第30章

Our days are very varied. We have been several times into the town and spent an hour in the Petty Sessions Court with Mr. Colquhoun, who sits on the bench. Each time we have come home laden with stories 'as good as any in the books,' so says Francesca. Have we not with our own eyes seen the settlement of an assault and battery case between two of the most notorious brawlers in that alley of the town which we have dubbed 'The Pass of the Plumes.'* Each barrister in the case had a handful of hair which he introduced on behalf of his client, both ladies apparently having pulled with equal energy.

These most unattractive exhibits were shown to the women themselves, each recognising her own hair, but denying the validity of the other exhibit firmly and vehemently. Prisoner number one kneeled at the rail and insisted on exposing the place in her head from which the hair had been plucked; upon which prisoner number two promptly tore off her hat, scattered hairpins to the four winds, and exposed her own wounds to the judicial eye. Both prisoners 'had a dhrop taken' just before the affair; that soft impeachment they could not deny.

One of them explained, however, that she had taken it to help her over a hard job of work, and through a little miscalculation of quantity it had 'overaided her.' The other termagant was asked flatly by the magistrate if she had ever seen the inside of a jail before, but evaded the point with much grace and ingenuity by telling his Honour that he couldn't expect to meet a woman anywhere who had not suffered a misforchin somewhere betwixt the cradle and the grave.

*The original Pass of the Plumes is near Maryborough, and was so called from the number of English helmet plumes that were strewn about after O'Moore's fight with five hundred of the Earl of Essex's men.

Even the all too common drunk-and-disorderly cases had a flavour of their own, for one man, being dismissed with a small fine under condition that he would sign the pledge, assented willingly; but on being asked for how long he would take it, replied, 'I mostly take it for life, your worship.'

We also heard the testimony of a girl who had run away from her employer before the completion of her six months' contract, her plea being that the fairies pulled her great toe at night so that she could not sleep, whereupon she finally became so lame that she was unable to work. She left her employer's house one evening, therefore, and went home, and curiously enough the fairies 'shtopped pulling the toe on her as soon as iver she got there!'

Not the least enlivening of the prisoners was a decently educated person who had been arrested for disturbing the peace. The constable asserted that he was intoxicated, but the gentleman himself insisted that he was merely a poet in a more than usually inspired state.

"I am in the poetical advertising line, your worship. It is true I was surrounded by a crowd, but I was merely practising my trade. I don't mind telling your worship that this holiday-time makes things a little lively, and the tradesmen drink my health a trifle oftener than usual; poetry is dry work, your worship, and a poet needs a good deal of liquid refreshment. I do not disturb the peace, your worship, at least not more than any other poet. I go to a grocer's, and, standing outside, I make up some rhymes about his nice sweet sugar or his ale. If I want to please a butcher--well, I'll give you a specimen:--'Here's to the butcher who sells good meat---In this world it's hard to beat;

It's the very best that's to be had, And makes the human heart feel glad.

There's no necessity to purloin, So step in and buy a good sirloin.'

I can go on in this style, like Tennyson's brook, for ever, your worship." His worship was afraid that he might make the offer good, and the poet was released, after promising to imbibe less frequently when he felt the divine afflatus about to descend upon him.

These disagreements between light-hearted and bibulous persons who haunt the courts week after week have nothing especially pathetic about them, but there are many that make one's heart ache; many that seem absolutely beyond any solution, and beyond reach of any justice.