fair with the restricted
narrowminded view that it is simply the question of damages.... He
appears to be now discussing whether my testimony that I am of such
excessive natural funkiness as to be intimidated by a few threats into
my matrimonial engagement is humanly credible.... I cannot at all
comprehend why, at his frequent references to my alleged
tiger-slaughters--which, with shrewd commonsense sapience, he seems to
consider mere ideally fabricated fibs and fanciful yarns--the whole
Court should be so convulsed with unmeaning merriment, nor why so stern
a Judge does not make any attempt to check such disorderly
interruptions....

So far as my imperfect hearing can ascertain, he has been instructing
the jury that they may utterly dismiss from their minds my highly
ingenious plea of inability to offer any other kind of matrimony than a
polygamous union--surely, a very, very slipshod off-hand method of
disposing of such a nice sharp quillet of the Law!... He is talking to
them about my means, and has thrown out a rather apt suggestion that I
may have been led by sheer vaingloriousness and Oriental love of
hyperbole into exaggerating my resources.... However, he "sees no reason
to doubt my competence to pay a reasonable amount of damages"--an
opinion with which I am not so pleased. "If the jury think me a gay sort
of Hindoo deceiver, who has heartlessly trifled with the affections of a
simple, unsuspecting English girl, that will lead them to award
substantial damages. If, on the other hand, they consider myself an
inexperienced Oriental ninnyhammer of a fellow, who has been entrapped
into an engagement by an ambitious, artful young woman--why, that may
incline them to inflict a merely nominal penalty." (But why, I should
like to know, does a Judge, who is infinitely more capable than a dozen
doltish juryman to express a decided opinion, thus put on the
double-faced mask of ambiguity, and run with the hare and halloo with
the hounds, like some Lukeworm from Laodicea?) ... Now he is mentioning
"certain circumstances, which he is bound to tell the jury have made a
strong impression on his own mind." ... Alack, that, owing to the
incorrigible mumbling of his diction, I cannot succeed in ascertaining
what these said circumstances are!... He has begun (I think) to
discourse concerning my latest offer of marriage in open Court. What a
pity that hon'ble judges should not study to acquire at least ordinary
proficiency in such