Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1911 — An Overwhelming Charge. [ARTICLE]

An Overwhelming Charge.

The magistrate looked sternly over his gold-rimmed glasses at the puny individual in the' dock. “You are charged," he remarked, reading the formal complaint, “with having willfully, feloniously and with malice aforethought appropriated to your own use and behoof a certain article, to-wit, a one-wheeled vehicle, commonly called a wheel-barrow, the said vehicle having been wrongfully and feloniously abstracted by you from the premises of one John Smith, carpenter, on September 18, Anno Domini, contrary to the statute in such cases made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of this great realm. What have you to say? Are you guilty or not guilty?” The prisoner’s face assumed a peagreen hup, his knees trembled and he stammered forth: “Not guilty, guv'nor. All I done was to steal a barrow!” —Tit-Bits.