small race mare, which excited the acquisitiveness of his father, who, desiring an easier mode of acquisition than by purchase, proposed to stake a horse he had (the same he had swapped for, on the road to Montgomery, with the land speculator,) against Simon's mare, upon the issue of a game of seven up. Since the game of chess between Mr. Jefferson and the French Minister, which lasted three years, perhaps there never has been a more closely contested match than that between these keen, sagacious and practiced sportsmen. It was played with all advantages; all the lights of science were shed upon that game. The old gentleman had the advantage of experience - the young of genius: it was the old fogy against young America. For a long time the result was dubious; as if Dame Fortune was unable or unwilling to decide between her favorites. The game stood six and six, and young Simon had the deal. Just as the deal commenced, after one of the most brilliant shuffles the senior had ever made, Simon carelessly laid down his tortoise-shell snuff-box on the table; and the father, affecting nonchalance, and inclining his head towards the box, in order to peep under as the cards were being dealt, took a pinch of snuff; the titillating restorative was strongly adulterated with cayenne pepper; the old fogy was compelled to sneeze; and just as he recovered from the concussion, the first object that met his eye was a Jack turning in Simon's hand. A struggle seemed to be going on in the old man's breast between a feeling of pride in his son and a sense of his individual loss. It soon ceased, however. The father

congratulated his son upon his success, and swore that he was wasting his genius in a retail business of "shykeenry" when nature had designed him for the bar.

        To follow Simon through the eventful and checkered scenes of his nascent manhood, would be to enlarge this sketch to a volume. We must be content to state briefly, that such was the proficiency he made in the polite accomplishments of the day, and such the reputation he acquired in all those arts which win success in legal practice, when thereto energetically applied, that many sagacious men predicted that the law would yet elevate Simon to a prominent place in the public view. In his twenty-first year, Simon, starting out with a single mare to trade in horses in the adjoining State of Alabama, returned, such was his success, with a drove of six horses and a mule, and among them the very mare he started with. These, with the exception of the mare, he converted into money; he had found her invincible in all trials of speed, and determined to keep her. Trying his fortune once more in Alabama, where he had been so eminently successful, Simon went to the city of Wetumpka, where he found the races about coming off. As his mare had too much reputation to get bets upon her, an ingenious idea struck Simon - it was to take bets, through an agent, against her, in favor of a long-legged horse, entered for the races. It was very plain to see that Simon's mare was bound to win if he let her. He backed his own mare openly, and got some trifling bets on her; and his agent was fortunate enough to pick up a green-looking

Georgia sucker, who bet with him the full amount left of Simon's "pile." The stakes were deposited in due form to the amount of some two thousand dollars. Simon was to ride his own mare - wild Kate, as he called her - and he had determined to hold her back, so that the other horse should win. But the Georgian, having by accident overheard the conversation between Simon and his agent, before the race, cut the reins of Simon's bridle nearly through, but in so ingenious a manner, that the incision did not appear. The race came off as it had been arranged; and as Simon was carefully holding back his emulous filly, at the same time giving her whip and spur, as though he would have her do her best, the bridle broke under the strain; and the mare, released from check, flew to and past the goal like the wind, some three hundred yards ahead of the horse, upon the success of which Simon had "piled" up so largely.

        A shout of laughter like that which pursued Mazeppa, arose from the crowd (to whom the Georgian had communicated the facts), as Simon swept by, the involuntary winner of the race; and in that laugh, Simon heard the announcement of the discovery of his ingenious contrivance. He did not return.

        Old Simon, when he heard of this counter-mine, fell into paroxysms of grief, which could not find consolation in less than a quart of red-eye. Heart-stricken, the old patriarch exclaimed - "Oh! Simon! my son Simon! to be overcome in that way! - a Suggs to be humbugged! His own Jack to be taken outen his hand and turned on him! Oh! that I should ha' lived to see this day!"

        Proceeding to Montgomery, Simon found an opening on the thither side of a faro table; and having disposed of the race mare for three hundred dollars, banked on this capital, but with small success. Mr. Suggs' opinion of the people of Montgomery was not high; they were fashioned on a very diminutive scale, he used to say, and degraded the national amusement, by wagers, which an enterprising boy would scorn to hazard at push-pin. One Sam Boggs, a young lawyer "of that ilk," having been cleaned out of his entire stake of ten dollars, wished to continue the game on credit, and Simon gratified him, taking his law license in pawn for two dollars and a half; which pawn the aforesaid Samuel failed to redeem. Our prudent and careful adventurer filed away the sheepskin, thinking that sometime or other, he might be able to put it to good use.

        The losses Simon had met with, and the unpromising prospects of gentlemen who lived on their wits, now that the hard times had set in, produced an awakening influence upon his conscience. He determined to abandon the nomadic life he had led, and to settle himself down to some regular business. He had long felt a call to the law, and he now resolved to "locate," and apply himself to the duties of that learned profession. Simon was not long in deciding upon a location. The spirited manner in which the State of Arkansas had repudiated a public debt of some five hundred thousand dollars gave him a favorable opinion of that people as a community of litigants, while the accounts which came teeming from that bright land, of murders and felonies

innumberable, suggested the value of the criminal practice. He wended his way into that State, nor did he tarry until he reached the neighborhood of Fort Smith, a promising border town in the very Ultima Thule of civilization, such as it was, just on the confines of the Choctaw nation. It was in this region, in the village of Rackensack, that he put up his sign, and offered himself for practice. I shall not attempt to describe the population. It is indescribable. I shall only say that the Indians and half-breeds across the border complained of it mightily.

        The motive for Simon's seeking so remote a location was that he might get in advance of his reputation - being laudably ambitious to acquire forensic distinction, he wished his fame as a lawyer to be independent of all extraneous and adventitious assistance. His first act in the practice was under the statute of Jeo Fails. It consisted of an amendment of the license he had got from Boggs, as before related; which amendment, was ingeniously effected by a careful erasure of the name of that gentleman, and the insertion of his own in the place of it. Having accomplished this feat, he presented it to the court, then in session, and was duly admitted an attorney and counsellor at law and solicitor in chancery.

        There is a tone and spirit of morality attaching to the profession of the law so elevating and pervasive in its influence, as to work an almost instantaneous reformation in the character and habits of its disciples. If this be not so, it was certainly a most singular coincidence that, just at the

time of his adoption of this vocation, Simon abandoned the favorite pastimes of his youth, and the irregularities of his earlier years. Indeed, he has been heard to declare that any lawyer, fulfilling conscientiously the duties of his profession, will find enough to employ all his resources of art, stratagem and dexterity, without resorting to other and more equivocal methods for their exercise.

        It was not long before Simon's genius began to find occasions and opportunities of exhibition. When he first came to the bar, there were but seven suits on the docket, two of those being appeals from a justice's court. In the course of six months, so indefatigable was he in instructing clients, as to their rights, the number of suits grew to forty. Simon - or as he is now called - Colonel Suggs, determined on winning reputation in a most effective branch of practice - one that he shrewdly perceived was too much neglected by the profession - the branch of preparing cases out of court for trial. While other lawyers were busy in getting up the law of their cases, the Colonel was no less busy in getting up the facts of his.

        One of the most successful of Col. Suggs' efforts, was in behalf of his landlady, in whom he felt a warm and decided interest. She had been living for many years in ignorant contentedness, with an indolent, easy natured man, her husband, who was not managing her separate estate, consisting of a plantation and about twenty negroes, and some town property, with much thrift. The lady was buxom and gay, and the union of the couple was unblessed with children.

By the most insinuating manners, Col. Suggs at length succeeded in opening the lady's eyes to a true sense of her hapless condition, and the danger in which her property was placed, from the improvident habits of her spouse; and, having ingeniously deceived the unsuspecting husband into some suspicious appearances, which were duly observed by a witness or two provided for the purpose, he soon prevailed upon his fair hostess to file a bill of divorce; which she readily procured under the Colonel's auspices. Under the presence of protecting her property from the claims of her husband's creditors, the Colonel was kind enough to take a conveyance of it to himself; and, shortly afterwards, the fair libellant; by which means he secured himself from those distracting cares which beset the young legal practitioner, who stands in immediate need of the wherewithal.

        Col. Suggs' prospects now greatly improved, and he saw before him an extended field of usefulness. The whole community felt the effects of his activity. Long dormant claims came to light; and rights, of the very existence of which, suitors were not before aware, were brought into practical assertion. From restlessness and inactivity, the population became excited, inquisitive and intelligent, as to the laws of their country; and the ruinous effects of servile acquiescence in wrong and oppression, were averted.

        The fault of lawyers in preparing their cases was too generally a dilatoriness of movement, which sometimes deferred until it was too late, the creating of the proper impression upon the minds of the jury. This was not the fault

of Col. Suggs; he always took time by the forelock. Instead of waiting to create prejudices in the minds of the jury, until they were in the box, or deferring until then the arts of persuasion, he waited upon them before they were empannelled; and he always succeeded better at that time, as they had not then received an improper bias from the testimony. In a case of any importance, he always managed to have his friends in the court room, so that when any of the jurors were challenged, he might have their places filled by good men and true; and, although this increased his expenses considerably, by a large annual bill at the grocery, he never regretted any expense, either of time, labor or money, necessary to success in his business. Such was his zeal for his clients!

        He was in the habit, too, of free correspondence with the opposite party, which enabled him at once to conduct his case with better advantage, and to supply any omissions or chasms in the proof: and so far did he carry the habit of testifying in his own cases, that his clients were always assured that in employing him, they were procuring counsel and witness at the same time, and by the same retainer. By a very easy process, he secured a large debt barred by the statute of limitations, and completely circumvented a fraudulent defendant who was about to avail himself of that mendacious defence. He ante-dated the writ, and thus brought the case clear of the statute.

        One of the most harassing annoyances that were inflicted upon the emigrant community around him, was the revival

of old claims contracted in the State from which they came, and which the Shylocks holding them, although they well knew that the pretended debtors had, expressly in consideration of getting rid of them, put themselves to the pains of exile and to the losses and discomforts of leaving their old homes and settling in a new country, in fraudulent violation of this object, were ruinously seeking to enforce, even to the deprivation of the property of the citizen. In one instance, a cashier of a Bank in Alabama brought on claims against some of the best citizens of the country, to a large amount, and instituted suits on them. Col. Suggs was retained to defend them. The cashier, a venerable-looking old gentleman, who had extorted promises of payment, or at least had heard from the debtors promises of payment, which their necessitous circumstances had extorted, but to which he well knew they did not attach much importance, was waiting to become a witness against them. Col. Suggs so concerted operations, as to have some half-dozen of the most worthless of the population follow the old gentleman about whenever he went out of doors, and to be seen with him on various occasions; and busying himself in circulating through the community, divers reports disparaging the reputation of the witness, got the cases ready for trial. It was agreed that one verdict should settle all the cases. The defendant pleaded the statute of limitations; and to do away with the effect of it, the plaintiff offered the cashier as a witness. Not a single question was asked on cross-examination; but a smile of derision, which was accompanied by a foreordained

titter behind the bar, was visible on the faces of Simon and his client, as he testified. The defendant then offered a dozen or more witnesses, who, much to the surprise of the venerable cashier, discredited him; and the jury, without leaving the box, found a verdict for the defendant. The cashier was about moving for a new trial, when, it being intimated to him that a warrant was about to be issued for his apprehension on a charge of perjury, he concluded not to see the result of such a process, and indignantly left the country.

        The criminal practice, especially, fascinated the regards and engaged the attention of Col. Suggs, as a department of his profession and energies. He soon became acquainted with all the arts and contrivances by which public justice is circumvented. Indictments that could not be quashed, were sometimes mysteriously out of the way; and the clerk had occasion to reproach his carelessness in not filing them in the proper places, when, some days after cases had been dismissed for the want of them, they were discovered by him in some old file, or among the executions. He was requested, or rather he volunteered in one capital case, to draw a recognizance for a committing magistrate, as he (Suggs) was idly looking on, not being concerned in the trial, and so felicitously did he happen to introduce the negative particle in the condition of the bond, that he bound the defendant, under a heavy penalty, "not" to appear at court and answer to the charge; which appearance, doubtless, much against his will, and merely to save his sureties, the defendant proceeded faithfully not to make.

        Col. Suggs also extricated a client and his sureties from a forfeited recognizance, by having the defaulting defendant's obituary notice somewhat prematurely inserted in the newspapers; the solicitor, seeing which, discontinued proceedings; for which service, the deceased, immediately after the adjournment of court, returned to the officer his personal acknowledgments: "not that," as he expressed it, "it mattered any thing to him personally, but because it would have aggravated the feelings of his friends he had left behind him, to of let the thing rip arter he was defunck."

        The most difficult case Col. Suggs ever had to manage, was to extricate a client from jail, after sentence of death had been passed upon him. But difficulties, so far from discouraging him, only had the effect of stimulating his energies. He procured the aid of a young physician in the premises - the prisoner was suddenly taken ill - the physician pronounced the disease small pox. The wife of the prisoner, with true womanly devotion, attended on him. The prisoner, after a few a days, was reported dead, and the doctor gave out that it would be dangerous to approach the corpse. A coffin was brought into the jail, and the wife was put into it by the physician - she being enveloped in her husband's clothes. The coffin was put in a cart and driven off - the husband, habited in the woman's apparel, following after, mourning piteously, until, getting out of the village, he disappeared in the thicket, where he found a horse prepared for him. The wife obstinately refused to be buried in the husband's place when she got to the grave; but the mistake

was discovered too late for the recapture of the prisoner.

        The tact and address of Col. Suggs opposed such obstacles to the enforcement of the criminal law in that part of the country, that, following the example of the English government, when Irish patriotism begins to create annoyances, the State naturally felt anxious to engage his services in its behalf. Accordingly, at the meeting of the Arkansas legislature, at its session of 184-, so soon as the matter of the killing a member on the floor of the house, by the speaker, with a Bowie knife, was disposed of by a resolution of mild censure, for imprudent precipitancy, Simon Suggs, Jr., Esquire, was elected solicitor for the Rackensack district. Col. Suggs brought to the discharge of the duties of his office energies as unimpaired and vigorous as in the days of his first practice; and entered upon it with a mind free from the vexations of domestic cares, having procured a divorce from his wife on the ground of infidelity, but magnanimously giving her one of the negroes, and a horse, saddle and bridle.

        The business of the State now flourished beyond all precedent. Indictments multiplied: and though many of them were not tried - the solicitor discovering, after the finding of them, as he honestly confessed to the court, that the evidence would not support them: yet, the Colonel could well say, with an eminent English barrister, that if he tried fewer cases in court, he settled more cases out of court than any other counsel.

        The marriage of Col. Suggs, some three years after his appointment of solicitor, with the lovely and accomplished Che-wee-na-tubbe, daughter of a distinguished prophet and warrior, and head-man of the neighboring territory of the Choctaw Indians, induced his removal into that beautiful and improving country. His talents and connections at once raised him to the councils of that interesting people; and he received the appointment of agent for the settlement of claims on the part of that tribe, and particular individuals of it, upon the treasury of the United States. This responsible and lucrative office now engages the time and talents of Col. Suggs, who may be seen every winter at Washington, faithfully and laboriously engaged with members of Congress and in the departments, urging the matters of his misssion upon the dull sense of the Janitors of the Federal Treasury.

        May his shadow never grow less; and may the Indians live to get their dividends of the arrears paid to their agent.

SQUIRE A. AND THE FRITTERS.

was called, greatly to their discontent. At length the joyful tidings were proclaimed, that a barrel of flour had come from Mobile. Much excitement prevailed. An animated discussion arose as to the form in which the new aliment should be served up; and on the motion of A., who eloquently seconded his own resolution, it was determined that Fritters should be had for supper that night. Supper time dragged its slow length along: it came, however, at last.

        There were a good many boarders at the Inn - some twenty or more - and but one negro waiter, except a servant of J.T., whom he kept about him, and who waited at table. Now, if Squire A. had any particular weakness, it was in favor of fritters. Fritters were a great favorite, even per se; but in the dearth of edibles, they were most especially so. He had a way of eating them with molasses, which gave them a rare and delectable relish. Accordingly, seating himself the first at the table, and taking a position next the door nearest to the kitchen, he prepared himself for the onslaught. He ordered a soup-plate and filled it half full of molasses - tucked up his sleeves - brought the public towel from the roller in the porch, and fixed it before him at the neck, so as to protect his whole bust - and stood as ready as the jolly Abbot over the haunch of venison, at the widow Glendinning's, to do full justice to the provant, when announced.

        Now, A. had a distinguished reputation and immense skill in the art and mystery of fritter eating. How many he could eat at a meal I forget, if I ever heard him say, but I should say - making allowances for exaggeration in such things - from

the various estimates I have heard, well on to the matter of a bushel - possibly a half a peck or so, more or less. When right brown and reeking with fresh fat, it would take as many persons to feed him as a carding-machine. Sam Harkness used to say, that if a wick were run down his throat after a fritter dinner, and lit, it would burn a week - but I don't believe that.

        He used no implement in eating but a fork. He passed the fork through the fritter in such a way as to break its back, and double it up in the form of the letter W, and pressing it through and closing up the lines, would flourish it around in the molasses two or three times, and then convey it, whole, to his mouth - drawing the fork out with a sort of c-h-u-g.

        If A. ever intended to have his daguerreotype taken - that was the time - for a more hopeful, complacent, benevolent cast of countenance, I never saw than his, when the door being left a little ajar, the cook could be seen in the kitchen, making time about the skillet, and the fat was heard cheerfully spitting and spattering in the pan.

        "But pleasures are like poppies spread," and so forth. As when some guileless cock-robin is innocently regaling himself in the chase of a rainbow spangled butterfly, poising himself on wing, and in the very act of conveying the gay insect to his expectant spouse for domestic use, some ill-omened vulture, seated in solitary state on a tree hard by, unfurls his wing, and swoops in fell destruction upon the hapless warbler, leaving nothing of this scene of peace and

innocence but a smothered cry and a string of feathers. So did J.T. look upon this scene of Squire A.'s expectant and hopeful countenance with a like and kindred malignity and fell purpose. In plain prose, - confederating and conspiring with three other masterful fritter eaters and Sandy, the amateur waiter at the Inn, it was agreed that Sandy should station himself at the door, and, as the waiting-girl came in with the fritters, he should receive the plate, and convey the same to the other confederates for their special behoof, to the entire neglect of the claim of Squire A. in the premises.

        Accordingly the girl brought in the first plate - which was received by Sandy - Sandy brought the plate on with stately step close by Squire A. - the Squire's fork was raised to transfix at least six of the smoking cakes with a contingency of sweeping the whole platter; but the wary Sandy raised the plate high in air, nor heeded he the Squire's cajoling tones - "Here, Sandy, here, this way, Sandy." Again the plate went and came, but with no better success to the Squire. Sandy came past a third time - "I say, Sandy, this way - this way - come Sandy - come now - do - I'll remember you;" - but Sandy walked on like the Queen of the West unheeding; the Squire threw himself back in his chair and looked in the puddle of molasses in his plate sourly enough to have fermented it. Again - again - again and yet again - the plate passed on - the fritters getting browner and browner, and distance lending enchantment to the view: but the Squire couldn't get a showing. The Squire began to be

peremptory, and threatened Sandy with all sorts of extermination for his contumacy; but the intrepid servitor passed along as if he had been deaf and dumb, and his only business to carry fritters to the other end of the table. At length Sandy came back with an empty plate, and reported that the fritters were all out. The Squire could contain himself no longer - unharnessing himself of the towel and striking his fist on the table, upsetting thereby about a pint of molasses from his plate, he exclaimed in tones of thunder, "I'll quit this dratted house: I'll be eternally and constitutionally dad blamed, if I stand such infernal partiality!" and rushed out of the house into the porch, where he met J.T., who, coolly picking his teeth, asked the Squire how he "liked the fritters?" We need not give the reply - as all that matter was afterwards honourably settled by a board of honor.

JONATHAN AND THE CONSTABLE

        It so happened that a certain Ned Ellett was pretty high, as well in office as in liquor, one drizzly winter evening - during the session of the S. Circuit Court. He had taken

in charge one Nash, a horse-thief, and also a tickler of rye whiskey; and this double duty coming upon him somewhat unexpectedly, was more than he could well sustain himself under. The task of discharging the prisoner over, Ned was sitting by the fire in the hall of the Choctaw House, in deep meditation upon the mutations in human affairs, when he received a summons from Jonathan, to come to his room, for the purpose of receiving a letter to be carried to a client in the part of the county in which Ned resided. It was about ten o'clock at night. Jonathan and I occupied the same room and bed on the ground-floor of the building, and I had retired for the night.

        Presently Ned came in, and took his seat by the fire. The spirits, by this time, began to produce their usual effects. Ned was habited in a green blanket over-coat, into which the rain had soaked, and the action of the fire on it raised a considerable fog. Ned was a raw-boned, rough-looking customer, about six feet high and weighing about two hundred net - clothes, liquor, beard and all, about three hundred. After Jonathan had given him the letter, and Ned had critically examined the superscription, remarking something about the handwriting, which, sooth to say, was not copyplate - he put it in his hat, and Jonathan asked him some question about his errand to L.

        "Why, Squire," said Ned, "you see I had to take Nash - Nash had been stealing of hosses, and I had a warrant for him and took him. - Blass, Nash is the smartest feller you ever see. He knows about most every thing and every

body. He knows all the lawyers, Blass - I tell you he does, and no mistake. He was the merriest, jovialest feller you ever see, and can sing more chronicle songs than one of these show fellers that comes round with the suckus. He didn't seem to mind bein took than a pet sheep. I tell you he didn't, Blass - and when I tell you a thing, Blass, you better had believe it, you had. Blass, did you ever hear of my telling a lie? No, not by a jug-full. Blass, aint I an hones' man? (Yes, said B., I guess you are.) - "Guess - Guess - I say guess. Well, as I was a saying, about Nash - I asked Nash, what he was doin perusin about the country, and Nash said he was just perusin about the country to see the climit? But I know'd Harvey Thompson wouldn't like me to be bringin a prisner in loose, so I put the strings on Nash, and then his feathers drapped, and then Blass, he got to crying - and, Blass, he told me - (blubbering) he told me about his - old mother in Tennessee, and how her heart would be broke, and all that - and, Blass, I'm a hard man and my feelins aint easy teched - but (here Ned boohood right out,) Blass, I'll be - if I can bar to see a man exhausted."

        Ned drew his coat-sleeve over his eyes, blew his nose, and snapped his fingers over the fire and proceeded: "Blass, he asked about you and Lewis Scott, and what for a lawyer you was, and I'll tell you jest what I told him, Blass, says I old Blass, when it comes to hard law, Nash, knows about all the law they is - but whether he kin norate it from the stump or not, that's the question. Blass, show me down some of these pairs of stairs. [They were on the ground-floor, but Ned, no doubt, was entitled to think himself high.] - B. showed him out.

        All this time I was possuming sleep in the bed as innocent as a lamb. Blass came to the bedside and looked inquisitively on for a moment, and went to disrobing himself. All I could hear was a short soliloquy - "Well, doesn't that beat all? It's one comfort, J. didn't hear that - I never would have heard the last of it. It's most too good to be lost. I believe I'll lay it on him."

        I got up in the morning, and as I was drawing on my left boot, muttered as if to myself, "but whither he kin norate it from the stump - that's the question." B. turned his head so suddenly - he was shaving, sitting on a trunk - that he came near cutting his nose off.

        "You doesn't mean to say you eaves-dropped and heard that drunken fool - do you? Remember, young man, that what you hear said to a lawyer in conference is confidential, and don't get to making an ass of yourself, by blabbing this thing all over town." I told him "I thought I should have to norate it a little."

SHARP FINANCIERING.

in a few minutes returned with the bill and a letter, which he delivered to Mr. Ripley, at the same time receiving the money from that gentleman plus the exchange. As the interlocutors were exchanging valedictory compliments, it occurred to Mr. Thompson that it would be a favor to him if Mr. Ripley would be so kind as to convey to Mr. T.'s correspondent a package he was desirous of sending, which request Mr. Ripley assured Mr. T. it would afford him great pleasure to comply with. Mr. Thompson then handed Mr. Ripley a package, strongly enveloped and sealed, addressed to the Raleigh Banker, after which the gentlemen parted with many polite expressions of regard and civility.

        Arriving without any accident or hindrance at Raleigh, Mr. Ripley's first care was to call on the Banker and present his documents. He found him at his office, presented the bill and letter to him, and requested payment of the former. That, said the Banker, will depend a good deal upon the contents of the package. Opening which, Mr. Ripley found the identical bills, minus the premium, he had paid Mr. T. for his bill: and which the Banker paid over to that gentleman, who was not a little surprised to find that the expert Mr. Thompson had charged him five per cent. for carrying his own money to Raleigh, to avoid the risk and trouble of which he had bought the exchange.

        T. used to remark that that was the safest operation, all around, he ever knew. He lead got his exchange - the buyer had got his bill and the money, too, - and the drawee was fully protected! There was profit without outlay or risk.

CAVE BURTON, ESQ., OF KENTUCKY.

of personal assurances and solemn asseverations of personal belief or knowledge of fact and of law. He claimed Kentucky for his native State, and for a reason that will suggest itself at once, was called by the bar THE BLOWING CAVE. Cave had evidently invoiced himself very high when he came out, thinking rather of the specific than the ad valorem standard. He had, to hear him tell it, renounced so many advantages, and made such sacrifices, for the happy privilege of getting to the backwoods, that the people, out of sheer gratitude, should have set great store by so rare an article brought out at such cost: - but they didn't do it. He had brought his wares to the wrong market. The market was glutted with brass. And although that metal was indispensable, yet it was valuable only for plating. Burton was the pure metal all through. He might have been moulded at a brass foundry. He had not much intellect, but what he had he kept going with a wonderful clatter. Indeed, with his habits and ignorance, it were better not to have had more, unless he had a great deal; for his chief capital was an unconsciousness of how ridiculous he was making himself, and a total blindness as to the merits of his case, which protected him, as a somnambulist is protected from falling by being unconscious of danger. He was just as good on a bad cause as on a good one, and just as bad on a good side as on a bad one. The first intimation he had of how a case ought to go, was on seeing how it had gone. Discrimination was not his forte. Indeed, accuracy of any kind was not his forte. He lumbered away lustily, very well content if he

were in the neighborhood of a fact or proposition, without seeming to expect to he at the precise point. He had a good deal of that sort of wit which comes of a bold, dashing audacity, without fear or care; such wit as a man has who lets his tongue swing free of all control of judgment, memory, or taste, or conscience. He scattered like an old shot-gun, and occasionally, as he was always firing, some of the shot would hit.

        A large, red-faced, burly fellow, good-natured and unscrupulous, with a good run of anecdote and natural humor, and some power of narrative, was Cave, - a monstrous demagogue withal, and a free and easy sort of creature, who lived as if he expected to-day were all the time he had to live in: and who considered the business of the day over when he had got his three meals with intermediate drinks.

        I cannot say Burton was a liar. I never knew him to fabricate a lie "out and out" - outside of the bar; - his invention was hardly sufficient for that. In one sense, his regard for truth was considerable - indeed, so great that he spent most of his conversation in embellishing it. It was a sponging habit he had of building on other men's foundations; but having got a start in this way, it is wonderful how he laid on his own work.

