Mr. Weems alone seemed wholly sad.
Mr. Shreek would first invite the attention of the jury to a letter, dated simply “Tuesday morning,” and signed with the name of the defendant. It was as follows:—
“My Sweet Rosebud” (laughter from the spectators),—“Before me lies your darling little letter of yesterday. I have read it over and over again, and kissed it many times.” (Merriment in the court-room.) “Why do you wish that you had wings, that you might fly away and be at rest?” (“No wonder she wanted wings,” interjected Mr. Shreek.) “Am I not all you wish?” (“He didn’t seem to be,” said Mr. Shreek.) “Cannot I make you perfectly happy? Oh, how I love you, my sweet, pretty, charming Rosebud! You are all in all to me. I think I can look down the dim vista of time, and see you going with me hand-in-hand through all the long and happy years.” (“He was not quite so short-sighted as he appears to be,” said Mr. Shreek; whereupon there was general laughter. Even Leonie laughed a little.) “And now, my own sweet love” (laughter), “I must bid you good-night. I send you a thousand kisses from your own, ever constant
Julius.”
“Rosebud! gentlemen,” said Mr. Shreek, as he folded the letter away and took out another. “Yes, a rosebud, and he the vile canker-worm that was eating away its life! But this is only one of many such effusions. Upon another occasion, he says:
“My Birdie,” (general laughter,)—“This morning a blessing came to me by the hands of the postman, and what do you think? the writer did not sign her name, and I am not sure whom I should thank, but I am going to risk thanking you, my own dear, loving Leonie. Why do you call me an angel, darling?” (“That,” observed Mr. Shreek, “was enough to astonish him!” And then everybody laughed again.) “I am only a plain, prosy man,” (“A close shave to the truth,” said Mr. Shreek,) “but I am exalted by having your love. If I were an angel, I would hover over you, my sweet,” (“And very likely drop something on her,” added Mr. Shreek,) “and protect you. You ask me if I think of you often! Think of you, Leonie! I think of nothing else.” (Laughter.) “You are always in my mind; and if I keep on loving you more and more, as I am doing, I shall die with half my love untold.” (Laughter. “Wonderful how he loved her, wasn’t it?” remarked Mr. Shreek.) “Again I send you a million kisses” (merriment), “and a fond good-night, and pleasant dreams.
“Your adoring J.”
“Observe,” said Mr. Shreek, taking out still another letter, “how he mocked her! How hollow, how infamous all of that sounds, in view of his subsequent treachery!”
Here Miss Cowdrick bowed her head and wept, and Mr. Weems looked as if he felt that death at the stake would be mere pastime in comparison with this experience.
“We now come,” said Mr. Shreek, “to letter number three—a document which reveals this moral monster in even a more hideous light.”
“My Precious One” (great laughter)—“How can I ever thank you for the trouble you have taken to make me those lovely slippers? They are two sizes too small for me” (laughter); “but I can look at them and kiss them” (“He was a tremendous kisser in his way, you observe,” said the learned counsel), “and think of you meantime. I could not come to see you last evening, for I sprained my ankle; but I looked at your picture and kissed it” (laughter. “At it again, you see,” said Mr. Shreek); “and I read over your old letters. There is a knock at my door now, and I must stop. But I will say, I love you. Oh, how I love you! my life and my light.
Fondly your own Julius.”
“But,” continued the eloquent counsel for the plaintiff, “this false lover, this maker of vows that were as idle as the whispering of the summer wind, did not always write prose to the unhappy lady whom he had deceived. Sometimes he breathed out his bogus affection through the medium of verse. Sometimes he invoked the sacred Muse to help him to shatter the heart of this loving and trustful woman. With the assistance of a rhyming dictionary, or perhaps having, with a bold and lawless hand, filched his sweets from some true poet who had felt the impulses of a genuine passion, he wrote and sent to my lovely but unfortunate client the following lines: