“Don’t you think you can receive his evidence, sir,” asks an attentive juryman. “Out of the question,” says the coroner, “you have heard the boy.” ‘Can’t exactly say’ won’t do you know. We can’t take _that_ in a Court of Justice, gentlemen. It’s terrible depravity. Put the boy aside. Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness. Very well, gentlemen! Here a man unknown proved to have been in the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half, found dead of two much opium. If you think you have any evidence to lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come to that conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death, you will find a verdict accordingly. Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are discharged. Good afternoon. While the coroner buttons his great coat, the eminent solicitor, and himself, give private audience to the rejected witness in a corner. That graceless creature only knows, that the dead man (whom he recognised just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night, when he, the boy, was shivering in a door-way near his crossing, the man turned to look at him, and came back, and, having questioned and found that he had not a friend in the world, said, “Neither have I—not one!” and gave him the price of a supper and night’s lodging. That the man had often spoken to him since; and asked him whether he slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he ever wished to die, and similar strange questions. That when the man had no money, he would say in passing, “I’m am as poor as you to-day, Jo,” but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most heartily believes) been glad to give him some. “He was very good to me,” says the boy, wiping his eyes with his wretched sleeve. “Wen I see him a layin so stritched out just now, I wished he could have heard me tell him so. He was very good to me, he was!” It may be asked, is the above an over-drawn picture of what is frequently observable in coroners’ courts? If answered in the negative! surely the time has come for the reception of additional evidence, with the view, not only to improvement in accordance with the age in which we live, but for the maintenance of the legitimate object for which coroners’ courts were first established, and which they profess to uphold in all the integrity of seeking _the truth_, _the whole truth_, _and nothing but the truth_. Under these circumstances it becomes an imperative duty to record cases where discrepancies exist or have existed.