"What kind of a game--," I began.
"Senor," he cried, and tears again seemed on the point of falling,
"every word I told you was true. But of course I couldn't testify
against the patron. He'd discharge me and blackmail me, and you
know I have a wife and innumerable children to support. Come on
over and have a drink."
This justice business, one soon learns, is of the same infallible
stuff as the rest of life. After all it is only the personal
opinion of the judge between two persons swearing on oath to
diametrically opposed statements; and for all the impressiveness
of deep furrowed brows I did not find that the average judge had
any more power of reading human nature than the average of the
rest of us. I well remember the morning when a meek little
Panamanian was testifying in his own behalf, in Spanish of course,
when the judge broke in without even asking for a translation of
the testimony:
"That'll do! Because of your gestures I believe you are trying to
bunco this court. You are lying--tell him that," this to the negro
interpreter; and he therewith sentenced the witness to jail.
As if any Panamanian could talk earnestly of anything without
waving his arms about him.
The telephone-bell rang one afternoon. It was always doing that,
twenty-four hours a day; but this time it sounded especially sharp
and insistent.
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