------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcriber’s Note: This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. THE WAYS OF THE HOUR. [Illustration: The Theft _The Ways of the Hour_ ] [Illustration: “This bears some resemblance, Mr. Wilmeter, to an interview in a convent. I am the novice, you the excluded friend, who is compelled to pay his visit through a grate.” _Ways of the Hour. Page 115._ ] THE WAYS OF THE HOUR. _A TALE._ BY J. FENIMORE COOPER. ‘Is this the way I must return to native dust?’ NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1892. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Entered, according to the Act of Congress, In the year 1861, by W. A. TOWNSEND AND COMPANY, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. [Illustration] PREFACE. ----------------------- The object of this book is to draw the attention of the reader to some of the social evils that beset us; more particularly in connection with the administration of criminal justice. So long a time has intervened since the thought occurred, and so many interruptions have delayed the progress of the work, that it is felt the subject has been very imperfectly treated; but it is hoped that enough has been done to cause a few to reflect on a matter of vital importance; one that to them may possess the interest of novelty. A strange indifference exists as to the composition of the juries. In our view, the institution itself, so admirable in a monarchy, is totally unsuited to a democracy. The very principle that renders it so safe where there is a great central power to resist, renders it unsafe in a state of society in which few have sufficient resolution to attempt even to resist popular impulses.