Nevertheless, the plain, blunt men are not
satisfied. They do not as yet feel sure as to its meaning. They
think it indicates either over-thoughtfulness about trifles or else
a leaning, slight though it be, toward despotism and free-trade.
They will now all, or nearly all, wear evening dress with a black
cravat, but even those of them who will consent to put on a white
one do so with a certain shamefacedness and sense of backsliding,
and of treachery to some good cause, though they do not exactly know
which.
JUDGES AND WITNESSES
The proceedings in the recent Bravo poisoning case have raised a
good deal of discussion in England as to the license of counsel in
cross-examination--a question which recent trials in this country
have shown to possess no little interest for us also. In the Bravo
inquest, as in the Tichborne case and the Beecher trial of the last
year, the cross-examination of the witnesses was pushed into matters
very remotely connected with the issue under trial, so that the
general result of the inquiry was not, as in most cases, the
eliciting of a certain number of facts bearing on the question in
court, but a complete revelation of the whole private life of a
family, or of a certain part of it, and even of a whole circle of
families.
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