“This case presents singular features. The secret and sunless caverns, where human motives lie concealed, it is the function of justice to lay open to vivifying light. Not only evil or good intentions are moving forces of apparent action, but mistakes and misjudgments. I conclude that your Honor puts down the defendant's fanciful and predatory wasp to the defendant's neglect of legal advice, to his feeble and guilty inepitude. I am willing to leave it there. I assume that he confesses the assault on my client's person with a pin, an insidious and lawless pin, pointed with cruelty and propelled with spite; I infer and understand that he offers in defence a certain alleged provocation, certain insertions of my client's elbow into the defendant's ear, certain trespasses and disturbance of the defendant's hair, finally, certain approximations and contacts between my client's adjacent quarter and the defendant's shoulders, denominated by him--and here we demur or object--as an act of sitting or squatting, whereby the defendant alleges himself to have been touched, grieved and annoyed. In the defendant's parsimonious neglect of counsel we generously supply him with a fair statement of his case. I return to my client. “Your Honor, what nobler quality is there in our defective nature than that which enables the earnest man, whether as a citizen or in divine worship, whether in civil matters or religious, to abide steadfastly by his conscience and convictions. He stands a pillar of principle, a rock in the midst of uncertain waters. The feeble look up to him and are encouraged, the false and shifty are ashamed. His eye is fixed on the future. Posterity shall judge him. Small matters of his environment escape his notice. His mind is on higher things.