nic reason, if he has some scientific
explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.

XI. The Twelve Men

The other day, while I was meditating on morality and Mr. H. Pitt, I
was, so to speak, snatched up and put into a jury box to try people.
The snatching took some weeks, but to me it seemed something sudden and
arbitrary. I was put into this box because I lived in Battersea, and
my name began with a C. Looking round me, I saw that there were also
summoned and in attendance in the court whole crowds and processions of
men, all of whom lived in Battersea, and all of whose names began with a
C.

It seems that they always summon jurymen in this sweeping alphabetical
way. At one official blow, so to speak, Battersea is denuded of all its
C's, and left to get on as best it can with the rest of the alphabet. A
Cumberpatch is missing from one street--a Chizzolpop from another--three
Chucksterfields from Chucksterfield House; the children are crying out
for an absent Cadgerboy; the woman at the street corner is weeping
for her Coffintop, and will not be comforted. We settle down with a
rollicking ease into our seats (for we are a bold, devil-may-care race,
the C's of Battersea), and an oath is administered to us in a totally
inaudible manner by an individual resembling an Army surgeon in his
second childhood. We understand, however, that we are to well and truly
try the case between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the
bar, neither of whom has put in an appearance as yet.

.....

Just when I was wondering whether the King and the prisoner were,
perhaps, coming to an amicable understanding in some adjoining public
house, the prisoner's head appears above the barrier of the dock; he
is accused of stealing bicycles, and he is the living image of a great
friend of mine. We go into the matter of the stealing of the bicycles.
We do well and truly try the case between the King and the prisoner in
the affair of the bicycles. And we come to the conclusion, after a brief
but reasonable discussion, that the King is not in any way implicated.
Then we pass on to a woman who neglected her children, and who looks as
if somebody or something had neglected her. And I am one of those who
fancy that something had.

All the time that the eye took in these light appearances and the brain
passed these light criticisms, there was in the heart a barbaric pity
and fear which men have never been able to utter from the beginnin