the defendant, as I
shall show later, clothed her in the less expensive flowers of the
king's poetry. No! gentlemen! The defendant exhibited in this affair a
certain frugality of--er--pecuniary investment, which I am willing to
admit may be commendable in his class. His only gift was
characteristic alike of his methods and his economy. There is, I
understand, a certain not unimportant feature of religious exercise
known as 'taking a collection.' The defendant, on this occasion, by
the mute presentation of a tip plate covered with baize, solicited the
pecuniary contributions of the faithful. On approaching the plaintiff,
however, he himself slipped a love-token upon the plate and pushed it
towards her. That love-token was a lozenge--a small disk, I have
reason to believe, concocted of peppermint and sugar, bearing upon its
reverse surface the simple words, 'I love you!' I have since
ascertained that these disks may be bought for five cents a dozen--or
at considerably less than one half-cent for the single lozenge. Yes,
gentlemen, the words 'I love you!'--the oldest legend of all; the
refrain, 'when the morning stars sang together'--were presented to the
plaintiff by a medium so insignificant that there is, happily, no coin
in the republic low enough to represent its value.

"I shall prove to you, gentlemen of the jury," said the Colonel,
solemnly, drawing a _Bible_ from his coat-tail pocket, "that the
defendant, for the last twelve months, conducted an amatory
correspondence with the plaintiff by means of underlined words of
sacred writ and church psalmody, such as 'beloved,' 'precious,' and
'dearest,' occasionally appropriating whole passages which seemed
apposite to his tender passion. I shall call your attention to one of
them. The defendant, while professing to be a total abstainer--a man
who, in my own knowledge, has refused spirituous refreshment as an
inordinate weakness of the flesh, with shameless hypocrisy underscores
with his pencil the following passage and presents it to the
plaintiff. The gentlemen of the jury will find it in the _Song of
Solomon_, page 548, chapter II, verse 5." After a pause, in which the
rapid rustling of leaves was heard in the jury-box, Colonel
Starbottle declaimed in a pleading, stentorian voice, "'Stay me with
--er--_flagons_, comfort me with--er--apples--for I am--er--sick of
love.' Yes, gentlemen!--yes, you may well turn from those accusing
pages and look at the double-faced defen