w limits, he had not been able to refrain
from making merry over Wood's statement that the basket which he had
been seen bearing home, on the eventful night, was a basket of eels.

"Fine eels those, gentlemen! We have seen gold-fish and silver-fish, but
golden eels are first discovered by this defendant The apostle, in Holy
Writ, caught a fish with a coin in its mouth; but this man leaves the
apostle in the dim distance when he finds eels that are all money. No
storied fisherman of Bagdad, catching enchanted princes disguised as
fishes in the sea, ever hooked such a treasure as this defendant hooked
when he hooked that basket of eels! [Rustling appreciation of the jest
among the jury.] If a squirming, twisting, winding, wriggling eel,
gentlemen, can be said at any given moment to have a back, we may
distinguish this new-found species as the greenback eel. It is a common
saying that no man can hold an eel and remain a Christian. I should like
to have viewed the pious equanimity of this good man when he laid his
hands on that whole bed of eels. In happy, barefoot boyhood, gentlemen,
we used to find mud-turtles marked with initials or devices cut in their
shells; but what must have been our friend's surprise to find, in the
muddy bed of Harlow's Creek, eels marked with a steel-engraving of the
landing of Columbus and the signature of the Register of the Treasury! I
hear that a corporation is now being formed by the title of The Harlow's
Creek Greenback National Bank-bill Eel-fishing Company, to follow up,
with seines and spears, our worthy friend's discovery! I learn that the
news of this rich placer has spread to the golden mountains of the West,
and that the exhausted intellects which have been reduced to such names
for their mines as 'The Tombstone,' 'The Red Dog,' the 'Mrs. E. J.
Parkhurst,' are likely now to flood us with prospectuses of the 'Eel
Mine,' 'The Flat Eel,' 'The Double Eel,' and then, when they get ready
to burst upon confiding friends, 'The Consolidated Eels.'"

It takes but little to make a school or a court-room laugh, and the
speech had appeared to give a good deal of amusement to the listeners.

To all?

Did it amuse that man who sat, with folded arms, harsh and rigid, at
the dock? Did it divert that white-faced woman, cowering in a corner,
listening as in a dream?

The judge now charged the jury briefly. It was unnecessary for him,
he said, to recapitulate evidence of so simple a character. The c