730 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1882, 



Failand House, a place which is very green in our 

 memories. It reached us at Washington, where, with 

 Mrs. Gray as my inseparable companion, I went to 

 attend the annual meeting of the regents of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. We were away from home little 

 more than a week, and even in that time we managed 

 to bring in a little visit to friends in Philadelphia. 



This miserable trial of Guiteau, of which you al- 

 ready knew unpleasant particulars, was still in pro- 

 gress ; but I did not go near the court-room, and 

 could not readily have been induced to do so. The 

 day after I received your letter I met an acquaintance, 

 one of the judges of the Court of Claims (a court for 

 trying claims against the United States government 

 preferred by citizens or others, and much is it to be 

 wished that a mass of claims presented to Congress 

 and cumbering its committees could be passed over to 

 this court), and I drew him into conversation upon 

 the scandal which the trial was causing. He spoke of 

 Judge Cox as a man of ability and high character, re- 

 ferred to the impossibility of shutting the prisoner's 

 mouth, the expectation that the man's prolonged reve- 

 lation of himself before the jury would throw more 

 light upon the case than any amount of expert testi- 

 mony, which I think was expected to be more con- 

 tradictory than it actually was, and of the determina- 

 tion to leave no ground for the ordering of a new 

 trial. My friend told me he had been twice in the court- 

 room, thought the judge might and should have ex- 

 ercised more control, yet that what he saw and heard 

 did not appear to him at the time so indecorous and 

 offensive as it appeared when presented in the news- 

 papers. Indeed, this sensational newspaper reporting 

 is a huge nuisance, and in respect to these matters our 



