I sat for two or three hours in utter desolation, thinking over my sad fortunes, and cut to the heart with a sense of the evils that surrounded me. At length a man came and told me that I was wanted. I followed him out, and was taken into a room full of people. I had never been in a court of justice before, and I certainly did not guess that this was a place that could bear such a title. I have seen a good deal of the world, and yet I am ready to declare that in no place, not even in the wilderness, among savages, is there a spot where men seem to me so rude, so ill-mannered, so unjust, so little humane, as in that place called _a court of justice_. The constable, the sheriff, the judge, and, above all, the lawyers, have the same heartlessness, the same disregard of the claims of one human being upon another. I was hurried through the crowd, and placed in an elevated seat, surrounded with a railing, thus becoming the object upon which every eye was bent. The sense of my degradation, innocent as I was, overwhelmed me with confusion. One of the lawyers, called the city attorney, soon got up and stated to a sour and awful looking man, who it appeared was the judge, that the times were marked with fearful signs. “May it please your honor,” said he, “the good old days of purity are past; no longer are the young brought up in the way in which they should go, but they are either instructed to ridicule every law of God and man, or left to work out their own destruction. It is a time for justice to do her work; for the judge to assert the majesty of the insulted law. I now bring before you, sir, a young man of genteel appearance; one who has evidently seen and known better things; but who yet, we have reason to believe, is a hardened and practised villain.” Having said this, the lawyer went on to state, that I entered a store the evening of the preceding day, and robbed the till or drawer of its money, amounting to several dollars; that I was soon pursued, and, while running, threw away the money; that I was speedily overtaken, lodged in the watch-house for the night, and then put in Bridewell. Here several witnesses were called, who testified to these facts. One of them, who had accompanied me to the watch-house, added, that he knew me perfectly well; that I was a thief and gambler by profession; that he had seen me some days before, at a little tavern, notorious as a gambling house, and that he had seen me playing at cards with two celebrated rogues. This he embellished with sundry particulars as to my looks and actions.