“Always wins,” he laughs. “The jury think either that it is not worth while, or that I think it safe, and agree accordingly. Juries haven’t much mind, you know. Besides, think of those idle golf sticks!” They laugh together. “And, further, it will flabbergast the doughty champion of the foreign gentleman. He won’t know how to begin—since he will have nothing of mine to answer or suggest.”
VI
THE FOOLISHNESS OF PREACHING
This seems true. Forrest knows the trick, and now he rises with manifest fear and trembling.
“Although the Commonwealth does not care to address you,” he says, “I conceive it my duty to do so—”
“I told you he would be caught,” whispers the district attorney to his assistant, in glee. “There is only one counter to that trick, and that is to submit your own case. Then the jury is compelled to think that the defence has as much or more confidence in its case than the Commonwealth. For it has more to gain from a speech.”
“—It is not proven that a watch has been stolen, nor that an officer was assaulted, yet that is exactly and only what the prisoner is charged with. All that is proven is that a man had a watch before he collided with the prisoner, and that he did not have it afterward. The law in its mercy has provided that every man shall be presumed innocent until he is proven guilty—proven, remember!—not guessed guilty—”
His address is now, unfortunately, to the court, who is getting more and more hungry.
“Why, sir, if anybody be guilty here, I am the one. But a short while ago I was his guest in that little kingdom hedged by the mountain and the glacier. I sang to him the stirring songs of our country. Those songs of which the theme is liberty alone! I thrilled his very soul with the tales of its freedom and justice and equality. I watched his nostrils expand at the words of our great battle-hymn. I beguiled him here with these things—though I did not mean to. And he came—to you, Columbia, land of the brave, who hold out your arms to all the nations of the earth and cry Come! You—you—who invited him! And you meet him with pistol and club and shackles; the home of the free is a prison! He begs for a crust, and you give him a bullet. And what has he done? He has but entered the door you hold open to him. And what will you do? Sick, wounded, and miserable—in peril of his life—at your own hands—what is your verdict? He is in your keeping. And as you hope for mercy at the great day, as you respect the sanctity of your oath, deal in justice and mercy with this stranger who has come within your opened gates—”
“One of the difficulties of the young lawyer is to know when he is done,” says the district attorney, slyly, leaning his elbow on the bench and speaking to the judge.
The judge nods in a certain gastric irritation which is not well for either the prisoner or his counsel, but answers nothing.