"I learned that a court of assize was sitting just then in the town; I was quite glad of an opportunity of seeing for myself a sight supposed to be such a compound of the farce and the row, 'an American court of justice in the rural districts.' I found out the courthouse; a dilapidated old building, crowning the rising ground at one end of the principal street. I entered the hall. On one side a rickety door, with a half moon grating near the top, marked the apartment (about twelve feet by fifteen), which served as the district jail. It was strong enough, probably, to be any barrier to the liberty of a lame ewe; yet it was large enough and strong enough for the requirements of the locality! I ascended the stairs, and, pushing open a door on the first landing, I found myself in 'court.' Accuse me not, oh hilarious reader, if I herein depart from all precedent and prefer not fun to fact; if I declare that I saw no revolvers, no bowie knives, heard neither cursing nor squabbling; possibly these are to be seen, and I may see them ere I return to Ireland--but here, at least, I declare, that I saw gravity and dignity on the bench and at the bar; order and decorum in the audience. The latter I attribute to the circumstance that there were no policemen to disturb the quiet of the place, by perpetually bawling out 'silence!'--an intolerable nuisance which _we_ have to endure. The room was about thirty feet square and fifteen in height. At the end opposite the entrance was the bench; in the middle of the apartment an oval shaped space was railed off on the floor; one end reaching to the desk (immediately under the bench), at which sat the county clerk and the sheriff. The oval space was alloted to the professors of the law. On each side, rising gradually to the rear, were rows of seats, or rather pews, for the auditors. The jury sat in one of these 'pews,' immediately on the left of the judge. Two large stoves, whose flue-pipes cut sundry capers in the air--with the laudable intention of giving us all the benefit possible of the heat they contained--kept the place comfortably warm. Occasionally the high sheriff would walk quietly down to one of the stoves, open the door, poke up the fire, and put in a fresh log. Accustomed from childhood to associate so largely the judicial functions with a horse-hair wig, and a black silk gown--indeed, rather inclined to think that these constituted the judge, and that without them there could be no law in the land, it seemed hard to believe that the gentleman on the bench before me, in civilian costume, could be a real genuine judge and no mistake....