eally could not tell exactly, Mr. Wellman."

"Would you say that it was going at ten miles an hour?"

"Oh, fully that!"

"Twenty miles an hour?"

"Yes, I should say it was going twenty miles an hour."

"Will you say it was going thirty miles an hour?" inquired Wellman with
a glance at the jury.

"Why, yes, I will say that it was."

"Will you say it was going forty?"

"Yes."

"Fifty?"

"Yes, I will say so."

"Seventy?"

"Yes."

"Eighty?"

"Yes," responded the young lady with a countenance absolutely devoid of
expression.

"A hundred?" inquired the lawyer with a thrill of eager triumph in his
voice.

There was a significant hush in the court-room Then the witness, with
a patient smile and a slight lifting of her pretty eyebrows, remarked
quietly:

"Mr. Wellman, don't you think we have carried our little joke far
enough?"

There is no witness in the world more difficult to cope with than a
shrewd old woman who apes stupidity, only to reiterate the gist of her
testimony in such incisive fashion as to leave it indelibly imprinted
on the minds of the jury. The lawyer is bound by every law of decency,
policy and manners to treat the aged dame with the utmost consideration.
He must allow her to ramble on discursively in defiance of every rule
of law and evidence in answer to the simplest question; must receive
imperturbably the opinions and speculations upon every subject of both
herself and (through her) of her neighbors; only to find when he thinks
she must be exhausted by her own volubility, that she is ready, at the
slightest opportunity, to break away again into a tangle of guesswork
and hearsay, interwoven with conclusions and ejaculation. Woe be unto
him if he has not sense enough to waive her off the stand! He might
as well try to harness a Valkyrie as to restrain a pugnacious old
Irishwoman who is intent on getting the whole business before the jury
in her own way.

In the recent case of Gustav Dinser, convicted of murder, a vigorous old
lady took the stand and testified forcibly against the accused. She
was as "smart as paint," as the saying goes, and resolutely refused to
answer any questions put to her by counsel for the defence. Instead,
she would raise her voice and make a savage onslaught upon the prisoner,
rehearsing his brutal treatment of the deceased on previous occasions,
and getting in the most damaging testimony.

"Do you say, Mrs.--" the lawyer would inquire deferentially, "t