The room in the basement of the City Hall was crowded. All the benches were occupied and many persons, white and black, were standing up. Among the members of the audience--for the performance is more like a vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious tribunal--I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which was playing in Richmond at the time--these doubtless drawn to the place by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model for his exceedingly amusing monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however, told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G. Brown, of Newport News, hold court. At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage, were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes; while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark, sat the judge--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination. "William Taylor!" calls a court officer. A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice. He is a sad spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon's plaster. The judge looks at him over his glasses. The hearing proceeds as follows: COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)--Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.) JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Sunday drunk--Five dollars. It is over. The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar. He is a short, wide negro, very black and tattered. A large black negress, evidently his consort, arises as witness against him. The case goes as follows: JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Drunk? THE WIFE (looking contemptuously at her spouse)--Drunk? Yass, Jedge, drunk. _Always_ drunk. THE PRISONER (meekly)--I ain't been drunk, Jedge. THE JUDGE--Yes, you have. I can see you've got your sign up this morning. (Looking toward cage at back of room): Make them niggers stop talkin' back there! (To the wife): What did he do, Mandy? THE WIFE (angrily)--Jedge, he come bustin' in, and he come so fast he untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e begins-- THE JUDGE (to the prisoner, sarcastically)--You wasn't drunk, eh? THE PRISONER (weakly)--I might of had a drink oh two. THE JUDGE (severely)--Was--you--_drunk_? THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. Ah wasn't drunk. Ah don't think no man's drunk s' long 's he can navigate, Jedge. I don't-- THE JUDGE--Oh, yes, he can be! He can navigate and navigate mighty mean!--Ten dollars. (At this point an officer speaks in a low tone to the judge, evidently interceding for the prisoner.) THE JUDGE (loudly)--No. That fine's very small. If it ain't worth ten dollars to get drunk, it ain't worth nothing at all. Next case!