The Jury System. ter beat a poor devil out 'en his dues; he'll have ter pay, don't yer fear." I said I didn't, and asked the young man from Har lem to come away to lunch with me. As we walked along I tried to talk about the case and asked the young man if he knew anything about the properties of naphtha, and the mechanics of engines, and he said, "No," and other things. Then I asked him if he didn't think we ought to go to some place and ask questions about these subjects so he could give his verdict justly, but he said he would rather eat, so we went to lunch. While we lunched he told me many wonderful things about Harlem, and the people there, and later I wrote a story about him and sold it for ten dollars, which is a very good price for a story about any young man in Harlem. After recess the case was resumed, and by and by the jury were taken away upstairs, and I rather hoped they were going to be hanged. After a while, however, they came back, and the one who sat in the first chair got up and said in somewhat composite English, which being translated, was to the effect that the rich man must pay for the engine which wouldn't work. I was the only person who seemed dissatisfied with the verdict, and we were adjourned until the next morning at ten o'clock. I thought over things during the silent watches of the night, and I concluded that there was something wrong in my missing an opportunity to swear. So in the morning when I reached court, I interviewed the clerk. He was not altogether civil about it, and said I must swear at once. Then he said some things very rapidly, and looked as if he expected me to agree with him, which I said I did for politeness' sake, and then he said that was all, for which I was very glad. I think that clerk liked me very much, for whenever he had to call a jury, I was in it. My first case was most interesting. It was about a man who had walked into a coal hole, and got a bit shaken up. I couldn't
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discover that he had been at all hurt, but his friends had suggested that it would be a suitable occasion for suing somebody, so he had brought a suit for large damages, away up in the thousands, against the owner of the house. The owner, who lived on the first floor of the house, said the coal belonged to a tenant on the top floor. The top-floor tenant said it was the janitor's business to look after coal holes, and the janitor said the man who put in the coal and left the cover off the hole was the proper one to sue. It seemed to me a very complicated case indeed. The two lawyers had a great many things to say. One of them was a very nice gentleman, the other was from Brooklyn. They objected to pretty nearly everything that seemed to me to have any bearing on the subject. Finally, after the lawyers had said a great many rude things to each other, and had had as much of the case as they wanted, they turned it over to the jury and told them to go upstairs and settle it. We were led up to a stuffy, bare room, furnished with twelve chairs and a table, all of which had seen better days, the door locked, and we left to general results. We all lighted cigars, and as some of them were very bad, the atmosphere was not pleasant. The fore man made us a little speech and discovered that eight of the jurors were for awarding damages, amount to be decided by discus sion, while four saw no reason why any damages should be awarded. I was one of the latter. My constituents were the one other free-born American in the crowd, a man who said his " bizness was cloe's," and who was inherently opposed to anybody giving up anything, under any circumstances, and a young grocer's clerk, who spoke English by inspiration only. We argued the case violently for two hours; that is, if advancing absurd, unintelligent, personal views, and exploiting the unutterable igno rance of the men gathered in that room could be called argument. At the end of that time I would have agreed to any ver
