After six weeks imprisonment, I was brought to trial before Chief Justice Wells. I was defended by a very tolerable lawyer, to whom I paid twenty-five dollars in consideration of his conversing five minutes with a jury of my peers, the said jury consisting of twelve hungry individuals who wanted to go out to dinner. When my legal adviser had made a few well-meaning remarks, the jury retired to talk the matter over among themselves; and, after about fifteen minutes absence, they returned and expressed their opinion that I was "not guilty." This opinion induced me to believe that they were very sensible fellows indeed. Not for a moment did I think of demanding a new trial; that would have been impertinent, as doubting the sagacity of the jury. My two Irish prosecutors left the court-room in a rage; and two more chop-fallen disappointed and mortified Greeks were never seen. The Judge took his departure, the spectators dispersed, and I crossed the street and dined sumptuously at Parker's, with a large party of friends. Very many of my Boston readers will remember a long series of articles which I wrote and published about that time, in the columns of one of the newspapers, entitled "Mysteries of Leverett Street Jail." In those sketches I gave the arrangements of the Jail, and its officers, "particular fits;" and the manner in which the fellows writhed under the inflictions, was a caution to petty tyrants generally. The startling revelations which I made created great excitement throughout the whole community; and I have good reason to believe that those exposures were the means of producing a far better state of affairs in the interior of the "stone jug." I have thus, very briefly, given the extent of my experience with reference to the old Leverett Street Jail. Unlawful ladies and gentlemen are now accommodated in an elegant establishment in Cambridge street, for the old Jail has been levelled to the ground to make room for "modern improvements."--I visited it just before the commencement of its destruction, and gazed at my old apartment "more in sorrow than in anger." There were my name and a few verses, which I had written upon the wall. There was the rude table, upon which I had penned two novels, which, from their tone, seem rather to have emanated from a gilded _boudoir_. There, too, in the grated window, was a little flower-pot in which I had cultivated a solitary plant. That poor plant had withered and died long ago, for the prisoners who succeeded me probably had no taste for such "trash." I took and carefully preserved the dead remains of my floral favorite--"for," said I to myself--"they will serve to remind me of a dark spot in my existence." And now, with the reader's permission, I will turn to matters of a more cheerful character. FOOTNOTES: [M] I allude to Mr. W.G. Jones, now deceased. CHAPTER XI "_The Uncles and Nephews._"