        Cave, like almost every other demagogue I ever knew, was "considerable" in all animal appetites: he could dispose of the provant in a way Capt. Dalgetty would have admired, and, like the Captain, he was not very nice as to the kind or quality of the viands; or, rather, he had a happy

faculty of making up in quantity what was lacking in quality. I don't think he ever rose from a table satisfied, though he often rose surfeited. You might founder him before you could subdue his appetite. He was as good in liquids as in solids. He never refused a drink: the parable of neglected invitations would have had no application to him if he had lived in those times. You might wake him up at midnight to take something hot or cold, edible or liquor, and he would take his full allowance, and smack his lips for more. He could scent out a frolic like a raven a carcass - by a separate instinct. He always fell in just in time. He was not a sponge. He would as soon treat as be treated, if he had any thing - as under the credit system he had - to treat with; but the main thing was the provant, and loafing was one of his auxiliaries. He had a clamorous garrison in his bowels that seemed to be always in a state of siege, and boisterous for supplies. Cave's idea of money was connected inseparably with bread and meat and "sperits:" money was not the representative of value in his political economy, but the representative of breakfast, dinner, supper and liquor. He was never really pathetic, though always trying it, until he came to describing, in defending against a promissory note, the horrors of want, that is, of hunger - then he really was touching, for he was earnest, and he shed tears like a watering pot. He reckoned every calamity by the standard of the stomach. If a man lost money, he considered it a diversion of so much from the natural aliment. If he lost his health, so much was discounted from life,

that is, from good living: if he died, death had stopped his rations. Cave had a mean idea of war, and never voted for a military man in his life. It wasted too much of the fruits of the earth. An account of a campaign never excited his horror, until the fasting of the soldiers and the burning of the supplies was treated of - then he felt it like a nightmare. Cave had a small opinion of clothes; they were but a shallow, surface mode of treating the great problem, man. He went deeper; he was for providing for the inner man - though his idea of human nature never went beyond the entrails. Studying human nature with him was anatomy and physic, and testing the capacity of the body for feats of the knife and fork. A great man with him was not so much shown by what he could do, as by what he could hold; not by what he left, but by what he consumed.

        Cave's mind was in some doubt as to things in which the majority of men are agreed. For example, he was not satisfied that Esau made as foolish a bargain with his brother Jacob as some think. Before committing himself, he should like to taste the pottage, and see some estimate of the net value of the birthright in the beef and venison market. If the birthright were a mere matter of pride and precedence, Cave was not sure that Esau had not "sold" the father of Israel.

        If Cave had a hundred thousand dollars, he would have laid it all out in provisions; for non constat there might be no more made; at any rate, he would have enough to answer all the ends and aims of life, which are to eat and drink as much as possible.

        Cave attended the Episcopal church every Sunday when there was service - i.e. once a month, and, though his attention was a little drowsy during most of the services, yet he brightened up mightily when the preacher read the prayer against famine, and for preserving the fruits of the earth to be enjoyed in due season.

        Cave was some forty five years of age at the time I am writing of: - so long had he warred on the pantry.

        He was an active man, indeed some part of him was always going - jaws, tongue, hands or legs, and to a more limited extent, brains. He never was idle. Indeed, taking in such fuel, he couldn't well help going. Even in sleep he was not quiet. Such fighting with unknown enemies - probably the ghosts of the animals he had consumed; - such awful contortions of countenance, and screams - and, when most quiet, such snorings (he once set a passenger running down stairs with his trunk, thinking it was the steamboat coming), you, possibly, never heard. I slept with him one night (I blush to tell it) on the circuit, and he seemed to be in spasms, going off at last into a suppressed rattle in the throat: I thought he was dying, and after some trouble, woke him. He opened his eyes, and rolled them around, like a goose egg on an axle. "Cave," said I, "Cave - can I do any thing for you?"

        "Yes," was his answer. "Look in my saddle-bags, and get me a black bottle of 'red-eye.' "

        I got it; he drank almost a half pint, and went to sleep like a child that has just received its nourishment.

        Burton had largely stored his memory with all manner of slang-phrases and odd expressions, whereby he gave his speech a relish of variety somewhat at the expense of classic purity. Indeed, his mind seemed to be a sort of water-gate, which caught and retained the foam and trash, but let the main stream pass through.

        But, as honest Bunyan hath it, we detain the reader too long in the porch.

        In the Christmas week of the year of Grace, 1838, some of us were preparing to celebrate that jovial time by a social gathering at Dick Bowling's office. There were about a dozen of us, as fun-loving 'youth,' as since the old frolics at Cheapside or the Boar's Head, ever met together, the judge and the State's attorney among them. The boats had just got up, on their first trip, from Mobile, and had brought, on a special order Dick had given, three barrels of oysters, a demijohn of Irish whiskey, and a box of lemons. Those were not the days of invitations: a lawyer's office, night or day, was as public a place as the court-house, and, among the members of the bar at that early period, there were no privileged seats at a frolic any more than in the pit of a theatre. All came who chose. Old Judge Sawbridge, who could tell from smelling a cork the very region whence the liquor came, and could, by looking into the neck of the bottle, tell the age as well as a jockey could the age of a horse by looking into his mouth, was there before the bells had rung for the tavern supper. Several of the rest were in before long. Burton had not come yet. The old Judge suggested a trick,

which was to get Burton to telling one of his Kentucky yarns and, as he was in the agony of it, to withdraw, one by one, and eat up all the oysters. We agreed to try it, but doubted very much the success of the experiment; although the Judge seemed to be sanguine.

        Dropping in, one by one, at last all came, filling the room pretty well. Among them was Cave. That domestic bereavement which had kept him from such a gathering, were a sad one. He entered the room in high feather. He was in fine spirits, ardent and animal. If he had been going, twenty years before, to a trysting-place, he could not have been in a gayer frame of mind. He came prepared. He had ravished himself from the supper table, scarcely eating any thing - three or four cups of coffee, emptying the cream-pitcher of its sky-blue milk, a card of spare-ribs and one or two feet of stuffed sausages, or some such matter; a light condiment of "cracklin bread," and a half pint of hog-brains thrown in just by way of parenthesis. He merely took in these trifles by way of sandwich, to provoke his appetite for the main exercises of the evening. When he came in the fire was booming and crackling - a half cord of hickory having been piled upon the broad hearth. The night was cold, clear, and frosty.

        The back room adjoining was as busy as a barracks, in the culinary preparations. The oysters, like our clients, were being forced, with characteristic reluctance, to shell out. And as the knife went tip, tip, tip, on the shells, Cave's mouth watered like the bivalve's, as he caught the sound - more delicious music to his ears than Jenny Lind and the

whole Italian troupe could give out. His spirits rose in this congenial atmosphere like the spirits in a barometer. He was soon in a gale, as if he had been taking laughing gas. Now Cave was as fond of oysters as a seal. A regiment of such men on the sea-shore, or near the oyster banks, would have exterminated the species in a season. The act against the destruction of the oyster ought to have embraced Cave in a special clause of interdiction from their use. He used to boast that he and D.L. had never failed to break an oyster cellar in Tuscaloosa whenever they made a run on it.

        Judge Sawbridge made a pass at him as soon almost as he was seated. He commenced by inquiring after some Kentucky celebrities - Crittenden, Hardin, Wickliffe, &c., whom he found intimate friends of Cave; and then he asked Cave to tell him the anecdote he had heard repeated, but not in its particulars, of the Earthquake-story. He led up to Cave's strong suit: for if there was one thing that Cave liked better than every thing else, eating and drinking excepted, it was telling a story; and if he liked telling any one story better than any other, it was the Earthquake-story. This story was, like Frank Plummer speech on the Wiscasset collectorship, interminable; and, like Frank's speech, the principal part of it bore no imaginable relation to the ostensible subject. No mortal man had ever heard the end of this story: like Coleridge's soliloquies, it branched out with innumerable suggestions, each in its turn the parent of others, and these again breeding a new spawn, so that the further he travelled the less he went on. Like Kit Kunker's dog howling after

the singing master and getting tangled up in the tune, the denouement was lost in the episodes. What the story was originally, could not be conjectured; for Cave had gone over the ground so often, that the first and many subsequent traces were rubbed out by later footprints. Cave, however, refreshing himself with about a pint of hot-stuff, rose, turned his back to the fire, and, parting his coat-tail, and squatting two or three times as was his wont when in the act of speaking, began

The Earthquake-story.

        * * * * * * * * *

        "Well, Judge, the thing happened in 1834, in Steubenville, Kentucky, where I was raised. I and Ben Hardin were prosecuting the great suit, which probably you have heard of, Susan Beeler vs. Samuel Whistler, for breach of promise of marriage. The trial came on, and the court-house was crowded. Every body turned out, men, women, and children; for it was understood I was to close the argument in reply to Tom Marshall and Bob Wickliffe. I had been

speaking about three hours and a half, and had just got to my full speed - the genius licks were falling pretty heavy. It was an aggravated case. Susan, her mother and three sisters were crying like babies; her old father, the preacher, was taking on too, pretty solemn; and the women generally were going it pretty strong on the briny line. The court-house was as solemn as a camp-meeting when they are calling up the mourners. I had been giving them a rousing, soul-searching appeal on the moral question, and had been stirring up their consciences with a long pole. I had touched them a little on the feelings - 'affections' - 'broken-hearts' - 'pining away' - 'patience on a monument,' and so forth; but I hadn't probed them deep on these tender points. It isn't the right way to throw them into spasms of emotion: reaction is apt to come. Ben Hardin cautioned me against this. Says Ben, 'Cave, tap them gently and milk them of their brine easy. Let the pathetics sink into 'em like a spring shower.' I saw the sense of it and took the hint. I led them gently along, not drawing more than a tear a minute or so: and when I saw their mouths opening with mine, as I went on, and their eyes following mine, and winking as I winked, I would put it down a little stronger by way of a clincher. [Hello, Dick, ain't they nearly all opened? I believe I would take a few raw by way of relish."]

        "No," Dick said: "they would be ready after a while." Here Cave took another drink of the punch and proceeded.

        "I say - old Van Tromp Rawkat was Judge. You knew old Ramkat, Judge - didn't you? No? Well, you

ought to have known him. He was the bloodiest tyrant alive. I reckon the old cuss has fined me not less than $500."

        Sawbridge. - "What for, Cave?"

        "Why, for contempt at ten dollars a clip - that was old Ramkat's tariff; and if every other man had been fined the same for contempt of Van Tromp, the fines would pay off the national debt. Old Ram had a crazy fit for fining persons. He thought he owed it to the people to pay off all the expenses of the judicial system by fines. He was at it all the time. His fines against the sheriff and clerk amounted to not less than ten per cent. on their salaries. If a court passed without fining somebody for contempt, he thought it was a failure of court, and he called a special term. Every thing was a contempt: a lawyer couldn't go out of court without asking leave; and the lawyers proposed, at a barmeeting, to get a shingle and write on one side of it "In," and on the other "Out," like an old-field school. He fined Tid Stiffness for refusing to testify in a gambling case $10; and then asked him again in the politest and most obsequious tones - if he hadn't better testify? Tid, thinking it a matter of choice, said 'No.' Old Ram nodded to the clerk, who set Tid down for another five. Ram got still more polite, and suggested the question again - and kept on till he bid him up to$250; and then told him what he had done, and then adjourned the case over, with Tid in custody, till next morning. Tid came into measures when the case was called, and agreed to testify, and wanted old Van to let him off

with the fines; but Ram wouldn't hear to it. The clerk, however, suggested that, on looking over the tallies, he found he had scored him down twice on one bid. Ram remarked that, as there seemed to be some question about it, and as Tid had been a good customer, he would split the difference with him and deduct a V; and then, in order to make the change even, he fined old Taxcross, the clerk, five dollars for not making up the entry right; but to let it come light on him, as he had a large family, allowed him to make it off of Tid by making separate entries of the fines - thus swelling his fees.

        "Oh, I tell you, old Ramkat was the bloodiest tyrant this side of France. I reckon that old cuss has cheated my clients out of half a million of dollars, by arbitrarily and officiously interfering to tell the juries the law, when I had got them all with me on the facts. There was no doing any thing with him. He would lay the law down so positive, that he could instruct a jury out of a stock, - a little, bald-headed, high-heel-booted, hen-pecked son of thunder! Fining and sending to the penitentiary were the chief delights of his insignificant life. Did not the little villain once say, in open court, that the finding of a bill of indictment was a half conviction, and it ought to be law that the defendant ought to be convicted if he couldnt get a unanimous verdict from the petty jury? Why, Judge, he convicted a client of mine for stealing a calf. I proved that the fellow was poor and had nothing to eat, and stole it in self defence of his life. 'Twouldn't do: he convicted him, or made the jury do it.

And old Ram told the fellow he should sentence him for five years. I plead with him to reduce the time. The boy's father was in court, and was weeping: I wept: - even old Ramkat boohoo'd outright. I thought I had him this time; but what did he do? Says he, 'Young man, your vile conduct has done so much wrong, given your worthy father so much pain, and given your eloquent counsel so much pain, and this court so much pain - I really must ENLARGE your time to TEN years.' And for stealing a calf! Egad, if I was starving, I'd steal a calf - yes, if I had been in Noah's ark and the critter was the seed calf of the world! [I say, where is Dick Bowling? Them oysters certainly must be ready by this time; - it seems to me I've smelt them for the last half hour."]

        "No," the judge told him; "the oysters were not ready - they were stewing a big tureen full at once."

        Cave called for crackers and butter, and, through the course of the evening, just in a coquetting way, disposed of about half a tray full of dough, and half a pound of Goshen butter.

        The reader will understand that during the progress of this oration, though at different times, the members withdrew to the back room and 'oystered.'

        "Well, but," said Tom Cottle - "about the earthquake?"

        "Yes - true - exactly - just so - my mind is so disturbed by the idea that those oysters will be stewed out of all flavor, that I ramble. Where was I? Yes, I recollect now. I was commenting on Tom Marshall's attack on Molly Muggin's

testimony. Moll was our main witness. She was an Irish servant girl, and had peeped through the key-hole of the parlor door, and seen the breach of promise going on upon the sofa. Well, I was speaking of Ireland, Emmet, Curran and so on, and I had my arm stretched out, and the jury were agape - old Ramkat leaning over the bench - and the crowd as still as death. When, what should happen? Such a clatter and noise above stairs, as if the whole building were tumbling down. It seems that a jury was hung, up stairs, in the second story - six and six - a dead lock, on a case of Jim Snipes vs. Jerry Legg for a bull yearling; all Nubbin Fork was in excitement about it; - forty witnesses on a side, not including impeaching and sustaining witnesses. The sheriff had just summoned the witnesses from the muster-roll at random; fourteen swore one way, and twenty-four the other, as to identity and ownership; and it turned out the calf belonged to neither; there was more perjury than would pale the lower regions to white heat to hear it. One witness swore" -

        Sawbridge. - "But, Cave, about the case you were trying."

        Cave. - "Yes - about that. Well, the jury wanted to hear my speech, and the sheriff wouldn't let them out. He locked the door and came down. One of them, Sim Coley, kicked at the door so hard that the jar broke the stove-pipe off from the wires in the Mason's Lodge-room above, and about forty yards of stove-pipe, about as thick round as a barrel, came lumbering over the banisters, and fell, with a

crash like thunder; in the grand jury-room below, and then came rolling down stairs, four steps at a leap, bouncing like a rock from a mountain side."

        Here Sam Watson inquired how such a long pipe could get down a "pair of stairs," and how much broader a staircase of a Kentucky court-house was than a turnpike road.

        Cave. - "Of course, I meant that it onjointed, and one or more of the joints rolled down. A loose, gangling fellow like you, Sam, ought to see no great difficulty in any thing being onjointed. I could just unscrew you" -

        "Order! Order!" interposed Judge Sawbridge. "No interruption of the speaker; Mr. Burton has the floor."

        "Well," continued Cave, "I had prepared the minds of the audience for a catastrophe, and this, coming as it did, had a fearful effect; but the hung jury coming down stairs on the other side of the building from the lodge, and by the opposite stairway, hearing the noise, started to running down like so many wild buffalo. A general hubbub arose below - old Ramkat rose in his place, with a smile at the prospect of so much good fining. 'Sheriff,' said he, 'bring before me the authors of that confusion.' Just then the plaster of the ceiling of the court room began to fall, and the women raised a shriek. Old Ramkat bellowed up - 'Sheriff, consider the whole audience fined ten dollars a piece, and mind and collect the fees at the door before they depart. Clerk, consider the whole court house fined - women and children half price - and take down their names. Sheriff, see to the doors being closed.' But just then another

section of the stove-pipe came thundering down, and about the eighth of an acre of plastering fell, knocking down sixty or seventy men and women; and the people in the galleries came rushing down, some jumping over into the crowd below; and a sheet of plastering, about as large as a tray, came down from above the chandelier, and struck old Ramkat over the head, and knocked him out of the judge's stand into the clerk's box; and he struck old Taxcross on the shoulders, and turned over about a gallon of ink on the records. Then Pug Williams, the bailiff, shouted out, 'Earthquake! - Earthquake!' and all the women went into hysterics; and Pug, not knowing what to do, caught the bell-rope, and began furiously to ring the bell. Such shouts of 'murder! fire! fire!' you never heard. There was a rush to the doors, but the day being cold they were closed, and of course on the inside, and the crowd pressed in such a mass and mess against them, that, I suppose, there was a hundred tons' pressure on them, and they could not be got open. I was standing before the jury, and just behind them was a window, but it was down: I leaped over the jury, carried them before me" -

        Watson. - "The first time you ever carried them, Cave."

        Cave. - "Not by a jug full. I bowed my neck and jumped leap-frog through the window, carried the sash out on my neck, and landed safe in the yard, cutting a jugular vein or two half through, and picked myself up and ran, with the sash on my neck, up street, bleeding like a butcher, and

shouting murder at every jump. I verily thought I never should see supper time.

        "In the mean time the very devil was to pay in the courthouse. Old Ramkat, half stunned ran up the steps to the judge's platform, near which was a window, hoisted it and jumped, like a flying mullet, over on to the green, thirty feet below, sprained his ankle and fell. Frank Duer, once the most eloquent man at the bar, but who had fattened himself out of his eloquence - weighing three hundred and ninety, and so fat that he could only wheeze out his figures of speech, and broke down from exhaustion of wind in fifteen minutes - followed suit, just squeezing himself through the same window, muttering a prayer for his soul that was just about leaving such comfortable lodgings, came thundering down on the ground, jarring it like a real earthquake, and bounced a foot, and fell senseless on Ramkat. Ramkat, feeling the jar, and mashed under Frank, thought the earthquake had shook down the gable end of the court-house and it had fell on him. So he thought fining time was over with him. He hollered out in a smothered cry, 'Excavate the Court! - Excavate the Court!' But nobody would do it, but let him sweat and smother for four hours.

        "Then Luke Casey, a little, short, bilious, collecting attorney, as pert and active as if he was made out of watch springs and gum-elastic, and who always carried a green bag with old newspapers and brickbats in it, and combed his hair over his face to look savage, so as to get up a reputation for being a good hand at dirty work - Luke

was ciphering the interest on a little grocery account of fifteen dollars; he had appealed from a justice's court, and had a big deposition, taken in the case, all the way from New-York, in his hand; he sprung over three benches of the bar at a leap, and grabbed his hand on Girard Moseley's head to make another leap towards a window - going as if there was a prospect of a fee ahead, and the client was about leaving town. He leaped clear over, but carried Girard's wig with him. Now Girard was a widower, in a remarkable state of preservation, and of fine constitution, having survived three aggravated attacks of matrimony. He pretended to practise law; but his real business was marrying for money. He had got well off at it, though he never got more than four thousand dollars with any one wife. He did lousiness on the principle of 'quick returns and short profits.' He pretended to be thirty and the rise, but was, at the least, fifty. He prided himself on his hair, a rich, light sorrel, sleek and glossy, and greased over with peppermint, cinnamon, and all sorts of sweet smells. He smelt like a barber's shop; and such a polite, nice, easy fellow, to BE sure, was Girard. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and yet let him get hold of a dime, and he griped it so hard you might hear the eagle squall. He only courted rich old maids in infirm health, and was too stingy ever to raise a family. He was very sweet on old Miss Julia Pritcher, a girl of about thirty-five, who was lank, hysterical, and, the boys said, fitified; and who had just got about five thousand dollars from her aunt, whom she had served about fifteen years as upper servant,

but who was now gone the old road. Nobody ever thought of Girard's wearing a wig. He pretended it was Jayne's Hair Elixir that brought it out. Fudge! But Luke caught him by the top-knot, and peeled his head like a white onion. He left him as bald as a billiard-ball - not a hair between his scalp and heaven. Luke took the wig, and hastily, without thinking what he was doing, filed it in the deposition. Mosely had brought Jule Pritcher there, and she was painted up like a doll: her withered old face streaked like a June apple. She needn't have put herself to that trouble for Girard; he would have married her in her winding-sheet, if she had been as ugly as original sin, and only had enough breath in her to say yes to the preacher.

        "And now the fury began to grow outside. The smoke, rushing out of the window of the lodge-room, and the cry of fire brought out the fire-engines and companies, and the rag, tag and bob-tail boys and negroes that follow on shouting, with great glee, 'fire! fire! fire!' along the streets. Ting-a-ling came on the engines - there wore two of them - until they brought up in the court-house yard; one of them in front, the other at the side or gable end. It was some time before the hose could be fixed right; every fellow acting as captain, and all being in the way of the rest. Wood Chuck, a tanner's journeyman - a long, slim, yellow-breeched fellow, undertook to act as engineer of engine No. 1. 'Play in at the windows!' cried the crowd outside, 'there's fire there' - and play it was. They worked the arms of the thing lustily - no two pulling or letting down at the, same

time, until at last, the water came. Wood guided pretty well for a first trial, first slinging the pipe around and scattering the crowd. But, just as they came pouring out of the window, thick as bees, he got his aim, and he sent the water in a sluice into the window; the engine had a squirt like all blazes; and as Chuck levelled the pipe and drew a bead on them, and as it shot into the faces of the crowd - vip, vip, vip - they fell back shouting murder, as if they had been shot from the window-sill. Old Girard had got hold of Jule and brought her to, and was bringing her, she clinging with great maidenly timidity to him, and he hugging her pretty tight, and they, coming to the window - the rest falling back - Chuck had a fair fire at them. He played on old Girard to some purpose - his bald head was a fair mark, and the water splashed and scattered from it like the foam on a figure head. The old fellow's ears rang like a conch shell for two years afterwards. Chuck gave Jule one swipe on one side of her head that drove a bunch of curls through the window opposite, and which washed all the complexion off that cheek, and the paint ran down the gullies and seams like blood; the other side was still rosy. The only safe place was to get down on the floor and let the water fly over. Old Girard never got over the tic-doloreux and rheumatism he got that day. The other engine played in the other window; and the more they played, the more the people inside shouted and hollered; and the more they did that, the more Chuck and Bill Jones, the engineer of No. 2, came to their relief. It was estimated that at least a thousand

hogsheads of water were played into that court-house: indeed, I believe several small boys were drowned.

        "Some one shouted out for an axe to cut through the front door. One was brought. A big buck negro struck with all his might, with the back of the axe, to knock it off its hinges; but there were at least twenty heads pushed up against the door, and these were knocked as dead by the blow as ever you saw a fish under the ice."

        Sawbridge. - "Were they all killed?"

        Cave. - "All? No - not all. Most of them came to, after a while. Indeed, I believe there was only three that were buried - and a tinner's boy, Tom Tyson, had his skull fractured; but they put silver plate in the cracks, and he got over it - a few brains spilt out, or something of the sort - but his appetite was restored.

        "By the way, we had some fun when the trial of Luke Casey's little case came on. Moseley was on the other side, and came into court with his head tied up in a bandanna handkerchief. He smiled when some of Luke's proof was offered, and Luke, a little nettled, drew out the deposition, and with an air of triumph said, 'Perhaps, Mr. Moseley, you will laugh at this,' opening the deposition; as he opened it the wig fell out, and, every body recognizing it as Moseley's, a laugh arose which was only stopped by old Ramkat's fining all around the table. Squire Moseley vamosed and left Luke to get a judgment, and the credit of a joke, of which he was innocent as Girard's head was of the hair.

        "Well, boys, I reckon you would all like to know what became of my case. You see" -

        Here Dick Bowling, smacking his lips, remarked that the oysters were very fine.

        "Oysters!" said Cave. "Have you been eating the oysters?"

        Dick said he had.

        Cave jumped to the back door at one bound, and called to the servant - "Jo, I say, Jo - get mine ready this minute - a few dozen raw - a half bushel roasted, and all the balance stewed - with plenty of soup; I'll season them myself; and put on plenty of crackers, butter and pickles. Be quick, Jo, old fel."

        Jo made his appearance, hat in hand, and answered; "Why, Mas Cave, dey's all gone dis hour past; de gem'men eat ebery one up."

        "The devil they have!" said Cave. "Gentlemen," he continued, turning to the crowd, "is this true?"

        "Yes," replied the Judge. "Cave, I thought you were so interested telling the story, that you would prefer not to be interrupted."

        The exclamatory imprecation which Cave lavished upon his soul, his eyes, and the particular persons present, and humanity generally, would not be befitting these chaste pages. He left without any valedictory salutations of a complimentary or courteous tenor. And he did not recover his composure until he removed a tray full of blood-puddings,

sweetbread, kidneys and the like soporific viands, which had once graced the landlord's larder.

        Speaking of the entertainment afterwards, Cave said he did not care a dern for the oysters, but it pained him to think that men he took to be his friends, should have done him a secret injury.

JUSTIFICATION AFTER VERDICT.

but that he did not choose to say more. I told him that it was impossible for me to defend him unless he would place me in possession of the facts, and assured him that whatever he communicated should be held in strict professional and personal confidence. But nothing I could say produced any change in his determination. I was about abandoning his case, remarking to him that if he felt no confidence in his counsel, or not enough to induce him to tell him the facts, he might be assured that it was no less his interest than my wish, that he should go where he would be better suited. But he persisted that it was from no want of confidence in me that he refused, and that he regarded me with the same feelings of friendship he had always felt for me, and concluded by telling me that if I refused to take his case he should employ no other lawyer, but would let the matter proceed without defence. I told him I did not see any hope of his escaping severe punishment as the case stood; to which he replied that he expected it, but that he hoped I would, if it were possible, prevent his being sent to jail. The case came up in the regular course of things and was tried. The facts were brought out plainly enough. The assault was made in public, on the square; the weapon a large cane, with which the defendant had given Cousins an awful beating, gashing his head and causing the blood to flow very freely over his clothes. The only words said by Beechim in the course of the affair were, "How, d-n you, how do you like that pineapple sop?" spoken just as he was leaving the prostrate Cousins. Of course on such testimony, the jury found the

defendant guilty: and the court retained Beechim in custody until some leisure was given it to fix the punishment, which, by the statute, the court was bound to impose.

