"My lord, when I went home last night arter sittin' here so many hours
I couldn't sleep a wink."
I could not help saying,—
"Then it is no use going to bed; we may as well finish the business."
That was all very well for him, but another juryman arose, amidst roars of laughter, and lifted up a hard, wooden-bottomed chair, and beat it with his heavy walking-stick.
The chair was perfectly indifferent to the treatment it was receiving after supporting the juryman for so many hours without the smallest hope of any reward, and I then asked,—
"Is that to keep order, sir?"
The excitement continued for a long time, but at last it subsided, and
I suggested a compromise.
I said probably the gentlemen in the next case would not speak for more than one hour each, and if they would agree to this I would undertake to sum up in five minutes.
The husky lion sat down, and so did the musician. The jury acquitted and went home.
These are some of the caprices of a jury which a Judge has sometimes to put up with, and it has often been said that Judges are more tried than prisoners. Perhaps that is so, especially when, if they do not get the kind of rough music I have mentioned from the jury-box, they sometimes receive a by no means complimentary address from the prisoner. One occurs to my mind, with which I will close this chapter.