A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Part 4

"Over there," said Judge Sabath, "is a man who has been a juror in criminal cases at least a dozen times."

His honor pointed to a short, thin man with a derby on the back of his head and a startling mustache, concealing almost half of his wizened face.

The man was sitting a bit childishly on a window ledge in the hall of the Criminal Court building swinging his legs and chewing rhythmically on a plug of tobacco.

"They let him go this morning while picking a jury for a robbery case before me," said the judge. "He tried to stay on, but neither side wanted him. You might get a story out of him. I think he's broken-hearted."

The short, thin man with the derby, swinging his legs from the window ledge said his name was Martin.

"That's true," he said, "what the judge said. I been a juror fourteen times. I was on five murders and four big robberies and then I was on five different a.s.sorted kinds of crimes."

"How do you like being a juror, Mr. Martin?"

"Well, sir, I like it a lot. I can say that out of the fourteen times I been a juror I never lost a case."

Mr. Martin aimed at the new cuspidor--and missed.

"There's some jurors as loses nearly every case they're on. They give in first crack. But take the Whitely murder trial I was on. That was as near as I ever come to losing a case. But I managed to hang the jury and the verdict was one of disagreement. Whitely was innocent. Anybody could have told that with half an eye."

"How long have you been serving on juries, Mr. Martin?"

"Going nigh on twenty-three years. I had my first case when I was a young man. It was a minor case--a robbery. I won that despite my youth and inexperience. In those days the cases were much harder than now on account of the lawyers. The old-fas.h.i.+oned lawyer was the talkingest kind of a nuisance I ever had to deal with. He always reminded me of somebody talking at a mark for two dollars a week.

"I don't refer to the orators. I mean the ones who talk during the case itself and who slow things up generally by bothering the witnesses to death with a lot of unnecessary questions. Although the orators are pretty bad, too. There's many a lawyer who has lost out with me on account of the way he made faces in the windup. One of my rules as a juror, a successful one, I might say, is, 'Always mistrust a lawyer who talks too fancy.'"

"Judge Sabath just said that they let you go in his court this morning."

"H'm," snorted Mr. Martin. "That was the lawyer. He's mad at me because he lost a case two years ago that I was on. I won it and he holds a grudge.

That's like some lawyers. They don't like the man who licks them.

"But you were asking about the qualifications of an all-around juryman.

I'll give 'em to you. First and foremost you want a man of wide experience in human nature. I spend most of my time in the courts when I ain't serving as juror studyin' human nature. You might say that all human nature is the same. But it's my experience that some is more so than others.

"Well, when you know human nature the next step is to figure out about lawyers. Lawyers as a whole is the hardest nut the juror has to crack. To begin with, they're deceivin', and if you let them they'll take advantage of your credulity. There's Mr. Erbstein, for instance, the criminal lawyer. He's a pretty smart one, but I won a case from him only four years ago and he's never forgiven me. I was juror in a manslaughter trial he was trying to run. He thought himself pretty foxy, but when it came to a showdown I put it all over him. There was a guy who was foreman of the jury that time who said I had it all over Mr. Erbstein as an argufier and that my arguments made his look like ten cents. I won easily on five ballots and Mr. Erbstein has never forgave me.

"But I'll go on about the qualifications. First of all, I never read newspapers. Never. No juror should ought to know anything about anything that's going on. I found that out in my youth when I first started in. The first question they ask you is, 'What have you heard about this case and what have you read or said about it?' That's the first one. Well, the right answer is 'nothing.'

"If you can say nothing and prove you're right they'll gobble you up as a juror. For that reason I avoid all newspapers, and right now I don't know what big crimes or cases have been committed at all. I have a clean, unprejudiced mind and I keep it that way.

"Nextly," said Mr. Martin, trying a new sight on the cuspidor, "I don't belong to any lodges whatsoever. They're a handicap. Because if the defendant is a Mason and you are a Elk he would rather have a brother Mason be juror than a strange Elk. So I don't belong to any of them and I don't go to church. I also have no convictions whatsoever about politics and have no favorites of any kind in the matter of authors or statesmen or anything. What I try to do is to keep my mind clean and unprejudiced on all subjects."

"Why do you like serving as a juror?"

Mr. Martin stared.

"Why?" he repeated. "Because it's every man's duty, naturally. And besides," he went on, narrowing his eyes into shrewd slits, "I've just been luckier than most people. Most people only get called a few times during their life. But I get called regularly every year and sometimes twice a year and sometimes four and five times a year for service. Of course, I ain't boasting, but the city has recognized my merits, no doubt, as a juror, knowing all the cases I've won, and it perhaps shows a little partiality to me for that reason. But I feel that I have earned it and I would like nothing said about it or any scandal started."

"What do you think of this Taylor death mystery in Los Angeles, Mr.

Martin?"

"Ha, ha," said Mr. Martin, "there you're tryin' to catch me. You thought you could put that over on me without my seein' through it, didn't you?

That's just the way the lawyers try to trap me when I'm sittin' on one of my cases. I ain't ever heard of this Taylor death mystery, not reading the papers, you see."