        Judge C. was something of a martinet in his line. He was a pretty good disciplinarian and kept the police business of the court in good order. There had been of late many violations of the law and a growing disposition was felt by the people and the courts to put down these excesses; but Beechim was so popular, and withal, so kind-hearted and gentlemanly a fellow, that a great deal of sympathy was felt for him, and a general wish that he might in some way get out of the scrape.

        Among the peculiarities of Judge C. was an itching curiosity. He was always peeping under the curtain of a case to see if he could not find something behind; and felt not a little disappointed and vexed when the examination stopped short of bringing out all the facts and incidents, the relations of the parties and the like.

        He had been struck with the expression used by Beechim - "pine-apple sop," and was evidently uneasy in mind in his present state of inability to unravel it. The first pause in the cause he was next trying gave him an opportunity of calling me to him: I came of course: Said he, "B - what did that fellow mean by 'pine-apple Sop?' " I told him there was a mystery about it which I could not explain. "A mystery, ha! Well, now, here, B -, in confidence - just tell me; it shan't go any farther - of course, you know - just give me an item of it." I told him I really was ignorant of

it - as was every one else; but I felt sure that it was some thing that would place my client's conduct in a better light, though he obstinately refused to tell it to me. The judge then assured me I had better see my client, and get him to state it to the court; that he would give all proper weighs to it in fixing the punishment, but that as the case stood, he should have to make an example of him. I took Paul aside and told him what the judge had said, and added my own counsel to his Honor's, but with no effect. He still mildly but resolutely refused to make any explanation. I felt a good deal vexed at this, as it seemed to me, most unreasonable conduct. Revolving the thing in my mind, I got more and more bothered the more I thought about it. I began to look at the circumstances more narrowly; that it was no sham or trick was very evident; no man would have taken such a beating for fun: that the provocation did not touch any domestic relations which the defendant might have desired to keep from being exposed, was apparent from the fact that my client had no relatives in the country, and the only girl he ever went to see was Cousins's sister. There were two facts I made sure of: the first that this meeting was immediately after Cousins's return from New Orleans, which occurred a few days after Beechim himself had arrived from that city; the second, that Cousins had kept out of the way and had received a note shortly before court from Beechim. I made up my mind that the quarrel originated in something that had occurred between the parties in New Orleans. I happened to know, too, that Samuel Roberts, Esq., one of

the 'cutest chaps we had about town, and 'up to trap' in whatever was stirring wherever he happened to be, was in New Orleans at the time these young gentlemen were there; and I determined to get the facts out of him if I could. Shortly after breakfast, on the next day after the verdict, - the judgment still delayed, partly by my request and partly by the judge's curiosity being yet unappeased - I sallied out with a package in my hand as if going to the post office. Sam was on the street. I knew if there was any thing to be concealed by him, the only way to get it was by a coup d'etat. So half-passing him, I turned suddenly on him, and putting my hand on his shoulder, and looking him in the eye, broke into a laugh, saying, "Well, Sam, that quarrel between Beechim and Cousins in New Orleans, and the - thing it grew out of - didn't it beat any thing you ever heard of? - Wasn't it the queerest affair that ever happened? I am defending Beechim, and, would you believe it? - he never told me up to last night what was the cause of the fight? Don't the whole thing look curious?" I said this very flippantly with a knowing air, as if I knew all about it. Sam's eyes twinkled as he answered? "Well, B-, isn't it the blamedest piece of business you ever heard of?" "Yes," said I, "it is; and we must get Paul out of this scrape - the judge is viperish, and, if we don't do something, six months in jail is the very lowest time we can get Paul off with. Now, Sam, just step here - tell me the particulars of the matter in New Orleans as you understand them; for you know any discrepancy between Paul's statement and yours might hurt things

mightily, and I want to know exactly how the case stands." "No," said Sam, "I can't do it. I promised Paul, on honor, that I wouldn't mention it to a soul, and I won't do it unless I am compelled. So you needn't ask me unless you bring a note from Paul relieving me from the pledge." I saw he was determined, and it was useless to press the point. I had a vague idea that a woman was mixed up in the matter, and was afraid of some exposure of that sort; so I let out blind to find out: "Well, well, Sam, if you stand on points of honor, of course that ends it; - but just explain this thing - how did the girl behave under the circumstances? you know it was calculated to be a little trying, and the thing being so sudden and the parties being strangers, too, - you understand?" and I looked several volumes, and searched narrowly for some answer. Sam merely replied, "Why, as to the girl opposite, if you mean her, she behaved very well. She laughed a little at first, but when Paul showed how it hurt him, she seemed to feel for him, and let the rest take all the laugh." I felt better satisfied with this explanation, and determined on my course.

        The judge, in the mean time, was on thorns of anxiety. He had been conversing with the clerk, and sheriff, and State's attorney, but to no purpose; they only inflamed his curiosity the more; the mystery seemed inscrutable. He came to my room twice that night - but I was out - to see me on the subject. Early in the morning, as I was taking a comfortable snooze, his Honor came into my room, and woke me up. "Get up, B-, get up - why do you sleep so late in

the morning? - it's a bad habit." (The judge was in the habit of sleeping until a late breakfast. I got up, and before I could get on my pantaloons, he opened the conversation. "B.," said he, "this thing about young Beechim distresses me a great deal. I feel really concerned about his case; and if you will tell me now how that difficulty originated, I - I - I - shall feel better about it. My mind would - yes, my mind would be relieved. Of course, B., you know all about the matter, and I assure you it will be to the interest of your client to reveal the whole affair - de-ci-ded-ly his interest. What is it?" I told him I really did not know, and could not find out as yet; but I thought I had got the clue to the mystery, and, if he would aid me, it could all be brought to light; I was convinced, that if it did come out, it would make decidedly for the benefit of Paul, whom I knew to be incapable of making a wanton assault upon any one, especially upon Cousins. The judge told me I might rely on him, and he would see if any one dared to hold back any thing which it was proper to bring out. He was so communicative as to assure me that, generally speaking, he was a man of but little curiosity: indeed, he sometimes reproached himself, and his wife often reproached him, for not knowing things; - that is, he said, he meant by "not knowing things" - personal matters, gossip, and so forth - and that he never got any thing but what was played like a trapball all over town; but, in this case, as a mere matter of speculation, he confessed he did feel desirous of unravelling the riddle; in fact, it preyed on his mind; he couldn't rest last night; he

even dreamed of a fellow funnelling him and pouring down his throat a bottle of spirits of turpentine, and asking him as he left him gagged, how he liked "that pine-apple sop." His Honor then went into many ingenious theories and surmises in elucidation of the mystery; but I felt assured that his explication was more fanciful than true.

        Finding a great indisposition still, to reveal any thing, on the part of Beechim, and fearing that, if he were present, he would interpose objections to the presentation of the proof as to the provocation, I arranged it so that the sheriff should detain Paul from the court-house until I could get the testimony in.

        In order to a more perfect understanding of the matter, I had as well state here, that Beechim was a young gentleman who had some two or three years before "located" in the county, and was doing a general land agency and collecting business, surveying lands, &c., having before been engaged as principal in an academy. He had graduated at the college at Knoxville, Tennessee, and cherished sentiments of great reverence for his venerable alma mater, which showed a very lively condition of the moral sensibilities. He thought very highly of the respectable society of that somewhat secluded village, and conceived a magnified idea of the burgh as a most populous, wealthy and flourishing metropolis. I verily believe he considered Knoxville at once the Athens and Paris of America, abounding in all the refinements, and shining with the polish of a rare and exquisite civilization - the seat of learning, the home of luxury,

and the mart of commerce. Letters, and arts, and great men, and refined modes, and cultivated manners, and women of a type that they never before had been moulded into, there abounded, in his partial fancy prodigal of such generous appreciation. The magnificent self-delusion of dear old Captain Jackson, immortalized by Elia, scarcely equalled the hallucination of Paul quoad the sights and scenes, the little short of celestial glory of and about the city of Knoxville, as he would persist in calling that out-of-the-way, not-to-be-gotten-to, Sleepy-Hollow town, fifty miles from the Virginia line, and a thousand miles from any where else. I speak of it in pre-railroad times. Paul had been assiduous in the cultivation of manners. His model was, of course, that he found at Knoxville. He had a great penchant for fashionable life, and fashionable life was the life of the coteries, the upper-tens of Knoxville. Rusticity and vulgarity were abominations to him. To go back to Knoxville and get to the tip of the ton there, was the extreme top-notch of Paul's ambition. Apart from this high-church Knoxvillism, Paul was an excellent fellow, somewhat vain, sensitive to a fault, and thin-skinned; somewhat pretentious as to fashion, style and manners; indeed, the girls had got to regard him as a sort of village Beau Brummell, "the glass of fashion and the mould of form" - a character on which he plumed himself not a little, and, I am sorry to say it, he did not bear his blushing honors as meekly as could have been hoped for under the circumstances. He had written back to the friends of his youth (as Mr. Macawber hath it), in Knoxville,

that he was growing more reconciled to his fate; his mind was calmer, he said, though his exile had, at first, gone very hard with him; but the manners of the natives were evidently, he was pleased to think, under his missionary labor, improving, and he must say for these natives, that they had evinced docility - which gave him hopes of further civilization.

        That there could be any thing beyond the pitch of refinement to which Knoxville had gone, Paul could not believe on less than ocular evidence.

        I got out a subpoena and sent the sheriff after Roberts, with orders for immediate attendance. The court was in session, and I proposed taking up this matter of Beechim's before the usual business of the day was gone into.

        Samuel came into the court somewhat discomposed, but on observing that Beechim was not present, became reassured. His Honor drew from his pouch a fresh quid of tobacco, deposited it in his right cheek, wiped his mouth neatly with his handkerchief, seated himself comfortably in his chair, cleared his throat, blew his nose, and spread out his countenance into a pleasant and encouraging "skew," and directed me to proceed with the witness - commencing at the beginning and telling the witness to take his time.

        Roberts took the stand. He testified to this effect: indeed, this is nearly a literal transcript of my notes, taken at the time "Witness knows the parties - has known them for three years - is intimately acquainted with Beechim being a Tennesseean and having been at one time at Knoxville -

knows that Beechim and Cousins were on good terms; indeed quite friendly until May last. In company with witness they went together to New Orleans; went by way of Jackson and the Mississippi river; arrived there the 13th of the month - conversed together a good deal - conversation of a friendly character - quite sociable; Beechim talked a great deal of Knoxville, the girls, fashions and society: Cousins listened attentively: knows the parties must have been friendly. Arrived in New Orleans on the 18th, about 10 A.M., Monday; intended to remain until Thursday; no boat going up until Tuesday night. B. expressed himself gratified by the zeal of the porters and hackmen to serve him; said, however, that it marred the enjoyment somewhat to think that probably these attentions might be mercenary. It was well not to be too credulous. Took lodgings at the St. Charles Hotel. Heard a conversation going on between the two - subject, the mode: Cousins had been in the city and the hotel, frequently, so he said - knew the rules and the etiquette; Beechim had been at the best hotels in Knoxville, knew their rules, but had been from Knoxville a good while, therefore was rusty - was not certain but that he might make some awkward blunder - might be fatal to his character: Cousins offered to act as cicerone - said B. might rely on him, 'to put him through;' told him to take an item from him - Beechim thanked him kindly. At three the gong rang for dinner - parties were in the gentlemen's sitting room. B. Started - thought at first that the steam engine that worked the cooking stove in the kitchen had burst its boiler. C.

told him it was the gong: B. asked him if it were not a new thing - long as he had been in Knoxville had never heard of such a thing - asked C. if he could believe it. Went to dinner - bill of fare was handed; B. wished to know if there was any lincister to translate the French dishes - said there was in Knoxville; got along pretty well until just as B. had taken a piece of pine-apple on his plate, the waiter came along and put a green-colored bowl before every guest's plate with water and a small slice of lemon in it. Beechim asked Cousins what that was. C. replied, 'Sop for the pine-apple.' B. said he thought so. "That's the way it used to be served up at 'The Traveller's Rest' in Knoxville." Beechim took the bowl and put it in his plate, and then put the pine-apple in the bowl, and commenced cutting up the apple, stirred it around in the fluid with his fork, and ate it, piece after piece. B. kept his eyes on the bowl - did not observe what was passing about him. Many persons at table - five hundred at least - ladies, dandies, foreigners, moustached fellows; began to be an uproar on the other side of the table; every body got to looking down at Beechim - eye-glasses put up - a double-barrelled spy-glass (as witness supposed) levelled at him by a man at the head of the table, who stood up to draw a bead on him - loud laughing - women putting handkerchiefs, or napkins, (witness is not certain which,) to their mouths. B. got through with the pine-apple. Cousins had been laughing with the rest - composed himself now, and asked B. "how he liked the pine-apple?" B. answered in these words: 'I think the pine-apple very good, but don't

you think the sauce is rather insipid?' - Spoke the words pretty loud - heard at some distance - great sensation - immoderate laughter - women screaming - men calling for wine - the French consul's clerk drank to the English consul's clerk 'Ze shentleman from ze interiore, may he leeve to a green ole aige,' - drank with all the honors. Beechim seeing the fuss, turned to an old man next him and asked what was the matter - any news of an exciting character? The old man, a cotton broker - an Englishman - replied that he, B., 'had been making an ass of himself - he had been eating out of the finger-bowl.' B.'s face grew as red as a beet - then pale; he jumped back - tried to creep out by bending his head down below the chairs - rushed on and knocked over the waiter with the coffee - spilt it on a young lady - staggered back and fell against a Frenchman - tore his ruffles - knocked him, head striking head, over against an Irishman - quarrel - two duels next morning - Frenchman killed. Gen. Sacré Frogleggé rose and proposed three cheers for the gentleman of retiring habits; encored: wine all around the board - uproarious doings: Tom Placide called on to rehearse the scene - done - applause terrific: Beechim got out - forgot where his hat was - ran bare-headed to the bar(?) - called for his bill - never got his clothes - ran to the steamboat - shut himself up in the state room for two days; - thing out in the Picayune next morning - no names given. B. came home - saw Cousins when he came up - licked him within an inch of his life with a hickory stick. Witness further saith not."

        "Yes" said the judge, "and served him right. Justification complete! So enter it, clerk."

        During the delivery of this testimony, you may be sure that the crowd were not very serious; but knowing how sensitive Beechim was on the subject, I was congratulating myself that he was not present. Turning from the witness as he finished, I was pained to see Beechim - he had come in after the trial began, - poor Paul! sitting on the bench weeping piteously. I tried to console him - I told him not to mind it - it was a mere bagatelle; but he only squeezed my hand, and brokenly said, "B., thank you; you are my friend: I shall never forget you; you meant it for the best: - you have saved my body but you have ruined my character. Goodbye, I leave this morning. Roberts will settle your fee. But, B., as a friend - one request; if - you - can - help - it - don't - let - this - thing - get - back - to - Knoxville."

                        "Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."

        Accordingly Paul left - for good and all. What became of him I don't know. I did hear of one Paul Beechim in California; but whether the same one or not, I can't say. He was named in the papers as a manager of the first San Francisco ball of 22d February, 1849.

        His Honor made a solemn and affecting charge to the audience, generally, commending the moderation of young Beechim. "See," said his Honor, "the way that this thing works. Most men would have seized their gun, or bowie,

on such terrible aggravation, and taken the life of the culprit; but this young gentleman has set an example which older heads might well copy: he has contented himself with taking a club and giving him a good, sound, constitutional, conservative licking; and you see, gentlemen, the milder remedy has answered every good purpose! The Court adjourns for refreshment."

AN AFFAIR OF HONOR.

        In the old times there came into the village of a Saturday evening, a company more promiscuous than select, who gathered, like bees at the mouth of a hive, around the doors of the grocery. On one of these occasions a scene occurred, which I think worthy of commemoration; and it may be relied upon as authentic, in the main, as it came regularly before

the Court as a part of the proceedings of a trial in a State case.

        Jonas Sykes was a very valiant man when in liquor. But Jonas, like a good many other valiant men, was more valiant in peace than in war. He was a very Samson in fight - but, like Samson, he liked to do battle with that description of weapon which so scattered the Philistine hosts - that jaw-bone - one of which Nature had furnished Jonas with. Jonas was prodigal in the jaw-work and wind-work of a fight, and he could outswear "our army in Flanders." He had method in his madness, too, as he showed in selecting his enemies. He always knew, or thought he knew, how much a man would stand before he commenced "abusing" him, and his wrath grew the fiercer according as the patience of his enemy grew greater, and he was more fierce - like a bull-dog chained - as he was the more held off.

        Jonas had picked a quarrel with a quiet, demure fellow of the name of Samuel Mooney, and lavished upon that gentleman's liver, soul and eyes, many expressions much more fervid than polite or kind. Sam stood it for some time, but at length, like a terrapin with coals on his back, even his sluggish spirit could stand it no longer. He began to retort on Jonas some of the inverted compliments with which Jonas had besprinkled him. Whereupon Jonas felt his chivalry so moved thereat, that he challenged him to mortal combat.

        Now, Jonas, as most bullies did at that time, went armed. Samuel had no weepins, as he called those dangerous implements,

and gave that fact as an apology for not accepting Jonas's kind invitation. But Jonas would not "hear to" any such paltry excuse; he denounced Sam, for a white-livered poltroon, who would insult a gentleman (thereby meaning himself), and then refuse him satisfaction, and swore he would post him up all over town; regretting that he did not have the chance of blowing a hole through his carcass with his "Derringer" that "a bull-bat could fly through without tetching airy wing," and giving him his solemn word of honor that if he, (Sam,) would only fight him, (Jonas,) he, (Jonas,) wouldn't hit him, (Sam,) an inch above his hipbone - which certainly was encouraging.

        Sam still protested he was weaponless. "Well," said Jonas, "you shan't have that excuse any longer. I've got two as good pistols as ever was bought at Orleens, and you may have choice." And pulling one out of either side pocket, he produced two pistols very much alike, and, advancing to Sam, put his hands behind him and shuffled them from hand to hand a moment or two, and then held them forward - one rather in advance of the other - towards Sam, telling him to take which he chose. Sam took the one nearest to him, and Jonas called out to Bob Dobbs, who stood by, "to put them through in a fair duel," and called the crowd to witness "that he done it to the rascal accordin' to law." Bob willingly accepted the honorable position assigned him; commanded order; made the crowd stand back; - measured off the ground - ten paces - and stationed the combatants sidewise in duelling position. Bob then

armed himself with a scythe blade, and flourishing it in the air, swore death and destruction to all who should interfere by word, look, or sign.

        Bob took his position at a right angle between two, and gave out in a loud and sonorous voice the programme of proceedings. "Gentlemen," said he, "the rules are as follows: the parties are to be asked - 'Gentlemen are you ready' - answering Yes, I, as mutual second, will then pronounce the words slowly, 'Fire: one - two - three;' the parties to fire as they choose between the words Fire and three, and if either fires before or after the time, I shall proceed to put him to death without quarter, bail or main prize." Micajah F., a lawyer present, suggested, "or benefit of clergy." "Yes," said Bob, "or the benefit of a clergyman."

        Bob then proceeded to give the words out. At the word two Jonas's pistol snapped, but Sam's went off, the ball striking a button on Jonas's drawers and cutting off a little of the skin. Jonas fell - his legs flying up in the air, and shouting, "Murder! Murder! he's knocked off all the lower part of my abdomen. Send for a doctor! quick! quick! Oh! Lordy! oh! Lordy! I'm a dead man: the other fellow got the - wrong - pistol!" (And so he had; for on examining Jonas's pistol, it was found to have had no load in it. Jonas, by mistake in shuffling, having given the loaded one to Sam and kept the empty one himself.)

        The testimony in the case was related with such comic humor by one of the witnesses, that the jury were thrown

into convulsions of laughter; and the case being submitted without argument, the verdict was a fine of one cent only against the combatants.

        Jonas immediately retired from the bullying business after that time, and as soon as he could get his affairs wound up, like " the star of Empire," "westward took his way."

HON. S.S. PRENTISS.

        It was at the period first mentioned by me, in 1837, that Sargeant S. Prentiss was in the flower of his forensic fame. He had not, at that time, mingled largely in federal politics. He had made but few enemies; and had not "staled his presence," but was in all the freshness of his unmatched faculties. At this day it is difficult for any one to appreciate the enthusiasm which greeted this gifted man, the admiration which was felt for him, and the affection which followed him. He was to Mississippi, in her youth, what Jenny Lind is to the musical world, or what Charles Fox, whom he resembled in many things, was to the whig party of England in his day. Why he was so, it is not difficult to see. He was a type of his times, a representative of the qualities of the people, or

rather of the better qualities of the wilder and more impetuous part of them. The proportion of young men - as in all new countries - was great, and the proportion of wild young men was, unfortunately, still greater.

        He had all those qualities which make us charitable to the character of Prince Hal, as it is painted by Shakspeare, even when our approval is not fully bestowed. Generous as a prince of the royal blood, brave and chivalrous as a knight templar, of a spirit that scorned every thing mean, underhanded or servile, he was prodigal to improvidence, instant in resentment, and bitter in his animosities, yet magnanimous to forgive when reparation had been made, or misconstruction explained away. There was no littleness about him. Even towards an avowed enemy he was open and manly, and bore himself with a sort of antique courtesy and knightly hostility, in which self-respect mingled with respect for his foe, except when contempt was mixed with hatred; then no words can convey any sense of the intensity of his scorn, the depth of his loathing. When he thus outlawed a man from his courtesy and respect, language could scarce supply words to express his disgust and detestation.

        Fear seemed to be a stranger to his nature. He never hesitated to meet, nor did he wait for, "responsibility," but he went in quest of it. To denounce meanness or villainy, in any and all forms, when it came in his way, was, with him, a matter of duty, from which he never shrunk; and so to denounce it as to bring himself in direct collision with the perpetrator or perpetrators - for he took them in

crowds as well as singly - was a task for which he was instant in season or out of season.

        Even in the vices of Prentiss, there were magnificence and brilliancy imposing in a high degree. When he treated, it was a mass entertaimnent. On one occasion he chartered the theatre for the special gratification of his friends, - the public generally. He bet thousands on the turn of a card, and witnessed the success or failure of the wager with the nonchalance of a Mexican monte-player, or, as was most usual, with the light humor of a Spanish muleteer. He broke a faro-bank by the nerve with which he laid his large bets, and by exciting the passion of the veteran dealer, or awed him into honesty by the glance of his strong and steady eye.

        Attachment to his friends was a passion. It was a part of the loyalty to the honorable and chivalric, which formed the sub-soil of his strange and wayward nature. He never deserted a friend. His confidence knew no bounds. It scorned all restraints and considerations of prudence or policy. He made his friends' quarrels his own, and was as guardful of their reputations as of his own. He would put his name on the back of their paper, without looking at the face of it, and give his carte blanche, if needed, by the quire. He was above the littleness of jealousy or rivalry; and his love of truth, his fidelity and frankness, were formed on the antique models of the chevaliers. But in social qualities he knew no rival. These made him the delight of every circle; they were adapted to all, and were exercised on all. The same

histrionic and dramatic talent that gave to his oratory so irresistible a charm, and adapted him to all grades and sorts of people, fitted him, in conversation, to delight all men. He never staled and never flagged. Even if the fund of acquired capital could have run out, his originality was such, that his supply from the perennial fountain within was inexhaustible.

        His humor was as various as profound - from the most delicate wit to the broadest farce, from irony to caricature, from classical allusion to the verge - and sometimes beyond the verge - of coarse jest and Falstaff extravagance; and no one knew in which department he most excelled. His animal spirits flowed over like an artesian well, ever gushing out in a deep, bright, and sparkling current.

        He never seemed to despond or droop for a moment: the cares and anxieties of life were mere bagatelles to him. Sent to jail for fighting in the court-house, he made the walls of the prison resound with unaccustomed shouts of merriment and revelry. Starting to fight a duel, he laid down his hand at poker, to resume it with a smile when he returned, and went on the field laughing with his friends, as to a pic-nic. Yet no one knew better the proprieties of life than himself - when to put off levity, and treat grave subjects and persons with proper respect; and no one could assume and preserve more gracefully a dignified and sober demeanor.

        His early reading and education had been extensive and deep. Probably no man of his age, in the State, was so well read in the ancient and modern classics, in the current

literature of the day, and - what may seem stranger - in the sacred scriptures. His speeches drew some of their grandest images, strongest expressions, and aptest illustrations from the inspired writings.

        The personnel of this remarkable man was well calculated to rivet the interest his character inspired. Though he was low of stature, and deformed in one leg, his frame was uncommonly athletic and muscular; his arms and chest were well formed, the latter deep and broad; his head large, and a model of classical proportions and noble contour. A handsome face, compact brow, massive and expanded, and eyes of dark hazel, full and clear, were fitted for the expression of every passion and flitting shade of feeling and sentiment. His complexion partook of the bilious rather than the sanguine temperament. The skin was smooth and bloodless - no excitement or stimulus heightened its color; nor did the writer ever see any evidence in his face of irregularity of habit. In repose, his countenance was serious and rather melancholy - certainly somewhat soft and quiet in expression, but evidencing strength and power, and the masculine rather than the light and flexible qualities which characterized him in his convivial moments. There was nothing affected or theatrical in his manner, though some parts of his printed speeches would seem to indicate this. He was frank and artless as a child; and nothing could have been more winning than his familiar intercourse with the bar, with whom he was always a favorite, and without a rival in their affection.

        I come now to speak of him as a lawyer.

        He was more widely known as a politician than a lawyer, as an advocate than a jurist. This was because politics form a wider and more conspicuous theatre than the bar, and because the mass of men are better judges of oratory than of law. That he was a man of wonderful versatility and varied accomplishments, is most true; that he was a popular orator of the first class is also true; and that all of his faculties did not often, if ever, find employment in his profession, may be true likewise. So far he appeared to better advantage in a deliberative assembly, or before the people, because there he had a wider range and subjects of a more general interest, and was not fettered by rules and precedents; his genius expanded over a larger area, and exercised his powers in greater variety and number. Moreover, a stump speech is rarely made chiefly for conviction and persuasion, but to gratify and delight the auditors, and to raise the character of the speaker. Imagery, anecdote, ornament, eloquence and elocution, are in better taste than in a speech at the bar, where the chief and only legitimate aim is to convince and instruct.

        It will always be a mooted point among Prentiss's admirers, as to where his strength chiefly lay. My own opinion is that it was as a jurist that he mostly excelled; that it consisted in knowing and being able to show to others what was the law. I state the opinion with some diffidence, and, did it rest on my own judgment alone, should not hazard it at all. But the eminent chief-justice of the high court of errors and appeals of Mississippi thought that

Prentiss appeared to most advantage before that court; and a distinguished judge of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who had heard him before the chancellor of Mississippi, expressed to me the opinion that his talents shone most conspicuously in that forum. These were men who could be led from a fair judgment of a legal argument by mere oratory, about as readily as old Playfair could be turned from a true criticism upon a mathematical treatise, by its being burnished over with extracts from fourth-of-July harangues. Had brilliant declamation been his only or chief faculty, there were plenty of his competitors at the bar, who, by their learning and powers of argument, would have knocked the spangles off him, and sent his cases whirling out of court, to the astonishment of hapless clients who had trusted to such fragile help in time oftrial.

