Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
"Gentlemen of the jury," said she, "you know without my telling you that
when my client, the plaintiff, Mrs. Stiles, comes here and says that she
has suffered at the hands of the railway company damages to the amount
of ten thousand dollars, she is not exaggerating her sufferings for the
sake of enlisting your sympathy. It is not that she comes to you with
feminine weakness, displaying her injuries, and, with feminine
resentment, overstating them and their effects, to rouse your pity. You
know, and I only remind you of it, that the rule of law forbids you to
give her more than she asks for: so I, on her behalf, take care that she
shall not ask for less than you might give her."
This was very well, and the jury probably understood as much.
Mrs. Tarbell paused a moment, and then proceeded in an impressive voice:
"But Mrs. Stiles's injuries, gentlemen, are not slight; she does not ask
you for a mere nominal sum in compensation of them, nor, in view of the
facts, will any sum that you do give her seem excessive. I shall show
you, gentlemen, that Mrs. Stiles, a widow, left almost penniless by her
husband, who has by her own efforts brought up and educated four
children, two of whom are still entirely dependent upon her, was, on the
ninth day of April last, through the negligence of the defendant,
injured in such a way as to give her seven weeks of the most painful
suffering and to render her unable for the rest of her life to do the
work upon which she has hitherto mainly depended for the support of
herself and her family. I shall show you that Mrs. Stiles attempted to
get on one of the defendant's cars; that while she was so doing the car
was started and she thrown off; that she sustained a sprain of the right
ankle and a fracture of the fibula; that the accident has resulted in
laming her for life and incapacitating her for the use of a
sewing-machine; and that it was by her sewing-machine that she supported
herself. Mrs. Stiles will now tell you her own story."
With this Mrs. Tarbell sat down. She had not the keen penetration which
years of practice give to a finished advocate, but she had feminine
instinct, which served her in quite as good stead; and, short as was the
time she had been addressing that jury, she felt that she could answer
for it as certainly as fifteen years before she could have answered for
one of her admirers. If Mr. Juddson had only been another woman she
could have told him this, but a glance would have been wasted on him: so
she kept her triumph to herself. She looked at the bullet-headed young
juror, at the benignant old juror, at the fat-faced and dropsical juror,
at the preternaturally-solemn negro juror, at the lantern-jawed foreman
with the black moustache; she was on a perfectly good understanding with
them, and knew what to say to each one of them. She felt that she could
have afforded to be a little less brief. However, Mrs. Stiles would
not-- By the way, where was Mrs. Stiles?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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