The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (easy to read books for adults list TXT) 📕

to go.” He twisted his hand in Jurgis’s collar and jerked at him. “Git up here, you!” he commanded.

But Jurgis did not move, and the bartender went behind the bar, and, after stowing the hundred-dollar bill away in a safe hiding-place, came and poured a glass of water over Jurgis. Then, as the latter began to moan feebly, the policeman got him to his feet and dragged him out of the place. The station-house was just around the corner, and so in a few minutes Jurgis was in a cell.

He spent half the night lying unconscious, and the balance moaning in torment, with a blinding headache and a racking thirst. Now and then he cried aloud for a drink of water, but there was no one to hear him. There were others in that same station-house with split heads and a fever; there were hundreds of them in the great city, and tens of thousands of them in the great land, and there was no one to hear any of them.

In the morning Jurgis was given a cup of water and a piece of bread, and then hustled into a patrol wagon and driven to the nearest police-court. He sat in the pen with a score of others until his turn came.

The bartender⁠—who proved to be a well-known bruiser⁠—was called to the stand. He took the oath and told his story. The prisoner had come into his saloon after midnight, fighting drunk, and had ordered a glass of beer and tendered a dollar bill in payment. He had been given ninety-five cents’ change, and had demanded ninety-nine dollars more, and before the plaintiff could even answer had hurled the glass at him and then attacked him with a bottle of bitters, and nearly wrecked the place.

Then the prisoner was sworn⁠—a forlorn object, haggard and unshorn, with an arm done up in a filthy bandage, a cheek and head cut and bloody, and one eye purplish black and entirely closed. “What have you to say for yourself?” queried the magistrate.

“Your Honor,” said Jurgis, “I went into his place and asked the man if he could change me a hundred-dollar bill. And he said he would if I bought a drink. I gave him the bill and then he wouldn’t give me the change.”

The magistrate was staring at him in perplexity. “You gave him a hundred-dollar bill!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, your Honor,” said Jurgis.

“Where did you get it?”

“A man gave it to me, your Honor.”

“A man? What man, and what for?”

“A young man I met upon the street, your Honor. I had been begging.”

There was a titter in the courtroom; the officer who was holding Jurgis put up his hand to hide a smile, and the magistrate smiled without trying to hide it. “It’s true, your Honor!” cried Jurgis, passionately.

“You had been drinking as well as begging last night, had you not?” inquired the magistrate.

“No, your Honor⁠—” protested Jurgis. “I⁠—”

“You had not had anything to drink?”

“Why, yes, your Honor, I had⁠—”

“What did you have?”

“I had a bottle of something⁠—I don’t know what it was⁠—something that burned⁠—”

There was again a laugh round the courtroom, stopping suddenly as the magistrate looked up and frowned. “Have you ever been arrested before?” he asked abruptly.

The question took Jurgis aback. “I⁠—I⁠—” he stammered.

“Tell me the truth, now!” commanded the other, sternly.

“Yes, your Honor,” said Jurgis.

“How often?”

“Only once, your Honor.”

“What for?”

“For knocking down my boss, your Honor. I was working in the stockyards, and he⁠—”

“I see,” said his Honor; “I guess that will do. You ought to stop drinking if you can’t control yourself. Ten days and costs. Next case.”

Jurgis gave vent to a cry of dismay, cut off suddenly by the policeman, who seized him by the collar. He was jerked out of the way, into a room with the convicted prisoners, where he sat and wept like a child in his impotent rage. It seemed monstrous to him that policemen and judges should esteem his word as nothing in comparison with the bartender’s; poor Jurgis could not know that the owner of the saloon paid five dollars each week to the policeman alone for Sunday privileges and general favors⁠—nor that the pugilist bartender was one of the most trusted henchmen of the Democratic leader of the district, and had helped only a few months before to hustle out a record-breaking vote as a testimonial to the magistrate, who had been made the target of odious kid-gloved reformers.

Jurgis was driven out to the Bridewell for the second time. In his tumbling around he had hurt his arm again, and so could not work, but had to be attended by the physician. Also his head and his eye had to be tied up⁠—and so he was a pretty-looking object when, the second day after his arrival, he went out into the exercise-court and encountered⁠—Jack Duane!

The young fellow was so glad to see Jurgis that he almost hugged him. “By God, if it isn’t ‘the Stinker’!” he cried. “And what is it⁠—have you been through a sausage-machine?”

“No,” said Jurgis, “but I’ve been in a railroad wreck and a fight.” And then, while some of the other prisoners gathered round, he told his wild story; most of them were incredulous, but Duane knew that Jurgis could never have made up such a yarn as that.

“Hard luck, old man,” he said, when they were alone; “but maybe it’s taught you a lesson.”

“I’ve learned some things since I saw you last,” said Jurgis, mournfully. Then he explained how he had spent the last summer, “hoboing it,” as the phrase was. “And you?” he asked, finally. “Have you been here ever since?”

“Lord, no!” said the other. “I only came in the day before yesterday. It’s the second time they’ve sent me up on a trumped-up charge⁠—I’ve had hard luck and can’t pay them what they want. Why don’t you quit Chicago with me, Jurgis?”

“I’ve no place to go,” said Jurgis, sadly.

“Neither have I,” replied the other, laughing lightly.⁠—“But we’ll wait till we get out