        It may be asked how is this possible? How is it consistent with the jealous demands which the law makes of the ceaseless and persevering attention of her followers as the condition of her favors? The question needs an answer. It is to be found somewhere else than in the unaided resources of even such an intellect as that of Sergeant Prentiss. In some form or other, Prentiss always was a student. Probably the most largely developed of all his faculties was his memory. He gathered information with marvellous rapidity. The sun-stroke that makes its impression upon the medicated plate is not more rapid in transcribing, or more faithful in fixing its image, than was his perception in taking cognizance of facts and principles, or

his ability to retain them. Once fixed, the impression was there for ever. It is true, as Mr. Wirt observed, that genius must have materials to work on. No man, how magnificently soever endowed, can possibly be a safe, much less a great lawyer, who does not understand the facts and law of his case. But some men may understand them much more readily than others. There are labor-saving minds, as well as labor-saving machines, and that of Mr. Prentiss was one of them. In youth he had devoted himself with intense application to legal studies, and had mastered, as few men have done, the elements of the law and much of its textbook learning. So acute and retentive an observer must too - especially in the freshness and novelty of his first years of practice - "have absorbed" no little law as it floated through the court-house, or was distilled from the bench and bar.

        But more especially, it should be noted that Mr. Prentiss, until the fruition of his fame, was a laborious man, even in the tapestring sense. While the world was spreading the wild tales of his youth, his deviations, though conspicuous enough while they lasted, were only occasional, and at long intervals, the intervening time being occupied in abstemious application to his studies. Doubtless, too, the supposed obstacles in the way of his success were greatly exaggerated, the vulgar having a great proneness to magnify the frailties of great men, and to lionize genius by making it independent, for its splendid achievements, of all external aids.

        With these allowances however, truth requires the admission that Mr. Prentiss did, when at the seat of government, occupy the hours, usually allotted by the diligent practitioner to books or clients, in amusements not well suited to prepare him for those great efforts which have indissolubly associated his name with the judicial history of the State.

        As an advocate, Mr. Prentiss attained a wider celebrity than as a jurist. Indeed, he was more formidable in this than in any other department of his profession. Before the Supreme, or Chancery, or Circuit Court, upon the law of the case, inferior abilities might set off, against greater native powers, superior application and research; or the precedents might overpower him; or the learning or judgment of the bench might come in aid of the right, even when more feebly defended than assailed. But what protection had mediocrity, or even second-rate talent, against the influences of excitement and fascination, let loose upon a mercurial jury, at least as easily impressed through their passions as their reason? The boldness of his attacks, his iron nerve, his adroitness, his power of debate, the overpowering fire - broadside after broadside - which he poured into the assailable points of his adversary, his facility and plainness of illustration, and his talent of adapting himself to every mind and character he addressed, rendered him, on all debatable issues, next to irresistible. To give him the conclusion was nearly the same thing as to give him the verdict.

        In the examination of witnesses, he was thought particularly

to excel. He wasted no time by irrelevant questions. He seemed to weigh every question before he put it, and see clearly its bearing upon every part of the case. The facts were brought out in natural and simple order. He examined as few witnesses, and elicited as few facts as he could safely get along with. In this way he avoided the danger of discrepancy, and kept his mind undiverted from the controlling points in the case. The jury were left unwearied and unconfused, and saw, before the argument, the bearing of the testimony.

        He avoided, too, the miserable error into which so many lawyers fall, of making every possible point in a case, and pressing all with equal force and confidence, thereby prejudicing the mind of the court, and making the jury believe that the trial of a cause is but running a jockey race.

        In arguing a cause of much public interest, he got all the benefit of the sympathy and feeling of the by-standers. He would sometimes turn towards them in an impassioned appeal, as if looking for a larger audience than court and jury; and the excitement of the outsiders, especially in criminal cases, was thrown with great effect into the jury-box.

        Mr. Prentiss was never thrown off his guard, or seemingly taken by surprise. He kept his temper: or, if he got furious, there was "method in his madness."

        He had a faculty in speaking I never knew possesed by any other person. He seemed to speak without any effort

of the will. There seemed to be no governing or guiding power to the particular faculty called into exercise. It worked on, and its treasures flowed spontaneously. There was no air of thought, no elevation, frowning or knitting of the brow - no fixing up of the countenance - no pauses to collect or arrange his thoughts. All seemed natural and unpremeditated. No one ever felt uneasy lest he might fall; in his most brilliant flights "the empyrean heights" into which he soared seemed to be his natural element - as the upper air the eagle's.

        Among the most powerful of his jury efforts, were his speeches against Bird, for the murder of Cameron; and against Phelps, the notorious highway robber and murderer. Both were convicted. The former owed his conviction, as General Foote, who defended him with great zeal and ability, thought, to the transcendent eloquence of Prentiss. He was justly convicted, however, as his confession, afterwards made, proved. Phelps was one of the most daring and desperate of ruffians. He fronted his prosecutor and the court, not only with composure, but with scornful and malignant defiance. When Prentiss rose to speak, and for some time afterwards, the criminal scowled upon him a look of hate and insolence. But when the orator, kindling with his subject, turned upon him, and poured down a stream of burning invective, like lava, upon his head; when he depicted the villainy and barbarity of his bloody atrocities; when he pictured, in dark and dismal colors, the fate which awaited him, and the awful judgment, to be pronounced at another

bar, upon his crimes, when he should be confronted with his innocent victims: when he fixed his gaze of concentrated power upon him, the strong man's face relaxed; his eyed faltered and fell; until at length, unable to bear up longer, self-convicted, he hid his head beneath the bar, and exhibited a picture of ruffian-audacity cowed beneath the spell of true courage and triumphant genius. Though convicted, he was not hung. He broke jail, and resisted recapture so desperately, that although he was encumbered with his fetters, his pursuers had to kill him in self-defence, or permit his escape.

        In his defence of criminals, in that large class of cases in which something of elevation or bravery in some sort, redeemed the lawlessness of the act, where murder was committed under a sense of outrage, or upon sudden resentment, and in fair combat, his chivalrous spirit upheld the the public sentiment, which, if it did not justify that sort of "wild justice," could not be brought to punish it ignominiously. His appeals fell like flames on those

                        "Souls made of fire, and children of the sun,
                        With whom revenge was virtue."

        I have never heard of but one client of his who was convicted on a charge of homicide, and he was convicted of one of its lesser degrees. So successful was he, that the expression - "Prentiss couldn't clear him" - was a hyperbole that expressed the desperation of a criminal's fortunes.

        Mr. P. was employed only in important cases, and generally

as associate counsel, and was thereby relieved of much of the preliminary preparation which occupies so much of the time of the attorney in getting a case ripe for trial. In the Supreme and Chancery Courts he had, of course, only to examine the record and prepare his argument. On the circuit his labors were much more arduous. The important criminal and civil causes which he argued, necessarily required consultations with clients, the preparation of pleadings and proofs, either under his supervision, or by his advice and direction; and this, from the number and difficulty of the cases, must have consumed time and required application and industry.

        At the time of which I speak, his long vigils and continued excitement did not enfeeble his energies. Indeed, he has been known to assert, that he felt brighter, and in better preparation for forensic debate, after sitting up all night in company with his friends than at any other time. He required less sleep, probably, than any man in the State, seldom devoting to that purpose more than three or four hours in the twenty-four. After his friends had retired at a late hour in the night, or rather at an early hour in the morning, he has been known to get his books and papers and prepare for the business of the day.

        His faculty of concentration drew his energies, as through a lens, upon the subject before him. No matter what he was engaged in, his intellect was in ceaseless play and motion. Alike comprehensive and systematic in the arrangement of his thoughts, he reproduced without difficulty what he had once conceived.

        Probably something would have still been wanting to explain his celerity of preparation for his causes, had not partial nature gifted him with the lawyer's highest talent, the acumen which, like an instinct, enabled him to see the points which the record presented. His genius for generalizing saved him, in a moment, the labor of a long and tedious reflection upon, and collation of, the several parts of a narrative. He read with great rapidity; glancing his eyes through a page he caught the substance of its contents at a view. His analysis, too, was wonderful. The chemist does not reduce the contents of his alembic to their elements more rapidly or surely than he resolved the most complicated facts into primary principles.

        His statements - like those of all great lawyers - were clear, perspicuous and compact; the language simple and sententious. Considered in the most technical sense, as forensic arguments merely, no one will deny that his speeches were admirable and able efforts. If the professional reader will turn to the meagre reports of his arguments in the cases of Ross v. Vertner, 5 How. 305; Vick et al. v. The Mayor and Aldermen of Vicksburg, 1 How. 381; and The Planters' Bank v. Snodgrass et al, he will, I think, concur in this opinion.

        Anecdotes are not wanting to show that even in the Supreme Court he argued some cases of great importance, without knowing any thing about them till the argument was commenced. One of these savors of the ludicrous. Mr. Prentiss was retained, as associate counsel, with Mr. (now Gen.) M-,

at that time one of the most promising as now one of the most distinguished, lawyers in the State. During the session of the Supreme Court, at which the case was to come on, Mr. M- called Mr. P.'s attention to the case, and proposed examining the record together; but for some reason this was deferred for some time. At last it was agreed to examine into the case the night before the day set for the hearing. At the appointed time, Prentiss could not be found. Mr. M- was in great perplexity. The case was of great importance; there were able opposing counsel, and his client and himself had trusted greatly to Mr. P.'s assistance. Prentiss appeared in the courtroom when the case was called up. The junior counsel opened the case, reading slowly from the record all that was necessary to give a clear perception of its merits; and made the points, and read the authorities he had collected. The counsel on the other side replied. Mr. P. rose to rejoin. The junior could scarcely conceal his apprehensions. But there was no cloud on the brow of the speaker; the consciousness of his power and of approaching victory sat on his face. He commenced, as he always did, by stating clearly the case, and the questions raised by the facts. He proceeded to establish the propositions he contended for, by their reason, by authorities, and collateral analogies, and to illustrate them from his copious resources of comparison. He took up, one by one, the arguments on the other side, and showed their fallacy; he examined the authorities relied upon in the order in which they were introduced, and showed their inapplicability, and the distinction between the facts of the

cases reported and those in the case at bar; then returning to the authorities of his colleague, he showed how clearly, in application and principle, they supported his own argument. When he had sat down, his colleague declared that Prentiss had taught him more of the case than he had gathered from his own researches and reflection.

        Mr. Prentiss had scarcely passed a decade from his majority when he was the idol of Mississippi. While absent from the state his name was brought before the people for Congress; the State then voting by general ticket, and electing two members. He was elected, the sitting members declining to present themselves before the people, upon the claim, that they were elected at the special election, ordered by Governor Lynch, for two years, and not for the called session merely. Mr. Prentiss, with Mr. Word, his colleague went on to Washington to claim his seat. He was admitted to the bar of the House to defend and assert his right. He delivered then that speech which took the House and the country by storm; an effort which if his fame rested upon it alone, for its manliness of tone, exquisite satire, gorgeous imagery, and argumentative power, would have rendered his name imperishable. The House, opposed to him as it was in political sentiment, reversed its former judgment, which declared Gholson and Claiborne entitled to their seats, and divided equally on the question of admitting Prentiss and Word. The speaker, however, gave the casting vote against the latter, and the election was referred back to the people.

        Mr. Prentiss addressed a circular to the voters of Mississippi,

in which he announced his intention to canvass the State. The applause which greeted him at Washington, and which attended the speeches he was called on to make at the North, came thundering back to his adopted State. His friends - and their name was legion - thought before that his talents were of the highest order; and when their judgments were thus confirmed - when they received the indorsement of such men as Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, they felt a kind of personal interest in him: he was their Prentiss. They had first discovered him - first brought him out - first proclaimed his greatness. Their excitement knew no bounds. Political considerations, too, doubtless had their weight. The canvass opened - it was less a canvass than an ovation. He went through the State - an herculean task - making speeches every day, except Sundays, in the sultry months of summer and fall. The people of all classes and both sexes turned out to hear him. He came, as he declared, less on his own errand than theirs, to vindicate a violated constitution, to rebuke the insult to the honor and sovereignty of the State, to uphold the sacred right of the people to elect their own rulers. The theme was worthy of the orator, the orator of the subject.

        This period may be considered the golden prime of the genius of Prentiss. His real effective greatness here attained its culminating point. He had the whole State for his audience, the honor of the State for his subject. He came well armed and well equipped for the warfare. Not content with challenging his competitors to the field, he threw down the

gauntlet to all comers. Party, or ambition, or some other motive, constrained several gentlemen - famous before, notorious afterwards - to meet him. In every instance of such temerity, the opposer was made to bite the dust.

        The ladies surrounded the rostrum with their carriages, and added, by their beauty, interest to the scene. There was no element of oratory that his genius did not supply. It was plain to see whence his boyhood had drawn its romantic inspiration. His imagination was colored and imbued with the light of the shadowy past, and was richly stored with the unreal but life-like creations, which the genius of Shakspeare and Scott had evoked from the ideal world. He had lingered, spell-bound, among the scenes of mediæval chivalry. His spirit had dwelt, until almost naturalized, in the mystic dream-land they peopled - among paladins, and crusaders, and knights-templars; with Monmouth and Percy - with Bois-Gilbert and Ivanhoe, and the bold McGregor - with the cavaliers of Rupert, and the iron enthusiasts of Fairfax. As Judge Bullard remarks of him, he had the talent of an Italian improvisatore, and could speak the thoughts of poetry with the inspiration of oratory, and in the tones of music. The fluency of his speech was unbroken - no syllable unpronounced - not a ripple on the smooth and brilliant tide. Probably he never hesitated for a word in his life: His diction adapted itself, without effort, to the thought; now easy and familiar, now stately and dignified, now beautiful and various as the hues of the rainbow, again compact, even rugged in sinewy strength, or lofty and grand in eloquent declamation.

        His face and manner were alike uncommon. The turn of the head was like Byron's; the face and the action were just what the mind made them. The excitement of the features, the motions of the head and body, the gesticulation he used, were all in absolute harmony with the words you heard. You saw and took cognizance of the general effect only; the particular instrumentalities did not strike you; they certainly did not call off attention to themselves. How a countenance so redolent of good humor as his at times, could so soon be overcast, and express such intense bitterness, seemed a marvel. But bitterness and the angry passions were, probably, as strongly implanted in him as any other sentiments or qualities.

        There was much about him to remind you of Byron: the cast of head - the classic features - the fiery and restive nature - the moral and personal daring - the imaginative and poetical temperament - the scorn and deep passion - the deformity of which I have spoken - the satiric wit - the craving for excitement, and the air of melancholy he sometimes wore - his early neglect, and the imagined slights put upon him in his unfriended youth - the collisions, mental and physical, which he had with others - his brilliant and sudden reputation, and the romantic interest which invested him, make up a list of correspondencies, still further increased, alas! by his untimely death.

        With such abilities as we have alluded to, and surrounded by such circumstances, he prosecuted the canvass, making himself the equal favorite of all classes. Old democrats were,

seen, with tears running down their cheeks, laughing hysterically; and some, who, ever since the formation of parties, had voted the democratic ticket, from coroner up to governor, threw up their hats and shouted for him. He was returned to Congress by a large majority, leading his colleague, who ran on precisely the same question, more than a thousand votes.

        The political career of Mr. Prentiss after this time is matter of public history, and I do not propose to refer to it.

        After his return from Congress, Mr. Prentiss continued to devote himself to his profession; but, subsequently to 1841 or 1842, he was more engaged in closing up his old business than in prosecuting new. Some year or two afterwards, the suit which involved his fortune was determined against him in the Supreme Court of the United States; and he found himself by this event, aggravated as it was by his immense liabilities for others, deprived of the accumulations of years of successful practice, and again dependent upon his own exertions for the support of himself and others now placed under his protection. In the mean time, the profession in Mississippi had become less remunerative, and more laborious. Bearing up with an unbroken spirit against adverse fortune, he determined to try a new theatre, where his talents might have larger scope. For this purpose, he removed to the city of New Orleans, and was admitted to the bar there. How rapidly he rose to a position among the leaders of that eminent bar, and how near he seemed to be to its first honors, the country knows. The energy with which he

addressed himself to the task of mastering the peculiar jurisprudence of Louisiana, and the success with which his efforts were crowned, are not the least of the splendid achievements of this distinguished gentleman.

        The danger is not that we shall be misconstrued in regard to the rude sketch we have given of Mr. Prentiss in any such manner as to leave the impression that we are prejudiced against, or have underrated the character of, that gentleman. We are conscious of having written in no unkind or unloving spirit of one whom, in life, we honored, and whose memory is still dear to us; the danger is elsewhere. It is twofold: that we may be supposed to have assigned to Prentiss a higher order of abilities than he possessed; and, in the second place, that we have presented, for undistinguishing admiration, a character, some of the elements of which do not deserve to be admired or imitated - and indeed, which are of most perilous example, especially to warm-blooded youth. As to the first objection, we feel sure that we are not mistaken, and even did we distrust our own judgment we would be confirmed by Sharkey, Boyd, Wilkinson, Guion, Quitman, to say nothing of the commendations of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, "the immortal three," whose opinions as to Prentiss's talents would be considered extravagant if they did not carry with them the imprimatur of their own great names. But we confess to the danger implied in the second suggestion. With all our admiration for Prentiss - much as his memory is endeared to us - however the faults of his character and the irregularities of his life may be palliated by the

peculiar circumstances which pressed upon idiosyncrasies of temper and mind almost as peculiar as those circumstances, - it cannot be denied, and it ought not to be concealed, that the influence of Prentiss upon the men, especially upon the young men of this time and association, was hurtful. True, he had some attributes worthy of unlimited admiration, and he did some things which the best men might take as examples for imitation. He was a noble, whole-soured, magnanimous man: as pure of honor, as lofty in chivalric bearing as the heroes of romance: but, mixed with these brilliant qualities, were vices of mind and habit, which made them more dangerous than if they had not existed at all: for vice is more easily copied than virtue: and in the partnership between virtue and vice, vice subsidizes virtue to its uses. Prentiss lacked regular, self-denying, systematic application. He accomplished a great deal, but not a great deal for his capital: if he did more than most men, he did less than the task of such a man: if he gathered much, he wasted and scattered more. He wanted the great essential element of a true, genuine, moral greatness: there was not - above his intellect and the bright army of glittering faculties and strong powers of his mind - above the fierce host of passions in his soul - a presiding spirit of Duty. Life was no trust to him: it was a thing to be enjoyed - a bright holiday season - a gala day, to be spent freely and carelessly - a gift to be decked out with brilliant deeds and eloquent words and all gewgaws of fancy - and to be laid down bravely when the evening star should succeed - the bright sun and the dews begin to fall

softly upon the green earth. True, he labored more than most men: but he labored as he frolicked - because his mind could not be idle, but burst into work as by the irrepressible instinct which sought occupation as an outlet to intellectual excitement: but what he accomplished was nothing to the measure of his powers. He studied more than he seemed to study, - more, probably, than he cared to have it believed he studied. But he could accomplish with only slender effort, the end for which less gifted men must delve, and toil, and slave. But the imitators, the many youths of warm passions and high hopes, ambitious of distinction - yet solicitous of pleasure - blinded by the glare of Prentiss's eloquence, the corruscations of a wit and fancy through which his speeches were borne as a stately ship through the phosphorescent waves of a tropical sea - what example was it to them to see the renown of the Forum, the eloquence of the Hustings, the triumphs of the Senate associated with the faro-table, the midnight revel, the drunken carouse, the loose talk of the board laden with wine and cards? What Prentiss effected they failed in compassing. Like a chamois hunter full of life, and vigor, and courage, supported by the spear of his genius - potent as Ithuriel's - Prentiss sprang up the steeps and leaped over the chasms on his way to the mount where the "proud temple" shines above cloud and storm; but mediocrity, in assaying to follow him, but made ridiculous the enterprise which only such a man with such aids could accomplish. And even he, not wisely or well: the penalty came at last, as it must ever come for a violation of

natural and moral laws. He lived in pain and poverty drooping in spirit, exhausted in mind and body, to lament that wasting of life, and health, and genius, which, unwasted, in the heyday of existence, and in the meridian lustre of his unrivalled powers, might have opened for himself and for his country a career of usefulness and just renown scarcely paralleled by the most honored and loved of all the land.

        If to squander thus such rare gifts were a grievous fault, grievously hath this erring child of genius answered it. But painfully making this concession, forced alone by the truth, it is with pleasure we can say, that, with this deduction from Prentiss's claims to reverence and honor, there yet remains so much of force and of brilliancy in the character - so much that is honorable, and noble, and generous - so much of a manhood whose robust and masculine virtues are set off by the wild and lovely graces that attempered and adorned its strength, that we feel drawn to it not less to admire than to love.

        In the midst of his budding prospects, rapidly ripening into fruition, insidious disease assailed him. It was long hoped that the close and fibrous system, which had, seemingly, defied all the laws of nature, would prove superior to this malady. His unconquerable will bore him up long against its attacks. Indeed it seemed that only death itself could subdue that fiery and unextinguishable energy. He made his last great effort, breathing in its feeble accents but a more touching and affecting pathos, and a more persuasive eloquence, in behalf of Lopez, charged with the offence of

fitting out an expedition against Cuba. So weak was he, that he was compelled to deliver it in a sitting posture, and was carried, after its delivery, exhausted from the bar.

        Not long after this time, in a state of complete prostration, he was taken, in a steamboat, from New-Orleans to Natchez, under the care of some faithful friends. The opiates given him, and the exhaustion of nature, had dethroned his imperial reason; and the great advocate talked wildly of some trial in which he supposed he was engaged. When he reached Natchez, he was taken to the residence of a relation, and from that time, only for a moment, did a glance of recognition fall - lighting up for an instant his pallid features - upon his wife and children, weeping around his bed. On the morning of - died this remarkable man, in the 42d year of his age. What he was, we know. What he might have been, after a mature age and a riper wisdom, we cannot tell. But that he was capable of commanding the loftiest heights of fame, and marking his name and character upon the age he lived in, we verily believe.

        But he has gone. He died, and lies buried near that noble river which first, when he was a raw Yankee boy, caught his poetic eye, and stirred, by its aspect of grandeur, his sublime imagination: upon whose shores first fell his burning and impassioned words as they aroused the rapturous applause of his astonished auditors. And long will that noble river flow out its tide into the gulf, ere the roar of its current shall mingle with the tones of such eloquence again - eloquence, as full and majestic, as resistless and sublime,

and as wild in its sweep as its own sea-like flood,

                         - "the mightiest river
                        Rolls mingling with his fame for ever."

        The tidings of his death came like wailing over the State, and we all heard them, as the toll of the bell for a brother's funeral. The chivalrous felt, when they heard that "young Harry Percy's spur was cold," that the world had somehow grown commonplace; and the men of wit and genius, or those who could appreciate such qualities in others, looking over the surviving bar, exclaimed with a sigh -

                        "The blaze of wit, the flash of bright intelligence,
                        The beam of social eloquence,
                        Sunk with HIS sun."

THE BAR OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

New Mexico, and, we suppose, New Mexico on Pandemonium.

        It may be one of the perversions of patriotism, to create and foster invidious and partial discriminations between different countries, and between different sections of the same country: and especially does this prejudice exist and deepen with a people stationary and secluded in habit and position. But travel, a broader range of inquiry and observation, more intimate associations and a freer correspondence, begetting larger and more cosmopolitan views of men and things, serve greatly to soften these prejudices, even where they are not entirely removed. That there is some good country even beyond the Chinese wall, and that all not within that barrier are not quite "outside barbarians," the Celestials themselves are beginning to acknowledge.

        There is no greater error than that which assigns inferiority to the bar of the South-West, in comparison with that of any other section of the same extent in the United States. Indeed, it is our honest conviction that the profession in the States of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, are not equalled, as a whole, by the same number of lawyers in any other quarter of the Union, - certainly in no other quarter where commerce is no more various and largely pursued.

        The reasons for this opinion we proceed to give. The most conclusive mode of establishing this proposition would probably be by comparison; but this, from the nature of the case, is impossible. The knowledge of facts and men is

wanting, and even if possessed by any capable of instituting the comparison, the decision would, at last, be only an opinion, and would carry but little weight, even if the cape city and fairness of the critic were duly authenticated to the reader.

        It is a remarkable fact, that the great men of every State in the Union, were those men who figured about the time of the organization and the settling down of their several judicial systems into definite shape and character. Not taking into the account the Revolutionary era - unquestionably the most brilliant intellectual period of our history - let us look to that period which succeeded the turmoil, embarrassment and confusion of the Revolution, and of the times of civil agitation and contention next following, and out of which arose our present constitution. The first thing our fathers did was to get a country; then to fix on it the character of government it was to have; then to make laws to carry it on and achieve its objects. The men, as a class, who did all this, were lawyers: their labors in founding and starting into motion our constitutions and laws were great and praiseworthy: but after setting the government agoing, there was much more to do; and this was to give the right direction and impress to its jurisprudence. The Statutes of free country are usually but a small part of the body of its law - and the common law of England, itself but a judicial enlargement and adaptation of certain vague and rude principles of jurisprudence to new wants, new necessities and exigencies, was a light rather than a guide, to the judges of

our new systems, called to administer justice under new and widely different conditions and circumstances. The greatest talent was necessary for these new duties. It required the nicest discrimination and the soundest judgment to determine what parts of the British system were opposed to the genius of the new constitution, and what parts were inapplicable by reason of new relations or differing circumstances. The great judicial era of the United States - equally great in bar and bench - was the first quarter of this century. And it is a singular coincidence that this was the case in nearly every, if not in every, State. Those were the days of Marshall and Story and Parsons, of Kent and Thompson and Roane, of Smith and Wythe and Jay, and many other fixed planets of the judicial system, while the whole horizon, in every part of the extended cycle, was lit up by stars worthy to revolve around and add light to such luminaries. Mr. Webster declared that the ablest competition he had met with, in his long professional career, was that he encountered at the rude provincial bar of back-woods New Hampshire in his earlier practice.

        And this same remarkable preëminence has characterized the bar of every new State when, or shortly after emerging from, its territorial condition and first crude organization; the States of Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana forcibly illustrate this truth, and we have no question but that Texas and California are affording new expositions of its correctness.

        A fact so uniform in its existence, must have some solid

principle for its cause. This principle we shall seek to ascertain. It is the same influence, in a modified form, which partly discovers and partly creates great men in times of revolution. Men are fit for more and higher uses than they are commonly put to. The idea that genius is self-conscious of its powers, and that men naturally fall into the position for which they are fitted, we regard as by no means an universal truth, if any truth at all. Who believes that Washington ever dreamed of his capacity for the great mission he so nobly accomplished, before with fear and trembling, he started out on its fulfilment? Probably the very ordeal through which he passed to greatness purified and qualified him for the self-denial and self-conquest, the patience and the fortitude, which made its crowning glory. To be great, there must be a great work to be done. Talents alone are not distinction. For the Archimedean work, there must be a fulcrum as well as a lever. Great abilities usually need a great stimulus. What dormant genius there is in every country, may be known by the daily examples of a success, of which there was neither early promise nor early expectation.

