The latest device which my acquaintance with courts has brought to my knowledge is an _alibi_ of a very refined and subtle nature. The hypothesis is, that the prisoner was walking from point A to point Z, along a distant road, at the hour when the crime was committed. The witnesses are supposed each to see him, and some to converse with him, at points which may be indicated by many or all the letters of the alphabet. Each witness must be alone when he sees him, so that no two may speak to what occurred at the same spot or moment of time; but, with this reservation, each may safely indulge his imagination with any account of the interview which he has wit to make consistent with itself, and firmness to abide by, under the storm of a cross-examination. "The force of _falsehood_ can no farther go." No rehearsal is necessary. Neither of the witnesses needs know of the existence of the others. The agent gives to each witness the name of the spot at which he is to place the prisoner. The witness makes himself acquainted with that spot, so as to stand a cross-examination as to the surrounding objects, and his education is complete. But as panaceas have only a fabulous existence, so this exquisite _alibi_ is not applicable to all cases; the witness must have a reason for being on the spot, plausible enough to foil the skill of the cross-examiner; and, as false witnesses cannot be found at every turn, the difficulty of making it accord with the probability that the witness was where he pretends to have been on the day and at the hour in question is often insuperable, to say nothing of the possibility and probability of its being clearly established, on the part of the prosecution, that the prisoner could not have been there. I should add, that, except in towns of the first magnitude, it must be difficult to find mendacious witnesses who have in other respects the proper qualifications to prove a concocted _alibi_, save always where the prisoner is the champion of a class; and then, according to my experience--sad as the avowal is--the difficulty is greatly reduced. These incidents illustrate the soundness of the well-known proposition, that mixture of truth with falsehood, augments to the highest degree the noxious power of the venomous ingredient. That man was no mean proficient in the art of deceiving, who first discovered the importance of the liar being parsimonious in mendacity. The mind has a stomach as well as an eye, and if the bolus be neat falsehood, it will be rejected like an over-dose of arsenic which does not kill.