me. From second to second it seemed to me that he was already speaking from the other world. His gaze both enchanted and frightened me.

I do not know whether he remained alive. The "surgeons" told me that there was very little hope. One of them told me to speak with him as little as possible, because he was too weak; but another, an older one, declared that if the patient did not141recover, then I should not be hindered. I chatted with him for a few minutes more.

One of the answers I received to my question about the sound of the bullets was given me by a Negro. He too had many wounds; and his face was almost entirely covered with bandages; only a bit of mouth could be seen, and one eye. The eye shone with a black gleam out of the white linen wrapping.

— How did the bullet sound to you, when you heard it flying? —

— Like a trolley car (an electric tramway) — he answered.

He meant the sharp, hard, ringing sound of the elevated rail.

This comparison was afterward declared by everyone to be the best of all the answers I received to my question. As a result of these conversations I wrote two feuilletons.

I had "interviews" with the highest generals of the war, including the famous Wheeler, the commander-in-chief Shafter, and Admiral Schley, and later with Dewey, the famous chief admiral.

With the small-built Wheeler I spent time deep into the night. It happened thus:

When I entered his hotel apartment, it was twilight and the room was dark.

— Well, the lamps must be lit, — he said.

— There is no need — I answered jokingly, — your uniform shines out of the darkness, and it is142very interesting. It will put us in a poetic mood.

He laughed and said:

— Good, let it be so! Although war in itself is no poetry. Nor is a war, either!

We chatted for a few hours. He was a peculiar man, and he spoke peculiarly too. When I was already about to take my leave, he would not let me. He had his servant ring for the waiter.

— Let us eat supper and go on chatting, — he said.

Food and wine were brought. We ate and talked again. Not only about the war. About life itself in the world. I tried to explain to him the general socialist idea, and he heard me out. But I had to give him my word that I would not mention it in the newspaper, nor the side matters that he himself had said.

During the time of the war it often fell to me to spend a whole night on an assignment — when, for example, a ship was expected carrying some important personage of the army or fleet, or with wounded soldiers or sailors.

In such a case there would gather reporters from all the newspapers of New York, Brooklyn, Newark, and correspondents from many other cities. Sometimes the number would reach a hundred or more.

Many hours we would spend thus, waiting143at the harbor. Sometimes almost a whole day and night, chatting, either all in one crowd, or dividing ourselves into groups. We told one another tales, joked, outdid one another with anecdotes, mostly dirty ones. We talked about interesting assignments, characters; described politicians, police captains, detectives. We laughed at city editors, loved city editors, took delight in their flashes of wit. We told about interesting "beats" — the kind that were founded on courage or chutzpah, on cleverness or human understanding.

Sometimes the credit goes to the reporter. But sometimes it is chiefly owed to the journalistic acumen and the sleuthing spirit of the city editor. Some city editors are simply geniuses in their craft, and in the more important cases they would distinguish themselves with interesting ideas.

One mediocre reporter used to mimic, with great talent, every city editor for whom he had worked; and he had worked for many, for he was a "rolling stone" (a stone that is forever rolling), one of those who hate to stay long in the same city or in the same post. He and a few others would tell of comic incidents, or comic mistakes, that had been made in this or that editorial office or police station.

One reporter had whole heaps of humorous stories, and was altogether full of humor. But the moment he took a pen in hand, all that would vanish. His reports were written very dryly.

Often a debate would arise — not about some idea, some thought, but about a fact, or about some144practical question. And sometimes the debate would turn into a bet — for a new hat, a box of cigars, or for a dinner with wine. The dispute was about the number of sails that a certain kind of sailing ship carries.

One of the two parties, a reporter who wore mutton-chop whiskers (which were by then already out of fashion), cried out:

— I was a sailor. I know what I am talking about.

And the other, who was the above-mentioned humorist, laughed at him:

— You were a sailor! — he said, — Tell that to the marines^*.

An interesting play on words came of it. But the first man grew very angry and began to curse and threaten. The humorist squared off at him with his fist and elbow. Then someone congratulated the humorist on his pun and demanded that he stand a round of whiskey in honor of the joke. The company supported the proposal, the wit complied, and over the whiskey peace was made between the two who had quarreled.

