It was nearly a year later that I paid my second visit to the police court, on a day, like the first, humid and dull, but very close and suffocatingly hot. It was a Monday morning, and there was a full dock, as I have learned that the prisoner’s pen at the right of the clerk’s desk is called. The clerk was standing with that sheaf of indictments in his hand, and saying, “John O’Brien!” and John O’Brien was answering, “Here, sor!” and the clerk was proceeding, “Complained of for being drunk guilty or not guilty pay a fine of one dollar and costs stand committed to the House of Industry,” and then writing on the indictment, and tossing it aside. As I modestly took my stand at the door, till I should gather courage to cross the room to one of the vacant seats which I saw among the policemen, one of these officers of the court approached me and said, “No room for you here to-day, my friend. Go up on the Common.” In spite of my share of that purely American vanity which delights in official recognition, I could not be flattered at this, and it was with relief that I found he was addressing a fellow-habitué behind me. The court-room was in fact very full, and there were no seats on the benches ordinarily allotted to spectators; so I at once crossed to my place, and sat down among the policemen, to whom I authorized my intrusion by taking my notebook from my pocket. I have some hopes that the spectators thought me a detective in plain clothes, and revered me accordingly. There was such a person near me, with his club sticking out of his back-pocket, whom I am sure _I_ revered. I had not come to report the events of this session of the court, but to refresh the impressions of my first visit, and I was glad to find them so just. There was, of course, some little change; but the same magistrate was there, serene, patient, mercifully inclined of visage; the colored attorney was there, in charge, as before, of a disastrous Irish case. The officials who tried to keep order had put off their flannel coats for coats of seersucker, and each carried a Japanese fan; neither wore a collar, now, and I fancied them both a little more in flesh. I think they were even less successful than formerly in quelling disturbances, though they were even more polished in the terms of their appeal. “Too much conversation in the court!” they called out to us collectively. “Conversation _must_ cease,” they added. Then one, walking up to a benchful of voluble witnesses, would say, “Must cease that conversation,” and to my fellow-policemen, “Less conversation, gentlemen;” then again to the room at large, “Stop all conversation in the court,” and “All conversation must cease entirely.”