to him. The presiding judge said:—"Proceed with the case."
The Recorder stood up immediately and opened his case in a most eloquent speech that was very moderate in its tone, in fact, I felt that he was performing a duty that he would have avoided if it were possible: I felt that he was, while accusing me of a horrible crime—as sorry for me as he was for his daughter. He tried to make his charge against me as leniently as he could. To go over all he said in support of the laws of his nation would be more than I could do, and more, dear reader, than you could stand. Suffice it to say that I was accused of what, in the eyes of this people, was the most heinous of heinous crimes, and that was—having married a second time. He said that he himself was much to blame as he had never asked me had I been married, but he added, as an excuse for his neglect, "How could I think that one so young had been married before?" (I did not quite see the force of this argument, as I was forty years old.) He said, to further
