ogative of the
attorney for the prosecution to examine and challenge the jurors first,
Shannon arose, and, taking the board, began to question them as to their
trades or professions, their knowledge of the case before the court, and
their possible prejudice for or against the prisoner.

It was the business of both Steger and Shannon to find men who knew a
little something of finance and could understand a peculiar situation
of this kind without any of them (looking at it from Steger's point of
view) having any prejudice against a man's trying to assist himself by
reasonable means to weather a financial storm or (looking at it from
Shannon's point of view) having any sympathy with such means, if they
bore about them the least suspicion of chicanery, jugglery, or dishonest
manipulation of any kind. As both Shannon and Steger in due course
observed for themselves in connection with this jury, it was composed of
that assorted social fry which the dragnets of the courts, cast into the
ocean of the city, bring to the surface for purposes of this sort.
It was made up in the main of managers, agents, tradesmen, editors,
engineers, architects, furriers, grocers, traveling salesmen, authors,
and every other kind of working citizen whose experience had fitted
him for service in proceedings of this character. Rarely would you have
found a man of great distinction; but very frequently a group of men who
were possessed of no small modicum of that interesting quality known as
hard common sense.

Throughout all this Cowperwood sat quietly examining the men. A young
florist, with a pale face, a wide speculative forehead, and anemic
hands, struck him as being sufficiently impressionable to his personal
charm to be worth while. He whispered as much to Steger. There was a
shrewd Jew, a furrier, who was challenged because he had read all of the
news of the panic and had lost two thousand dollars in street-railway
stocks. There was a stout wholesale grocer, with red cheeks, blue eyes,
and flaxen hair, who Cowperwood said he thought was stubborn. He was
eliminated. There was a thin, dapper manager of a small retail clothing
store, very anxious to be excused, who declared, falsely, that he
did not believe in swearing by the Bible. Judge Payderson, eyeing him
severely, let him go. There were some ten more in all--men who knew
of Cowperwood, men who admitted they were prejudiced, men who were
hidebound Republicans and resentful of this crime, m