all remember that while these inveterate and imperishable
presiders (if you please) appear on the platform every night in the year
as regularly as the volunteered piano from Steinway's or Chickering's,
and have bolstered up and given tone to a deal of questionable merit and
obscure emptiness in their time, they have also diversified this
inconsequential service by occasional powerful uplifting and upholding of
great progressive ideas which smaller men feared to meddle with or
countenance.

OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC

[From the Buffalo Express, Saturday, May 14, 1870.]

New YORK, May 10.

The Richardson-McFarland jury had been out one hour and fifty minutes.
A breathless silence brooded over court and auditory--a silence and a
stillness so absolute, notwithstanding the vast multitude of human beings
packed together there, that when some one far away among the throng under
the northeast balcony cleared his throat with a smothered little cough it
startled everybody uncomfortably, so distinctly did it grate upon the
pulseless air. At that imposing moment the bang of a door was heard,
then the shuffle of approaching feet, and then a sort of surging and
swaying disorder among the heads at the entrance from the jury-room told
them that the Twelve were coming. Presently all was silent again, and
the foreman of the jury rose and said:

"Your Honor and Gentleman: We, the jury charged with the duty of
determining whether the prisoner at the bar, Daniel McFarland, has been
guilty of murder, in taking by surprise an unarmed man and shooting him
to death, or whether the prisoner is afflicted with a sad but
irresponsible insanity which at times can be cheered only by violent
entertainment with firearms, do find as follows, namely:

"That the prisoner, Daniel McFarland, is insane as above described.
Because:

"1. His great grandfather's stepfather was tainted with insanity, and
frequently killed people who were distasteful to him. Hence, insanity is
hereditary in the family.

"2. For nine years the prisoner at the bar did not adequately support his
family. Strong circumstantial evidence of insanity.

"3. For nine years he made of his home, as a general thing, a poor-house;
sometimes (but very rarely) a cheery, happy habitation; frequently the
den of a beery, drivelling, stupefied animal; but never, as far as
ascertained, the abiding place of a gentleman. These be evid