The Green Bag
172
Green Bag, and Mortville is a transparent equivalent for Dedham. However, his obser vations are not to be deemed too closely linked with any particular section of the country, and may be typical of many a semi-rural county. The article was first pub lished in the Boston Transcript of Feb. 8, 1911, and is reprinted with its courteous
permission.
HE aged constable of the town of Fareham accosted me in the post office, and holding a paper under my nose, informed me that I had been drawn as juryman.
I was to report for the civil term of the Superior Court about to sit at
The panel numbered thirty-odd
and
that is a large enough handful of men to insure a good human average. (Lawyers
by the selection of their craft are below the human average.) Our jury was well mannered, did not quarrel, was conscien tious and laborious in the consideration
Mortville in and for the county of Wessex-God-save-the-Commonwealth-of
of cases. There were two or three block
Massachusetts. From my neighbors I learned that there were various pre texts on which I might ask to be excused. But I was advised that being a literary
me — a blockhead is always a man who
man (in my town any sort of journalist is a “literary man") I should find the court experience good material. My
fellow townsmen are always solicitous about my material. When I fell off the roof and broke my leg, they congratu
lated me because I could use the experi
heads (who, of course, disagreed with thinks as you do not), and there were
one or two idlers who paid little atten tion to the cases. The great majority were sensible, honest, hard-thinking men. There is a notion current among
half-educated people, who prove their inferiority by thinking themselves su
perior, that the jury system must be a great mistake. A few days after the
whether I ever wrote another word or
opening of the term I went into a literary club in Boston. A Boston literary club consists of five members who cannot write and several hundred
not.
members who have never tried.
ence in a novel. I agreed that a session in the jury box would be good experience Moreover, I had no excuse to
I met
offer the judge, because being a “literary man" I have no honest occupation, no private business which I have a right to regard as important. Finally, I
one of those who have tried, a good man, but too highly cultivated ever to have
consider it dishonest to try to escape public business and throw it on some
to have a man like me on a jury. After the waiter had brought them, we con
body else.
I reportedat the court house.
My fellow jurors were men of many
had much real education. I told him of my jury duty. He said it was unusual
tinued the conversation.
I found it
was not that my club friend thought much of me, but that he had a poor
occupations, of all ages, and of a good order of intelligence. It may be that
opinion of juries.
in the cities respectable men shirk the duty, and undesirable job-seekers fill
selecting jurors. Yet he was sure that juries were as a rule uneducated. I
the jury boxes.
said these jurors were good men. “Well, what sort are they?" he asked. "Why, just thirty men, same as thirty
I doubt if that is true,
and I know that no such condition prevails in my county. Our jury was immeasurably superior to the lawyers in point of intelligence and honesty.
He knew nothing
about courts or about the system of
men you might pick up anywhere, around this club."
