ago and he's never forgiven me. I was juror in a manslaughter trial he was
trying to run. He thought himself pretty foxy, but when it came to a
showdown I put it all over him. There was a guy who was foreman of the
jury that time who said I had it all over Mr. Erbstein as an argufier and
that my arguments made his look like ten cents. I won easily on five
ballots and Mr. Erbstein has never forgave me.

* * * * *

"But I'll go on about the qualifications. First of all, I never read
newspapers. Never. No juror should ought to know anything about anything
that's going on. I found that out in my youth when I first started in. The
first question they ask you is, 'What have you heard about this case and
what have you read or said about it?' That's the first one. Well, the
right answer is 'nothing.'

"If you can say nothing and prove you're right they'll gobble you up as a
juror. For that reason I avoid all newspapers, and right now I don't know
what big crimes or cases have been committed at all. I have a clean,
unprejudiced mind and I keep it that way.

"Nextly," said Mr. Martin, trying a new sight on the cuspidor, "I don't
belong to any lodges whatsoever. They're a handicap. Because if the
defendant is a Mason and you are a Elk he would rather have a brother
Mason be juror than a strange Elk. So I don't belong to any of them and I
don't go to church. I also have no convictions whatsoever about politics
and have no favorites of any kind in the matter of authors or statesmen or
anything. What I try to do is to keep my mind clean and unprejudiced on
all subjects."