At one end of the Chief Magistrate’s house, there
used to be, when I was last at Maubin, a long room
thus defended, in which he sat daily to dispense justice;
and great activity in entering was expected of the
prisoner under trial, the assembled witnesses, and the
counsel employed in each case. Many a sentence, it
is whispered, has fallen with enhanced severity from
judicial lips ; many a prisoner has come away with a
lighter punishment, as the consequence of his manner
of entering the court. And the same circumstance has
TH E COURT-HOUSE, MAUBIN
played, and, it is hinted, still plays, no little part in the
rise and fall of advocates ; in the lifting of one man
to some giddy pinnacle of honour, in the degradation
of another to depths of official displeasure.
It is not to be expected that a career at Maubin
462
THE LANDING-PLACE AT WAKEMA
