The Twelve Men

The other day, while I was meditating on morality and Mr. H. Pitt, I was,
so to speak, snatched up and put into a jury box to try people.
The snatching took some weeks, but to me it seemed something sudden
and arbitrary. I was put into this box because I lived in Battersea,
and my name began with a C. Looking round me, I saw that there were
also summoned and in attendance in the court whole crowds and processions
of men, all of whom lived in Battersea, and all of whose names began
with a C.

It seems that they always summon jurymen in this sweeping
alphabetical way. At one official blow, so to speak,
Battersea is denuded of all its C's, and left to get on
as best it can with the rest of the alphabet. A Cumberpatch
is missing from one street--a Chizzolpop from another--
three Chucksterfields from Chucksterfield House; the children
are crying out for an absent Cadgerboy; the woman at the street
corner is weeping for her Coffintop, and will not be comforted.
We settle down with a rollicking ease into our seats
(for we are a bold, devil-may-care race, the C's of Battersea),
and an oath is administered to us in a totally inaudible manner
by an individual resembling an Army surgeon in his second childhood.
We understand, however, that we are to well and truly try the case
between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar,
neither of whom has put in an appearance as yet.

. . . . .

Just when I was wondering whether the King and the prisoner
were, perhaps, coming to an amicable understanding in some
adjoining public house, the prisoner's head appears above
the barrier of the dock; he is accused of stealing bicycles,
and he is the living image of a great friend of mine.
We go into the matter of the stealing of the bicycles.
We do well and truly try the case between the King and the
prisoner in the affair of the bicycles. And we come to the
conclusion, after a brief but reasonable discussion, that
the King is not in any way implicated. Then we pass on to a
woman who neglected her children, and who looks as if somebody
or something had neglected her. And I am one of those who fancy
that something had.

All the time that the eye took in these light appearances
and the brain passed these light criticisms, there was in
the heart a barbaric pity and fear which men have never been
able to utter from the beginning, but which is the power behind
half the poems of the world. The mood cannot even adequately
be suggested, except faintly by this statement that tragedy
is the highest expression of the infinite value of human life.
Never had I stood so close to pain; and never so far away
from pessimism. Ordinarily, I should not have spoken of these
dark emotions at