the witness chair are of minor importance. The lawyers occupy the
center of the stage the greater part of the time. Their clients sit
watching, the judge and jury keep silent and listen to them.

In order to make a trial or a contest there must be two sides. There
may be three or more lawyers, but usually they divide themselves into
two groups and take sides. The attacking party,--the plaintiff,
complainant, or prosecutor,--naturally the more aggressive, and the
man who is defending himself.

The latter's lawyer is the one who is wary and alert. Sometimes the
attacking lawyer having gained a position sits down and defends it.
During the trial there is a constant change of attack, the taking of a
redoubt, charges and countercharges, trenches captured and forsaken
again. The intellectual and legal battle is as bitter as any physical
one. To the understanding observer and the participant it is momentous
and intense.

While the contest is waging there is no intermission. The fight is
always hot, keen, bitter. Quietly as the lawyer may handle himself,
underneath his calm exterior he is ready to fight, bite, scratch,
shoot, kill, slash, but always he must do so under the rules of the
game, never hitting below the belt. What the battle is about is the
issue, the result is called the verdict, or the decision, and the
formal statement of the court as to the result the judgment.

The contest is so real it soon ceases to be a play. It is too much in
earnest and whatever humorous quality it may possess never loses the
underlying intensity of human conflict. One noted trial lawyer says
that he always feels the loss of a case in the pit of his stomach,