From time to time, when there were no more important duties, I used to go over to the "Barge Office," where the newly arrived immigrants were kept, before the buildings on Ellis Island were finished.

145The "Barge Office" is located at the Battery, right next to the South Ferry.

At the immigrant station there occur, or used to occur, countless tragedies of life and comedies of life. Close relatives, devoted friends, mothers and sons, husbands and their wives, who had been separated for many years, meet here again. As these lines are being written, the number of migrants coming to America is very small, and the immigrant station is a relatively quiet place. But then it used to seethe there as in a cauldron. Very often the reunions took place through iron gratings, or through a wall of closely-woven wire.

I once witnessed a scene in which, through the wire net, I saw a Christian Hungarian woman catch sight of her only son, who had left home many years before. She flung herself at the wire and began to claw at it, like a maddened cat, clawing and screaming.

I was acquainted with every nook of the building and with every official. They already knew the special character of my observations, and they used to be helpful to me.

The professional interpreters of the station were for the most part the same officials who received the immigrant and put the first questions to him. Of some of them it was said that they knew a dozen languages. Mostly they could say only the few words that were needed to put those questions and to understand the immigrant's answers; and even so, their command of the languages was often a peculiar one. For example: one of these polyglots (masters of many languages) used to ask of every Jewish immi-146grant: "How much mazuma have you?" — and he was sure that there was no other word for money in Yiddish than "mazuma" (cash). Usually the immigrant would not understand this word either, and the linguist would have to explain by gesture what he meant.

But there were a few who really did know several languages. One of them, a German, took the matter up in the thorough German manner. He devoted time and effort to studying the Slavic languages, until he had learned them thoroughly.

The "matron," the woman who looked after the women immigrants, was a living library of romantic secrets.

When the newly arrived are led through, various officials stand and look them over. The matron is also among them. When, among those who march past, she notices a woman who must be detained, she takes her out of the marching file and leads her aside. Then she talks with her.

In those days people did not yet know the present restrictions and severities. There were, however, certain laws, and in many cases the immigrant would be detained, arrested. When an unmarried woman was "in a delicate condition" (or a woman whose husband had not seen her for a certain time), she would be among the detained. A woman who was about to give birth to an illegitimate child was not let in, unless someone was prepared to acknowledge the child.

She was a woman of some thirty-odd years, the matron, with hair like straw. The immigrants loved her, and someone had given her the name "the immigrants' mother." She told me many interesting things and pointed out many interesting characters.

147Once she presented to me a middle-aged Italian with a quite young Italian girl. She explained to me that the girl had just arrived and that this middle-aged man was her betrothed. He lived in New York and had a good business. The two had never seen each other before. The match had been concluded through letters, and the marriage ceremony through a proxy. He had seen her photograph and had taken a liking to her. He could not travel to Italy himself. So he had sent a friend of his to go through the ceremony with her, according to an Italian law that required it. From the standpoint of that Italian law they were already husband and wife even before they had laid eyes on each other.

He was twice as old as she, a simple, very dark-complexioned fellow. He sat there "drinking her in," gazing at her.

— A spring chicken (a tender young pullet) — he said to me in his Italian English, and the unctuous delight fairly dripped from his lips and his eyes.

She sat and looked on, as though it were all the same to her. Through an interpreter I asked her whether she felt happy.

— He is, after all, my husband, so I am happy — she answered.

He swelled with pleasure at her answer.

Among the scenes and situations that I observed with the help of the "matron" was also the following:

148A Czech, a man of about forty, had come to fetch his wife from the old country. He came with an eight- or nine-year-old grandchild. The grandchild was not by his wife, but by a stranger with whom he had become acquainted here in America. His lawful wife he had not seen for some ten years. He had told her frankly about the affair in a letter, and she had been willing to come under these circumstances. So he had brought the child as a gift for their reunion. His wife, very comely, very blond, not pretty but healthy as an oak, greeted the man and at once took the boy, looked him over as one looks over a calf at market, gave a smile and began to kiss him, as though he were her own child. The three of them went off into the city.

