Eel-fishing Company, to follow up,
with seines and spears, our worthy friend's discovery! I learn that
the news of this rich placer has spread to the golden mountains of the
West, and that the exhausted intellects which have been reduced to
such names for their mines as 'The Tombstone,' 'The Red Dog,' the
'Mrs. E. J. Parkhurst,' are likely now to flood us with prospectuses
of the 'Eel Mine,' 'The Flat Eel,' 'The Double Eel,' and then, when
they get ready to burst upon confiding friends, 'The Consolidated
Eels.'"

It takes but little to make a school or a court-room laugh, and the
speech had appeared to give a good deal of amusement to the listeners.

To all?

Did it amuse that man who sat, with folded arms, harsh and rigid, at
the dock? Did it divert that white-faced woman, cowering in a corner,
listening as in a dream?

* * * * *

The judge now charged the jury briefly. It was unnecessary for him, he
said, to recapitulate evidence of so simple a character. The chief
question for the jury was as to the credibility of the witnesses. If
the witnesses for the prosecution were truthful and were not mistaken,
the inference of guilt seemed inevitable; this the defendant's counsel
had conceded. The defendant had proved a good reputation; upon that
point there was only this to be said: that, while such evidence was
entitled to weight, yet, on the other hand, crimes involving a breach
of trust could, from their very nature, be committed only by persons
whose good reputations secured them positions of trust.

* * * * *

The jury-room had evidently not been furnished by a ring. There was a
long table for debate, twelve hard chairs for repose, twelve spittoons
for luxury, and a clock.

The jury sat in silence for a few moments, as old Captain Nourse, who
had them in his keeping, and eyed them as if he was afraid that he
might lose one of them in a crack and be held accountable on his bond,
rattled away at the unruly lock. Looking at them then, you would have
seen faces all of a New England cast but one. There was a tall,
powerful negro called George Washington, a man well known in this
county town, to which he had come, as driftwood from the storm of war,
in '65. Some of the "boys" had heard him, in a great prayer-meeting in
Washington--a city which he always spoke of as his "namesake"--at the
time of the great review, say, in his strong voice, with that pathet