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CHAPTER XI: SOME

EREWHONIAN TRIALS

n Erewhon as in other countries there are some courts
Iof justice that deal with special subjects. Misfortune
generally, as I have above explained, is considered more
or less criminal, but it admits of classification, and a court
is assigned to each of the main heads under which it can
be supposed to fall. Not very long after I had reached the
capital I strolled into the Personal Bereavement Court, and
was much both interested and pained by listening to the
trial of a man who was accused of having just lost a wife to
whom he had been tenderly attached, and who had left him
with three little children, of whom the eldest was only three
years old.
The defence which the prisoner’s counsel endeavoured to
establish was, that the prisoner had never really loved his
wife; but it broke down completely, for the public prosecu-
tor called witness after witness who deposed to the fact that
the couple had been devoted to one another, and the pris-
oner repeatedly wept as incidents were put in evidence that
reminded him of the irreparable nature of the loss he had
sustained. The jury returned a verdict of guilty after very
little deliberation, but recommended the prisoner to mercy
on the ground that he had but recently insured his wife’s

10 Erewhon