In another case the leading role was played by a Jewish woman, a stout but charming one, whom her husband refused to acknowledge. He had received a letter from the old country saying that she had been unfaithful to him. And she sat in the "detention pen" (the room for the detained) and did not stop talking to everyone who stood near her. She told the whole story to everyone and swore that she was innocent.

Once I noticed an Italian woman talking to the agent of the Italian immigrants' society. She had a good voice, and she uttered her words with such beautiful pronunciation and with such a lovely Italian melody that I could not keep myself from stopping to look and listen. As she pleaded, she gestured with her hand and her fingers, in the Italian manner, in time with her pleas. It almost seemed to me that she was declaiming some poem.

149— What is she saying? — I asked the agent.

— She says — he answered — "I can wash clothes; I can scrub floors; I can mind a child. Have pity on me, get me some kind of work and take me out of here."

— Get her a position in the opera — I said.

The agent laughed.

Another interesting scene that I observed among the Italian immigrants was the following:

Two women immigrants, an aunt and her niece, were quarreling. The aunt was an unmarried woman, no longer young, and her niece — a married young wife, very young indeed. They quarreled and reviled each other in fiery voices. In the course of it the aunt cried out:

— I will testify that you are a liar. You are not eighteen years old at all, but fifteen; and it is already a year since your wedding.

— And I will testify to the officials that you are much older than you said. You are not thirty years old at all, but forty-one. I will swear it by the Holy Mary.

There was no law that would have barred the little woman from America because at fifteen she was already married; she had simply had an ambition to make herself out older; and her aunt's words had so inflamed her that she screamed like a tigress.

Once, when I came there, a few of the officials pointed out to me a fiery girl who150was running back and forth, wringing her hands and speaking in a tone of supplication.

"You surely know Russian; perhaps you will understand what she is saying," they turned to me. "It is not Russian, nor Polish, nor Czech either. But it is some Slavic tongue. None of the others can understand what she is saying. Perhaps you will understand."

When I came up close to her, she threw herself upon me and began to speak in a tone of despair, like a madwoman. Her Slavic words sounded almost like Little Russian (Ukrainian). Such was the impression they made on me. It seemed to me that any moment now I would understand, and yet I did not understand. Finally one of the immigrants explained that it was Croatian. Croatian is almost Serbian. But she spoke a certain dialect and pronounced the words in such a way that those who understood Serbian could not understand her.

Her husband lived in Boston, and she thought that she was already there, only that they wanted to send her back to Croatia. She cried that she wanted to see her husband. They explained to her in Serbian the true situation and gave her to understand that a letter would be written to her husband. When she heard this, she sat down on the ground and out of joy laughed and wept hysterically. Through her tears her face shone.

The scene with the Croatian woman reminds me of a scene that I witnessed later — at Ellis Island, on one of the several visits that I made there after the immigrant station had been moved over to it.

151Some of the immigrants were taken up above, onto the roof garden. A young Polish woman of about forty began to scream and cry.

"I don't want to; I don't want to; I won't let myself!" she wailed.

Officials tried to calm her. But she pushed them away, struck them with her fists, and screamed.

She thought that this was a ship and that they were already sending her back to Europe. Ignorant as the wanderers were, they all understood that some immigrants were sent back. So she thought that she was one of the victims. A commotion arose, and I, speaking Russian to her, helped to calm her. In part she understood my words. But with the movements of my hands I had more success than with my Russian words. I showed her by signs that the roof did not move; that the building stood in one place; that it was not a ship.

In the several years that I was connected with the "Commercial Advertiser," six sensational criminal trials took place in New York, with which the entire press of the country was filled. I attended and reported on all of them.

One of them was a "kidnapping case." It concerned a stolen little girl, for whom the criminals demanded ransom money. In New York there had already once been such a story, and the child was never found. The mother of the little girl, who was now152had vanished, almost lost her mind, and millions of other mothers suffered together with her. In all the cities people read thirstily the dispatches about the case, hoping that the "kidnappers" would be caught.