"That's too bad, Mr. Martin. It's quite a story." Mr. Martin sighed and slipped from the window ledge, shaking down his wrinkled, high-water pants.

"Yes," he sighed, a sudden wistfulness coming into his rheumy eyes.

"Things have been pretty slow around here. Chicago used to be the place for a juror--none better. But I been thinkin' of going west. Not that I heard anything, mind you, about any of these cases." Mr. Martin glowered virtuously. "I never read the papers, sir, and have no prejudices whatsoever.

"But I've just been feelin' lately that there are wider opportunities in the west for a man of my experience and record than are left around here."

TO BERT WILLIAMS

"Well," said Mr. Bert Williams, in his best "Under the Bamboo Tree"

dialect, "If you like mah singin' and actin' so much, how come, you bein'

a writer, you don't write somethin' about youah convictions on this subjeck? Oh! It's not youah depahtment! Hm! Tha's jes' mah luck. I was always the mos' unluckiest puhson who ever trifled with misfohtune. Not his depahtment! Tha'--tha's jes' it. I never seems to fall jes' exactly in the ri-right depahtment.

"May I ask, without meanin' to be puhsonal, jes' what is your depahtment?

Murder! Oh, you is the one who writes about murders and murderuhs foh the paper! Nothin' else? Is tha' so? Jes' murders and murderuhs and--and things like tha'? Well, tha' jes' shows how deceivin' looks is, fo' when you came in heah I says to mahself, I says, 'this gen'le-man is a critic of the drama.' And when I sees you have on a pair o' gloves I added quickly to mahself, 'Yes, suh, chances are he is not only a critic of the drama, but likewise even possuhbly a musical critic.' Yes, suh, all mah life I have had the desire to be interviewed by a musical critic, but no matter how hard I sing or how frequently, no musical critic has yet taken cognizance o' me. No, suh, I get no cognizance whatsoever.

"Not meanin' to disparage you, suh, or your valuable depahtment. Foh if you is in charge o' the murder and murderuh's depahtment o' yo' paper possuhbly some time you may refer to me lightly between stabbin's or shootin's in such wise as to say, foh instance, 'the doomed man was listenin' to Mr. Williams' latest song on the phonograph when he received the bullet wound. Death was instantaneous, the doomed man dyin' with a smile on his lips. Mr. Williams' singin' makes death easy--an' desirable.'

"What, suh? You is! Sam, fetch the gen'leman some o' the firewater, the non-company brand, Sam. All right, say when. Aw, shucks, that ain't enough to wet a cat's whiskers. Say when again. There, tha's better. Here, Sam.

You got to help drink this. It's important. The gen'leman says if I will wait a little while, jes' a little while, he is goin' to alter his depahtment on the newspaper. Wasn't that it? Oh, I see. In the magazine.

Very well. Here's to what you says about me some day in the magazine. An'

when you writes it don't forget to mention somewhere along in it how when I was playin' in San Francisco and Sarah Bernhardt was playin' there, and this was years ago, don' forget to mention along with what you write about mah singin' and actin' that I come to mah dressing room one evenin', in Frisco, and there's the hugest box o' flowers you ever saw with mah name on it. An' I open it up and, boy! There plain as the nose on your face is a card among the flowers readin', 'to a fellow artist, from Sarah Bernhardt.' And--whilst we are, so to speak, on the subjeck--you can put in likewise what Eleanora Duse said o' me. You know who she is, I suppose, the very most superlative genius o' the stage, suh. Yes, suh, the very most. An' she says o' me when she went back to Italy, how I was the best artist on the American stage.

"Artist! Tha' always makes Sam laugh, don't it, Sam, when he heahs me refuhed to as artist. An'--have another beaker o' firewater, suh. It's strictly non-company brand. An' here's how again to tha' day you speak of when you write this article about me. An', boy, make it soon, 'cause this life, this sinful theat'ical life, is killin' me fast. But I'll try an'

wait. Here's howdy."

He didn't wait. And today a lazy, crooked grin and a dolorous-eyed black face drift among the shades in the Valhalla where the Great Actors sit reading their press notices to one another. The Great Actors who have died since the day of Euripides--they sit around in their favorite make-ups in the Valhalla reserved for all good and glorious Thespians.

A company of ladies and gentlemen that would make Mr. Belasco's heart stop beating! The Booths and Barretts from antiquity down, the Mrs. Siddonses and Pattis, the Cyranos, Hamlets, buffoons and heroes. All of them in their favorite make-ups, in their favorite cap and bells, their favorite swords, their favorite doublet and hose--all of them sit around in the special Valhalla of the Great Actors reading their press notices to one another and listening to the hosannas of such critics as have managed to pry into the anterior heaven.

And today Bert Williams makes his entrance. Yes, suh, it took that long to find just the right make-up. To get just the right kind of ill-fitting white gloves and floppy shoes and nondescript pants. But it's an important entrance. The lazy crooked grin is a bit nervous. The dolorous eyes peer sadly through the opening door of this new theater.

Lawdy, man, this is got a Broadway first night backed off the boards.

Rejane, Caruso, Coquelin, Garrick and a thousand others sittin' against the towering walls, sittin' with their eyes on the huge door within' to see who's a-comin' in now.