No Sentence.

Otago Witness, Issue 2051, 15 June 1893, Page 50

No Sentence.

A French gentleman who visited Dalmatia in Austro-Hungary tells how he unconsciously posed as a native dignitary. He visited the police court of Zara, the capital of the country, one day to take some sketches of the Dalmatian peasants who had been summonsd from neighbouring villages as witnesses in a case that was being tried. Among others, he sketched two fine-looking old women. Bach wore on her head (he says) a large snow-white turban trimmed with red ribbons, and great braids of falso hair tied with green ribbons. Their broad silver girdles were ornamented with uncut jewels. They stood with their hands clasped, motionless, and apparently frightened about something— l could not tell what. , . „ „ Later the judge called me to him, and told me thai the two old peasants who h.ad posed for me an hour with such apparent goodwill had come to him to make a complaint. They had solemnly related how "a man had kept them standing an hour, looking at them sternly and writing all the time, and that

finally he had given them each a florin, but had not passed sentence on them." The two poor old women had thought that I was a judge, and that while I was studying them to catch the expression of their faces and the pose of their heads I was reading their hearts to discover if there were any guilt on their consciences !

Why?

A young man by the name of Augustus was struggling along in the world of letters. Augustus had a leaning towards poetry. At an evening party he was called upon to repsat a poem. The lady of the house had never been refused before, but he said — " I cannot. Something has occurred in my career which makes it absolutely impossible for me to repeat a poem here." They adjourned to the conservatory, and he told her the reason. " I am," he said, " of a philosophical turn of mind. • Why do I live ? ' was a subject that interested me deeply. I spent anxious hours over it in the still watches of the night, and produced a poem that satisfied even me. "I sent it to a newspaper. There was no response. The third and fourth day came and went, and yet no response. " At the end of the fifth day, still anxious, I saw a notice at the top of a column addressed to correspondents. It was to Augustus — " ' Augustus, you want to know why you live. You live, Augustus, because you posted that peem and did not bring it in person.' "