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120 A Recruit for Law and Orderone else for the good he has this day doneto me. I am sending you my best wishesand beloved friendship.Hoping that you will accept my apologywith great amity, I remain,Sincerely yours,(SDG) HARRY SAMUELS.Judge A. was not to be outdone byHarry in courtesy, and he answered himin a spirit of generous friendship:CITY OF NEW YORKCITY MAGISTRATES' COURTS.Nov. 14th.MY DEAR HARRY:I was overjoyed to receive your letterof a few days ago. It has given me asmuch pleasure as your first one causedme distress and bewilderment. Moreover,what is especially gratifying to meis that I can plainly see from the tone ofyour letter that it is written in full andfree sincerity.I had hoped all along that your firstletter to me had not been written wickedlyand from a bad heart, but rather frommisunderstanding and it was because ofthis hope as much as from any desire topunish that I sent the letter to JudgeHoyt.Your recital of your struggles and disappointmentmakes it all quite clear tome, but if you had given yourself up tobitterness and hatred it could hardly becalled a victory for you. As it is, I amsure you are destined to succeed and tomake a good citizen.I am still regretful for the imprisonmentI forced your mother to undergo,and for the pain it brought to her family.As stated by Judge Hoyt, had it beenbrought to my attention that she hadlittle children at home I should havetried to be lenient as I almost invariablyam in such cases.It is not always an easy thing to be amagistrate and to promote public welfarethrough enforcing the laws when so doingfalls harshly upon some unfortunate offender.Your mother's offense may inone way seem to be trifling, and it is notalways that we can get at the real truth.Most of us try to do our best and withthousands of cases to try yearly and sometimesmore than a hundred in a day wemust sometimes make mistakes, seemharsh or otherwise unjust.I am going to show Judge Hoyt yourletter and talk to him about you, andexpress to him my pleasure at what hehas done in your case.In the meantime rest assured that youhave my entire forgiveness and it goeswithout saying that I hope I have yours.With best wishes, I am,Sincerely yours,(Signed) A.To Mr. Harry Samuels,New York City.P. S. Come to see me at the 7th DistrictMagistrates' Court one week fromSunday, say, about ten thirty in themorning, sending in your name to theCourt Attendant.This last letter closes the official recordof the case. I might go on and tell howHarry and his mother have been succeedingin their struggles, of his plans for obtainingthe technical education for whichhe has been striving, and of the friendlyconfidence with which he seeks adviceand counsel from Judge A. and myself,but such matters are of personal interestonly and form no part of our court proceedings.I do not think that Mrs. Samuels nowregrets that one night in prison, eventhough it entailed upon her a certainamount of unnecessary suffering. For,after all, it led through devious and unexpectedcircumstances to a happy consummation.We all have gained somethingin consequence: Mrs. Samuels,through the acquisition of new-foundfriends; Judge A. and myself, throughthe deeper knowledge and broader understandingwhich this experience has givenus, and Harry, through a clearer conceptionof his duties and responsibilities asa unit of society and as a prospectivecitizen.Harry and I both think it would be agood thing to tell this story to the public.The boy believes sincerely, and I heartilyagree with him, that his experience mayteach something to those who fail tograsp the purpose of our law and whoare accustomed to rail against its enforcementin a shallow and blatant fashion.