Yollop: "About 145 pounds, in my clothes."
Counsel: "You are six feet tall, I should say?"
Yollop: "Lacking a quarter of an inch."
Counsel: "Ahem! As I was saying, this strong, desperate man, armed
with a revolver, allowed you to walk across the room and strike him
in the face, causing him to crumple up and fall to the floor as if
struck by a--well, someone like Jack Dempsey. Isn't that so?"
Yollop: "I never was so surprised in my life."
Counsel, thunderously: "Answer my question!"
Yollop: "Well, I hit him and he fell."
Counsel: "Do you regard yourself as an experienced boxer?"
Yollop: "No, I don't."
Counsel: "Are you what may be termed a powerful man, able to strike
a powerful blow with the fist?"
Yollop: "I don't know. The defendant can answer that question better
than I can."
Counsel, to the court: "Your honor, I appeal to you to direct this
witness to answer my questions--"
The Court: "Confine your answers to the questions as they are put to
you, Mr. Witness."
Counsel to Yollop: "Now see if you can answer this question, Mr.
Yollop. You have described in direct examination that this defendant
was a big, burly, rough looking man. You say you were surprised when
he went down under your inexpert blow. Why were you surprised?"
Yollop: "I was surprised to find how easy it is to knock a man
down."
Counsel. "I see. You had never knocked a man down before. Is that
so?"
Yollop: "I had never even struck a man before."
Counsel: "And yet you found it singularly easy to deliver a blow on
the jaw of an armed man with sufficient force to knock him down?"
Yollop: "I can only answer that question by saying that he went down
when I struck him. I don't know how hard or how easy it is to knock
a man down."
Counsel: "But you admit you were surprised?"
Yollop: "Yes. I was surprised."
Counsel, shaking his finger and speaking with something like
malevolence in his voice and manner: "Don't you know, Mr. Yollop,
that this man was so exhausted from lack of food that he was not
only unable to defend himself from your assault but that the weakest
blow--or even a gentle push with the open hand,--would have sent him
sprawling?"
Yollop: "I don't know anything about that."
Counsel: "Wasn't he so weak that he could hardly walk across the
room after he arose?"
Yollop: "Possibly. He was not too weak, however, to climb up two
floors on a fire escape and pry open my window before I,--"
Counsel: "Now,--now,--now! Please answer my question?"
Yollop: "He complained of being dizzy. He held his hand to his jaw.
That's all I can say."
Counsel: "You were pointing the revolver at him all the time, you
have testified. Is that true?"
Yollop: "Yes."
Counsel: "If he had made an attempt to attack you, you would have
shot him, wouldn't you?"
Yollop: "I would have shot AT him, I suppose."
Counsel, slowly, distinctly, dramatically: "In other words, you
would have been strong enough to do the thing that he was unable to
do,--pull a trigger."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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