        In a new country the political edifice, like all the rest, must be built from the ground up. Where nothing is at hand, every thing must be made. There is work for all and a necessity for all to work. There is almost perfect equality. All have an even start and an equal chance. There are few or no factitious advantages. The rewards of labor and skill are not only certain to come, but they are certain to come at once. There is no long and tedious novitiate. Talent and

energy are not put in quarantine, and there is no privileged inspector to place his imprimatur of acceptance or rejection upon them. An emigrant community is necessarily a practical community; wants come before luxuries - things take precedence of words; the necessaries that support life precede the arts and elegancies that embellish it. A man of great parts may miss his way to greatness by frittering away his powers upon non-essentials - upon the style and finish of a thing rather than upon its strength and utility - upon modes rather than upon ends. To direct strength aright, the aim is as essential as the power. But above all things, success more depends upon self-confidence than any thing else; talent must go in partnership with will or it cannot do a business of profit. Erasmus and Melancthon were the equals of Luther in the closet; but where else were they his equals? And where can a man get this self-reliance so well as in a new country, where he is thrown upon his own resources; where his only friends are his talents; where he sees energy leap at once into prominence; where those only are above him whose talents are above his; where there is no prestige of rank, or ancestry, or wealth, or past reputation - and no family influence, or dependants, or patrons; where the stranger of yesterday is the man of mark to-day; where a single speech may win position, to be lost by a failure the day following; and where amidst a host of competitors in an open field of rivalry, every man of the same profession enters the course with a race-horse emulation, to win the prize which is glittering

within sight of the rivals. There is no stopping in such a crowd: he who does not go ahead is run over and trodden down. How much of success waits on opportunity! True, the highest energy may make opportunity; but how much of real talent is associated only with that energy which appropriates, but which is not able to create, occasions for its display. Does any one doubt that if Daniel Webster had accepted the $1,500 clerkship in New Hampshire, he would not have been Secretary of State? Or if Henry Clay had been so unfortunate as to realize his early aspirations of earning in some backwoods county his $333.33 per annum, is it so clear that Senates would have hung upon his lips, or Supreme Courts been enlightened by his wisdom?

        The exercise of our faculties not merely better enables us to use them - it strengthens them as much; the strength lies as much in the exercise as in the muscle; and the earlier the exercise, after the muscle can stand it, the greater the strength.

        Unquestionably there is something in the atmosphere of a new people which refreshes, vivifies and vitalizes thought, and gives freedom, range and energy to action. It is the natural effect of the law of liberty. An old society weaves a network of restraints and habits around a man; the chains of habitude and mode and fashion fetter him: he is cramped by influence, prejudice, custom, opinion; he lives under a feeling of surveilance and under a sense of espionage. He takes the law from those above him. Wealth, family, influence, class, caste, fashion, coterie and adventitious

circumstances of all sorts, in a greater or less degree, trammel him; he acts not so much from his own will and in his own way, as from the force of these arbitrary influences; his thoughts and actions do not leap out directly from their only legitimate head-spring, but flow feebly in serpentine and impeded currents, through and around all these impediments. The character necessarily becomes, in some sort, artificial and conventional; less bold, simple, direct, earnest and natural, and, therefore, less effective.

        What a man does well he must do with freedom. He can no more speak in trammels than he can walk in chains; and he must learn to think freely before he can speak freely. He must have his audience in his mind before he has it in his eye. He must hold his eyes level upon the court or jury - not raised in reverence nor cast down in fear. For the nonce, the speaker is the teacher. He must not be sifting his discourse for deprecating epithets or propitiating terms, nor be seeking to avoid being taken up and shaken by some rough senior, nor be afraid of being wearisome to the audience or disrespectful to superiors: bethinking him of exposure and dreading the laugh or the sneer, when the bold challenge, the quick retort, the fresh thought, the indignant crimination, the honest fervor, and the vigorous argument are needed for his cause. To illustrate what we mean - let us take the case of a young lawyer just come to the bar of an old State. Let us suppose that he has a case to argue. He is a young man of talent, of course - all are. Who make his audience? The old judge, who, however mild a

mannered man he may be, the youth has looked on, from his childhood, as the most awful of all the sons of men. Who else? The old seniors whom he has been accustomed to regard as the ablest and wisest lawyers in the world, and the most terrible satirists that ever snapped sinews and dislocated joints and laid bare nerves on the rack of their merciless wit. The jury of sober-sided old codgers, who have known him from a little boy, and have never looked on him except as a boy, most imprudently diverted by parental vanity from the bellows or the plough-handles, to be fixed as a cannister to the dog's tail that fag-ends the bar: - that jury look upon him, - as he rises stammering and floundering about, like a badly-trained pointer running in several directions, seeking to strike the cold trail of an idea that had run through his brain in the enthusiasm of ambitious conception the night before: - these, his judges, look at him or from him with mingled pity and wonder; his fellow-students draw back from fear of being brought into misprision and complicity of getting him into this insane presumption; and, after a few awkward attempts to propitiate the senior, who is to follow him, he catches a view of the countenances of the old fogies in whose quiet sneers he reads his death-warrant; and, at length, he takes his seat, as the crowd rush up to the veteran who is to do him - like a Spanish rabble to an auto da fe. What are his feelings: What or who can describe his mortification? What a vastation of pride and self-esteem that was? The speech he made was not the speech he had conceived. The speech he had in him he did not deliver; he

"aborted" it, and, instead of the anticipated pride and joy of maternity, he feels only the guilt and the shame of infanticide.

        Alack-a-day! Small is the sum of sympathy which is felt by the mass of men for the woes and wounds of juvenile vanity and especially for the woes of professional vanity. From the time of Swift, who pilloried Bettsworth to eternal ridicule, and of Cobbett, who, with rude contempt, scoffed at the idea of being blamed for "crushing a lawyer in the egg," but few tears of commiseration have been shed for the poor "Wind-seller," cut down in his raw and callow youth. And, yet, I cannot help, for the soul of me, the weakness which comes into my eyes, when I see, as I have seen, a gallant youth, full of ardor and hope, let down, a dead failure, - on his first trial over the rough course of the law. The head hung down - the cowed look of timid deprecation - the desponding carriage - tell a story of deep wounds of spirit - of hopes overcast, and energies subdued, and pride humbled - which touches me deeply. I picture him in the recesses of his chamber, wearing through the weary watches of the night - grinding his teeth in impatient anguish, - groaning sorrowfully and wetting his pillow with bitter tears - cursing his folly, and infatuation, and his hard fate - envying the hod-carrier the sure success of his humbler lot, and his security against the ill fortune of a shameful failure, where failure was exposed presumption.

        I have felt, in the intensity of my concern for such an one, like hazarding the officiousness of going to him, and advising him to abandon the hang-dog trade, and hide his shame in some obscurer and honest pursuit.

        And, rough senior, my dear brother, think of these things when your fingers itch to wool one of the tender neophytes - and forbear. I crave no quarter for the lawyer, full-grown or half-grown; he can stand peppering - it is his vocation, Hal - he is paid for it; but for the lawyerling I plead; and to my own urgency in his behalf, I add the pathetic plea of the gentle Elia in behalf of the roast-pig - "Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them with the plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them or make them stronger than they are - but consider, he is a weakling - a flower."

        But revenons à nos moutons.

        But suppose the debutant does better than this; suppose he lets himself out fully and fearlessly, and has something in him to let out; and suppose he escapes the other danger of being ruined by presumption, real or supposed; he is duly complimented: - "he is a young man of promise - there is some 'come out' to that young man; some day he will be something - if - if" two or three peradventures don't happen to him. If he is proud, - as to be able to have accomplished all this he must be, - such compliments grate more harshly than censure. He goes back to the office; but where are the clients? They are a slow-moving race, and confidence in a young lawyer "is a plant of slow growth." Does he get his books and "scorn delights and live laborious days," for the prospect of a remote and contingent, and that at best, but a poorly remunerating success? Does he cool his hot blood in the ink of the Black-letter, and spin

his toils with the industry and forethought of the patient spider that is to be remunerated next fly-season, for her pains, and sit, like that collecting attorney, at the door of the house, waiting and watching until then, for prey? If so, he is a hero indeed; but what years of the flower of his life are not spent in waiting for the prosperous future, in the vague preparation which is not associated with, or stimulated by, a present use for, and direct application to a tangible purpose of what he learns! Where one man of real merit succeeds, how many break down in the training; and even where success is won, how much less that success than where talent, like Pitt's, takes its natural position at the start, and, stimulated to its utmost exercise, fights its way from its first strivings to its ultimate triumphs - each day a day of activity and every week a trial of skill and strength; learning all of law that is evolved from its practice, and forced to know something, at least, of what the books teach of it; and getting that larger and better knowledge of men which books cannot impart, and that still more important self-knowledge, of which experience is the only schoolmaster.

        In the new country, there are no seniors: the bar is all Young America. If the old fogies come in, they must stand in the class with the rest, if, indeed, they do not "go foot." There were many evils and disadvantages arising from this want of standards and authority in and over the bar - many and great - but they were not of long continuance, and were more than counterbalanced by opposite benefits.

        It strikes me that the career of Warren Hastings illustrates

my idea of the influence of a new country and of a new and responsible position over the character of men of vigorous parts. In India, new to English settlement and institutions, he well earned the motto, "Mens æqua in arduis," inscribed over his portrait in the council chamber of Calcutta: but after he returned to England, amidst the difficulties of his impeachment, his policy ignored all his claims to greatness, had it alone been considered: the genius that expatiated over and permeated his broad policy on the plains of Hindostan seemed stifled in the conventional atmosphere of St. Stephen's.

        While we think that the influence of the new country upon the intellect of the professional emigré was highly beneficial, we speak, we hope, with a becoming distrust, of its moral effect. We might, in a debating club, tolerate some scruple of a doubt, whether this violent disruption of family ties - this sudden abandonment of the associations and influence of country and of home - of the restraints of old authority and of opinion - and this sudden plunge into the whirling vortex of a new and seething population - in which the elements were curiously and variously mixed with free manners and not over-puritanic conversation - were efficient causes of moral improvement: we can tolerate a doubt as to whether the character of a young man might not receive something less than a pious impression, under these circumstances of temptation, when that character was in its most malleable and fusible state. But we leave this moral problem to be solved by those better able to manage it, with

this single observation, that if the subject were able to stand the trial, his moral constitution, like his physical after an attack of yellow fever, would be apt to be the better for it. We cannot, however, in conscience, from what we have experienced of a new country with "flush fixins" annexed, advise the experiment. We have known it to fail. And probably more of character would have been lost if more had been put at hazard.

        In trying to arrive at the character of the South-Western bar, its opportunities and advantages for improvement are to be considered. It is not too much to say that, in the United States at least, no bar ever had such, or so many: it might be doubted if they were ever enjoyed to the same extent before. Consider that the South-West was the focus of an emigration greater than any portion of the country ever attracted, at least, until the golden magnet drew its thousands to the Pacific coast. But the character of emigrants was not the same. Most of the gold-seekers were mere gold-diggers - not bringing property, but coming to take it away. Most of those coming to the South-West brought property - many of them a great deal. Nearly every man was a speculator; at any rate, a trader. The treaties with the Indians had brought large portions of the States of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana into market; and these portions, comprising some of the most fertile lands in the world, were settled up in a hurry. The Indians claimed lands under these treaties - the laws granting preemption rights to settlers on the public lands, were to be

construed, and the litigation growing out of them settled, the public lands afforded a field for unlimited speculation, and combinations of purchasers, partnerships, land companies, agencies, and the lilies gave occasion to much difficult litigation in after times. Negroes were brought into the country in large numbers and sold mostly upon credit, and bills of exchange taken for the price; the negroes in many instances were unsound - some as to which there was no title; some falsely pretended to be unsound, and various questions as to the liability of parties on the warranties and the bills, furnished an important addition to the litigation: many land titles were defective; property was brought from other States clogged with trusts, limitations, and uses, to be construed according to the laws of the State from which it was brought: claims and contracts made elsewhere to be enforced here: universal indebtedness, which the hardness of the times succeeding made it impossible for many men to pay, and desirable for all to escape paying: hard and ruinous bargains, securityships, judicial sales; a general looseness, ignorance, and carelessness in the public officers in doing business; new statutes to be construed; official liabilities, especially those of sheriffs, to be enforced; banks, the laws governing their contracts, proceedings against them for forfeiture of charter; trials of right of property; an elegant assortment of frauds constructive and actual; and the whole system of chancery law, admiralty proceedings; in short, all the flood-gates of litigation were opened and the pent-up tide let loose upon the country. And such

a criminal docket! What could boast more largely of its crimes? What more splendid rôle of felonies! What more terrific murders! What more gorgeous bank robberies! What more magnificent operations in the land offices! Such McGregor-like levies of black mail, individual and corporate! Such superb forays on the treasuries, State and National! Such expert transfers of balances to undiscovered bournes! Such august defalcations! Such flourishes of rhetoric on ledgers auspicious of gold which had departed for ever from the vault! And in INDIAN affairs! - the very mention is suggestive of the poetry of theft - the romance of a wild and weird larceny! What sublime conceptions of super-Spartan roguery! Swindling Indians by the nation! (Spirit of Falstaff, rap!) Stealing their land by the township! (Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild! tip the table!) Conducting the nation to the Mississippi river, stripping them to the flap, and bidding them God speed as they went howling into the Western wilderness to the friendly agency of some sheltering Suggs duly empowered to receive their coming annuities and back rations! What's Hounslow heath to this? Who Carvajal? Who Count Boulbon?

        And all these merely forerunners, ushering in the Millennium of an accredited, official Repudiation; and IT but vaguely suggestive of what men could do when opportunity and capacity met - as shortly afterwards they did - under the Upas-shade of a perjury-breathing bankrupt law! - But we forbear. The contemplation of such hyperboles of mendacity

stretches the imagination to a dangerous tension. There was no end to the amount and variety of lawsuits, and interests involved in every complication and of enormous value were to be adjudicated. The lawyers were compelled to work, and were forced to learn the rules that were involved in all this litigation.

        Many members of the bar, of standing and character, from the other States, flocked in to put their sickles into this abundant harvest. Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee contributed more of these than any other four States; but every State had its representatives.

        Consider, too, that the country was not so new as the practice. Every State has its peculiar tone or physiognomy, so to speak, of jurisprudence imparted to it, more or less, by the character and temper of its bar. That had yet to be given. Many questions decided in older States, and differently decided in different States, were to be settled here; and a new state of things, peculiar in their nature, called for new rules or a modification of old ones. The members of the bar from different States had brought their various notions, impressions and knowledge of their own judicature along with them; and thus all the points, dicta, rulings, offshoots, quirks and quiddities of all the law, and lawing, and law-mooting of all the various judicatories and their satellites, were imported into the new country and tried on the new jurisprudence.

        After the crash came in 1837 - (there were some premonitory fits before, but then the great convulsion came on)

- all the assets of the country were marshalled, and the suing material of all sorts, as fast as it could be got out, put into the hands of the workmen. Some idea of the business may be got from a fact or two: in the county of Sumpter, Alabama, in one year, some four or five thousand suits, in the common-law courts alone, were brought; but in some other counties the number was larger; while in the lower or river counties of Mississippi, the number was at least double. The United States Courts were equally well patronized in proportion - indeed, rather more so. The white suable population of Sumpter was then some 2,400 men. It was a merry time for us craftsmen; and we brightened up mightily, and shook our quills joyously, like goslings in the midst of a shower. We look back to that good time, "now past and gone," with the pious gratitude and serene satisfaction with which the wreckers near the Florida Keys contemplate the last fine storm.

        It was a pleasant sight to profesional eyes to see a whole people let go all holds and meaner business, and move off to court, like the Californians and Australians to the mines: the "pockets" were picked in both cases. As law and lawing soon got to be the staple productions of the country, the people, as a whole the most intelligent - in the wealthy counties - of the rural population of the United States, and, as a part, the keenest in all creation, got very well "up to trap" in law matters; indeed, they soon knew more about the delicate mysteries of the law, than it behooves an honest man to know.

        The necessity for labor and the habit of taking difficulties by the horns is a wonderful help to a man; no one knows what he can accomplish until he tries his best; or how firmly he can stand on his own logs when he has no one to lean on.

        The range of practice was large. The lawyer had to practise in all sorts of courts, State and Federal, inferior and Supreme. He had the bringing up of a lawsuit, from its girth in the writ to its grave in the sheriff's docket. Even when not concerned in his own business, his observation was employed in seeing the business of others going on; and the general excitement on the subject of law and litigation, taking the place, in the partial supension of other business, of other excitements, supplied the usual topics of general, and, more especially, of professional conversation. If he followed the circuit, he was always in law: the temple of Themis, like that of Janus in war, was always open.

        The bar of every country is, in some sort, a representative of the character of the people of which it is so important an "institution." We have partly shown what this character was: after the great Law revival had set in, the public mind had got to be as acute, excited, inquisitive on the subject of law, as that of Tennessee or Kentucky on politics: every man knew a little and many a great deal on the subject. The people soon began to find out the capacity and calibre of the lawyers. Besides, the multitude and variety of lawsuits produced their necessary effect. The talents of the lawyers soon adapted themselves to the nature and exigencies of the service required

of them, and to the tone and temper of the juries and public. Law had got to be an every-day, practical, common-place, business-like affair, and it had to be conducted in the same spirit on analogous principles. Readiness, precision, plainness, pertinency, knowledge of law, and a short-hand method of getting at and getting through with a case, were the characteristics and desiderata of the profession. There was no time for wasting words, or for manæuvring and skirmishing about a suit; there was no patience to be expended on exordiums and perorations: few jurors were to be humbugged by demagogical appeals; and the audience were more concerned to know what was to become of the negroes in suit, than to see the flights of an ambitious rhetoric, or to have their ears fed with vain repetitions, meek sentimentality, or tumid platitudes. To start in medias res - to drive at the centre - to make the home-thrust - to grasp the hinging point - to give out and prove the law, and to reason strongly on the facts - to wrestle with the subject Indian-hug fashion - to speak in plain English and fervid, it mattered not how rough, sincerity, were the qualities required: and these qualities were possessed in an eminent degree.

        Most questions litigated are questions of law: in nine cases out of ten tried, the jury, if intelligent and impartial, have no difficulty in deciding after the law has been plainly given them by the court: there is nothing for a jury to do but to settle the facts, and these are not often seriously controverted, in proportion to the number of cases tried in a new country; and the habit of examining carefully, and arguing

fully, legal propositions, is the habit which makes the lawyer. Nothing so debilitates and corrupts a healthy taste and healthy thought, as the habit of addressing ignorant juries; it corrupts style and destroys candor; it makes a speech, which ought to be an enlightened exposition of the legal merits of a cause, a mere mass of "skimble skamble stuff," a compound of humbug, rant, cant and hypocrisy, of low, demagoguism and flimsy perversions - of interminable wordiness and infinite repetition, exaggeration, bathos and vituperation - frequently of low wit and buffoonery - which "causes the judicious to grieve," "though it splits the ears of the goundlings." I do not say that the new bar was free from these traits and vices: by no manner of means but I do say that they were, as a class, much freer than the bar of the older States out of the commercial cities. The reason is plain: the new dogs hadn't learned the old tricks; and if they had tricks as bad, it was a great comfort that they did not have the same. If we had not improvement, we had, at least, variety; but, I think, we had improvement.

        There was another thing: the bar and the community - as all emigrant communities - were mostly young, and the young men cannot afford to play the pranks which the old fogies safely play behind the domino of an established reputation. What is ridiculous, in itself or in a young man, may be admired, or not noticed, in an older leader with a prescriptive title to cant and humbug; it is lese majesty to take him off, but the juniors with us had no such immunity. If he tried such tricks he heard of it again; it was rehearsed in

his presence for his benefit - if he made himself very ridiculous, he was carried around the circuit, like a hung jury in old times, for the especial divertisement of the brethren. A respectable old snob like Mr. Buzzfuz, shrouded like Jack the Giant Killer, in a mantle of dignity that forbade approach, if it did not hide the wearer from attack, never could hear what his"d-d good-natured friends" thought of his performances in the department of humbug or cant; but this was, by no means, the case with such an one in our younger community.

        Again, it is flattering to human nature to know that these forensic tricks are not spontaneous but acquired, and a young bar cannot, all at once, acquire them. It requires experience, and a monstrous development of the organs of Reverence and Marvellousness in the audience to practise them with any hope of success, and these bumps were almost entirely wanting in the craniums of the new population around, all of whose eye-teeth were fully cut, and who, standing knee-deep in exploded humbugs, seemed to wear their eyes stereotyped into a fixed, unwinking qui vive: the very expression of their countenances seemed to be articulate with the interrogatory, "who is to be picked up next?" It stops curiously the flow of the current when the humbugger sees the intended humbuggee looking him, with a quizzical 'cuteness, in the eye. and seeming to say by the expression of his own, "Squire, do you see any thing green here?"

        The business of court-house speaking began to grow too common and extensive to excite public interest; the novelty

of the thing, after a while, wore off. A stream of sound poured over the land like the trade winds; men now, as a general thing, only came to court because they had business there, and staid only until it was accomplished. It is otherwise in the old country as it had been in the new. It is one of the phenomena of mind that quiet and otherwise sensible men, come from their homes to the county seat to listen to the speeches of the lawyers, - looking over the bar and dropping the under jaw in rapt attention, when some forensic Boreas is blowing away at a case in which they have no interest or concern, deserting, for this queer divertisement, the splitting of their rails and their attention to their bullocks; or, if they needed some relaxation from such pursuits, neglecting their arm-chairs in the passage with the privilege of reading an old almanac or listening to the wind whistling through the key-hole. When a thing gets to be a work-day and common-place affair, it is apt to be done in a commonplace way, and the parade, tinsel, and fancy fireworks of a holiday exercise or a gala-day fête are, apt to be omitted from the bill and the boards.

        It is a great mistake to suppose that a lawyer's strength lies chiefly in his tongue; it is in the preparation of his case - in knowing what makes the case - in stating the case accurately in the papers, and getting out and getting up the proofs. It requires a good lawyer to make a fine argument; but he is a better lawyer who saves the necessity of making a fine argument, and prevents the possibility of his adversary's making one.

        These practical requirements and habits had the effect of driving from the bar that forensic nuisance, "a pretty speaker;" Fourth-of-Julyisms fled to the stump or the national anniversary barbecues; they were out of place in those prosaic times and proceedings. A veteran litigant having a tough lawsuit, had as little use for a flowery orator, letting off his fancy pyrotechnics, as he had for Juno's team of peacocks for hauling his cotton to market.

        Between the years 1833 and 1845, the bar was most numerous, and, we think, on the whole, most able. The Supreme Court bar of Mississippi was characterized by signal ability. It may well be doubted if so able and efficient a bar ever existed at any one period of the same duration, in a Southern State: not that the bar was made up of Wickhams, Leighs, Johnsons, and Stanards, nor of Clays, Crittendens, Rowans, and Wickliffes; nor, possibly, that there were any members of the Jackson bar equal to these great names of the Richmond and Frankfort bars; yet those who have heard the best efforts of Prentiss, Holt, Walker, Yerger, Mays, and Boyd, may be allowed to doubt the justness of that criticism which would deny a place to them among lawyers even so renowned as the shining lights of the Virginia and Kentucky forums. But we meant to say, that if this claim be ignored, yet the Mississippi bar, if not so distinguished for individual eminence, made up the deficiency by a more generally-diffused ability, and a larger number of members of inferior, though only a shade inferior, distinction.

        As some proof of the ability of the South-western bar, it may be stated, that we had not unfrequently an advent into the new country of lawyers of considerable local reputation in the older States - men who, in their own bailiwicks, were mighty men of War - so distinguished, indeed, that on the first bruiting of a lawsuit, the litigants, without waiting for the ferry-boat, would swim Tar river, or the Pedee, or French Broad, to get to them, under the idea that who got to them first would gain the case. But after the first bustle of their coming with the fox-fire of their old reputations sticking to their gowns, it was generally found, to the utter amazement of their friends who had known them in the old country, that the new importation would not suit the market. They usually fell back from the position at first courteously tendered them, and, not unfrequently, receded until, worked out of profitable practice, they took their places low down in the list, or were lost behind the bar, among the spectators. There is something doubtless in transplantation - something in racing over one's own training-paths - something in first firing with a rest, and then being compelled to fire off-hand amid a general flutter and confusion; but, making all this allowance, it hardly accounts fully for the result. For we know that others, against these disadvantages, sustained themselves.

        Nor was there, nor is there, any bar that better illustrates the higher properties or nobler characteristics which have, in every State, so much ennobled the profession of the law, than that of the South-West, a class of men more fearless

or more faithful, more chivalrous, reliable or trustworthy, more loyal to professional obligations, or more honorable inter-professional intercourse and relations. True, there were exceptions, as, at all times and every where, there are and will be. Bullying insolence, swaggering pretension, underhanded arts, low detraction, unworthy huckstering for fees, circumvention, artful dodges, ignoring engagements, facile obliviousness of arrangements, and a smart sprinkling, especially in the early times of pettifogging, quibbling and quirking, but these vices are rather of persons than of caste, and not often found; and, when they make themselves apparent, are scouted with scorn by the better members of the bar.

        We should be grossly misunderstood if we were construed to imply that the bar of the South-West, possessing the signal opportunities and advantages to which we have adverted, so improved them that all of its members became good lawyers and honorable gentlemen. Mendacity itself could scarcely be supposd to assert what no credulity could believe. All the guano of Lobos could not make Zahara a garden. In too many cases there was no sub-soil of mind or morals on which these advantages could rest. As Chief Justice Collier, in Dargan and Waring, 17 Ala. Reports, in language, marrying the manly strength and beauty of Blackstone to the classic elegance and flexible grace of Stowell, expresses it, "the claim of such," so predicated, "would be pro tanto absolutely void, and, having nothing to rest on, a court of equity" (or law) "could not impart to it vitality.

Form and order has been given to chaos, but an appeal to equity" (or law) "to breathe life into a nonentity, which is both intangible and imperceptible, supposes a higher power - one which no human tribunal can rightfully exercise. Æquitas sequitur legem." This view is conclusive.

        We should have been pleased to say something of the bench, especially of that of the Supreme Court of Alabama and Mississippi, but neither our space nor the patience of the reader will permit.

        A writer usually catches something from, as well as communicates something to, his subject. Hence if, in the statements of this paper, we shall encounter the incredulity of some old fogy of an older bar, and he should set us down as little better than a romancer in prose, we tea him to consider that we have had two or three regiments of lawyers for our theme - and be charitable.

THE HON. FRANCIS STROTHER.

        If I hold the pencil in hand in idle reverie, it is because my mind rests lovingly upon a picture I feel incapable of transcribing with fidelity to the original: I feel that the coarse copy I shall make will do no justice to the image on the mind; and, therefore, I pause a moment, to look once

more at the original before it is obscured by the rude counterpart.

        Fifteen years ago - long years crowded with changes and events - such changes as are only effected in our country within so short a period, - the savage disappearing - the frontier-man following on to a further border - that border, like the horizon, widening and stretching out towards the sinking sun, as we go on; - then, the rude settlement, now the improved neighborhood, with its school-houses and churches; the log cabin giving way to the mansion, - the wilderness giving way to the garden and the farm; fifteen years ago, I first saw him. He was then, so far as I can remember, what he is now: - no perceptible change has occurred in any outward or inner characteristic, except that now a pair of spectacles occasionally may be found upon his nose, as that unresting pen sweeps in bold and beautiful chirography across his paper; a deeper tinge of gray may be seen in his hair, and possibly too, his slight, but graceful and well-knit form may be a trifle less active than of old. I put these as possibilities - not as matters I can note.