We, the reporters of the various newspapers, a sizable group, used to wait at the little girl's parents' home, or at the police station, in case something new should be heard. While waiting, we told each other stories and cracked indecent jokes. Once, when we were at the parents' home, a stout journalist was amusing the crowd with very obscene rhymes.

"Stop it! This is not the place for it," I said to him. "Such a tragedy!"

"What are you, a priest?" he retorted. The others cast humorous glances at me. Then one of them said to me quietly:

"You take it too seriously. If you think that they have no hearts, you are mistaken. Every one of them would sacrifice himself to find the vanished little girl. But they like a bit of fun too."

Finally the kidnappers — a young couple — were caught. The baby was identified by them from her photograph, which had been printed in the newspapers. They were sentenced to a long term.

A second great trial concerned a couple who were accused of a "badger game" — that is, of luring a strange man into an intimate scene with the wife, catching them, and then forcing him to buy his way out of the husband's pretended rage. The couple belonged to "better" society. He was an intelligent man and had earlier held a post as American consul in Algiers. And she was the daughter of153a high judge in Atlanta, Georgia. Their victim paid the sum demanded, but afterward he told the whole story to the police. The accused woman was a very beautiful woman, with interesting red hair and alluring girlish eyes. They were tried separately. He was sentenced to nineteen years in prison.

His wife's trial was the chief sensation. One of the newspapers let out a piquant little piece of "news," that she was striving to bewitch the twelve men of the jury with her glances. There came to be a great fuss about her eyes. Newspapers printed special pictures of them. On one of these pictures, at a certain point of the eyes, there was a mark, and below it stood: "Right here lies the magic."

And there were people who took this seriously.

Finally the prosecutor demanded that the accused not look at the jury. But she did look, whether willingly or unwillingly. And the twelve jurors involuntarily looked at her eyes. It was like the story of the woman whom the Hasidic rebbe told that if she would not think about a white bear, she would have a child.

The chief prosecutor was an incompetent politician. He himself never used to conduct a trial. But this case caused such an uproar that he wanted to use it to draw attention to himself. So he himself took the testimony at the examination and delivered the closing speech. But he only demonstrated his incompetence. The jury was divided. And no second trial took place. She went free.

In the next great trial, which I atten-154ded, the man arrested was a handsome dentist by the name of Kennedy. He was accused of murdering a girl of the underworld, after she had given him a certain sum to bet at the races. She was found murdered in a hotel room, and in her corset a check with his signature was found. The check was worthless, for the dentist had no money in the bank. The prosecutor explained that he had gambled away the girl's money, given her the worthless check, and then killed her so that she could not accuse him. There were clear proofs against him. The hotel officials identified him as the man who had taken the room with the girl; in his apartment clear signs were found that there had been made the instrument with which the young woman was murdered. There was a whole series of other details that pointed to him as the murderer. At first he in fact confessed. But afterward he denied it. Among his neighbors he was popular. They liked him, and a couple of them testified that they had seen him going home (on Staten Island) at an hour when the hotel officials said he had been at the hotel.

Two of the lawyers in this sensational trial were Jews — Warhouse and Grossman. The first had, as a boy, been a fellow pupil of mine at the Christie Street School, when I attended it during the first year that I spent in America (second volume, pages 120–122).

As prosecutor the trial was conducted by an assistant district attorney (deputy prosecutor) by the name of John F. McIntyre. In his closing speech he demanded the death penalty, and he expressed it in the most brutal155manner. "This accused man," he cried out, pointing his finger at the dentist, "should be set in the electric chair, and through his body let an electric current pass, until he is dead!"

Kennedy was found guilty and sentenced to death.

When the trial was over, a couple of the reporters set about collecting signatures for an address, in which a high compliment was expressed to the judge, to the assistant district attorney, and to the jurors for the "just and able manner in which they had conducted the case." With indignation I refused to sign my name, declaring myself against the death penalty and reminding them of McIntyre's brutal words.

"You are a strange person, Cahan," one of the other reporters reproached me. "McIntyre is a man without gall. He spoke that way because he believed that his duty demanded it of him."

"Did his duty demand of him to speak like a bloodthirsty Indian?" I answered.

