Take the judge, for instance. (I quote Smilk.) What sort of an opinion does he have of you if you slide up to the little "gate," with your tail between your legs and plead guilty? Why, he hardly notices you. He has to put on his spectacles in order to see you at all and he doesn't even have to look in the statute book to refresh his memory as to the minimum penalty for larceny or whatever it is. And the way the Assistant District Attorney looks at you! And the bailiffs too. But put up a fight and see what happens. The whole blamed works sits up and takes notice. The judge looks over his spectacles and says to himself, "by gosh, he's a tough lookin' bird, that guy is;" the District Attorney goes around tellin' everybody in a whisper that you're a desperate character; the clerk of the court, the stenographer and all the bailiffs sort of wake up and act busy; the men waiting to be examined for jobs on the jury begin to fidget and wonder whether the judge is a "crab" or a nice, decent feller what'll let 'em off when they tell him they got sickness in the family, and all of 'em ha tin' you worse than poison because you didn't plead guilty. He was remanded for trial within two weeks after his arrest. The court, finding him penniless, announced he would appoint counsel to defend him. Whereupon Smilk sauntered back to the Tombs with a light heart, confident that his sojourn there would be brief and that March at the very latest would see him snugly settled in his rent-free, food-free, landlordless home on the Hudson, entertainment for man and beast provided without discrimination, crime no object. First of all, his lawyer unexpectedly got a job to represent a shady lady in a sensational breach of promise suit that drew weekly postponements over a period of five months and finally died a natural death out of court sometime in June. This resulted in his lawyer becoming so affluent that it wasn't necessary for him to bother with Cassius, so he withdrew from the case. After some delay, another lawyer was appointed to defend him and things began to look up. But by this time the dockets had become so jammed with unrelated dilemmas, and the summer heat was so intense, that the new lawyer informed him he couldn't possibly sandwich him in unless he would consent to change his plea to "guilty", contending that the combination of humility and humidity would go a long ways towards softening the judge. But Cassius sturdily refused to cheapen himself. In the meantime, new crimes had been committed by countless gentlemen of leisure; the Tombs was full of men clamoring for attention, and there was an undetected waiting list outside that stretched all the way from the Battery to the lower extremities of Yonkers.