there.

It is, of course, not unnatural that in the course of a trial
occupying weeks or months the tension should occasionally be
relieved by a gleam of humor. After one has been busy trying
a case for a couple of weeks one goes to court and sets to
work in much the same frame of mind in which one would attack
any other business. But the fact that a small boy sometimes
sees something funny at a funeral, or a bevy of giggling
shop-girls may be sitting in the gallery at a fashionable
wedding, argues little in respect to the solemnity or beauty
of the service itself.

What are the celebrated cases--the trials that attract the
attention and interest of the public? In the first place,
they are the very cases which contain those elements most
likely to arouse the sympathy and prejudices of a jury--where
a girl has taken the life of her supposed seducer, or a
husband has avenged his wife's alleged dishonor. Such cases
arouse the public imagination for the very reason that every
man realizes that there are two sides to every genuine tragedy
of this character--the legal and the natural. Thus, aside
from any other consideration, they are the obvious instances
where justice is most likely to go astray.

In the next place, the defence is usually in the hands of
counsel of adroitness and ability; for even if the prisoner
has no money to pay his lawyer, the latter is willing to take
the case for the advertising he will get out of it.