“It was with a rueful countenance that he took his seat in the court. The room was densely filled with the usual motley assemblage at a county sessions. Loafers half in rags, and shopmen in the latest cut, portly farmers with huge mud-stained boots, and drovers carrying heavy loaded whips, here a sober Quaker with a broad-rimmed beaver, and there a gay young lawyer with more wit than briefs, long men and short men, fat ones and lean ones, some with merry round faces, and others with countenances as sour as crab-apples, officers and loungers, attorneys and clients, filled up every vacant space outside the bar, whiling away the time until the appearance of the judge, by speculating on the prospects of a crop, or discussing the points of a case set down for trial at the term. At length his honor made his appearance, and, bustling and bowing through the crowd, assumed the bench, wiped the perspiration from his rubicund face, coughed with judicial gravity, and ordered the crier to open the court. That high functionary accordingly started to his feet, and in a nasal twang mumbled over a formula which no one could hear distinctly, but which appeared to be a recapitulation of the iniquities of those in authority generally, and of his honor in particular, as it ended with a hope that God would save the commonwealth and the honorable court. After the crier sat down, a very lean man, with a very sharp nose, and a very squeaking voice, called out ‘John Smith,’ whereupon a little fat man jumped up and said ‘here;’ but the clerk, without seeming to notice him, went on and called Joseph Thomson, Zerubabel Thomson, Joab Johnson, and the Lord knows how many more Thomsons and Johnsons, all of whom severally jumped up and said ‘here.’ Then, the jury being empannelled, the case came on, and the attorneys got into towering passions, and seemed as if they could have eaten each other up, while the jury smiled and nodded, and their foreman—the little fat man—stroked his chin and looked extremely wise. After this was gone through with, there was a general buzz through the room, when suddenly the judge cried ‘order,’ and then the sheriff cried ‘order,’ and the sleepy constables and tipstaves opened their eyes and echoed ‘order’ more lustily than either; whereupon his honor turned over one or two big books bound in white calf,—ah! this is prime Port—consulted his notes for a moment, and then proceeded to sum up the evidence and charge the jury.