Valentine was not left alone in his trials. The friends of the Methodist church flocked around, and one or another was always with him. The clergymen of every denomination took a great interest in his situation and character. And the better Valentine was known, the deeper this interest grew. In advance of his trial, the press took up his case, and the papers were filled with accounts of visits that this or that gentleman had made him; conversations that one or another clergyman had held with him in his cell; and with descriptions of his good looks, graceful manners, intelligence, knowledge, conversational powers and eloquence--all "so remarkable in one of his race and station." It would seem, indeed, as if, unhappily, the good points of the unhappy young man had never been known or suspected, until crime had brought him prominently before the public. If there was anything to be regretted in the great sympathy that was felt for him, it was that the sympathizers kept up too much fuss around him for the good of one of his excitable temperament, and thus prevented the self-recollection and sobriety that befited the solemnity of his situation. Through the kindness of these friends, the best counsel that could be prevailed upon to take up his hopeless cause was retained, to defend Valentine in the approaching trial. There was one affecting circumstance that occurred just before the sitting of the criminal court. Mrs. Waring had been subpoenaed to attend as a witness for the prosecution. She came up from Louisiana; and, soon after her arrival in the city, she sought out the poor, little, obscure wife of the prisoner, and gave her what comfort she could impart--telling her, that though she was the principal witness, her testimony would not bear hard upon Valentine, whom she felt persuaded was mad, and unconscious of his acts at the moment she witnessed them. And that she hoped his life might yet be spared, for she felt convinced that capital punishment was in no case a corrector or a preventor of crime. And that, if the trial should terminate unfavorably, she would petition the governor for a commutation of the sentence. And that her petition, under the circumstances, would be the most powerful that could be presented. These and other merciful promises and reviving hopes did the gentle-hearted widow infuse into the poor girl's sinking heart.