I said, "One would think you were a _prima
donna_. What does make people go on so about you?"
My brother is hopelessly generous and confiding. His inability to
believe evil is something incredible, and so has come all this
suffering. You said you hoped I should be at rest when the first
investigating committee and Plymouth Church cleared my brother almost
by acclamation. Not so. The enemy have so committed themselves that
either they or he must die, and there has followed two years of the
most dreadful struggle. First, a legal trial of six months, the
expenses of which on his side were one hundred and eighteen thousand
dollars, and in which he and his brave wife sat side by side in the
court-room, and heard all that these plotters, who had been weaving
their webs for three years, could bring. The foreman of the jury was
offered a bribe of ten thousand dollars to decide against my brother.
He sent the letter containing the proposition to the judge. But with
all their plotting, three fourths of the jury decided against them,
and their case was lost. It was accepted as a triumph by my brother's
friends; a large number of the most influential clergy of all
denominations so expressed themselves in a public letter, and it was
hoped the thing was so far over that it might be lived down and
overgrown with better things.
But the enemy, intriguing secretly with all those parties in the
community who wish to put down a public and too successful man, have
been struggling to bring the thing up again for an ecclesiastical
trial.
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