The other reporters measured me with their eyes, as if to say: "What kind of nut are you?" (crackpot).

And McIntyre was in fact a kind-hearted man.^*

Later a higher court, on technical grounds, set aside the verdict against Kennedy; and at the sec-156ond trial the jury could not agree. He went free.

The most sensational of all the criminal trials of those years was the Molineux case. Molineux was the son of a wealthy, prominent New York family. Officially he was tried on the charge that he had poisoned a woman. In reality, however, he was accused of having attempted to poison two men — the director of a Washington athletic club, of which he was a member, and another member of the same club. To both he had sent poison — so the prosecutor explained. The director was named Cornish and the club member Barnet. (The poison that was sent to Barnet reached its goal: Barnet died. But the poison that was supposed to kill Cornish instead killed a woman at whose place Cornish was lodging.)

Cornish, Molineux hated because of a clash in the club, and Barnet — because of a woman with whom he, Molineux, was in love. Molineux afterward married the heroine of the sensational story. When the trial took place, she used to come every day to the courtroom together with Molineux's parents, and when they would bring her husband in, they used to kiss each other like a couple in love.

She was described as a charming, aristocratic lady and as one of the figures in the romantic life that, according to unpublished reports, went on in the athletic club. And this enchantress had one eye. The other was a glass eye. From a distance it was not noticeable; but when one157looked more closely, one could see the flaw. She was slim, elegant, with an interesting smile. And yet one could not help wondering at the success she had with these wealthy gentlemen.

Curious eyes were drawn to her in the courtroom. People whispered about the dead Barnet and about the "ladies' days" in the said club. But this was founded only on rumors. At the trial these rumors were not admitted.

Molineux was a slim, not tall, elegantly dressed man of over thirty, with an intelligent American face, with a cheerful smile. The warm kisses that he used to give his wife in court used to raise a question among those present: was he not doing this deliberately, to show that he had no reason to be downcast?

The trial was one of the deepest and most tangled in the history of American criminal courts. The proofs against Molineux were "circumstantial evidence." They were founded chiefly on reason. The one who sent the poisons had concealed his identity according to a plan. He rented private mail boxes in two places to receive letters and packages. He called himself by the names of his two victims. At the place where he received the poison, which he later sent to Cornish, he called himself "Barnet," whereas at the place to which the poison was sent that he was to use to do away with Barnet, he gave his name as "Cornish." Later the proprietors of the mail boxes said that they recognized in Molineux the man who had at their places these158boxes rented — the supposed "Cornish" and the supposed "Barnet."

In the trial a false beard also played a role, and a manufacturer who said that Molineux had ordered the beard from him. But most of the time was taken up by handwriting experts. The matter concerned several letters that certain medicine companies had received. The assistant district attorney argued that Molineux had written them. According to his explanations, Molineux had done thus: on the letters with which he requested the medicine that he later sent (with poison) to Barnet, he signed himself "Cornish"; and on the letters that he addressed to the companies from which he requested the medicine that he later sent (also with poison) to Cornish, he signed himself "Barnet."

The assistant district attorney brought together all the famous handwriting experts of America, and each of them delivered a long lecture before the jury. In doing so he illustrated his explanations with chalk on a large school blackboard, like a teacher explaining a lesson to his class. And each of the jurors held a large book with photographs of all the letters in question.

The trial lasted thirteen weeks. When everything was finished, and people were waiting for the verdict, the sensational newspapers made special preparations. The curiosity in the city was great. It was a question of which newspaper would be the first to put out an "extra" with the result — a question of a single minute, perhaps. So one of the sensational newspapers had prepared carrier pigeons, the kind that know how to fly with a letter to a fixed point. With these pigeons a159official of the newspaper stood on a roof opposite the courthouse. It was arranged that one of the reporters should give a signal with a handkerchief through a window of the courthouse. A white handkerchief meant "not guilty"; a red one — "guilty." As soon as the signal was given, the man on the roof would release the pigeon with a note in its beak, on which the verdict would be written.

The verdict was "guilty."

A couple of minutes later, even before Molineux was led out of the courthouse, boys were already running about in the street with bundles of newspapers on which, in letters half a page in size, stood the words: "Molineux Guilty!"