        The large, well-developed head - the mild, quiet, strong face - the nose, slightly aquiline - the mouth, firm yet fiexible - the slightly elongated chin - the shape of the head oval, and protruding largely behind the ears in the region that supplies the motive powers, would not have conveyed a right meaning did not the blue eyes, strong yet kind, beaming out the mingled expression of intelligence and benignity, which, above all other marks, is the unmistakable, uncounterfeitable

outward sign of a true gentleman, relieve and mellow the picture. The voice kind, social, gentle - and the whole manner deferential, simple, natural and winning - self-poised, modest, friendly, and yet delicate and gracefully dignified. Dignified is scarcely an apt word in the vulgar meaning attached to it; for there was no idea of self, much less of pretension or affectation connected with his manner or bearing. But there was, towards high and low, rich and poor, a genuine and unaffected kindness and friendliness, which every man who approached him felt had something in it peculiarly sweet towards him; and made the most unfriended outcast feel there was, at least, one man in the world who felt an interest in and sympathy for him and his fortunes. Towards the young especially was this exhibited, and by them was it appreciated. A child would come to him with the feeling of familiarity and a sense of affectionate consideration; and a young man, just coming to the bar, felt that he had found one who would be glad to aid him in his struggles and encourage him in difficulty. Were this rare manner a thing of art and but a manual gone through with - put on for effect - it could not have been long maintained or long undiscovered. But it was the same all the time - and the effect the same. We need scarcely say that the effect was to give the subject of it a popularity well nigh universal. It was a popularity which during years of active life in all departments of business affairs, public and private - all the strifes of rivalry and collisions of interest never shook. The fiercest oppositions of party left him uninjured in fame or appreciation: indeed

no party ties were strong enough to resist a popularity so deep and wide.

        He had passed through the strong temptations which beset a man in a new country, and such a country, unscathed, unsoiled even by suspicion, and ever maintained a reputation above question or challenge. It were easy to have accumulated an immense fortune by an agency for the Indians in securing their claims under the treaty of 1830; and he was offered the agency with a compensation which would have made him a millionnaire; he took the agency but rejected the fortune.

        He was the genius of labor. His unequalled facility in the dispatch of business surprised all who knew its extent. Nothing was omitted - nothing flurried over - nothing bore marks of haste, nothing was done out of time. System - order - punctuality waited upon him as so many servants to that patient and indomitable industry. He had a rare tact in getting at, and in getting through, a thing. He saw at once the point. He never missed the joint of the argument. He never went to opening the oyster at the wrong end. He never turned over and over a subject to find out what to do with it or how to commence work. He caught the run of the facts - moulded the scheme of his treatment of them - saw their right relations, value and dependence, and then started at once, in ready, fluent and terse English, to put them on paper or marshal them in speech. His power of statement was remarkable, especially of written statement. He could make more out of a fact than most men out of two:

and immaterial matters he could so dove-tail and attach to other matters, that they left an impression of a great deal of plausibility and pertinency.

        He loved labor for its own sake as some men love ease. There was no part of office-work drudgery to him. He carried his writing materials about with him as some men their canes: and that busy pen, at a moment's notice, was speeding over the paper, throwing the g's and y's behind at a rapid rate.

        A member of Congress - he was in the House, defending the Pre-emption System, out of it, attending to some business before the departments; in again, writing with a pile of letters before him; in the committee room, busy with its business: again, before the Secretary of War, arguing some question about the Dancing Rabbit Treaty, 14th article: - and then consulting the Attorney General, so that persons who had no knowledge of his ubiquitous habits, seeing him at one of these places, would have been willing to have sworn an alibi for him if charged with being that morning at any other.

         Returning to the practice, it was the same thing. The management and care of his own property - his attention to a large family and household affairs - these things would have made some inroads upon another's time, but these and a large practice, extended over many courts and several of the wealthiest counties of the State, at a time when every man was a client, did not seem to press upon him. He could turn himself from one subject to another with wonderful ease: the hinges of his mind moved as if oiled, in any direction.

Trying an important case in the Circuit Court, as the jury retired and the Court was calling some other case, he would propose to the opposite counsel to go down into the Orphan's Court, and try a case there, involving a few thousands; and that dispatched, might be found in the Chancery office preparing a suit for trial there; which finished, he would hear the result of the law case, and, by the meeting of Court, have (if decided adversely) a bill of exceptions ready, of a sheet or two of foolscap, or a bill for an injunction to take the case into Chancery. At night, he would be ready for a reference before the Master of an account of partnership transactions of vast amount; and, as he walked into Court next morning, would merely call by to file a score or two of exceptions; and, in all the time, would carry on his consultations and prepare the cases coming on for trial, and be ready to enjoy a little social conversation with his brethren. In all this, there was no bustle, hurry, parade, fuss, or excitement. He moved like the Ericsson motor, without noise, the only evidence that it was moving being the progress made.

        He was never out of temper, never flurried, never excited. There was a serious, patient expression in the eyes, which showed a complete mastery of all things that trouble the nervous system. Even when he complained - as he often did - it was not a testy, ill-natured, peevish grumbling, but seemingly the complaint of a good, gentle nature, whose meekness was a little too sternly tried. He never abused any body. He had no use for sarcasm or invective. Even when

prosecuting for crime a heinous criminal, he used the language of civility, if not of kindness. Indeed, he seemed to seek a conviction from a sheer feeling of consideration for the prisoner. He would cross-examine a swift or perjured witness in a tone of kindness which seemed anxious to relieve him from embarrassment; and plying with great tact question after question, would, when the witness faltered and stammered or broke down, seem to feel a lively sentiment of commiseration for his unfortunate predicament. In commenting upon his testimony, he would attribute his unhappy course to any thing but wilful misstatement - to strange hallucination, prejudice, an excitable temperament, want of memory, or even to dreaming: but still the right impression was always left, if in no other way, by the elaborate disclaimers and apologies, that, with such persistent and pertinacious over-kindness, he made for the delinquent.

        There was business skill in every thing he did. His arguments were clear, brief, pointed - never wandering, discursive or episodical - never over-worked, or over-laden, or over-elaborated. He took all the points - took them clearly, expressed them neatly and fully - knew when to press a point and when to glide over it quickly, and above all - what so few know - he knew when he was done. His tone was that of animated conversation, his manner courteous, respectful, impressive and persuasive: never offending good taste, never hurried away by imprudence or compromising his case by a point that could be made to reach it; and probably making as few imprudent admissions as any member of the bar.

        But in many of these points he was equalled; in one he was not - his tact in drawing papers. In a paper showing for a continuance or for a change of venue, the skill with which the facts were marshalled and conclusions insinuated was remarkable. Like shot-silk the light glanced over and along the whole statement, though it was often hard to find precisely where it was or what made it; yet, if admitted, a little emphasis or a slight connection with extraneous matter would put his adversary's case in a dangerous position.

        A more pliant, facile, complying gentleman than the Hon. Francis, it was impossible to find on a summer's day, - so truthful, so credulous, so amiably uncontroverting. It seemed almost a pity to take advantage of such simplicity, to impose upon such deferential confidence! Such innocence deserved to be respected, and like the Virgin in the fable, sleeping by the lion, one would think that it ought to carry in its trusting purity a charm against wrong from the most savage brutality or the most unscrupulous mendacity. This view of the subject, I am forced to say, does not quite represent the fact. The Hon. Francis was very limber - but it was the limberness of whalebone, gum-elastic, steel springs and gutta percha - limber because tough - easily bowed, but impossible to be broken or kept down. He had great suavity - but it was only the suaviter in modo. Substantially and essentially he was fortiter in re - mechanically he was suaviter in modo: the suaviter was only the running gear by which he worked the fortiter. In his own private affairs no man was more liberal and yielding, or less exacting or

pertinacious; professionally, his concessions took the form of, and exhausted their energies in beneficent words, benignant seamings and gracious gestures. But his manner was inimitably munificent. Though he gave nothing, he went through the motions of giving most grandly; empty-handed you felt that you were full; you mistook the filling of your ears for some substantial benefit to your client; there was an affluence of words, a lingual and manual generosity which almost seemed to transpose the figures on the statement which he proposed as a settlement. With a grand self-abnegation, he would allow you to continue a cause when his side was not ready to try it, and would most blandly merely insist on your paying the costs, magnanimously waiving further advantage of your situation. He would suffer you to take a non-suit with an air of kindness calculated to rivet a sense of eternal obligation. No man revelled in a more princely generosity than he when he gave away nothing. And to carry out the self-delusion, he took with the air of giving a bounty. Before his manner of marvellous concession all impediments and precedence vanished. If he had a case at the end of the docket, he always managed to get it tried first: if the arrangement of the docket did not suit his convenience, his convenience changed it by a sort of not-before understood, but taken-for-granted general consent of the bar. There was such a matter-of-course about his polite propositions, that for a good while, no one ever thought of resisting them; indeed, most lawyers, under the spell of his infatuating manners half-recollected some sort of agreement

which was never made. In the trial of a cause he would slip in testimony on you in such a cozy, easy, insinuating fashion, that you were ruined before you could rally to oppose it. Even witnesses could not resist the graciousness and affectionateness of his manner, the confidence with which he rested on their presumed knowledge: - they thought they must know what he evidently knew so well and so authentically.

        He lifted great weights as the media do heavy tables without any show of strength.

        The Hon. Francis had no doubts. He had passed from this world of shadows to a world of perfect light and knowledge. He had the rare luck of always being on the right side: and then he had all the points that could be made on that side clearly in his favor, and all that could be made against him were clearly wrong. He was never taken off his guard. If a witness swore him out of court, he could not swear him out of countenance. He expected it. His case was better than he feared. In the serene confidence of unshakable faith in his cause, brickbats foil on his mind like snowflakes, melting as they fell, and leaving no impression. If he had but one witness, and you had six against him, long after the jury had ceased listening and when you concluded, he would mildly ask you if that was all your proof, and if you proposed going to the jury on that?

        But if the Hon. Francis had no doubts, he had an enormous development of the organ of wonder. He had a note of admiration in his eye as large as a ninepin. He wondered

that a party should have brought such a suit; that another had set up such a defence; that the counsel should have taken such a point; that the court should have made such a ruling (with great deference), and he wondered that the Sureme Court had sustained it. Nil admirari was not his maxim.

        I was a little too fast when I said he was never taken by surprise. He was once - indeed twice. Casually looking at some papers Blass held in his hand, as an important case was being called for trial, he saw what he took to be a release of the action by one of the nominal plaintiffs: in order to avoid the effect of this paper, he applied for a continuance, which it was never difficult for him to obtain. Finding out afterwards his mistake, he moved to set aside the order of continuance. It required a lion-like boldness to make and assign the grounds of the motion: this effort he essayed with his usual ingenuity. He commenced by speaking of Blass's high character - that he had been deceived by the real and implied assurance of B. - that he acquitted B. of all intentional impropriety: he entered into a most elaborate disclaimer of all injurious imputation: he spoke only of the effect: he had only seen hastily a paper endorsed as a release: he should be surprised if the gentleman would hold him to the order taken under such circumstances of mistake - a mistake which had misled him, and which he took the earliest opportunity of correcting. "In other words," said B., "you peeped into my hand and mistook the card, and now you want to renig because your eyes fooled you." "Ahem!" said S., "I have

already stated the facts." "Well," said B., pulling out the paper, "I will let you set aside the order if you promise to go to trial." "No," S. answered, "I believe not: on further reflection, perhaps it might be irregular."

        On another occasion he had been cross-examining an Irishman, and the Hibernian desiring to come prepared to make a display in affidavit elocution, had written out his testimony at length: but having got drunk he had dropped the MS., which being found by the client of Mr. S., was put into his hands. Mr. S. opened the paper and inquired of the witness, "Mr. McShee, did you ever see this paper before: have the kindness to look at it?" The witness snatched up the paper and answered quickly, "Sure, yes - it's mine, Misther Strother, I lost it meself, and where is the $5 bill I put in it?"

        Being pressed for time, one morning, Mr. S. entered a barber's shop in Mobile, where he saw a brother lawyer of the Sumter bar, Jemmy O., highly lathered, sitting in much state in the chair waiting for the barberian to sharpen his blade. Mr. S. addressed his old acquaintance with great warmth and cordiality - requested him to keep his seat - begged him not to be at all uneasy on his account - protested that he was not in his way - he could wait - not to think of putting him to trouble - pulled off his cravat - it was no intrusion - not at all - by no means - politely disclaimed, affirmed and protested - until J.O., thinking that Mr. S. somehow had precedence, got up and insisted on Mr. S. taking the chair, to which Mr. S., like Donna Julia, "vowing he would ne'er consent, consented" - was duly shaved -

all the while protesting against it - and went out, leaving J. O. to think he was the politest man he had ever met with.

        When J.O. afterwards found out that S. had no precedence, he said he had been taught a new chapter of law - the title by disclaimer.

        At length the Hon. Mr. Strother got his hands full. He got at last to the long wished for enjoyment which was to reward the trials of his earlier years. He was made commissioner of the State Banks of Alabama. He had it all to himself. No partner shared with him this luxurious repast. Such a mass and mess of confusion - such a bundle of heterogeneous botches; in which blundering stupidity, reckless inattention, and both intelligent and ignorant rascality had made their tracks and figures, never before was seen. He was to bring order out of chaos - reconcile discrepancies - supply whole pages of ledgers - balance unbalanceable accounts - understand the unintelligible - collect debts involved in all mazes of legal defences, or slumbering cozily in chancery - to bring all sorts of agents to all sorts of settlements - to compromise bad debts - disencumber clogged property - to keep up a correspondence like that of the Pension Bureau - and manage the finances of the State government. The State trembled on the verge of Repudiation; if the assets of the banks were lost, the honor of the State was gone. The road through the Bank operations was like the road through Hounslow heath, every step a robbery. To bring the authors to their responsibility - to hunt up and hunt down absconding debtors and speculators

- to be every where at once - to be in Boston, Mobile, New Orleans, New-York - and then to keep up his practice in several counties just for holiday refreshment, were some of the labors he performed.

        He succeeded wonderfully. He kept untarnished the honor of the State. He restored its solvency, and, clothed with such vast trusts, greater than were ever before confided, perhaps, in the South-West to a single man, he discharged them with a fidelity which can neither be exaggerated nor denied. He, like Falstaff, "turned diseases to commodity:" the worthless assets of the Banks were turned into State Bonds; and the State, relieved of the pressure upon her resources, rose up at once to her place of honor in the sisterhood of States, and shone, with a new and fresher lustre, not the least in that bright galaxy. Relieved of her embarrassments, in no small degree through the instrumentality of the distinguished citizen, whose name shines through the nom de guerre at the head of this article, improvements are going on, mingling enterprise with patriotism, and giving forth the most auspicious prospects for the future. It is, therefore, not out of place to give some passing notice of one more instrumental than any other in redeeming the State from the Flush Times, in the course of our hasty articles illustrative of that hell-carnival.

MR. TEE AND MR. GEE.

gave the remedy by attachment, and which statute was, as he was fond of saying, "to be liberally construed in favor of justice and for the prevention of fraud:" and he thought the perfection of professional practice under the "perfection of reason," was, to get a skulking debtor fixed so as to give an opportunity for starting the remedy after him, and thus securing a bad or doubtful debt out of property which might otherwise be "secreted," or squandered in paying other debts, for which the debtor might have a sickly fancy.

        Squire Tee was a great favorite of Northern creditors, and deservedly. He clung to them through thick and thin, through good report and through bad report, in hard times and in easy times, and through all times. He "kept his loyalty, his love, his zeal" in a perpetual fervor. His confidence in them was unbounded. Nothing could either increase or diminish it. He would have sacrificed his own interest to theirs - he did, no doubt, frequently: and the more he gave of service to their cause - by the usual law of charity - the more he was capable of giving - the widow's cruse of oil grew by the giving to two widows' cruses of oil.

        Among other things, he practiced an intimate acquaintance with the facts of his case. No man was more sedulous in the preparation of proofs. He knew that however well a case was put up on the papers, it was of but little avail if it was not also well put up in the evidence. He liked evidence - a plenty of it, and good what there was of it: better too much than not enough; - he liked to converse

with the witnesses himself - to know exactly what they would prove: it pleased him to hear them rehearse, and then it prepared him for the coming on of the piece when he could act as prompter. He was an amateur in evidence; he loved it as an antiquarian an old fossil - as a machinist a new invention - as a politician a new humbug; it was a thing to be admired for itself - it had both an intrinsic and an extrinsic value. Receiving many claims when the times were at the hardest, he found himself frequently opposed by the ablest counsel of the State; and the incident we are to relate of him occurred on one of those occasions.

        It should have been stated that, as in collecting cases, many of the clients lived at a great distance from the debtor, the attorney acted, in such instances, as the general agent of the creditor, to a great extent: and, in preparing a case for trial, had to do the work of both client and counsel. Mr. Tee was often brought into correspondence with the debtors afterwards to be made defendants. Opportunities afforded by such relations, it will readily be perceived, could very easily be improved into occasions for eliciting such facts as would, in no few instances, be very useful evidence on the trial. In this way, Mr. Tee's research and industry had been rewarded by a vast amount of useful information of which his duty to his clients made him not at all penurious, when it became their interest to have it turned into testimony. He had a good memory, a good manner, an excellent voice and a fine person; and he knew of no more pleasing way of putting to account a good memory, a good

manner, an excellent voice and a fine person, than in delivering testimony in open court for a Northern client. He had one advantage over most witnesses; he knew something about the facts before he heard the parties' statements: he paid the most particular attention with the view of having matters definitely fixed in his mind, and then, being a lawyer and a good judge of the article proof, he was able to refer his statement to the proper points, and to know the relevancy and bearing of the facts on the case. He was fluent, easy, unembarrassed, though somewhat earnest of manner and speech, and had a lively talent for affidavit, elocution and a considerable power of compendious, terse and vigorous narrative in that department of forensic eloquence. It affords us pleasure to be able to pay this deserved meed of justice to an old friend and associate. Some men are niggardly of praise. Not so this author.

        This marked fidelity to the interests of his clients had made Mr. Tee somewhat familiar with the witness box, and the result had almost universally been a speedy disposal of the matter involved in the controversy in favor of his client.

        The bar, not always the most confiding of men, nor the least querulous, had begun to find fault with this euthanasia, as Mr. C.J. Ingersoll, in his Bunyan-like style, expresses it: they wanted a lawsuit to die the old way, and not by chloroform process, - the old bull-baiting fashion - fainting off from sheer exhaustion, or overpowered by sheer strength and lusty cuffs, kicking and fighting to the last. And so they

complained and averred it was to their great damage, wherefore they sued Tee to discontinue proceedings of this sort, but he refused, and possibly, still refuses.

        A suit had been brought by Tee for a leading house in New-York, in the U.S. Court, on a bill of exchange drawn or indorsed by a merchant, and W.Y. Gee, Esq., employed to defend it. The amount was considerable, but the case promised to be more interesting as involving a new and difficult point in the Law Merchant upon the question of notice.

        The case had been opened for the plaintiff - the bill, protest, depositions, foreign statutes, and so forth, read, and one or two witnesses examined. The Court had taken a recess for dinner - it being understood or taken for granted that the plaintiff had closed his case. The defendant either had no witnesses or else preferred submitting the ease without them, the point on which Mr. Gee relied having been brought out by an unnecessary question propounded by Tee to his own witness.

        After the meeting of the Court, Mr. Gee, who was a little near-sighted, was seen before the bar, leisurely arranging a small library of books he had collected, and by the aid of which he was to argue the point on the notice. Having accomplished this to his satisfaction, he leaned his head on his hand and was absorbed in profound cogitation - like an Episcopal clergyman before the sermon. The court interrupted him in this meditation by announcing its readiness to proceed with the cause. Gee rose and remarked to the Court that

the defence was one of pure law, and he should raise the only question he meant to make by a demurrer to the plaintiff's evidence. "Not until the plaintiff gets through his proof, I reckon," said Mr. Tee. "Why, I thought you had rested," replied Mr. Gee. "Yes," said Tee, "I did rest a little, and am now tired resting, and will proceed to labor - Clerk, SWEAR ME."

        Gee jumped from his seat and rushed towards Tee - "Now Tee," said he - "just this one time, if you please, forbear, for Heaven's sake - come now, be reasonable - it is the prettiest point as it stands I ever saw - the principle is really important - don't spoil it, Tee." But Tee, fending Gee off with one hand, held out the other for the book. Gee grew more earnest - "Tee, Tee, old fellow - I say now, look here, Tee, don't do this, this time - just hold off for a minute - come, listen to reason - now come, come, let this case be an exception - you said you were through - if you will just stand off I won't demur you out any more."

        But Tee was not to be held off - he repeated, "Clerk, swear me, I must discharge my professional duties."

        Gee retired in disgust, not waiting to hear the result - barely remarking, that if it came to that, Tee would cover the case like a confession of judgment and the statute of Jee-fails besides. We believe he was not mistaken; for his affidavy carried the case sailing beyond gun-shot of Gee's batteries.

        Gee contented himself with giving notice to Tee that he

should require him for the future to give him notice when he meant to testify in his cases, as he wished to be saved the trouble of bringing books and papers into Court. To which Tee replied he might consider a general notice served upon him then.

SCAN. MAG.

        One Squire Furkisson was a witness against the aforesaid Patrick, and, upon his evidence chiefly, the said McFadgin was convicted on three several indictments for testing the strength of his shillaly on the craniums of as many citizens; albeit, Patrick vehemently protested that he was only in fun, "and afther running a rig on the boys for amusement, on a sportive occasion of being married to a female woman - his prisint wife."

        A more serious case was now coming up against Pat, having its origin in his drawing and attempting to fire a pistol, loaded with powder and three leaden bullets, which pistol the said Patrick in his right hand then and there held, with intent one Bodley then and there to kill and murder contrary

to the form of the statute (it being highly penal to murder a man in Alabama contrary to the form of the statute).

        To this indictment Patrick pleaded "Not guilty," and, the jury being in the box, the State's Solicitor proceeded to call Mr. Furkisson as a witness. With the utmost innocence, Patrick turned his face to the Court and said, "Do I understand yer Honor that Misther Furkisson is to be a witness fornent me agin?" The judge said dryly, it seemed so. "Well, thin, yer Honor, I plade guilty sure, an' ef yer Honor plase, not becase I am guilty, for I'm as innocent as yer Honor's sucking babe at the brist - but jist on the account of saving Misther Furkisson's sowl."

AN EQUITABLE SET-OFF.

        Smith waited, for some time, for an opportunity of righting himself in the premises; preferring to be discreetly silent on the subject of his loss, such accidents being looked upon, about that time, by those with whom he most associated, more as a matter of ridicule than sympathy. At length Mr. Hickerson, in the course of one of his trading forays in the neighboring village, had got a fine mule, and brought him home, well pleased with his bargain. A favorable opportunity now presented itself for Mr. Smith to obtain his revenge. He adopted the following plan: He sent a complaisant friend, a Mr. Timothy Diggs, over to Hickerson's one Sunday morning,

with instructions. Mr. Diggs, riding leisurely beyond Mr. Hickerson's premises, caught sight of the mule, and, turning towards the house, saw Mr. Hickerson, who was sitting in the porch calmly enjoying those exhilarating reflections which come across the mind of a jockey after a good trade. "Halloo, Hickerson," said he, "I see you have got Jones's big mule - Jones came near selling him to me, but I got item in time, and escaped." "Why," said Hickerson, "was any thing the matter with the mule?" "Yes," said Diggs; "however, I don't know myself that there was much, only this; that the mule does very well except in the full of the moon, and then he takes fits which last about a week, hardly ever longer; and then such rearing and charging, and biting and kicking! he's like all possessed - nobody and nothing can manage him. Now, the best you can do is to go down to Smith's, and trade him off with him for a bran-new sorrel horse he's got. "Well," said Hickerson, "I'll do that sure. Hold on, and keep dark, old fellow, and see how I'll crack him."

        Hickerson accordingly fixed up his mule, and rode over to Mr. Smith's, and after much chaffering, and many mutual compliments, in the French style, to their respective animals, the new sorrel, that had been fixed up for Mr. Hickerson's special benefit, and had all the diseases that horseflesh is heir to, and some it gets by adoption, was exchanged for the mule.

        It was not long before Mr. Hickerson, finding Mr. Smith in company with some of the young gentlemen who could relish humor of this sort, ventured to relate this amusing incident;

but when Mr. Smith, who had quietly awaited the termination of the narrative and the laughter growing thereout, in his turn gave in the counter-plot, Mr. Hickerson's sensibilities became greatly excited; and seeking to right himself by the law, on the facts coming out, found that Mr. Smith had only obtained an equitable set-off, and that he could not plead his own turpitude to regain what he had lost in trying to come the old soldier over another man.

COOL REJOINDER.

        "Well," said the Judge, "brother K., if you do, you will astonish your stomach most mightily."

A HUNG COURT.

        A justice of the peace in Alabama has jurisdiction in cases of debt, to the extent of fifty dollars; and there are two justices for every captain's beat. It was usual, when a case of much interest came on, for one justice to call in the other as associate. On one occasion, the little town of Splitskull, in -- County was thrown into a flutter of excitement, by a suit brought by one Smith against one Johnston, for forty dollars, due on a trade for a jackass, but payment of which was resisted, on the plea that the jackass turned out to be valueless. The parties - the ass excluded - were brothers-in-law, and the "connection" very numerous; the ass, too, was well known, and shared the usual fate of notoriety - a great deal of good, and a somewhat greater amount of bad, repute. The issue turned upon the worth of the jack, and his standing in the community.

Partisan feeling was a good deal aroused - the community grew very much excited - several fights arose from the matter, and it was said that a constable's election had been decided upon the issue of jackass vel non; and - but we doubt this - it was even reported that a young lady in the neighborhood had discarded a young gentleman for the part he took in favor of the quadruped, differing widely, as she did - no doubt honestly - on the merits of the question, from her swain. Unfortunately, politics at that time were raging wildly; and the name of the jack being Dick Johnson, and one of the parties being a whig and the other a democrat, that disturbing element was thrown in. But it is only fair to say, that the excitement on the actual merits of the subject, to a considerable extent, blotted out party lines;. so that I cannot say that the ass was seriously injured by politics - few are. This controversy got into the church; but the church had soon to drop it - two of the preachers having got to fisticuffs, and made disclosures on each other, &c., &c., the danger being that it would break up the congregation.

        It got, at length, into the lawyers' hands; and then, of course, all hopes of a settlement of the controversy, except in one way, were at end.

