on; no less should he to-day champion the cause of the
unprotected and the comparatively defenseless--save for that paramount
power which surrounds beauty and innocence--even though the plaintiff
of yesterday was the defendant of to-day. As he approached the court a
moment ago he had raised his eyes and beheld the starry flag flying
from its dome--and he knew that glorious banner was a symbol of the
perfect equality, under the Constitution, of the rich and the poor,
the strong and the weak--an equality which made the simple citizen
taken from the plough in the veld, the pick in the gulch, or from
behind the counter in the mining town, who served on that jury, the
equal arbiters of justice with that highest legal luminary whom they
were proud to welcome on the bench to-day. The Colonel paused, with a
stately bow to the impassive Judge. It was this, he continued, which
lifted his heart as he approached the building. And yet--he had
entered it with an uncertain--he might almost say--a timid step. And
why? He knew, gentlemen, he was about to confront a profound--aye! a
sacred responsibility! Those hymn-books and holy writings handed to
the jury were _not_, as his Honor surmised, for the purpose of
enabling the jury to indulge in--er--preliminary choral exercise! He
might, indeed, say "alas not!" They were the damning, incontrovertible
proofs of the perfidy of the defendant. And they would prove as
terrible a warning to him as the fatal characters upon Belshazzar's
wall. There was a strong sensation. Hotchkiss turned a sallow green.
His lawyers assumed a careless smile.

It was his duty to tell them that this was not one of those ordinary
"breach-of-promise" cases which were too often the occasion of
ruthless mirth and indecent levity in the courtroom. The jury would
find nothing of that here, There were no love-letters with the
epithets of endearment, nor those mystic crosses and ciphers which, he
had been credibly informed, chastely hid the exchange of those mutual
caresses known as "kisses." There was no cruel tearing of the veil
from those sacred privacies of the human affection--there was no
forensic shouting out of those fond confidences meant only for _one_.
But there was, he was shocked to say, a new sacrilegious intrusion.
The weak pipings of Cupid were mingled with the chorus of the
saints--the sanctity of the temple known as the "meeting-house" was
desecrated by proceedings more in keeping with the shrine of
Venu