and-so, living at such a place, was stabbed at two o'clock this morning by Whatshisname....' That's not interesting. Begin like this: 'A mysterious crime with an exotic touch about it was committed in the early hours this morning when all worthy New Yorkers were enjoying their beauty sleep.... Far away, where the snows of the Taurus Mountains gleam to heaven, the victim, a lovely Syrian maid, once had her home....'" I followed his advice, though my version was severely blue-pencilled, but his point--selecting a picturesque angle of attack--was sound and useful.
The police court work was over by half-past ten, and I was then generally sent on to report the trials in Special or General Sessions. These, naturally, were of every sort and kind. Divorce, alienation of affection and poison trials were usually the best news. My hair often stood on end, and some of the people were very unpleasant to interview. The final talk before a man went to the Chair was worst of all. If the case was an important one, I had to get an interview in the Tombs Prison cell before the day's trial--there was no sub judice prohibition in New York. Inevitably, I formed my own opinion as to a man's innocence or guilt; the faces, gazing at me through bars, would often haunt me for days. Carlyle Harris, calm, indifferent, cold as ice, I still see, as he peered past the iron in Murderers' Row, protesting his innocence with his steely blue eyes fixed on mine; he was a young medical student accused of poisoning his wife with morphia; he was electrocuted ... and Lizzie Borden ... though this was in Providence, Rhode Island--who took all her clothes off, lest the stains of blood betray her, before killing her father and mother in their sleep....
Some of the cases made a lasting and horrible impression; some even terrified. The behaviour of individuals, especially of different races, when sentence was given also left vivid memories; negroes, appealing hysterically to God and using the most extraordinary, invented words, the longer the better; the stolid, unemotional Chinamen;
the voluble Italian; the white man, as a rule, quiet,
