to the law. He has prosecuted at least fifty men for murder,
and convicted more than he cares to remember. Such trials
are invariably dignified and deliberate so far as the conduct
of the legal side of the case is concerned. No judge,
however unqualified for the bench; no prosecutor, however
light-minded; no lawyer however callous, fails to feel the
serious nature of the transaction or to be affected strongly
by the fact that he is dealing with life, and death. A
prosecutor who openly laughed or sneered at a prisoner charged
with murder would severely injure his cause. The jury,
naturally, are overwhelmed with the gravity of the occasion
and the responsibility resting upon them.

In the Patterson, Thaw, and Molineux cases the evidence,
unfortunately, dealt with unpleasant subjects and at times was
revolting, but there was a quiet propriety in the way in which
the witnesses were examined that rendered it as inoffensive as
it could possibly be. Outside the court-room the vulgar crowd
may have spat and sworn; and inside no doubt there were
degenerate men and women who eagerly strained their ears to
catch every item of depravity. But the throngs that filled
the courtroom were quiet and well ordered, and the justified
interested outnumbered the morbid.

The writer deprecates the impulse which leads judges, from a
feeling that justice should be publicly administered, to throw
wide the doors of every courtroom, irrespective of the
subject-matter of the trial. We need have no fear of Star
Chamber proceedings in America, and no harm would be done by
excluding from the courtroom all persons who have no business