The Light that Lies

by George Barr McCutcheon

“You look better in a blue serge than anythink you—”

“It is comfort, not looks, that I'm after, Turple,” explained Sampson, who perhaps lied.

“Sets a man off as no other goods—I beg pardon, sir. I will call up the booking office at once, sir. The blue serge, sir?”

“The blue serge,” said Sampson, brightly. “Anythink else, sir?”

Sampson grew facetious. “You might give me a shirt and a collar and a necktie, Turple.” The man bowed gravely and retreated. His master, moved by an increasing exhilaration, called after him: “I might also suggest a pair of shoes and—well, you know what else I'm in the habit of wearing in the daytime.”

Turple, knowing his master's feelings about jury service, was very much amazed later on to hear him whistling cheerily as he made preparations for a dinner engagement. The mere thought of a jury, heretofore, had created in his master a mood provocative of blasphemy, and here he was—actually “landed,” as he had put it himself—whistling as gaily as a meadow lark. Turple shook his head, completely puzzled, for he also knew his master to be a most abstemious man. In all his three years of association with his employer he had never known him to take a nip during the daytime, and that is what Turple called being most abstemious.

The next morning Sampson, instead of hanging back aggrievedly as was his wont, was in the court-room bright and early—(half an hour ahead of time, in fact)—and he never looked fresher, handsomer or more full of the joy of living. He passed the time of day with the attendants, chatted agreeably with No. 2, who also came in early, and subsequently listened politely to the worries of No. 5, a chubby-faced bachelor who couldn't for the life of him understand why the deuce manicurers persisted in cutting the cuticle after having been warned not to do so.

He rather pitied No. 7, who appeared in a cutaway coat a trifle too small for his person and a very high collar that attracted a great deal of attention from its wearer if from no one else. No. 7, he recalled, had been quite indifferently garbed the day before: a shiny, well-worn sack coat, trousers that had not been pressed since the day they left the department store, and a “turndown” collar that had been through the “mangle” no less than a hundred times—and should have been in one at that instant instead of around his neck. No. 7 was also minus a three days' growth of beard.

Everybody seemed bright and cheerful. There were still two more jurors to be secured when court convened. Never in all his experience had Sampson seen a judge on the bench who behaved so beautifully as this one. He looked as though he never had had a grouch in his life, and as if he really enjoyed listening to the same old questions over and over again. Occasionally he interjected a question or an interpolation that must have been witty, for he graciously permitted his hearers to laugh with him; and at no time was he cross or domineering. His hair, carefully brushed, was sleekly plastered into an enduring neatness, and his moustache was never so smartly trimmed and twisted as it was on this sprightly morning. One might have been led into believing that it was not winter but early spring.

The deputy clerk had taken too much pains in shaving himself that morning, for in his desire to scrape closely in the laudable effort to curb the sandy growth on his cheek and chin, he had managed to do something that called for the application of a long strip of pale pink court-plaster immediately in front of his left ear. He was particular about turning the other cheek, however, so that unless you walked completely around him you wouldn't have noticed the court-plaster. The attendants, noted for their untidiness, were perceptibly spruced up. If any one of them was chewing tobacco, he managed to disguise the fact.