The said newspaper had printed two kinds of editions — one with the headline "Molineux Guilty" and the other with the headline "Molineux Not Guilty." Its editorial office was not far from the criminal court. The pigeon flew lightning-fast. It brought the news in less than a minute.

Molineux was sentenced to death. But the appeal took a long time. His lawyers argued that there had been no right to bring the Barnet matter into the Cornish trial. And they won. The verdict was set aside after Molineux had spent three years in the "death house." He received a new trial. But the two murders were so closely intertwined that without the Barnet evidence it was impossible to convince twelve people that he had sent the poison to Cornish. In the second trial the jury was divided, and no160third trial took place. He went free.

His second trial took place when I was no longer connected with the "Commercial Advertiser." But I attended it.

A couple of years later I saw him with a lady on top of an omnibus on Fifth Avenue. Afterward there appeared a book of his with the title "The Room Behind the Little Door" (the room where the electric chair stands). In the book he tells what he saw and felt in the three years that he spent in the section where people sit who have been sentenced to death. The book is written with great force, with talent.

Some time later he lost his mind, and a couple of years after that he died.

The next criminal story that stirred up all of America concerned the death of an old man, a great millionaire from the state of Texas, who lived in New York. His name was Rice.

One early morning he was found dead with a towel over his face. It turned out that the towel had been soaked in chloroform. Someone had laid it over his face while he was asleep.

The old millionaire had left a will, according to which his entire estate was entrusted to a Texas lawyer by the name of Patrick, that he should distribute or administer it however he wished. Patrick too lived in161New York, and he had an office on Broadway, near Chambers Street. According to the will, this meant that he was Rice's lawyer and confidant. Newspaper people came to him simply for information, and I was one of them.

He was a tall man, a stout man, with a short, round-trimmed little beard, a blond one. When I spoke with him, he did not make a good impression on me. He did not speak in a natural voice; as if he were nervous. Chiefly his laughter made such an impression on me. He laughed too much and was too eager to answer my questions. In my report I did not mention this, although in the editorial office I told about it. But I was not the only one on whom he made such an impression, and by the next morning the city was seething with the name Patrick. The district attorney set about looking into his life. It turned out that he had been very little acquainted with Rice. Some even doubted whether the millionaire had ever seen him at all. How then was the will to be explained? Was it a forgery?

The district attorney did not have to rack his brain long over these questions. Rice's servant, Jones, was arrested, and Jones confessed to everything. He tried to commit suicide, but he was caught, and then he told everything.

The murder had been committed by him, Jones; but the one who talked him into it was Patrick, who had worked out the whole plan. Patrick had also written the "will" and forged Rice's signature under it. He and Jones were to divide Rice's millions between them.

Among the details was the following fact: at the time when the wet towel was lying162over Rice's face, Patrick kept talking with Jones on the telephone all the while. Patrick asked how things stood, and Jones answered him that Rice was lying with the wet towel over his nose and breathing heavily. Later Jones told Patrick that Rice was no longer breathing.

I was present when Jones told all these details to the district attorney. It lasted about three hours. Patrick was also present. When Jones came to the most important points in Patrick's role in the murder, Patrick went over to the window and laughed out loud.

The newspapers dug up "from under the ground" every crumb that had any bearing on Patrick's life and character. It turned out that he was a freethinker, a man with progressive ideas. He was a strong adherent of Henry George. Those who knew him privately presented him as a thoughtful, well-read man with a sympathetic character.

The story reminded me of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."

Jones was spared his life because he gave testimony for the state. In Patrick's case there came about a tangle of appeals and a battle among lawyers, which gave him the possibility of saving himself from death. And even the term to which he was finally sentenced to sit in prison he did not fully serve out.

In one of the smaller murder trials that I attended around that time, the chief figure was163an American-born Jewish young man by the name of Hall. He had been in love with a Christian girl, and she had turned away from him. This brought him to a feeling of despair. He resolved to kill her.

She was a salesgirl in a small department store, on Third Avenue, uptown. So he went into the store and, in the presence of a crowd, shot her.

