This fellow is a sort of author. He had served a time or two as a juror
in the Supreme Court of New York County. In that building down by the
City Hall. But he says those cases bored him terribly. They were
chicken-feed sort of rows, generally concerned with the question of how
many dollars and fractions thereof X had occasioned the loss of to Z by
reason of his failure to deliver such and such a quantity of (say)
beeswax before the drop in the market of 39.7-1/4 cents, as called for
by telephone agreement, possibly. The "Court" (a nice, pink and grey old
fellow) would go to sleep, with his mouth open, during the drone of the
legal argument, and be awakened automatically (apparently by some change
in atmospheric conditions) at the moment required for him to begin his
charge to the jury. Occasionally, he would come semi-to for an instant
before this, and indistinctly utter the words, "Objection sustained."
My friend's chief impression of these proceedings is his recollection of
one phenomenon which he observed. Not long after the opening of the
presentation of X's side of the case he saw very clearly that Z hadn't a
leg to stand on. It was ridiculous that he had the face to come into
court with an attempt to question the truth of facts which were as
apparent to the naked eye as the Woolworth Building. My friend felt it
needless to pay any further attention to the foolish formalities of the
argument. If he had not had an uneasy feeling that he might get pinched
for this, he would have gone to sleep, like the Judge.
But those were dull days in the jury business.
A little later my friend gets some sort of a ticket instructing him to
call and talk things over with a gentleman having the university degree
of Commissioner of Jurors. This gentleman asks my friend if he has ever
been arrested on a criminal charge, if he is opposed to capital
punishment, and if he has any prejudice against Episcopalians. My friend
is a man of liberal mind, and replies that he would just as soon hang an
Episcopalian as anybody else. "You're on," said the gentleman, reaching
for a blotter; and signed him up. My friend didn't know exactly for
what. But the gentleman said everything was all right, they might not
call on my friend for a long time, and then perhaps it would be a short
case.
Sometime back was all this. My friend had almost forgotten about his
acquaintance with the Commissioner. Then all of a sudden the gong sounds
and the great Crime Wave is on. Detectives dash madly about with
shotguns. A jeweller is shot every day after lunch and a subway
ticket-seller is robbed directly after every train starts. My friend
hurries home early because everybody is fined who is caught on any paved
street after dark, and there in his letter-box is the summons from his
old friend the Commissioner, who apparently has borne him in mind all
this while.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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