Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1893 — No Sentence. [ARTICLE]

No Sentence.

A French gentleman who visited Dalmatia in Austro-Jlungary 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 summoned from neighboring villages as witnesses in a case that was being tried. Among others he sketched two fine-looking old women. Each wore on her head a large, snow-white, turban trimmed with red ribbons, and great braids of false hair tied with green ribbons. Their broad silver girdles were ornamented with uncut joweis. Theysl jod with their hands clasped, motionless, and apparently frightened about something, I could not tell what. Later the judge called me to him, and told me that the two old peasants who had posed for me an hour, with such apparent good-will, had come tq him to make a complaint. They had solemnly related how “a m anhad kept them standing an hour, looking at them sternly and writing all the time, and finally that 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 trying to read their hearts and discover if there were any guilt on their conscience-.