ht
His one tender spot to probe;
If of "central" he had thought,
She'd have been too much for Job!

THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE OF SMITH VS. JONES

BY SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

I reported this trial simply for my own amusement, one idle day last
week, and without expecting to publish any portion of it--but I have
seen the facts in the case so distorted and misrepresented in the daily
papers that I feel it my duty to come forward and do what I can to set
the plaintiff and defendant right before the public. This can best be
done by submitting the plain, unembellished statements of the witnesses
as given under oath before his Honor Judge Sheperd, in the Police Court,
and leaving the people to form their own judgment of the matters
involved, unbiased by argument or suggestion of any kind from me.

There is that nice sense of justice and that ability to discriminate
between right and wrong, among the masses, which will enable them, after
carefully reading the testimony I am about to set down here, to decide
without hesitation which is the innocent party and which the guilty in
the remarkable case of Smith vs. Jones, and I have every confidence that
before this paper shall have been out of the printing-press twenty-four
hours, the high court of The People, from whose decision there is no
appeal, will have swept from the innocent man all taint of blame or
suspicion, and cast upon the guilty one a deathless infamy.

To such as are not used to visiting the Police Court, I will observe
that there is nothing inviting about the place, there being no rich
carpets, no mirrors, no pictures, no elegant sofa or arm-chairs to
lounge in, no free lunch--and, in fact, nothing to make a man who has
been there once desire to go again--except in cases where his bail is
heavier than his fine is likely to be, under which circumstances he
naturally has a tendency in that direction again, of course, in order to
recover the difference.

There is a pulpit at the head of the hall, occupied by a handsome
gray-haired judge, with a faculty of appearing pleasant and impartial to
the disinterested spectator, and prejudiced and frosty to the last
degree to the prisoner at the bar.

To the left of the pulpit is a long table for reporters; in front of the
pulpit the clerks are stationed, and in the centre of the hall a nest of
lawyers. On the left again are pine benches behind a railing, occupied
by seedy white men, negroes, Chinamen, Kanaka