The trial lasted only a couple of days. I used to sit and look at Hall and could not tear my eyes away from him. He showed no fear, no anxiety. He sat like a little lamb. As if he could not grasp what was happening here.

He had no money for a lawyer, so the court gave him a free one, and the free defender took no trouble to defend him. I was convinced that a good lawyer could have awakened pity in the jury. It was easy to understand that he had committed the murder in an unusual mental state. When a man comes into a large store and shoots the one he loves in the eyes of a mass of witnesses, and makes no attempt to escape, it is clear that life no longer plays any role for him. He is a sick man, not a murderer. To set such an unfortunate person in the electric chair would have been far more murderous than his deed.

The jury in a very short time brought in a verdict of "guilty"!

At the moment when he was sentenced to death, he again behaved like a little lamb; and when the sheriff led him out of the courtroom, he did not walk but ran, as if he wanted to164reach the electric chair sooner and be freed from the world.

"Why are you hurrying so? You'll trip," the sheriff said to him, with a humor that was full of pity.

This was the time of "white slavery" in the Jewish quarter. Organized gangs of filthy "cadets" (pimps) and outcasts were running riot, seeking out beautiful, decent, weak-willed Jewish girls with the aim of seducing them and dragging them by force into the mire.

The corrupt police, under the control of the corrupt Tammany party, which ruled over New York, protected the "cadets," just as it protected the indecent houses where the criminals kept their victims. Yet it used to happen from time to time that a "cadet" got himself into such a situation that the police were forced to bring him before the court.

I attended one such trial.

The man arrested was the son of decent, respectable middle-class parents. He himself had been dragged into the mire by other scoundrels. The trial concerned a girl whom he had ruined. She and two of her girlfriends were the witnesses. The jury heard a mass of details that cannot be mentioned here. The women were then told to leave the hall.

The guilty man was sentenced to a long term.

One case with which America was then seething was not connected with an ordinary crime, but with a question of morality on the stage. Today such a trial in New York would be impossible, although in the more distant states it can still happen even today.

165It concerned a play that was a dramatization of Alphonse Daudet's novel "Sappho." As Sappho there played Olga Nethersole, who was then famous. The "moral censors" of that time accused her that the play was an immoral one and that her acting was a crime.

To declare acting in such a play as "Sappho" a crime would have meant declaring all of European literature a crime.

When it became known that Olga Nethersole and the proprietors of the theater were being brought before the court, the play was banned in fifty American cities. And in hundreds of American churches priests then delivered fiery sermons against theaters that wanted to put on such an "immoral" drama.

I attended the trial for the "Commercial Advertiser." The arguments of the district attorney and the explanations of the witnesses whom he put forward sounded like voices from the Middle Ages.

But the verdict (the trial ended on the 7th of April, 1900) was "not guilty." A whole Nethersole — a tall, interesting woman, with tears of joy in her eyes, with a face flaming from happy excitement — pressed the hand of every juror.

Right after that there began a rush to see "Sappho." It became the most popular play in America. Five companies set out across the various American cities to perform "Sappho." Everywhere, naturally, people wanted to see Olga Nethersole. But since she could not perform in several places at the same time, people had to content themselves with another "star."

Often I used to go about the various court-166halls, to look on, to listen. When something interested me, I would sometimes sit for an hour or two. I also observed the various types who appeared in the corridors, or who sat and followed the trials: comrades and friends of the accused, or simply "curiosity-seekers."

I saw types of born criminals, people who had already been in prison several times and always went on in the same way. I became acquainted with some of them. I met people with criminal souls, who really had no moral feeling except the feeling of devotion and loyalty to their comrades, and perhaps also to a mother.

One of those on trial whom I observed was a handsome, educated young man. He had an unnatural form of passion, of the same sort as those for which the English writer Oscar Wilde had been kept in prison. The witnesses against him were little boys, with whom he had struck up an acquaintance in Central Park.

He hardly defended himself, and his lawyer was helpless. He was sentenced to twenty years! He listened to his sentence with a childlike expression, and when the sheriffs took him away from the court, he walked just like the above-mentioned Jewish young man Hall, who had shot his beloved.