Few persons realize how difficult it is for an outsider, such as an ordinary juryman, to decide an issue of fact. A flat denial is worth a hundred ingenious defences in which the act is admitted but the attempt is made to explain it away. It is this that gives the jury so much trouble in criminal cases. For example, in the case of the pickpocket the lawyers and the judge may know that the complaining witness is a worthy woman, the respectable mother of a family, and that the defendant is a rascal. But each comes before the jury presumably of equal innocence. She says he did, he says he didn't. The case must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Generally the defendant's word, so far as the jury can see, is as good as his accuser's. If there are other witnesses it is usually not difficult, and certainly not impossible, to show that they have poor eyesight, bad memories, or are undesirable citizens in general. The criminal lawyer learns in his cradle never to admit anything. By getting constant adjournments he wears out the People's witnesses, induces others to stay away, and when the case finally comes to trial has only the naked accusation of the complainant to disprove. Or, to put it in more technically correct fashion, the complainant has only his own word wherewith to establish his case beyond a reasonable doubt. A bold contradiction is often so startling that it throws confusion into the enemy's camp. I once defended a worthy gentleman named Cohen on a charge of perjury, alleged to have been committed by him in a civil case in which he, as defendant, denied that he had ever ordered a set of stable plans from a certain architect. The latter was a young man of very small practice who had an office but no clerks or draughtsmen. He certainly believed with the utmost honesty that my client had come to his office, engaged him to design a stable, and approved an elaborate set of plans that he had drawn. When it came to paying for them Mr. Cohen declined. The architect brought suit, and at the trial swore to the dates and places of the interviews between Cohen and himself, and to all the surrounding circumstances and details connected with the execution of the plans in question. His lawyer expected that the defendant would interpose the defense that the plans were inferior, defective, or worthless. Not at all! Mr. Cohen swore that he had never ordered the plans and, in fact, had _never seen the architect in his life!_ He alleged that until the suit was brought he had never even _heard_ of him, and that either the architect was demented or a liar, or else some other Cohen had given the order. The architect and his lawyer were thunderstruck, but they had no witnesses to corroborate their contentions, since no one had ever seen Cohen in the other's office. The jury disagreed and the architect in some way secured Cohen's indictment for perjury. But during the criminal trial, at which I defended him, Mr.