defendant amongst innumerable other ingenious excuses, has pleaded for your indulgence on the score of poverty. He has the brazen effrontery to plead poverty, forsooth! after complacently admitting, in that box, that he is earning at this very moment an income by his pen alone that might be envied by many a hardworking English journalist! I do not say this by way of making any reflection upon the defendant; on the contrary, gentlemen, I consider it does credit to his ability and enterprise. (Jab bows again.) But at the same time it disposes effectually of his allegation that he is without means, and indeed, leaving his literary gains entirely out of the question, it must have been obvious from what you have heard and seen of his manner of living in this country that he is amply provided with pecuniary resources. Bearing this in mind, gentlemen, I ask you to mark your sense of his heartless treatment of the plaintiff, and the mental and social injury she has suffered on his account, by awarding her substantial damages; not, I need scarcely say, in any spirit of vindictiveness, but as some compensation (however inadequate) for all she has gone through, and also as a warning to other ingratiating but unprincipled Orientals that they cannot expect to trifle with the artless affection of our generous, warmhearted English maidens without paying—aye, and paying dearly, too! for the amusement. (He sits down amidst applause.)
