Life — July 12, 1883 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

21 (ee POPULAR SCIENCE CATECHISM. Lesson VI—The Jury. HAT is this? An intelligent jury, darling. But these men who look like ignorant and vicious loafers? They are jurors, dear. And that wall-eyed chucklehead in the middle? Sh! he is the foreman. Why is he made foreman? Because he knows less than the others. My! But what ts a jury for? A jury, my precious, is a body of men, good and true, who decide questions of justice for the people. How is the question submitted? Why, the lawyers talk and chew tobacco and abuse witnesses, while the judge and jurors take a nap, and then the judge is waked up by the clerk, and gives his charge. And what is that? As intellige ent a summary of the laws bearing on the question as he can improvise. Well, after the poor judge has delivered his charge? Why then the jurors wake up, and go off to decide the case. But they have heard nothing of the evidence. No. Nor of the law. No. But ts not that awful? No, it makes no difference. Gracious! why? . . . Because they could understand neither if they did hear. Then what do they do when they go off? Play poker. My ! but is that not a wicked game? Very. How long do they play poker? If no one has fixed them, they play until one man is fractured, How fractured? Broke. And then? He amuses himself by working out a verdict. And the rest? Sign it. Then this is the way the law is administered? Every time. But you said this was the way the jury did if no one had “ fixed" them, Yes, sweet. How is a jury“ fixed?” ‘That is a secret. Well, when a jury is“ fixed,” how is the verdict? Immensely satisfactory. Always? ‘Always. To whom? To the side that did the fixing. Lf I want further information on this subject, to whom shall I go? To Mr. Ingersoll, dear. Cc. CRUEL DIPLOMACY. RELENTLESS WORK OF CHINESE PATRIOTS IN THEIR Country's Cause. A great American Statesman laid low by a Blood Curdling Dinner in Mott Street. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. HE beautiful pictures, statuary, tapestry and glass ware in the Hoffman House barroom furnished a superb setting for a stout, florid man, who leaned upon the bar and regarded in a dreamy way a second man who was not so florid but who was several times as fat. The ascetic impressions awakened by Bouguerau’s “‘ Nymphs and Satyr” were relieved by the regular faint clicking from the oyster stand, where three haughty openers were at work. Through the door from the hotel, past the magnificent bronze statue of the Ionian woman wearing nothing in parti- cular, came the languid figure of Mr. Stokes, with its rapturous trousers and foot gear and its chastened thatching of gray. The eye of the proprietor took in the seventeen or eighteen knots of frosty champagne bottles, each the centre of a prodigal and. desirable group, and lighted upon the person of the florid man at the bar, who was taking brandy and ‘soda. Mr. Stokes rushed to him and shook him warmly by the hand. “ How are things i in Camden ?” he asked, effusively. “You mock me,” replied Mr. Robeson—for he it was—smiling sadly. “Who,” he continued, “is the comicbooks.com