The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-03-13
THE TRIAL AS IT Is,
A Look at 1t Through spectacles Favorable
to the Plaintiff.

"A A1OOh az II AhrOuSu SpeCIaCleS Favorable
TO the Plaintiff.
Letter in Chicago Inter Ocean.
The reports for the daily papers are made
by young men who do not write shorthand,
and who have consequently little practical
knowledge of what is really required at the
hands of a verbatim reporter. They scud
along at a breakneck speed, writing long
hand as best they may, for seven or eight
hours day. They have no opportunity to
rewrite their notes, and their copy often goes
to the printer without revision. All expert
enced reporters know what farce such an
attempt to report at verbatim is, and their
journalistic sympathy will be extended to
these men who are compelled to palm off
their hit-or-miss efforts and tumblng rheto-
ric for a record of what occurs in thkcourse
of days, every one of which has been crowded
with exciting Incidents
Each one of these men know that he could
better give the spirit of days proceedings
in column of carefully written matter of
sketch and anal ySs than in his four or five
columns of running record devoid of color
and bare of incident but the public pressure
demands verbatim reports, and they do the
best they can. In doing this they become
so jaded and callous as to not be sensitive to
dramatic incident or humorous episode, or so
tagged out as to be incapable of obeying the
reportorial impulse TO make the most of the
picturesque and the grotesque. The other
day when Mrs. Cougar tainted or went into
Mysteries, a Chicago reporter would have
broken leg rather than miss the opportun-
ty to write up "a strong-m woman so
weak minded as to faint" And, kindly or
otherwise, he would have given more space
to the incident than to the droning of wit
nesses But only one paper the Journal,
made anything OF the episode.
Again, the spectacle of four or five lawyers
humping their heads together in eager con-
ference to find some little grain of indiscre-
ton. some little act of common imprudence.
some expression that will bear the Interpret
alton of looseness, and bounding a woman
through ten hours OF questioning to find
some discrepancy or contradiction or incon-
sistency of statement, some ncoherency in
pointed phrase, would naturally suggest the
inquiry of how five men, vulnerable as men
are. would come out of such laying bare of
their private lives for one month instead of
for twenty years. And this suggestion
would start men like Townsend to building
up graphic picture more taking than whole
columns filled with testimony Or the
spectacle, seen often when Mrs. Cougar was
on the stand, of her four lawyers raliying
close about her with faces dark with sun
pressed excitement and eyes flashing and
hands moving in imperious gesture, almost
touching in their sweep the hair of the wo-
man resting for moment at the white heat
OF the hunt-she painting and confused they
bristlng with the resources of masculinity
i'll tight-such a spectacle would suggest an
effective sketch OF a woman who had so often
defed and scolded men, admitting in ewes
and face and attitude the possibility of occa-
sions when men would do the work better
than women. But the reporters stumbling
along behind the swollen tide of disiointed
testimony, could have no eyes for scenes
like this. And hence because they are made
pack-horses to carry load of inconseouent
ral how fol To criVy c1- 81,
OF this celebrated case"
The case differs from other so-called scan
dial cases in several important and significant
particulars. No one in Lafayette seriously
makes the charge that there has ever been
unhappiness or cause for unhappiness, out
side OF present complications, in either fam
lily. On the other hand, there are in both
cases the best evidences of domestic TRANQUIL
ity and such loyalty and helpfuness as is
usual in married life. The circumstance
that in the Wallace household the wife has
been something OF an invalid and in the
Cougar household the husband at times n
sufferer from ill-health has been made use of
in certain quarters as an excuse for the alleged
liason between Captain Wallace and Mrs
Cougar. But it so happens that this circum-
stance, as matter of fact, has brought out in
clearer light the sturdy fidelity of the wife
in one case, and the devotion of the husband
in the other. In regard to the latter fine
the former, it is a subject of common re-
mark.
Speaking to one gentleman a railroad man.
of the attitude Mr.. Cougar took toward his
wife in this terrible trial. l drew out the I'M
expected reply, "He ought to. She has stuck
to him through thick and thin. Years ago.
when, through hard work and the goadng of
ambition, his eyes failed him, that woman,
his wife, did for him things that few women
would think OF doing for husband She
read law books to him. she wrote at his die
tation sucn papers as his practice required
the preparation of; she used her eyes while
his rested, and when he recovered a common
remark was that no two people in the world,
after such an intimacy and companionship,
understood each other better than John d.
and Helen NJ. Cougar"
Telling this story to liquor-dealer who
has no personal or political sympathy with
Mrs. Cougar, he said quickly; Between you
and me and the gatepost. 1 believe that
When Mandler and the boys got up this
racket about these people told them that il
John D. Cougar said his wife wasn't guilty,
Or that she wasn't there, would believe him