The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-14
THE HOTEL CLERK ON
 THE UNWRITTEN LAW
By IRWIN s. COBB.

Standard Oil company. There are so many different methods of execution too and that commend it to the careful and dis crimnating killer. Some of the leading authorities favor catching your victim while he's sitting on a roof garden look ing a play and some insist that you can get the best general results by surprising him when he's in a bathing suit armed with nothing but the key to- the bath house door. Bat there's at least an old fashioned firm who say that if you can slip up behind the other fellow when he's talking to a lady on the street. and plug him in the rear color button with a soft nose bullet it's just the same as meldlng hundred aces. So you see all youve got to do is to pay your money and take your choice, and you can't go far wrong if you pick the right kind of a lawyer"
 wy will a jury fall for the unwritten law gulf when it's simply a case of cold blooded killin ?' inquired the House De- tective.
 Well, it's customary for jury to fall | for something, Larry said the Hotel | Clerk, "and I suppose it might just as | well be nice, poetcal romantic, char | lotte russo plea such as the unwritten | law that takes aif the pressure off the , brain, instead of a complicated defense | like emotional insanity or dementia prae- cox, that's full of words that sound like 1 the names of sleeping cars and require more or less thinking. Anyway, there's something about getting on a jury in a murder trial that appears to upset the | human intellect and leave it In the de- plorable state of a capsized cup custard. | You take the average juror before he 1 gets to be a juror and let him be in his real estate office or his shoe store or his delicatessen shop or his what not, trans acting the ordinary affairs of life. And then let a gentleman step inside in a l frock coat with a law book under his | arm and as a preliminary to buying lot or a pair of felt insoles or liverwurst or ! something, let this gentleman lead of | with a two-hour oration touching on the l inherent love of home and country, which burns in every human breast or should do so unless the f1ue is defective, and 1 then go on to speak of the flag, the gorand old fer-lag, and the billowy blue canopy I of heaven and the bill of rights and Paul | Rever's ride and the Last Days of Pom pei and few other perfectly pertinent l topics. What would the proprietor of l said premises do? Would he stand for it? He would not. He'd call for the watch or else he'd slam the young man eloquent in his vociferating map with some of the portable desk fixtures
 But when he's up for jury service, it's different A deputy sheriff wearing a made tie comes round and summons him | and he goes to a courthouse and sits in a corridor where the wind blows free for a couple of days waiting for his ! turn. Then he mounts the witness stand 1 and holds up his right hand and a court attendant says three hurried grunts to him in the Choctaw language, this be- ing the solemn ceremony called admin isterng the oath. After which he sits down In an exposed place, where several
 hundred strangers can look at him and wonder why he wears that kind of whis- | kers. And while the sketch artists are drawing criminal libels of him the law yers on both sides aHd the judge take turns asking him If he reads the papers
 and if so, why, and has he got any opin
 ions on this subject, or any other sub.
 ject, and does he keep a COW and dit he ever vote the Hearst ticket and are any of his children red-headed and other
 similar questions; all this being done
 dye understand, with a view to ascer
 taining whether he ought to serve in g murder trial. But after suffering great pain for awhile he qualities and the judge
 tells him that he Is performing the high | est duty of citizenship and that great
 trust has been imposed upon him, an6
 then. to show he means 1t, orders the
 sheriff to lock him and his Il fellow
 malefactors up very tight and keep ar
 eye on them day and night.
 Well, after eight or nine weeks thu
 prisoners available cash begins to TUT low and his learned counsel decides it''
 time to close the case. So he makes tn, same summing-up speech that had loni