THE POLICE COURT BESIEGED
Yesterday at half-past two in the afternoon, applicants for position on the Police force, in numbers variously estimated at from two hundred to ten thousand, laid siege to the Police Court, where the Police Commissioners were entrenched to examine the qualifications of candidates for the twelve new places created at the last meeting of the Board of Supervisors, and the war went on from that time until five o'clock without flagging. They formed two long lines, Post-office fashion, and filed slowly in at one door and out at another, under a steady fire of jokes from the spectators, to which they replied with melancholy witticisms which would have been tolerated and even gravely admired at a well-regulated funeral. There were some stately, fine-looking men in the procession, and some that looked mighty "ornery;" some wore good clothes and were clean, and some were ragged, to some extent, and not stainless; some were cheerful, and some looked distressed and constitutionally out of luck. But what of it? The whole of that crowd, except, perhaps, twelve, were entirely out of luck yesterday -- and it is something to have company in misfortune. The applicants had to write their names and addresses, to show the extent of their orthographic and calligraphic accomplishments; and they do say that some who write and spell well as a general thing, were so flustrated by excitement yesterday that they made hieroglyphics of so extravagant and shapeless a nature, that they could not recognize their own signatures in the list after the ink got cold.
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