        After the parties employed their lawyers, the note of busy preparation rang more loudly throughout the excitement. Forty witnesses a side were subpoenaed. The people turned out as to a muster. The pro-ass party, and the anti-ass party made themselves busy in getting things ready

for trial. The justices preserved an air of mysterious and dignified impartiality, and all attempts to sound them on the question proved abortive. Little Billy Perkins, who taught a singing school in the neighborhood, and who had many arts and many opportunities for ingratiating himself with the wife and daughters of Squire Crousehorn, did get, he used afterwards to boast, some little item, in a private way, as to the leaning of that jurist; and, on the strength of it, laid a wager of a set of singing books and a tuning-fork, against twenty bushels of corn, vs. the ass: but the wary Squire Rushong, who was a bachelor, kept his own counsel, and even kept away from all the quiltings and shuckings, for fear his secret might be wormed out of him by some seducing Delilah; or else, that he might, by refusing to compromise his judicial character, compromise his matrimonial prospects. But it was said that the Squire was sweet on Miss Susan Smith; and it was easy enough to see, that to take part against the ass, in the present aspect of affairs, was the same as to give up all hopes of Miss Susan, or, what was tantamount with the prudent Squire - any inchoate rights or prospective interests in her father's estate. And it was whispered about by some of the anti-ass party, that, considering how cold Miss Susan had been to the Squire before, there was something suspiciously sweet in the way she smiled on him as he helped her into the ox-wagon from the church door, when she was about leaving for home. But I dare say this was mere imagination. The plaintiff, Smith, was fortunate enough to employ Tom B. Devill, an

old lawyer who had great experience in the courts of the county, especially in such fancy cases as the present; and was justly distinguished throughout all that neck of woods, for having the most "LIBELLIOUS" tongue in all that region: while the rival faction were thrown upon young Ned Boller, a promising disciple in the same department of the profession; and who was considered as a "powerful judge of law," especially of "statue law," but who had not the same experience in the conduct of such important and delicate litigation. Great was the exultation of the pro-assites, when it was announced that their messenger - though the others had got to the court-house first - had seen the Squire Tom B. before their adversary; the pro-assite messenger, by sharp foresight, having made his way straight to the grocery where Tom was, and the other, by a strange mistake as to his whereabouts, going to his office to find him. The pro-assites swore there was no use in carrying the thing further - it was as good as decided already - for "Tom B. Devill could shykeen and bullyrag Ned Boller's shirt off, and give him two in the game." Anti-ass stock fell in the market, and there was even some feeler put out for a "comp." - but the proposition was indignantly rejected.

        The canvassing of the witnesses, and preparations for trial, played the very mischief with the harmony of the settlement. The people had come in from one of the older Southern States, for the most part, and were known to each other, and had been for many years, and before they had come out: - unfortunately, being known has its disadvantages as

well as advantages. Such revelations! Some had run off for debt, some for stealing - some had done one thing, some another; and even the women were not spared - and, of the rising generation - but I spare these details.

        The plaintiff, knowing the advantage of having a persecuted individual in view of the evidence, had brought Dick Johnson under a subpoena duces tecum, on the ground; and the groom, Hal Piles, made him go through the motions very grandly - rearing up - braying his loudest, and kicking up other rustics, indicating a great flow of animal spirits, and great vivacity of manners. Accompanying all which performances, Hal's ready witticisms - which he had picked up at his various stands - though not remarkable for refinement, seemed to excite no little merriment in the crowd around, well qualified to appreciate and enjoy such rhetorical flourishes and intellectual entertainment.

        The trial came on. It lasted several days. The place of the trial was the back-room of the grocery, the crowd standing outside or in the front-room; but this not affording space enough, it was adjourned to the grove in front of the meeting-house; and ropes drawn around an area in front for the lawyers, Court, and witnesses. The case was carried through, at last, even to the arguments of the learned barristers; but these we cannot give, as we were not present at the trial, and might do injustice to the eminent counsel, by reporting their speeches second-hand. It is enough to say, that old Devill did his best, and fully sustained his reputation; while Boller not only met the expectations of

his friends, but acquitted himself in the blackguarding line so admirably, that even old Tom B. Devill asked the protection of the Court: an appeal he had never made before.

        At length the case was put to the justices, and they withdrew to consider of their judgment. They remained out, in consultation, for a good while. The anxiety of the crowd and the parties was intense, and kept growing, the longer they staid out. A dozen bets were taken on the result; and fourteen fights were made up, to take place as soon as the case was decided. At least twenty men had deferred getting drunk, until they could hear the issue of this great suit.

        The justices started to return to their places - and "here they come," being cried out, the crowd (or rather crowds scattered about the hamlet) came rushing up from all quarters to hear the news.

        Silence being ordered by the constable, you might have seen a hundred open mouths (as if hearing were taken in at that hole) gaping over the rope against which the crowd pressed. Justice Crousehorn hemmed three times, and then, with a tremulous voice, announced that the "Court ar hung," - one and one. Now here was a fix. What was to be done? In vain the "Digest" was looked into; in vain "Smith's Justice" was searched. Nothing could be found to throw light on the matter. The case had to be tried: if decided either way, "there was abundance of authority," as Rushong well suggested, to show that the defeated party could appeal: but here there was no judgment. Ned Boler

insisted that the defendant had really gained the case, as the plaintiff must show himself entitled to judgment before he could get it; and likened it to a case of failure of proof: but, on this point, the Court divided again. Tom B. Devill argued thatthe plaintiff was entitled to judgment, as he had the justice issuing the warrant in his favor, and the associate was only called in as vice-justice, or, at most, as supplementary, and supernumerary, and advisory: and likened it to the case of a President of the United States differing from his cabinet. But here the Court divided again.

        The crowd outside now raised a terrible row, disputing as to who had won the bets - the betters betting on particular side's winning, contending that they had not lost, as such a thing as a hung court "wasn't took into the calcu." - but their adversaries claimed that the bet was to be literally construed.

        At length a brilliant idea struck Mr. Justice Crousehorn - which was, that his brother Rushong should sit and give judgment alone, and then, afterwards, that he, Crousehorn, should sit and grant a new trial. Accordingly, this was agreed to. Justice Rushong took the bench, and Squire Crousehorn retired. The former then gave judgment for the plaintiff; which the crowd, not knowing the arrangement, hearing, the pro-assites raised a deafening shout of triumph, in which Dick Johnson joined with one of his loudest and longest brays. But brother Crousehorn, taking the seat of justice, speedily checked these manifestations of applause, by announcing he had granted a new

trial, which caused the anti-assites to set up a counter-shout, in which Richard also joined. So the cause was gotten back again to where it was before, and then was continued for further proceedings.

        But what was to be done with the case now? If tried again, the same result would happen, and there was no election of new justices for eighteen months; the costs, in the mean time, amounting to an enormous sum. The lawyers now got together, and settled it. Each party was to pay his own costs - Tom B. Devill took the jackass for his fee, and was to pay Ned Boller ten dollars of his fee, and the forty dollar note was to be paid to the plaintiff: an arrangement whereby the parties only lost about fifty dollars a piece; besides the amount in controversy. But the heart-burnings and excitement the great trial left, were incapable of compromise, and so they remain to this day.

        But this trial was the making of Ned Boller. His practice immediately rose from $75 to $350 a year. And to this day, so strong was the effect of his speech, that when the Splitskullers want an hyperbole to express a compliment for a speech, they say it was "nearly equal to Ned Boller's great speech against the jackass."

SAMUEL HELE, ESQ.

        Of all the members of the bar, Sam cultivated most the faculty of directness. He could tolerate nothing less than its absence in others. He knew nothing of circumlocution. He had as soon been a tanner's horse, and walked all his life pulled by a pole and a string, around a box, in a twenty-foot ring, as to be mincing words, hinting and hesitating, and picking out soft expressions. He liked the most vigorous words; the working words of the language. He thought with remarkable clearness; knew exactly what he was going to say; meant exactly what he said; and said exactly what he meant. A sea-captain with his cargo insured, would as soon have made a "deviation" and forfeited the insurance, as Sam, especially when in pursuit of a new idea, would have wandered for a minute from his straight course. His sense was strong,

discriminating, and relevant. Swift was not more English in his sturdy, peremptory handling of a subject, than Sam; nor more given to varnish and mollifying. He tore the feathers off a subject, as a wholesale cook at a restaurant does the plumage off a fowl, when the crowd are clamorously bawling for meat. Sam was well educated and well informed. But his memory had never taken on more matter than his mind assimilated. He had no use for any information that he could not work into his thought. He had a great contempt for all prejudices except his own, and was entirely uncramped by other people's opinions, or notions, or whims, or fancies, or desires. The faculty of veneration was not only wanting, but there was a hole where there ought to have been a bump. Prestige was a thing he didn't understand. Family he had no idea of, except as a means of procreation, and he would have respected a man as much or as little, if, improving on the modern spirit of progress, he had been hatched out in a retort by a chemical process, as if he had descended from the Plantagenets, with all the quarterings right, and no bar sinister. He had no respect for old things, and not much for old persons. Established institutions he looked into as familiarly as into a horse's mouth, and with about as much respect for their age. He would, if he could, have wiped out the Chancery system, or the whole body of the common law, "the perfection of human reason," as he would an ink blot dropped on the paper as he was draughting a bill to abolish them. He had no tenderness for the creeds or superstitions of others. A man, tender-toed on the matter of favorite hobbies, had better not be

in Sam's neighborhood. If he cherished any mysteries and tenderness of belief that the strong sunlight of common sense caused to blink in the eyes, Sam was no pleasant companion to commune with; for Sam would drag them from the twilight as he would an owl, into noonday, and laugh at the figure they cut in the sunshine. A delicately-toned spiritualist felt, when Sam was handling his brittle wares, as a fine lady would feel, on seeing a blacksmith with smutty fingers taking out of her box, her complexion, laces and finery.

        Doctor Samuel Johnson objected to some one "that there was no salt in his talk;" he couldn't have said that of Sam's discourse. It not only contained salt, but salt-petre: for probably, as many vigorous, brimstone expressions proceeded from Sam's mouth, as from any body else's, the peculiar patron of brimstone fireworks only excepted.

        The faculty of the wonderful did not hold a large place on Sam's cranium. He believed that every thing that was marvellous was a lie, unless he told it himself; and sometimes even then, he had his doubts. He only wondered on one subject; and that was, that there always happened to be about him such "a hell of a number of d-d fools;" and this wonder was constant, deriving new strength every day; and he wondered again at his inability to impress this comfortable truth upon the parties whom he so frequently, in every form and every where, and especially in their presence, sought to make realize its force and wisdom, by every variety of illustration; by all the eloquence of earnest conviction and solemn asseveration.

        If Sam had a sovereign contempt for any one more than another, it was for Sir William Blackstone, whom he regarded as "something between a sneak and a puke," and for whose superstitious veneration of the common law he felt about the same sympathy that Gen. Jackson felt for Mr. Madison's squeamishness on the subject of blood and carnage, which the hero charged the statesman with not being able "to look on with composure" - (he might as well have said, pleasure).

        Squire Sam was of a good family - a circumstance he a good deal resisted, as some infringement on his privileges. He would have preferred to have been born at large, without any particular maternity or paternity; it would have been less local and narrow and more free and roomy, and cosmopolitan.

        There had once been good living in the family. This is evident from the fact that Sam had the gout; which proof, indeed, except vague traditions, which Sam rejected as unworthy of a sensible man's belief, is the only evidence of this matter of domestic economy. Sam thought particularly hard of this; he considered it a monstrous outrage, that the only portion of the prosperous fortunes of his house which fell to his share, should have been a disease which had long survived the causes of it. As his teeth were set on edge, he thought it only fair he should have had a few of the grapes.

        Sam's estimate of human nature was not extravagant. He was not an optimist. He had not much notion of human

perfectibility. He was not apt to be carried away by his feelings into any very overcharged appreciation either of particular individuals or the general race. I never heard him say what he thought would eventually become of most of them; but it was very evident, from the tenor of his unstinted talk, what he thought ought to become of them, if transmundane affairs were regulated by principles of human justice.

        The particular community in which the Squire had set up his shingle was not, even in the eyes of a more partial judgment than he was in the habit of exercising upon men, ever supposed to be colonized by the descendants of the good Samaritan; and if they continued perverse, and persevered in iniquity, it was not Sam's fault - he did his duty by them. He cursed them black and blue, by night and by day. He spared not. In these divertisements he exercised his faculties of description, prophecy and invective, largely. The humbugs suffered. Sam vastated them, as Swedenborg says they do with them in the other world, until he left little but a dark, unsavory void, in souls, supposed by their owners to be stored up, like a warehouse, with rich bales of heavenly merchandise. He pulled the dominos from their faces, and pelted the hollow masks over their heads lustily. These pursuits, laudable as they may be, are not, in the present constitution of village society, winning ways; and therefore I cannot truly say that Sam's popularity was universal; nor did it make up by intensity in particular directions, what it lacked of diffusion. Indeed, I may go so far as to say, that it was remarkable neither for surface nor depth.

        It is a profound truth, that the wounds of vanity are galling to a resentful temper, and that few people feel much obliged to a man who, purely from a love of truth, convinces the public that they are fools or knaves; or who excites a doubt in themselves touching the right solution of this problem of mind and morals. Hence I may be allowed to doubt whether Sam's industry and zeal in these exercises of his talents - whatever effect they may have had on the community - essentially advanced this gentleman's personal or pecuniary fortunes. However, I am inclined to think that this result, so far from grieving, rather pleased the Squire. Having formed his own estimate of himself, he preferred that that estimate should stand, and not be shaken by a coincidence of opinion on the part of those whose judgments in favor of a thing he considered was pretty good prima facie evidence against it.

        Sam's disposition to animadvert upon the community about him, found considerable aggravation in a state of ill health; inflaming his gout, and putting the acerbities and horrors of indigestion to the long account of other provocatives, of a less physical kind, to these displays. For a while, Sam dealt in individual instances; but this soon grew too tame and insipid for his growing appetite; for invective is like brandy - the longer it is indulged in, the larger and stronger must be the dose. Sam began to take them wholesale; and he poured volley after volley into the devoted village, until you would have thought it in a state of siege.

        There had, a few days before, been a new importation from Yankeedom - not from its factory of calicoes, but from its factory of school-teachers. The article had been sent to order, from one of the interior villages of Connecticut. The Southern propensity of getting every thing from abroad, had extended to school-mistresses, - though the country had any number of excellent and qualified girls wishing such employment at home, - as if, as in the case of wines, the process of importing added to the value. It was soon discovered that this article was a bad investment, and would not suit the market. Miss Charity Woodey was almost too old a plant to be safely transplanted. What she had been in her youth could not be exactly known; but if she ever had any charms, their day had long gone by. I do not mean to flatter her when I say I think she was the ugliest woman I ever saw - and I have been in places where saying that would be saying a good deal. Her style of homeliness was peculiar only in this - that it embraced all other styles. It is a wonderful combination which makes a beautiful woman; but it was almost a miracle, by which every thing that gives or gilds beauty was withheld from her, and every thing that makes or aggravates deformity was given with lavish generosity. We suppose it to be a hard struggle when female vanity can say, hope, or think nothing in favor of its owner's personal appearance; but Miss Charity had got to this point: indeed, the power of human infatuation on this subject - for even it is not omnipotent - could not help her in this matter. She did not try to conceal it, but let the matter pass,

as if it were a thing not worth the trouble of thinking about.

        Miss Charity was one of those "strong-minded women of New England," who exchange all the tenderness of the feminine for an impotent attempt to attain the efficiency of the masculine nature; one of that fussy, obtrusive, meddling class, who, in trying to double-sex themselves, unsex themselves, losing all that is lovable in woman, and getting most of what is odious in man.

        She was a bundle of prejudices - stiff, literal, positive, inquisitive, inquisitorial, and biliously pious. Dooty, as she called it, was a great word with her. Conscience was another. These were engaged in the police business of life, rather than the heart and the affections. Indeed, she considered the affections as weaknesses, and the morals a sort of drill exercise of minor duties, and observances, and cant phrases. She was as blue as an indigo bag. The starch, strait-laced community she came from, she thought the very tip of the ton; and the little coterie of masculine women and female men - with its senate of sewing societies, cent societies, and general congress of missionary and tract societies - the parliaments that rule the world. Lower Frothingham, and Deacon Windy, and old Parson Beachman, and all the young Beachmans, constituted, in her eyes, a sort of Puritanic See, before which she thought Rome was in a state of continual fear and flutter.

        She had come out as a missionary of light to the children of the South, who dwell in the darkness of Heathenesse.

It was not long - only two days - before she began to set every thing to rights. The whole academy was astir with her activity. The little girls, who had been petted by their fathers and mothers like doll-babies, were overhauled like so much damaged goods by her busy fingers, and were put into the straitjacket of her narrow and precise system of manners and morals, in a way the pretty darlings had never dreamed of before. Her way was the Median and Persian law that never changed, and to which every thing must bend. Every thing was wrong. Every thing must be put right. Her hands, eyes, and tongue were never idle for a moment, and in her microscopic sense of dooty and conscience, the little peccadilloes of the school swelled to the dimensions of great crimes and misdemeanors.

        It was soon apparent that she would have to leave, or the school be broken up. Like that great reformer Triptolemus Yellowby, she was not scant in delivering her enlightened sentiments upon the subject of matters and things about her, and on the subject of slavery in particular; and her sentiments on this subject were those of the enlightened coterie from which she came.

        The very consideration with which, in the unbounded hospitality and courtesy to woman in the South-West, she was treated, only served to inflame her self-conceit, and to confirm her in her sense of what her dooty called on her to do, for the benefit of the natives; especially to reforming things to the standard of New England insular habitudes.

        A small party was given one evening, and she was invited.

She came. There were some fifteen or twenty persons of both sexes there; among them our friend Sam, and a few of the young men of the place. The shocking fact must be related, that, on a sideboard in the back parlor was set out something cold, besides solid refreshments, to which the males who did not belong to the "Sons" paid their respects. A little knot of these were laughing and talking around Sam, who, as usual, was exerting himself for the entertainment of the auditors, and, this time, in good humor. Some remarks were made touching Miss Charity, for whose solitary state - she was sitting up in the corner by herself, stiff as steelyards - some commiseration was expressed; and it was proposed that Sam should entertain her for the evening. And it was suggested to Sam that he should try his best to get her off, by giving her such a description of the country as would have that effect. "Now," said one of them, "Sam, you've been snarling at every thing about you so long, suppose you just try your best this time, and let off all your surplus bile at once, and give us some peace. Just go up to her, and let her have it strong. Don't spare brush or blacking, but paint the whole community so black, that the Devil himself might sit for the picture." Sam took a glass, and tossing it off, wiped his mouth, after a slight sigh of satisfaction, and promised, with pious fervor, that, "by the blessing of Heaven, he would do his best."

        One of the company went to Miss Charity and, after speaking in the highest terms of Sam, as a New England man, and as one of the most intellectual, and reliable, and

frank men in the country, and one, moreover, who had conceived a lively regard for her, asked leave to introduce him; which having been graciously given, Sam (having first refreshed himself with another potation) was in due form introduced.

        Miss Woodey, naturally desirous of conciliating Squire Hele, opened the conversation with that gentleman, after the customary formalities, by saying something complimentary about the village. "And you say, madam," replied Sam, "that you have been incarcerated in this village for two weeks; and how, madam, have you endured it? Ah, madam, I am glad, on some accounts, to see you here. You came to reform: it was well. Such examples of female heroism are the poetry of human life. They are worth the martyrdom of producing them. I read an affecting account the other day of a similar kind - a mother going to Wetumpka, and becoming the inmate of a penitentiary for the melancholy satisfaction of waiting upon a convict son."

        Miss Woodey. - "Why, Mr. Hele, how you talk! You are surely jesting."

        Sam. - "Madam, there are some subjects too awfully serious for jest. A man had as well jest over the corruptions and fate of Sodom and Gomorrah - though, I confess, the existence of this place is calculated to excite a great deal of doubt of the destruction of those cities, and has, no doubt, placed a powerful weapon in the hands of infidelity throughout the immense region where the infamy of the place is known."

        Miss W. - "Why, Mr. Hele, I have heard a very different account of the place. Indeed, only the other evening, I heard at a party several of the ladies say they never knew any village so free from gossip and scandal."

        Sam. - "And so it is, madam. Men and women are free of that vice. I wish it were otherwise. It would be a sign of improvement, - as a man with fever when boils burst out on him, - an encouraging sign. Madam, the reason why there is no scandal here is, because there is not character enough to support it. Reputation is not appreciated. A man without character is as well off as a man with it. In the dark all are alike. You can't hurt a man here by saying any thing of him; for, say what you will, it is less than the truth, and less than he could afford to publish at the court-house door, and be applauded for it by the crowd. Besides, madam, every body is so busy with his own villany, that no one has time to publish his neighbor's."

        Miss W. - "Really, Mr. Hele, you give a poor account of your neighbors. Are there no honest men among them?"

        Sam. - "Why, - y-e-s, - a few. The lawyers generally acknowledge, and, as far as circumstances allow, practise, in their private characters, the plainer rules of morals; but, really, they are so occupied in trying to carry out the villany of others, they deserve no credit for it; for they have no time to do any thing on private account. There is also one preacher, who, I believe, when not in liquor, recognizes a few of the rudiments of moral obligation. Indeed, some

think he is not blamable for getting drunk, as he does it only in deference to the public sentiment. I express no opinion myself, for I think any man who has resided for ten years in these suburbs of hell, ought modestly to decline the expression of any opinion on any point of ethics for ever afterwards.

        Miss W. - "But, Mr. Hele, if all this villany were going on, there would be some open evidence of it. I have not heard of a case of stealing since I've been here."

        Sam. - "No, madam; and you wouldn't, unless a stranger came to town with something worth stealing; and perhaps not then; for it is so common a thing that it hardly excites remark. The natives never steal from each other - I grant them that. The reason is plain. There are certain acquisitions which, with a certain profession, are sacred. 'Honor among,' &c. - you know the proverb. Besides, the thief would be sure to be caught: 'Set a' - member of a certain class - you know that proverb, too. Moreover, all they have got they got, directly or indirectly, in that way - if getting a thing by purchase without equivalent, or taking it without leave is stealing, as any where else out of Christendom, except this debatable land between the lower regions and the outskirts of civilization, it is held to be. And to steal from one another would be repudiating the title by which every man holds property, and thus letting the common enemy, the true owner, in, whom all are interested in keeping out. Madam, if New-York, Mobile, and New Orleans were to get their own, they might inclose the whole town, and

label the walls "the lost and stolen office." When a Tennesseean comes to this place with a load of bacon, they consider him a prize, and divide out what he has as so much prize money. They talk of a Kentucky hog-drover first coming in in the fall, as an epicure speaks of the first shad of the season."

        Miss W. - "The population seems to be intelligent and - "

        Sam (with Johnsonian oracularity). - "Seems - true; but they are not. Whether the population first took to rascality, and that degraded their intellects, or whether they were fools, and took to it for want of sense, is a problem which I should like to be able to solve, if I could only find some one old enough to have known them when they first took to stealing, or when they first began playing the fool; but that time is beyond the oldest memory. I can better endure ten rascals than one fool; but I am forced to endure both in one. I see, in a recent work, a learned writer traces the genealogy of man to the monkey tribe. I believe that this is true of this population; for the characteristic marks of a low, apish cunning and stealing, betray the paternity: but so low are they in all better qualities, that, if their respectable old ancestor the rib-nosed baboon, should be called to see them, he would exclaim, with uplifted paws, 'Alas, how degenerate is my breed!' For they have left off all the good instincts of the beast, and improved only on his vices."

        Miss W. - "I have heard something of violent crimes,

murders, and so forth, in the South-West, but I have never heard this particular community worse spoken of - "

        Sam. - "Madam, I acquit them of all crimes which require any boldness in the perpetration. As to assassination, it occurs only occasionally, - when a countryman is found drunk, or something of the sort; and even assaults and batteries are not common. These occur only in the family circle; such as a boy sometimes whipping his father when the old man is intoxicated, or a man whipping his wife when she is infirm of health: except these instances, I cannot say, with truth, that any charge of this kind can be substantiated. As to negroes - "

        Miss W. - "Do tell me, Mr. Hele - how do they treat them? Is it as bad as they say? Do - do - they, - really, now - "

        Hele. - " Miss W., this is a very delicate subject; and what I tell you must be regarded as entirely confidential. Upon this subject there is a secrecy - a chilling mystery of silence - cast, as over the horrors and dungeons of the inquisition. The way negroes are treated in this country would chill the soul of a New Holland cannibal. Why, madam, it was but the other day a case occurred over the river, on Col. Luke Gyves's plantation. Gyves had just bought a drove of negroes, and was marking them in his pen, - a slit in one ear and an underbit in the other was Luke's mark, - and a large mulatto fellow was standing at the bull-ring, where the overseer was just putting the number

on his back with the branding-iron, when the nigger dog seeing his struggles, caught him by the leg, and the negro, mad with the pain, - I don't think he did it intentionally, - seized the branding-irons, and put out the dog's - a favorite Cuba bloodhound - left eye. They took the negro down to the rack in the plantation dungeon-house, and, sending for the neighbors to come into the entertainment, made a Christmas frolic of the matter. They rammed a powder-horn down his throat, and lighting a slow match, went off to wait the result. When gone, Col. Gyves bet Gen. Sam Potter one hundred and fifty dollars that the blast would blow the top of the negro's head off; which it did. Gen. Sam refused to pay, and the case was brought into the Circuit Court. Our judge, who had read a good deal more of Hoyle than Coke, decided that the bet could not be recovered, because Luke bet on a certainty; but fined Sam a treat for the crowd for making such a foolish wager, and adjourned court over to the grocery to enjoy it."

        Miss W. - "Why, Mr. Hele, it is a wonder to me that the fate of Sodom does not fall upon the country."

        Sam. - "Why, madam, probably it would, if a single righteous man could be found to serve the notice. However, many think that its irredeemable wickedness has induced Heaven to withdraw the country from its jurisdiction, and remit it to its natural, and, at last, reversionary proprietors, the powers of hell. It subserves, probably, a useful end, to stand as a vivid illustration of the doctrine of total depravity.

        Miss W. - "But, Mr. Hele, - do tell me, - do they now part the young children from their mothers - poor things?"

        Sam - "Why, no, - candidly, - they do not very much, now. The women are so sickly, from overwork and scant feeding and clothing, that the child is worth little for the vague chance of living. But when cotton was fifteen cents a pound, and it was cheaper to take away the child than to take up the mother's time in attending to it, they used to send them to town, of a Sunday, in big hamper baskets, for sale, by the dozen. The boy I have got in my office I got in that way - but he is the survivor of six, the rest dying in the process of raising. There was a great feud between the planters on this side of Sanotchie, and those on the other side, growing out of the treatment of negro children. Those who sold them off charged the other siders with inhumanity, in drowning theirs, like blind puppies, in the creek; which was resented a good deal at the time, and the accusers denounced as abolitionists. I did hear of one of them, Judge Duck Swinger, feeding his nigger dogs on the young varmints, as he called them; but I don't believe the story, it having no better foundation than current report, public belief, and general assertion."

        Miss W. (sighing). - "Oh, Mr. Hele! are they not afraid the negroes will rise on them?"

