The temperature in the room dropped nearly 20 degrees; it went from hot to cold.

The practice of hanging up stockings in the chimney corner for Kriss Kringle to fill with toys, pretty books, bon-bons, &c., for good children, is being superseded by that of placing a Christmas Tree on the table to await the annual visit of the worthy Santa Klaus.

And so the jury and he approached, as if this were a time of peace instead of one of the greatest world disturbances ever known in history, the question whether the prosecution had proved to the jury’s satisfaction that George Joseph Smith was guilty of murder. The jury were the shield which stood between him and death, unless, to the jury’s satisfaction, he was proved to be guilty. Yet while they were the shield of the man accused, they were also the Sword of the State; and if the man were proved guilty, they were the servants of the State to punish him. Their respective functions were these: he the judge, had to settle the law, and the jury must take the law from him. The jury were judges of fact.

To the fashionable world he cannot be a stranger […] and his having married a sister of the Duke of Leeds is a voucher for my assertion.