a simple affair as Elocution!

"It may strike you, gentlemen, that if the plaintiff had any genuine
affection for the defendant, or any actual intention of linking her lot
with his, she would----" (the rest is a severe mumble!) "Or again, you
may take into consideration----" (but precisely _what_ they are to take
is, to myself, a dumb show!). "Still, after making every possible
allowance for the idealising effects of the tender passion upon the
female judgment, I confess I find it a little difficult to persuade
myself that----" (Again I am not in at the finish--but, from the
bristling and tossing of JESSIMINA'S hat-plumes, I am in great hopes
that it contained something complimentary to myself.) ... He has just
concluded with the observation that, "after what they have seen and
heard of the defendant during the proceedings, the jury should find
little difficulty in arriving at a fairly accurate estimate of the loss
which a young lady of British birth and bringing-up would sustain by
her failure to secure such a husband."

From the last it is clear that his hon'ble lordship meant that, in
secret, he has the highest opinion of my merits, though he entirely
overlooked the obvious fact that he would have better carried out his
benevolent and patronising intentions towards me by affecting (just now)
to consider me only a worthless poor chap. But even the most
subtly-trained European intellects are curiously backward in such
elementary chicaneries!

3 P.M.--The jury are assembling their heads. They seem generally
agreed--except a couple of stout ones who are lolling back and listening
with mulish simpers. If I were certain that they were fellow-colleagues
from _Punch_, I would encourage them by secret signs to persevere--but
who knows that they may not be partisans of the plaintiff? If so, they
deserve to be condignly punished for such obstinate dull-headedness....
The foreman has asked that they may retire, whereupon Justice
HONEYGALL answers them, "certainly," and retires his own person
contemporaneously....

3.15 P.M.--The jury are still absentees. In reply to my questions, my
solicitor says that, as far as he can see, the damages can't be under
L250, and may amount to a cold "Thou" (or thousand)! Adding that, if I
had only let him brief WITHERINGTON, Q.C., I might have got off with
L50, or even what is nominally called a farthing. But I say to him, in
such a case how could I possibly have acquired any forensic distin