what should I be if I 'adn't 'ad a
sound business training?'

Mr Clinton arrived at the mortuary, a gay red and white building, which
had been newly erected and consecrated by a duke with much festivity and
rejoicing. Mr Clinton was sworn with the other jurymen, and with them
repaired to see the bodies on which they were to sit. But Mr Clinton was
squeamish.

'I don't like corpses,' he said. 'I object to them on principle.'

He was told he must look at them.

'Very well,' said Mr Clinton. 'You can take a 'orse to the well but you
can't make 'im drink.' When it came to his turn to look through the pane
of glass behind which was the body, he shut his eyes.

'I can't say I'm extra gone on corpses,' he said, as they walked back to
the Court. 'The smell of them ain't what you might call
_eau-de-Cologne_.' The other jurymen laughed. Mr Clinton often said
witty things like that.

'Well, gentlemen,' said the coroner, rubbing his hands, 'we've only got
three cases this morning, so I sha'n't have to keep you long. And they
all seem to be quite simple.'

V

The first was an old man of seventy; he had been a respectable,
hard-working man till two years before, when a paralytic stroke had
rendered one side of him completely powerless. He lost his work. He was
alone in the world--his wife was dead, and his only daughter had not
been heard of for thirty years--and gradually he had spent his little
savings; one by one he sent his belongings to the pawn shop, his pots
and pans, his clothes, his arm-chair, finally his bedstead, then he
died. The doctor said the man was terribly emaciated, his stomach was
shrivelled up for want of food, he could have eaten nothing for two days
before death.... The jury did not trouble to leave the box; the foreman
merely turned round and whispered to them a minute; they all nodded, and
a verdict was returned in accordance with the doctor's evidence!

The next inquiry was upon a child of two. The coroner leant his head
wearily on his hand, such cases were so common! The babe's mother came
forward to give her evidence--a pale little woman, with thin and hollow
cheeks, her eyes red and dim with weeping. She sobbed as she told the
coroner that her husband had left her, and she was obliged to support
herself and two children. She was out of work, and food had been rather
scanty; she had suckled the dead baby as long as she could, but her milk
dried up. Two days before, on waking up in the morning