Most of us have undergone this sensation at one time or another, with less cause then had poor James.

There he was, put up almost for the first time in his life to conduct, single-handed, a most important case, upon which it was scarcely too much to say the interest of the entire country was concentrated.

Nor was this all.

Opposed to him were about twenty counsel, all of them men of experience, and including in their ranks some of the most famous leaders in England: and, what was more, the court was densely crowded with scores of men of his own profession, every one of whom was, he felt, regarding him with curiosity not unmixed with pity.

Then, there was the tremendous responsibility which literally seemed to crush him, though he had never quite realised it before.
"May it please your Lordship," he began; and then, as I have said, his mind became a ghastly blank, in which dim and formless ideas flitted vaguely to and fro.
There was a pause--a painful pause.
"Read your pleadings aloud," whispered a barrister who was sitting next him, and realised his plight.
This was an idea.