The Learned Counsel hoped the Gentlemen of the Jury "would not resemble those other three Lions by being deaf, deaf to the cause of justice, deaf to the interests of his client the Right Worshipful, deaf to those promptings of illuminating intelligence which had been especially vouchsafed to them as Jurymen, deaf to their duties as citizens in a strange world where there were to be found things even stranger than themselves." Thereupon the Learned Counsel sat down.
The Jury were asked if they wished to put any questions before His
Lordship summed up.
One juryman, rising, wished to know where Trafalgar Square was, as he had never seen it.
Consternation in Court.
His Lordship. "Good gracious, where do you live?"
Juryman was understood to say he had lived all his life upon the borders of Clapham Common. Questioned further with regard to this extraordinary admission, confessed he had never seen any of the Lions until he met the one in Court. Knew the Griffin well, as he had waited beside it during the four different days he had been obliged to come to town for the first time in his life. Had waited from an early hour each morning for several days until his name was called, when the different Jury lists were made up. Obliged to wait so many days on account of the names being taken alphabetically on the List, his beginning with Y, his name being Yobb.
After this brief interlude his Lordship appeared to rouse himself up and proceeded to sum up at one and the same time. His Lordship commenced by observing that the case before them that day was without exception the most extraordinary case that had ever come before him since he had presided as a judge. The Learned Judge considered that the child Ridgwell was exempt from—er—er—any deliberate desire to pervert facts. This boy claimed that he had become the recipient of some High Order of Imagination. He, the Learned Judge, had not the remotest idea what this order meant, and he firmly believed nobody else in Court had the faintest conception either concerning such a possession. However, children would be children, which was unfortunate, as he himself considered that children should be always, ahem! grown up, yes, or nearly always. That is to say, as often as was possible.
But the defendant, Mr. Learnéd Bore, had not even got the plea of childishness to excuse some of the very reprehensible, if not flippant, statements he had dared to make in the witness-box.
As a writer, the Learned Judge had always been led to believe that Mr. Learnéd Bore was quite intelligent; as a witness, the Learned Judge considered him deplorable. That a Lord Mayor of London, of London, perhaps the most beautiful and dignified city in the world, with a few architectural exceptions which the Learned Judge deplored, but—ahem!—allowed; that the Lord Mayor of this City with the glittering chains of that High Office still weighing down his neck, yet wearing his crimson robes, which the Learned Judge hoped blushed for him, as indeed his, the Learned Judge's own robes did, which he was at that moment wearing. That this Lord Mayor should utter the still more crimson falsehoods and fabrication of fairy folk, was well-nigh inconceivable.
The Learned Judge could only suppose such a state of Civic imbecility was due to the decadence of the times in which they had the misfortune to live. It was the first indication that the downfall of London, like that of Rome, and—er—other cities he could not at the moment recall—was at hand.