Among the members of the audience--for the performance is more like a vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious tribunal--I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which was playing in Richmond at the time--these doubtless drawn to the place by the fact that Walter C.Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model for his exceedingly amusing monologue.

Mr.Kelly himself has, however, told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G.
Brown, of Newport News, hold court.
At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage, were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes; while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark, sat the judge--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination.
"William Taylor!" calls a court officer.
A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice.

He is a sad spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon's plaster.

The judge looks at him over his glasses.

The hearing proceeds as follows: COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)--Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.) JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Sunday drunk--Five dollars.
It is over.
The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar.