Then came some impromptu repartee between Counsel, which was entirely successful. Then searching questions by the Counsel for the Bacon and more laughter. Mr. and Mrs. William Willie had testimonials from friends who had visited them to say that a cross word was unknown in their home. Counsel said that was all very well, but no one quarrelled before company. He wanted to know whether affairs were equally amicable in private. With great ingenuity he went over all the various ways in which husbands manage to ruffle the feathers of their spouses, but finally based his address to the Jury on the general valuelessness of testimonials and the all-round improbability of the whole story. Then came another hot argument for the claimants, and the Judge summed up with great impartiality. After this the case went to the Jury. It was awkward at first, but soon it got to whispering quite busily. Each jurywoman leaned back and was talked to by the juryman behind her, six pink ears being in such close proximity to six downy upper lips that nobody was in the least surprised when it was announced that the Jury wished to retire. It retired and it was gone many minutes. It was even feared that it had eloped, and the usher with the fishing pole was sent after it, and brought it back. It settled down with more giggles and the verdict was announced: For the claimants. And there was a storm of applause. The other two cases passed off similarly and more quickly. Two such tender husbands and two such happy wives were never seen. It was a foregone conclusion in each case. The chairing of the two couples through the crowds in the meadow with their Bacon swinging before them followed. It is hardly necessary to add the comment of an historian of Essex on the attempt "to raise the ghost of the Custom": "The ceremony was only a theatrical parade of dry bones; the ancient spirit of the thing was not there--so impossible is it for society to go backward or to clothe with flesh the skeleton of an obsolete habit or dead custom, which modern feeling and refinement have long entombed." Three years ago an imitation of the Dunmow celebration was attempted at Walthamstow. In 1909 the farmers round about Dunmow, by co-operating to form a Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory, carried forward the Bacon tradition on new lines. This local record--by a Vegetarian! for _tempora mutantur_, and with the changed times which have overthrown the Flitch, _nos mutamur in illis_--should not close perhaps without the following extract from a rhyme in _Punch_. If a little better than some other poetical effusions on the subject of the Flitch, it certainly ignores the basic principle of the Flitch foundation, that it takes two to make a quarrel!--