38

ALL RESTS WITH THE JURY

CLOSE OF ARGUMENT IN THE SHEEDY CASE.

Mr. Strode Brings His Brilliant, Earnest Plea for the Life of His Client to a Thrilling Close.

And Mr. Lambertson Reviews the History of the Crime With Telling Eloquence and Vigor-Bracing Up the Jury.

A Passionate Outburst of Counsel.

Never in the history of the city has public interest in any event been so thoroughly demonstrated as was yesterday the interest in the Sheedy case. People began to arrive at the court house before 8 o'clock, hoping thereby to secure desirable seats ere court opened at 9. As the hour of opening approached long lines of people were to be seen pouring from every direction en route to the court house. Every neighboring hitching post was brought into service for the tethering of horses and vehicles. At 9 o'clock it was almost impossible to crowd one's way through the court room. No regard was paid to the railing enclosing the large space usually allotted to the court and the bar. Every foot of standing room even in that large court chamber was filled, and more than filled. The ladies, who largely predominated, had invaded the very steps of the throne of justice, and Judge Field's platform was flanked on either side by banks of feminine faces and gay and fluttering headgear. If there was a single inch of vacant space in all that crowded room outside of the few square feet in front of the jury box, it was impossible to locate it by a view form the judicial dais. Even the defendants were brought into uncomfortable proximity with the eager throngs, whose chairs were crowded directly up against them. No such assemblage of beauty, fashion, walth, intelgence, mixed with their various reverses, has ever been witnessed in a Lincoln court of justice, or anything nearly approaching it, while hundreds were turned away, not because the doors were closed, but because it was utterly impossible to push one's way in. There was a musical but deafening hum of conversation as the jostling, pushing audience pushed into more or less uncomfortable positions, content even with the poorest accommodations, gald even that they were permitted to stand up to see and hear the proceedings. Such an audience was well calculated to bring out every latent power of logic and eloquence from the brains and lips of the gifted counsel, and most truly did it exert its full capabilities in that line. There were old ladies and old gentlemen there, whose wrinkled: visages