London, had been made the subject
of a virulent and unscrupulous newspaper attack by a man who, in
addition to writing plays which nobody professed to understand,
undoubtedly wrote articles that all fair-minded people unquestionably
deplored. This unprincipled person, Mr. Learned Bore by name, had seen
fit to attack no less a person than the Worshipful the Lord Mayor of
London, and that, moreover, during his Lordship's tenure of office,
believing that he, an unscrupulous journalist, could drag the Lord
Mayor down from his exalted position by means of a few clap-trap
phrases written for money, although he, the learned Counsel, marvelled
how any one could find it in their hearts to remunerate such a person
engaged in such a calling using such questionable language in such a
preposterous case.

He, the Most Worshipful the Lord Mayor, the observed of all observers
in the City as elsewhere, or in any assemblage he adorned with his
presence and ornamented with his personality, had been accused in an
offensive phrase of "imbibing too freely of the Devil's cup," the
Devil's cup in this instance signifying wine, the insidious inference
being that the Most Worshipful the Mayor was inebriated, and, moreover,
in public, and in Trafalgar Square of all places in London. The
Counsel paused dramatically, then a thrill of unutterable horror crept
into the hitherto purring voice of Mr. Gentle Gammon.

"That, my Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury, is a foul calumny, an
insidious lie, uttered to drag down the exalted of the earth, and
bespatter the resplendent robes of Civic dignity with the spiteful mud
besprinkled from the nethermost garbaged recesses of the journalistic
gutter.

"During the still and beautiful night hours, when this travesty of an
accusation is brought, my client, the Most Worshipful, had wandered
into the holy star-lit night, clad in the flowing robes symbolical of
his exalted earthly estate, to place a wreath, a beautiful wreath, upon
one of the monuments of London he deemed the most dignified and fitting
to receive it. That monument, if they but lifted their eyes, they
would see in Court. A stately noble Lion, whose presence there had
necessitated the removal of four separate sets of folding doors leading
to the Court in order that it might be present. Could this noble beast
but speak," urged Mr. Gentle Gammon, K.C., "could it even roar, it
would speak its severest censures, would roar its loudest denunciations