It is the second day of my trial. The whole performance is tiresome and monotonous in the extreme. On one side—the side of the prosecution, the side against me—the case is legally perfect, on my side there is practically no defense; and surrounded as I am by powerful and subtle political influences, I have come to the conclusion that I have as much chance of success—or escape—as the proverbial snowball in Hades.

Considering my hopeless predicament and my helplessness, I am astonished at the sneering and insulting manner of the prosecuting attorney. Why this unseemly desire[Pg 2] to swat as insignificant a gnat as I?[1] During lunch at recess I hear that my victim and accuser is very much embarrassed and annoyed at the pertinent questions asked by the prosecutor and translated by an interpreter.

"Are you a picaroon?" queried the District Attorney.

"No," protested the blushing Mexican, "I am only a congressman."

Insults are sometimes the making of a man\'s reputation, but ridicule always kills, as my Mexican opponent confessed to me once in Mexico City, adding that he never paid the slightest attention to insults or libelous attacks of the Mexican press. In this case they made him change his mind and he was sent twice three thousand miles from Mexico to prosecute as libel that which he could not even read.

[Pg 3]

Finally the case is concluded and I ............