he crape veil and bonnet, and as she resumed her
seat, Judge Parkman turned to the prisoner.

"In assuming the responsibility of your own defence you have adopted a
line of policy which, however satisfactory to yourself, must, in the
opinion of the public, have a tendency to invest your cause with
peculiar peril; therefore I impress upon you the fact, that while the
law holds you innocent, until twelve men agree that the evidence proves
you guilty, the time has arrived when your cause depends upon your
power to refute the charges, and disprove the alleged facts arrayed
against you. The discovery and elucidation of Truth, is the supreme aim
of a court of justice, and to its faithful ministers the defence of
innocence is even more imperative than the conviction of guilt. The law
is a Gibraltar, fortified and armed by the consummate wisdom of
successive civilizations, as an impregnable refuge for innocence; and
here, within its protecting bulwarks, as in the house of a friend, you
are called on to plead your defence. You have heard the charges of the
prosecution; listened to the testimony of the witnesses; and having
taken your cause into your own hands, you must now stand up and defend
it."

She rose and walked a few steps closer to the jury, and for the first
time during the trial, looked at them steadily. White as a statue of
Purity, she stood for a moment, with her wealth of shining auburn hair
coiled low on her shapely head, and waving in soft outlines around her
broad full brow. Unnaturally calm, and wonderfully beautiful in that
sublime surrender, which like a halo illumines the myth of Antigone, it
was not strange that every heart thrilled, when upon the strained ears
of the multitude fell the clear, sweet, indescribably mournful voice.

"When a magnolia blossom or a white camellia just fully open, is
snatched by violent hands, bruised, crushed, blackened, scarred by
rents, is it worth keeping? No power can undo the ruin, and since all
that made it lovely--its stainless purity--is irrevocably destroyed,
why preserve it? Such a pitiable wreck you have made of the young life
I am bidden to stand up and defend. Have you left me anything to live
for? Dragged by constables before prejudiced strangers, accused of
awful crimes, denounced as a female monster, herded with convicts, can
you imagine any reason why I should struggle to prolong a disgraced,
hopelessly ruined existence? My shrivelled, mutilated life is in your