courtroom manners, coarse jesting, profane swearing, and smoking were no longer j)ermissible. An Irish excursionist, on entering one of the rooms newly fitted up for the district court, saw twelve pine sticks placed in a row in front of the jurors' seats. Prompted by curiosity he asked an attendant their significance and use, and was informed that they were called desk-protectors, and that it was made part of his duty to provide whittling timber for the gentlemen of the jury.
It was said that McGowan, before coming to California, was sentenced to the state prison of Pennsylvania for the robbery of the Chester bank, and that he was afterward pardoned by the governor on condition that he wonld leave the state. The fact is, Ned forfeited his bail and was never pardoned. Many criminals, however, have been set at liberty on these conditions, which course is assuredly wrong on the part of any community or nation except under extraordinary circumstances. The only plea, on the part of a judge or a ruler, for adopting such a course is that in another country a criminal may reform and live a virtuous life. But no matter how the penitent may promise this is seldom the result. Far oftener happens it that the pardoned, sent from a society which knows and watches him, to one where he is unknown and consequently may with greater safety commit new villainies, enters upon a career of wickedness wider than ever. Having served an apprenticeship and become skilled in crime in one place, he is offered the most tempting facilities for profiting by his past experience, and for gaining the confidence of a new community, where he may practise his profession with the fullest success. A bad man, entering one state from another, may rightly be sent back to the place in which his wickedness was bred; but to turn him unwhipt upon the world is about as righteous as to turn into your neighbor's vineyard the fox caught iu your own because you dislike to kill it. If any
