The Twainian Vol 43 No. 6 (1984) & San Francisco Alta California, June 23, 1867
IN THE STATION HOUSE
I have been in the Station House. I staid there all night. I don't mind mentioning it, because anybody can get into the Station House here without committing an offence of any kind. And so he can anywhere that policemen are allowed to cumber the earth. I complimented this police force in a letter some time ago, and felt like a guilty, degraded wretch when I was doing it, and now I am glad I got into the Station House, because it will teach me never to so far forget all moral principle as to compliment a police force again.
I was on my way home with a friend a week ago - it was about midnight - when we came upon two men who were fighting. We interfered like a couple of idiots, and tried to separate them, and a brace of policemen came up and took us all off to the Station House. We offered the officers two or three prices to let us go, (policemen generally charge $5 in assault and battery cases, and $25 for murder in the first degree, I believe,) but there were too many witnesses present, and they actually refused.
They put us in separate cells, and I enjoyed the thing considerably for an hour or so, looking through the bars at the dilapidated old hags, and battered and ragged bummers, sorrowing and swearing in the stone-paved halls, but it got rather tiresome after a while. I fell asleep on my stone bench at 3 o'clock, and was called at dawn and marched to the Police Court with a vile policeman at each elbow, just as if I had been robbing a church, or saying a complimentary word about the police, or doing some other supernaturally mean thing.
We sat on wooden benches in a lock-up partitioned off from the Court Room, for four hours, awaiting judgment -not awaiting trial, because they don't try people there, but only just take a percentage of their cash, and let them go without further ceremony. We were a pretty cheerful crowd, but a rather haggard and sleepy one. Three first-rate young fellows, and well dressed, were in the lot - one a clerk, one a college student, and one an Indiana merchant. Two had been soldiers on the Union side, and one on the other, and all had battled at Antietam together. The merchant was arrested for being drunk, and the other two for assault and battery. An old seedy, scarred, bloated and bleeding bummer was present, who had been kicked out of a gin mill by the barkeeper, he said, and got arrested for it. He said he had been in the Station House a good many times before. I said: "What will they do with you?"
"Ten days, likely," (with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, and an expressive shrug). A negro man was there, with his head badly battered and bleeding profusely. He had nothing to say.
A bloated old hag sat in the corner, with a wholesome black eye, a drunken leer in the sound one, and nothing in the world on but a dingy calico dress, a shocking shawl, and a pair of slippers that had seen better days, but long enough ago to have forgotten them. I thought I might as well prospect my company thoroughly while time dragged along, and so I went over and started a conversation with her. She was very communicative; said she lived in the Five Points, and must have been particularly drunk to have wandered so far from home; said she used to have a husband, but he had drifted off somewhere, and so she had taken up with another man; she had had a child, also - a little boy - but it took all her time to get drunk, and keep drunk, and so he starved, one winter's night - or froze, she didn't know which - both, may be, because it snowed in "horrible" through the roof, and he hadn't any bedclothes but a window-shutter. "But it was a d----d good thing for him, anyway," said she, "because he'd have had a miserable rough time of it if he'd a lived"; and then she chuckled a little, and asked me for a chew of tobacco and a cigar. I gave her a cigar and borrowed the tobacco for her, and then she winked a wink of wonderful mystery and drew a flask of gin from under her shawl, and said the police thought they were awful smart when they searched her, but she wasn't born last week. I didn't drink with her, notwithstanding she invited me. She said she was good for ten days, but she guessed she could stand it, because if she had as many dollars as she had been in limbo she could buy a gin-mill.
Two flash girls of sixteen and seventeen were of our little party, and they said they had been arrested for stopping gentlemen in the street in pursuance of their profession, but averred that the charge was false, and that the gentlemen had made the first advances; and then they cried - not because they felt ashamed of having been locked up in a Station House, but because they would have to suffer in jail for several days, in company a little rougher than they were used to. I felt sorry for those two poor girls, and thought it was a pity that the merciful snow had not frozen them into a peaceful rest and forgetfulness of life and its weary troubles, too.
Towards 8 o'clock fresh jail birds began to arrive, and my three young gentlemen grew cheerful, and sang out to each new comer, "Another delegate! Your credentials, if you please, sir. The clerk will enter the gentleman's name on the records and make honorable mention of it - assault and battery, sir? - or disorderly?-= - theft? arson? highway robbery? - ah, drunk, is it? - set him down drunk, but pertinent. Room, gentlemen and ladies, room for the honorable delegate from the purlieus of the Five Points!"
And so we chaffed the cheerful hours away. At last I be held a hand-writing on the wall that made me start! I felt as if an accusing spirit had been raised up to mock me. The legend read (how familiar it was!) "THE TROUBLE WILL BEGIN AT EIGHT o'clock!"' How well I remembered inventing that sentence in the Morning Call office when I was writing the advertisement for my first lecture in San Francisco - and behold how little did I think then that I should live to see it inscribed upon the walls of a prison-house, many and many a hundred miles away! I smiled at the conceit when I first wrote it, but when I thought how sad hearted and how full of dreams of a happier time the poor fellow might have been who scribbled it here, there was a touching pathos about it that I had never suspected it possessed before. I am not writing a fancy sketch, now, but simply jotting down things just as they occurred in that villainous receptacle for rascals and unfortunates down town yonder.
At 9 o'clock we went out, one by one, under guard, and stood up before the Judge. I consulted with him about the practicability of contesting my case on the ground of unjust imprisonment, but he said it would be troublesome, and not worth the bother, inasmuch as nobody would ever know I had been in the Station House unless I told it myself, and then he let me go. I staid by and watched them dispense justice a while observed that in all small offences the policeman's charge on the books was received as entirely sufficient, and sentence passed without a question being asked of either accused or witnesses - and then departed, glad I had been in the Station House, because I knew all about it now from personal experience, but not anxious to pursue my investigations any further in that line.