The case was tried and a verdict found: 
    The jury, with great humanity,
  Acquitted the prisoner on the ground
    Of extemporary insanity.

MR. FINK’S DEBATING DONKEY.

  Of a person known as Peters I will humbly crave your leave
  An unusual adventure into narrative to weave—­
  Mr. William Perry Peters, of the town of Muscatel,
  A public educator and an orator as well. 
  Mr. Peters had a weakness which, ’tis painful to relate,
  Was a strong predisposition to the pleasures of debate. 
  He would foster disputation wheresoever he might be;
  In polygonal contention none so happy was as he. 
  ’Twas observable, however, that the exercises ran
  Into monologue by Peters, that rhetorical young man. 
  And the Muscatelian rustics who assisted at the show,
  By involuntary silence testified their overthrow—­
  Mr. Peters, all unheedful of their silence and their grief,
  Still effacing every vestige of erroneous belief. 
  O, he was a sore affliction to all heretics so bold
  As to entertain opinions that he didn’t care to hold.

  One day—­’t was in pursuance of a pedagogic plan
  For the mental elevation of Uncultivated Man—­
  Mr. Peters, to his pupils, in dismissing them, explained
  That the Friday evening following (unless, indeed, it rained)
  Would be signalized by holding in the schoolhouse a debate
  Free to all who their opinions might desire to ventilate
  On the question, “Which is better, as a serviceable gift,
  Speech or hearing, from barbarity the human mind to lift?”
  The pupils told their fathers, who, forehanded always, met
  At the barroom to discuss it every evening, dry or wet,
  They argued it and argued it and spat upon the stove,
  And the non-committal “barkeep” on their differences throve. 
  And I state it as a maxim in a loosish kind of way: 
  You’ll have the more to back your word the less you have to say. 
  Public interest was lively, but one Ebenezer Fink
  Of the Rancho del Jackrabbit, only seemed to sit and think.

On the memorable evening all the men of Muscatel Came to listen to the logic and the eloquence as well—­ All but William Perry Peters, whose attendance there, I fear.  Was to wreak his ready rhetoric upon the public ear, And prove (whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn’t lift The human mind as ably as the other, greater gift.  The judges being chosen and the disputants enrolled, The question he proceeded in extenso to unfold:  “Resolved—­The sense of hearing lifts the mind up out of reach Of the fogs of error better than the faculty of speech.”  This simple proposition he expounded, word by word, Until they best understood it who least perfectly had heard.  Even the judges comprehended as he ventured to explain—­ The impact of a spit-ball admonishing in vain.  Beginning at a period before Creation’s morn, He had