My solicitor, SIDNEY SMARTLE, is of the opinion that my case is looking "a bit rocky," but that much will depend upon how the Judge sums up. What a pity that, owing to judicial red-tapery, I am prohibited from popping in upon him at lunch and importuning him to pronounce a decree in my favour! XXXII _Containing the conclusion of the whole matter, and (which many Readers will receive in a spirit of chastened resignation) Mr Jabberjee's final farewell._ _Queen's Bench Court, No. ----,_ 2 P.M. Hon'ble Justice HONEYGALL is now summing-up, in such very nice, chatty, confidential style that it is impossible to hear one half of his observations, while the remainder is totally inaudible.... Nevertheless, I already gather that he regards the affair with the restricted narrowminded view that it is simply the question of damages.... He appears to be now discussing whether my testimony that I am of such excessive natural funkiness as to be intimidated by a few threats into my matrimonial engagement is humanly credible.... I cannot at all comprehend why, at his frequent references to my alleged tiger-slaughters--which, with shrewd commonsense sapience, he seems to consider mere ideally fabricated fibs and fanciful yarns--the whole Court should be so convulsed with unmeaning merriment, nor why so stern a Judge does not make any attempt to check such disorderly interruptions.... So far as my imperfect hearing can ascertain, he has been instructing the jury that they may utterly dismiss from their minds my highly ingenious plea of inability to offer any other kind of matrimony than a polygamous union--surely, a very, very slipshod off-hand method of disposing of such a nice sharp quillet of the Law!... He is talking to them about my means, and has thrown out a rather apt suggestion that I may have been led by sheer vaingloriousness and Oriental love of hyperbole into exaggerating my resources.... However, he "sees no reason to doubt my competence to pay a reasonable amount of damages"--an opinion with which I am not so pleased. "If the jury think me a gay sort of Hindoo deceiver, who has heartlessly trifled with the affections of a simple, unsuspecting English girl, that will lead them to award substantial damages. If, on the other hand, they consider myself an inexperienced Oriental ninnyhammer of a fellow, who has been entrapped into an engagement by an ambitious, artful young woman--why, that may incline them to inflict a merely nominal penalty." (But why, I should like to know, does a Judge, who is infinitely more capable than a dozen doltish juryman to express a decided opinion, thus put on the double-faced mask of ambiguity, and run with the hare and halloo with the hounds, like some Lukeworm from Laodicea?) ... Now he is mentioning "certain circumstances, which he is bound to tell the jury have made a strong impression on his own mind." ... Alack, that, owing to the