“I am not prepared to forecast the judgment of posterity on that point of ritualistic devotion to which my client is so devoted an advocate. Neither am I anxious or troubled to seek opinion whether my client inserted his elbow into the defendant's ear, or the defendant, maliciously or inadvertently, by some rotatory motion, applied, bumped or banged his ear against my client's elbow; whether the defendant rubbed or impinged with his head on the appendant coat tails of my client, or the reverse. I am uninterested in the alternative, indifferent to the whole matter. It seems to me an academic question. If the defendant so acted, it is not the action of which we complain. If my client once, twice, or even at sundry times, in his stern absorption, did not observe what may in casual accident have taken place behind, what then? I ask your Honor, what then? Did the defendant by a slight removal, by suggestion, by courteous remonstrance, attempt to obviate the difficulty? No! Did he remember those considerate virtues enjoined in Scripture, or the sacred place and ceremony in which he shared? No! Like a serpent, he coiled and waited. He hid his hypocrisy in white hairs, his venomous purpose in attitudes of reverence. He darkened his morbid malice till it festered, corroded, corrupted. He brooded over his fancied injury and developed his base design. Resolved and prepared, he watched his opportunity. With brazen and gangrened pin of malicious point and incensed propulsion, with averted eye and perfidious hand, with sudden, secret, backward thrust, with all the force of accumulated, diseased, despicable spite, he darted like a serpent's fang this misapplied instrument into the unprotected posterior, a sensitive portion, most outlying and exposed, of my client's person. “This action, your Honor, I conceive to be in intent and performance a felonious, injurious and sufficient assault. For this injury, for pain, indignity and insult, for the vindication of justice in state and community, for the protection of the citizen from bold or treacherous attack, anterior or posterior, vanguard or rear, I ask your Honor that damages be given my client adequate to that injury, adequate to that vindication and protection.” So much and more Ballister spoke. Mr. Kernegan took off his spectacles and rubbed his forehead. “Well,” he said, “I guess Mr. Ballister'll charge Albion about forty dollars--” Ballister started up. “Don't interrupt the Court. It's worth all that. Albion and Jay haven't been acting right and they ought to pay for it between 'em. The Court decides Jay Dee shall pay twenty dollars damages and costs.” The court-room murmured with approval. * * * * *