It was easy enough to be seen that nobody would owe a seat to courtesy. So I leaned against a pillar, and tried to forget that I had a body. It was no easy task, for here was an ache, and there a tremor, and there a faintness, which made me very sensible of not being all spirit. I seemed to be in a court-room, and a woman was speaking with great earnestness in behalf of her client, a dog-stealer. She was very red in the face, and very fierce in the eye; her voice, which was roused to its topmost pitch, had a shrill squeak to it, which grated on my nerves like the finger-nail upon dried plaster; and I could see the eyes of her “honorable colleague” intently regarding her dress, from which two or three hooks had bounded, apparently scared from their post by the vehemence of her eloquence. He was undoubtedly meditating a joke at her expense. One of the judges was a very pretty woman, who seemed to have just come in possession of a new bracelet; for she kept up a constant clasping and unclasping, and was evidently very well satisfied with the curve of her arm, whatever she might have thought of the lawyer’s speech. Another one observed the arm too—a neighbor on the bench, whom I suspected of being a susceptible sort of a widower—and I thought to myself that I should be very sorry to be a prisoner, looking for justice to those two pre-occupied judges. The jury were half men, half women. But I will not record my observations, lest it should be thought that I dreamed very perversely. Suffice it, that I again pitied the poor prisoner. Oh! the difficulty of imagining oneself a spirit, with such fleshly reminders! _Could_ I stand another moment? I looked as pleadingly as I could about me, but nobody moved. Getting out seemed impossible, for the passage was crowded. Oh! how I longed for “the good old days, the dear old time, and all my peace of mind”—not forgetting somebody to find me the _best seat_! It was no place to be in love with _equality_. I was (it was very wrong, I know, and I might not be so tempted when awake,) I was ready to sign myself Esau, jun.—barter my birthright of intellect, and power, and independence, in short, every thing we had gained by the Reform, for but the strong arm and protecting presence to take me through that crowd. Luckily, I lacked the means of making my madness practical, for not an arm offered itself, and not a face turned toward me for any better purpose than to favor me with a familiar stare—an expressive acknowledgment of _equality_, which had been one of the first features of the Reform. “Rather tiresome standing,” observed the burly individual before mentioned, seeing me balance on my toes, and twist from side to side, and try by various other methods of equal importance to rid myself of my fatigue. “Rather tiresome standing,” and he changed his comfortable position for one of like comfort; and stretched his arms along the back of his seat with provoking complacency. I assented with a sigh.