The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 11 (of 12): Dresden Edition—MiscellanyIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 11 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Miscellany
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
The public feeling excited at Boonton was overshadowed by
that at Morristown and the neighboring region. For six
months no topic was so interesting to the public as this. It
monopolized attention at the stores, and became a fruitful
subject of gossip in social and church circles. Under such
circumstances it was to be expected that everybody who could
spare the time would go to court yesterday. Lines of people
began to climb the court house hill early in the morning. At
the hour of opening court the room set apart for the trial
was packed, and distaffs had to be stationed at the foot of
the stairs to keep back those who were not early enough.
From nine thirty to eleven o'clock the crowd inside talked
of blasphemy in all the phases suggested by this case, and
the outsiders waited patiently on the lawn and steps and
along the dusty approaches to the gray building.
Eleven o'clock brought the train from New York and on it
Colonel Ingersoll. His arrival at the court house with his
clerk opened a new chapter in the day's gossip. The event
was so absorbing indeed, that the crowd failed entirely to
notice an elderly man wearing a black frock snit, a silk
hat, with an army badge pinned to his coat, and looking like
a merchant of means, who entered the court house a few
minutes behind the famous lawyer. The last comer was the
defendant.
All was ready for the case. Within five minutes five jurors
were in the box. Then Colonel Ingersoll asked what were his
rights about challenges. He was informed that he might make
six peremptory challenges and must challenge before the
jurors took their seats. The only disqualification the Court
would recognize would be the inability of a juror to change
his opinion in spite of evidence. Colonel Ingersoll induced
the Court to let him examine the five in the box and
promptly ejected two Presbyterians.
Thereafter Colonel Ingersoll examined every juror as soon as
presented. He asked particularly about the nature of each
man's prejudice, if he had one. To a juror who did not know
that he understood the word, the Colonel replied: "I may not
define the word legally, but my own idea is that a man is
prejudiced when he has made up his mind on a case without
knowing anything about it." This juror thought that he came
under that category.
Presbyterians had a rather hard time with the examiner.
After twenty men had been examined and the defence had
exercised five of its peremptory challenges, the following
were sworn as jurymen. * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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