        Sam. - "Why, y-e-s, they do occasionally, and murder a few families, - especially in the thick settlements, - but less than they did before the patrol got up a subscription among the planters to contribute a negro or two apiece, every month

or so, to be publicly hung, or burned, for the sake of example. And, to illustrate the character of the population, let me just tell you how Capt. Sam Hanson did at the last hanging. Instead of throwing in one of his own negroes, as an honest ruffian would have done, he threw in yellow Tom, a free negro; another threw in an estate negro, and reported him dead in the inventory; while Squire Bill Measly painted an Indian black and threw him in, and hung him for one of his Pocahontas negroes, as he called some of his half-breed stock."

        Miss W. - "Mr. Hele! what is to become of the rising Generation - the poor children - I do feel so much for them - with such examples?"

        Sam. - "Madam, they are past praying for - there is one consolation. Let what will become of them, they will get less than their deserts. Why, madam, such precocious villany as theirs the world has never seen before: they make their own fathers ashamed of even their attainments and proficiency in mendacity; they had good teaching, though. Why, Miss Woodey, a father here never thinks well of a child until the boy cheats him at cards: then he pats him on the head, and says, 'Well done, Tommy, here's a V.; go, buck it off on a horse-race next Sunday, and we'll go snooks - and, come, settle fair, and no cheating around the board.' The children here at twelve years have progressed in villany beyond the point at which men get, in other countries, after a life of industrious rascality. They spent their rainy Sundays, last fall, in making a catechism of oaths and profanity

for the Indians, whose dialect was wanting in those accomplishments of Anglo-Saxon literature. There is not a scoundrel among them that is not ripe for the gallows at fourteen. At five years of age, they follow their fathers around to the dram-shops, and get drunk on the heel-taps."

        Miss W. - "The persons about here don't look as if they were drunk."

        Sam. - "Why, madam, it is refreshing to hear you talk in that way. No, they are not drunk. I wish they were. It would be an astonishing improvement, if dissipation would only recede to that point at which men get drunk. But they have passed that point, long ago. I should as soon expect to see a demijohn stagger as one of them. Besides, the liquor is all watered, and it would require more than a man could hold to make him drunk: but the grocery keeper defends himself on the ground, that it is only two parts water, and he never gets paid for more than a third he sells. But I never speak of these small things; for, in such a godless generation, venial crimes stand in the light of flaming virtues. Indeed, we always feel relieved when we see one of them dead drunk, for then we feel assured he is not stealing."

        Miss W. - "But, Mr. Hele, is there personal danger to be apprehended - by a woman? - now - for instance - expressing herself freely?"

        Sam. - "No, madam, not if she carries her pistols, as they generally do now, when they go out. They are usually insulted, and sometimes mobbed. They mobbed a Yankee

school mistress here, some time ago, for saying something against slavery; but I believe they only tarred and feathered her, and rode her on a rail for a few squares. Indeed, I heard some of the boys at the grocery, the other night, talk of trying the same experiment on another; but who it was, I did not hear them say."

        Here Sam made his bow and departed, and, over a plate of oysters and a glass of hot stuff, reported progress to the meeting whose committee he was, but declined leave to sit again.

        The next morning's mail-stage contained two trunks and four bandboxes, and a Yankee school-mistress, ticketed on the Northern line; and, in the hurry of departure, a letter, addressed to Mrs. Harriet S-, was found, containing some interesting memoranda and statistics on the subject of slavery and its practical workings, which I should never thought of again had I not seen something like them in a very popular fiction, or rather book of fictions, in which the slaveholders are handled with something less than feminine delicacy and something more than masculine unfairness.

        [Sam takes the credit of sending Miss Charity off, but Dr. B., the principal, negatives this: he says he had to give her three hundred dollars and pay her expenses back to get rid of her; and that she received it, saying she intended to return home and live at ease, the balance of her life, on the interest of the money.]

JOHN STOUT ESQ., AND MARK SULLIVAN.

of cases and of clients better suited to give notoriety than enviable reputation to the practitioner. He seemed to have a separate instinct, like a carrion crow's, for the filthy; and he snuffed up a tainted atmosphere, as Swedenborg says certain spirits do, with a rare relish. But with all John's industry and enterprise, John never throve, but at fifty years of age, he was as seedy and threadbare in clothes as in character. He had no settled abode, but was a sort of Calmuc Tartar of the Law, and roamed over the country generally, stirring up contention and breeding dirty lawsuits, fishing up fraudulent papers, and hunting up complaisant witnesses to very apocryphal facts.

        Well, on one bright May morning, Squire Stout presented himself at the door of the jail in Livingston, and asked admittance, professing a desire to see Mr. Mark Sullivan, an old friend. Harvey Thompson, the then sheriff, admitted him to the door within, and which stood between Mark and the passage. John desired to be led into the room in which Mark was, wishing, he said, to hold a private interview with Mark as one of Mark's counsel; but Harvey peremptorily refused - telling him, however, that he might talk with the prisoner in his presence. The door being thrown back, left nothing but the iron lattice-work between the friends, and Mark, dragging his chain along, came to the door. At first, he did not seem to recognize John; but John, running his hand through the interstices, grasped Mark's with fervor, asking him, at the same time, if it were possible that he had forgotten his old friend, John Stout.

Mark, as most men in durance, was not slow to recognize any friendship, real or imaginary, that might be made to turn out to advantage, and, of course, allowed the claim, and expressed the pleasure it gave him to see John. John soon got his hydraulics in readiness, - for sympathy and pathetic eloquence are wonderfully cheap accessories to rascality, - and begun applying his handkerchief to his eyes with great energy. "Mark, my old friend, you and I have been friends many a long year, old fellow; we have played many a game of seven up together, Mark, and shot at many a shooting match, Mark, and drunk many a gallon of 'redeye' together; - and to think, Mark, my old friend and companion, that I loved and trusted like a brother, Mark, should be in this dreadful fix, - far from wife, children, and friends, Mark, - it makes a child of me, and I can't - control - my feelings." (Here John wept with considerable vivacity, and doubled up an old bandanna handkerchief and mopped his eyes mightily.) Mark was not one of the crying sort. He was a Roman-nosed, eagle-eyed ruffian of a fellow, some six feet two inches high, and with a look and step that the McGregor himself might feel entitled him to be respected on the heather.

        So Mark responded to this lachrymal ebullition of Stout's a little impatiently: "Hoot, man, what are you making all that how-de-do for? It sent so bad as you let on. To be sure, it sent as pleasant as sitting on a log by a camp fire, with a tickler of the reverend stuff, a pack of the documents and two or three good fellows, and a good piece of fat deer meat roasting

at the end of a ramrod; but, for all that, it aint so bad as might be: they can't do nothing with me: it was done fair, - it was an old quarrel. We settled it in the old way: I had my rifle, and I plugged him fust - he might a knowed I would. It was devil take the hindmost. It wasn't my fault he didn't draw trigger fust - they can't hurt me for it. But I hate to be stayin' here so long, and the fishin' time comin' on, too - it's mighty hard, but it can't be holped, I suppose." (And here Mark heaved a slight sigh.)

        "Ah, Mark," said John, "I aint so certain about that; that is, unless you are particular well defended. You see, Mark, it aint now like it used to be in the good old times. They are getting new notions now-a-days. Since the penitentiary has been built, they are got quare ways of doing things, - they are sending gentlemen there reg'lar as pigtracks. I believe they do it just because they've got an idea it helps to pay taxes. When it used to be neck or nothin', why, one of the young hands could clear a man; but now it takes the best sort of testimony, and the smartest sort of lawyers in the market, to get a friend clear. The way things are goin' on now, murdering a man will be no better than stealin' a nigger, after a while."

        "Yes," said Mark., "things is going downwards, - there aint no denyin' of that. I know'd the time in old Washington, when people let gentlemen settle these here little matters their own way, and nobody interfered, but minded their own business. And now you can't put an inch or two of knife in a fellow, or lam him over the head a few times with

a light-wood knot, but every little lackey must poke his nose into it, and Law, law, law, is the word, - the cowardly, nasty slinks; and then them lawyers must have their jaw in it, and bow, bow wow, it goes; and the juror, they must have their say so in it; and the sherrer, he must do something, too; and the old cuss that grinds out the law to 'em in the box, he must have his how-de-do about it; and then the witnesses, they must swear to ther packs of lies - and the lawyers git to bawlin' and bellerin', like Methodist preachers at a camp meetin' - allers quarrellin' and no fightin' - jawin' and jawin' back, and sick eternal lyin' - I tell you, Stout, I won't stay in no such country. When I get out of here, I mean to go to Texas, whar a man can see some peace, and not be interfered with in his private consarns. All this come about consekens so many new settlers comin' in the settlement, bringin' their new-fool ways with 'em. The fust of it was two preachers comin' along. I told 'em 'twould never do - and if my advice had been tuk, the thing could a been stopped in time; but the boys said they wanted to hear the news them fellers fotch'd about the Gospel and sich - and there was old Ramsouser's mill-pond so handy, too! - but it's too late now. And then the doggery-keepers got to sellin' licker by the drink, instead of the half-pint, and a dime a drink at that; and then the Devil was to pay and NO mistake. But they cant hurt me, John. They'll have to let me out: and ef it wasn't so cussed mean, I'd take the law on 'em, and sue 'em for damages; but then it would be throw'd up to my children, that Mark Sullivan tuk

the law on a man; and, besides, Stout, I've got another way of settlin' the thing up, - in the old way, - ef my life is spared, and Providence favors me. But that sent nothin' to the present purpose. John, where do you live now?"

        John. - "I'm living in Jackson, Mississippi, now, Mark; and hearing you were in distress, I let go all holds, and came to see you. Says I, my old friend Mark Sullivan is in trouble, and I must go and see him out; and says my wife: 'John Stout, you pretend you never deserted a friend, and here you are, and your old friend Mark Sullivan, that you thought so much of, laying in jail, when you, if any man could, can get him clear.' Now, Mark, I couldn't stand that. When my wife throw'd that up to me, I jist had my horse got out, and travelled on, hardly stopping day or night, till I got here. And the U.S. Court was in session, too, and a big lawsuit was coming on for a million of dollars. I and Prentiss and George Yerger was for the plaintiff, and we were to get five thousand dollars, certain, and a hundred thousand dollars if we gained it. I went to see George, before I left, and George said I must stay - it would never do. Says he, 'John,' - he used always to call me John, - 'you know,' - which I did, Mark, - 'that our client relies on you, and you must be here at the trial. I can fix up the papers, and Prent. can do the fancy work to the jury; but when it comes to the heavy licks of the law, John, you are the man, and no mistake.' And just then Prentiss come in, and, after putting his arm and sorter hugging me to him, - which was Prent's way with his intimate friends, - says, 'John, my old

friend, you have to follow on our side, and you must mash Sam Boyd and Jo Holt into Scotch snuff; and you'll do it, too, John: and after gaining the case, we'll have a frolic that will suck the sweet out of the time of day.' And then Yerger up and tells Prentiss about my going off; and Prentiss opened his eyes, and asked me if I was crazy; and I told him jist this: says I, 'Prent, you are a magnanimous man, that loves his friend, aint you?' and Prentiss said he hoped he was. And then said I, 'Prentiss, Mark Sullivan is my friend, and in jail, away from his wife and children, and nobody to get him out of that scrape; and may be, if I don't go and defend him - there is no knowing what may come of it; and how could I ever survive to think a friend of mine had come to harm for want of my going to him in the dark, dismal time of his distress.' (Here John took out the handkerchief again, and began weeping, after a fashion Mr. Alfred Jingle might have envied, even when performing for the benefit of Mr. Samuel Weller.) 'No,' said I, 'Sergeant Prentiss, let the case go to h-l, for me; - John Stout and Andrew Jackson never deserted a friend, and never will.' Said Prentiss, 'John, I admire your principles; give us your hand, old fellow; and come, let us take a drink;' - for Prent. was always in the habit of treating his noble sentiments - George wasn't. Well, Mark, you see I came, and am at your service through thick and thin."

        "Yes," said Mark, "I'm much obleeged to you, John, but I'm afeered I can't afford to have you, - you're too dear an article for my pocket; besides, I've got old John Gayle, and I reckon he'll do."

        "Why," said John, "I don't dispute, Mark, but that the old Governor is some punkins, - you might have done worse. I'll not disparage any of my brethren. I'll say to his back what I've said to his face. You might do worse than get old John - but, Mark, two heads are better than one; and though I may say it, when it comes to the genius licks of the law in these big cases, it sent every man in your fix can get such counsel. Now, Mark, money is money, and feelins is feelins; and I don't care if I do lose the case at Jackson. If you will only secure two hundred dollars to pay expenses, I am your man, and you're as good as cleared already."

        But Mark couldn't or wouldn't come into these reasonable terms, and his friend Stout left him in no very amiable mood, - having quite recovered from the fit of hysterics into which he had fallen, - and Mark turned to Thompson, and making sundry gyrations with his fingers upon a base formed by his nose, his right thumb resting thereon, seemed to intimate that John Stout's proposition and himself were little short of a humbug, which couldn't win.

        Mark, though ably and eloquently defended, was convicted at the next court, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for life. And Stout, speaking of the result afterwards, said he did not wonder at it, for the old rascal, after having sent for him all the way from Jackson, higgled with him on a fee of one thousand dollars, when he, in indignant disgust at his meanness, left him to his fate.

MR. ONSLOW.

        On one occasion, a case was tried of some difficulty and complexity, involving the title to a negro, which had been run off from a distant part of the State, and sold in Noxubee county by a man, who had, previously to running him, mortgaged him to the plaintiff. The negro had been in the county for a good while before he was discovered; and the present holder had been sued - Mr. Onslow being the attorney for the mortgagee, and indeed it was understood, having some other rights in the litigation than those of counsel. The defendant had retained Henry G-y and James T.

H- , Esqrs., ingenious youth, who were duly and fully prepared, and especially willing, to exhaust all the law there was, and a good deal there wasn't, to defeat the plaintiff's recovery in the premises.

        Mr. Onslow appeared alone. Indeed, he would have scorned assistance in such a proceeding. He had come on horseback from the Mississippi Swamp, on no other business than to attend to this case. His preparation was arduous and thorough - his zeal apostolic. No doubt he had made the pine-trees sweat rezinous tears, "voiding their rheum," and had made the very stumps ache, and the leaves quiver, as he journeyed on, rehearsing the great speech he intended to make in the to-be celebrated case of Hugginson vs. McLeod. He was a peculiar-looking man, was Mr. Onslow. Rising six feet in his stockings, large-boned, angular, muscular, without an ounce of surplus flesh, he was as active and as full of energy as a panther. His head was long and large, the features irregular and strongly-marked, face florid, eyes black, restless and glaring, mouth like a wolf-trap, and muscles twitching and shaking like a bowl of jelly, and hair a reddish-brown - about as much of it as Absalom carried, but of such independence of carriage that it stuck up all around, "like quills upon the fretful porcupine." He was a sort of walking galvanic battery; charged full in every fibre with the electric current. If a man had run his hand over his hair in a dark room across the grain, the sparks would have risen as from the back of a black cat. We have not heard from him since the spiritual rappings, table tippings,

and movings were the vogue, - but we will go our old hat against a julep, that if the spirits would not come at his bidding, they have quit coming from the vasty deep, or closed business, Mr. N.P. Tallmadge, or any other medium to the contrary notwithstanding: and if he couldn't set a table going by the odic force, the whole thing is a proved humbug. He was a speaker of decided power, - indeed of tremendous power. When he spoke, he spoke in earnest. He went it with a most vigorous vim. He had taken a cataract and hurricane for his model. Such a bellowing, - such a fiery fury, of fuss and noise, would sink into a modest silence a whole caravan of howling dervishes. Jemmy T. thought he could be heard when he let himself out two miles: I think this extravagant, - I should think not more than a mile and a half. When he drew in a long breath, and bore his weight on his voice, the very rafters seemed to move: but his voice was not all. He grew as rampant as a wolf in high oats, - jumping up, rearing around, and squatting low, and sidling about - forwards, backwards - beating benches - knocking the entrails out of law-books - running over chairs, and clearing out the area for ten feet around him, whirling about like a horse with the blind staggers; while he quivered all over like a galvanized frog. He usually let off as much caloric as would have fed the lungs of the Ericsson.

        Innumerable were the points and half-points made during the progress of the case, and Onslow was fortunate enough to win on most of these. At every ruling that was made in his favor, he would suck in his breath with a long inspiration,

smile a spasmodic smile of grisly satisfaction, and smack his lips. He was in high feather, and on excellent terms with the judge, whose rulings he would indorse with marked empressement.

        After he had bellowed his last, he took his seat; and the judge asked the counsel if they desired any charges.

        Onslow rose, and told the Court he had a few. He drew out of his hat about six pages of foolscap, on which was written twenty-two charges, elaborately drawn out, - some of them long enough to have been divided into chapters, - and the whole might have been modified and indexed to advantage. The defendant's counsel, while Onslow was reading his charges, sent up to the bench a single instruction couched in a few words.

        Onslow read his charge 1. in a loud and argumentative voice - the Court gave it: "Exactly, your honor," observed O., and so on to the 22d, which was also given, Onslow bowing and smiling, and his face glowing out, from anxiety to assurance, as the charge was read and given, like a lightning-bug's tail, giving light out of darkness.

        After he got through reading the charges, he handed them to the judge. Hon. H. S. B. was on the bench - one of the best judges in the State. He turned to the jury: "Gentlemen," said he, "listen to the instructions the Court gives you in this case."

        He then read the first instruction of Onslow, in a clear, decided tone; at the conclusion of it O. sighed heavily, - so with the next, and so on; Onslow all this time gazing

with rapt attention upon the judge, and his mouth motioning with the judge's - like a schoolboy writing O's in his first copy - and at the end of every charge ejaculating, "Exactly, your honor!"

        After getting through these charges, the judge remarked: "And now, gentlemen, I give you this charge for the defendant." Onslow stopped breathing, as the judge slowly syllabled out, "But notwithstanding - all - this - it being - an admitted - fact - that - the mortgage - was - not - recorded - in - Noxu - bee - county - you - must - fi - n - d for the d - e - fen - dant." As this was going on, Onslow was completely psychologized: he stared until his eyes looked as if they would pop out - his lower jaw dropped - and putting his hand to his head, involuntarily exclaimed - "Oh, hell! your honor!"

        He left in the course of ten minutes, to start on a return journey of three hundred miles, in mid-winter, and such roads - through the woods to the Mississippi Swamp. - "Phansy his phelinks."

JO. HEYFRON.

the Emerald Isle about him, but its greenness, - was the wrong one for the decisive judicial experiment to be commenced on. Jo. knew too much law, and the judge too little, for an equality of advantages. On the occasion refered to, just as the judge had pronounced a very peremptory and a very ridiculous decision, Jo. got up in his deprecating way, with a book in his hand, and was about to speak, when the Judge thundered out, "Mr. Heyfron! you have been practising, sir, before this Court long enough to know that when this Court has once decided a question, the propriety of its decision can only be reviewed in the High Court of Errors & Appeals! Take your seat, sir!"

        "If your honor plase!" broke out Jo., in a manner that would have passed for the most beseeching, if a sly twinkle in the off corner of his eye had not betokened the contrary, - "If your honor plase! far be it from me to impugn in the slightest degray, the wusdom and proprietay of your honor's decision! I merely designed to rade a few lines from the volume I hold in my hand, that your honor might persave how profoundly aignorant Sir Wulliam Blockstone was upon this subject."

        The judge looked daggers, but spoke none; and Heyfron sat down, immortal. His body is dead, but he still lives, for his brilliant retort, in the anecdotal reminiscences of the South-Western bar. The anecdote has already (in a different, but incorrect form) had the run of the news-papers.

OLD UNCLE JOHN OLIVE.

        Uncle John was a gentleman of the old school, if, indeed, he was not before there was any school. He was some seventy or seventy-five years old, perhaps a little older. His physique was remarkable. He looked more like an antediluvian boy than a man. He was some four feet and a half or five feet high, rather large for that height, and tapering off with a pair of legs marking Hogarth's line of beauty, - an elegant curve, something on the style of apair of pot hooks. His beard and hair were grizzly gray, and the face oval, with a high front in the region of benevolence; but which, I believe, no one ever knew the sense of being placed there:

for all of Uncle John's benefactions together, would not have amounted to a supper of bones for a hungry dog. Uncle John's eyes were black or black-ish, with sanguine trimmings, as if lined by red fereting. He had a voice with a double wabble - and, especially when he tried it on the vowels, he ran up some curious notes on the gamut, and eked out the sound with a very useless expenditure of accent. Uncle John Olive belonged to the Baptist Church, - hard-shell division, but took it with the privilege: he had a thirst like the prairies in the dog-days, and it took nearly as much of the liquid to refresh it. But much as Uncle John loved the ardent restoratives, he loved money quite as well; and there was a continual warfare going on in Uncle John's breast between these aspiring rivals: but this led to a compromise. Uncle John treated both with equal impartiality: he drank very freely, but drank very cheap liquors, making up for any lack of quality, by no economy of quantity.

        Uncle John's scheme of life was simple. It was but a slight improvement on Indian modes. He lived out in the woods, in a hut which an English nobleman would have considered poor quarters for his dogs. The furniture was in keeping, and his table was in keeping with the furniture. His whole establishment would probably have brought fifteen dollars. The entire civil list of the old gentleman could not have cost seventy-five dollars to answer its demands. He had no white person in his family except himself - and about fifteen negroes, of all sorts and sizes. He worked some six or seven hands, but being of a slow turn,

and very old-fogyish in his notions, he did not succeed very well with them, either in governing them or making much of a crop: about a bale to the hand was the extent to which Uncle John ever went, even in the best seasons. But as he spent nothing except for some articles of the last necessity, he managed to lay up every year some few dollars, which he kept in specie, hid in a hole under a plank of the floor, in an old chest. This close economy and saving way of life, kept up for about fifty-five years, had at length made old Uncle John Olive worth some ten thousand dollars. He had made it wholly by parsimony. He was habitually and without exception the closest man I ever saw, - as close as the bark is to a tree, or as green is to a leaf.

        He was dressed in home-made linsey, and as he went gandering it along, you would take him for the survivor of those Dutchmen whom Irving tells of, rolling the ninepins down the cave in the Kaatskill Mountains, when Rip Van Winkle went to see them; except that Uncle John did not carry the keg of spirits on his shoulder, - but generally in his belly.

        A circle of a mile drawn around Uncle John would have embraced all he knew and more than he knew of this breathing world, its ways and works, and plan and order; except what he got item of at the market-town or at the courthouse. All beyond that circle was mystery. Uncle John was a silent man, - he used his tongue for little except to taste his liquor, - and his eyes and ears were open always, though I suspect there must have been some stoppage in the

way to the brain: for the more Uncle John heard and observed, the more he seemed not to know about matters seen and heard. But a more faithful attention I never heard of. Uncle John was in the habit of attending court, and gave his special attention to the matters there carried on: the way he would listen to an argument on a demurrer or an abstract point of law, might be a lesson and example to the most patient Dutch commentator. He would stare with a gaze of rapt attention upon the Court and Counsel, occasionally shifting one leg, and uttering a slight sigh as some one of them closed the argument; and stretching his head forward, and putting his hand behind his ear to catch the sound as the Court suggested something, though he never understood a single word of what was going on. Towards the end of a long discussion, Uncle John would begin to flag a little, wiping the perspiration from his brow, as if the exercise of listening were very fatiguing - as, indeed, in not a few instances, it might well have been.

        On the occasion referred to in the opening, Uncle John called me, and after the salutations, told me he wanted to see me right then on business of importance. I should have said before that I had had some business of Uncle John's in hand, which I discharged entirely to his satisfaction; not charging the venerable old gentleman any thing, but getting my fee out of another person through whose agency the old man had got into the difficulty. This being Uncle John's first and only lawsuit, though the matter was very simple, gave him a high opinion of my professional abilities.

Indeed, next to his man Remus Simpson, the "foreman of the crap," whom he was in the habit of consulting on "difficult pints," I stood higher with Uncle John than any one else as "a raal judgmatical man." I hope I state the fact with a feeling of becoming modesty. In the way of law, Uncle John evidently thought the law would be behaving itself very badly, if it did not go the way, I wished it; and looked to my opinion not so much as to what the law was, as what it was to be after I spoke the word.

        I told Uncle John Olive that I was a good deal pressed for time just at that moment, as a case was going on in which I was concerned; but as it was he, Uncle John, I would spare him a few moments. And so I left Duncan to harangue the jury until I could confer with the old man, and took him into the vacant jury-room on the same floor, and shut the door. "Well," said I, "Uncle John, I hope nothing serious has happened - [which was a lie, for I was, in the then (and I might lay the fact with a continuando) depressed state of my fiscality, - I confess I was a little anxious for something to happen in order to relieve the same, and was just doing a little mental arithmetic; figuring up what I should charge the old man, whether a fifty or a hundred; but concluding to take the fifty, rather than hazard the chance of bluffing the old man off.]

        "But," said the old man, "they is, I tell you. B-a-a-A-W-ling - Bawling, Virgil C-a-A-A-n-non won't do to tie to no way you can fix it - Bawling."

        "Why," said I, "Uncle John, I must confess the conduct of that young man has not altogether - (here the sheriff

called me at the door) but Uncle John, quick I'm called - " "Well, Bawling, I reckon it don't make much odds about your going back - you've told that juror what they must do wonce, and I reckon they wont ha' a furgot it by this time, Bawling."

        "Yes, - but they are obstinate sometimes, Uncle John, and I must go - quick now - Uncle John - You say Cannon did - what to you."

        "Why, Bawling - Virgil Cannon - he had been a whippin' my nigger, Remus - Remus told me so hisself, and I kin prove it by Remus and sore-legged Jim - jest 'cause Remus sassed him - when he sassed Remus fust - when he, Virgil Cannon, should have said, as Remus heerd, that Virgil Cannon should ov said Remus stole his corn - I went to see Virgil Cannon, and 'Virgil Cannon,' says I, - jest in them words I said it, Bawling; 'you nasty, stinking villain, what did you whip my nigger, Remus, fur?' And what you think Bawling, Virgil Cannon should have said?" (here was a long emphatic stony stare.) "Why I don't know, Uncle John," replied I. "Why, Bawling, Virgil Cannon should ov said to me, says he, 'Go to h-ll, you d-d old bow-legged puppy, and kiss my foot' - Now, Bawling, what would you advise me to do, Bawling?"

        "Well," said I, "old man, I would advise you not to do it. Good-bye, I must go." And I left the old fellow stiff as a pillar staring at the place which I left.

        I don't know how long he remained there - for I pitched into the case, and the way I made the fire fly from parties, witnesses and counsel, in the corn case, was curious.

EXAMINING A CANDIDATE FOR LICENSE.

without being disturbed by any attention to his bill-book. He had taken up a favorable opinion of the law from the glimpses he had got of its physiognomy; and, having borrowed an old copy of Blackstone, went to work to master its contents as well as he could. He had reached about thirty-five years when this hallucination struck him. He was a stout, heavy fellow - with a head that Spurzheim might have envied: though the contents thereof did not give any new proof of Spurzheim's theory. He was not encumbered with any learning. He had all the apartments of his memory unfilled and waiting to be stored with law. An owl-like gravity sat on him with a solemnity like the picture of sorrowing affection on a tombstone. He was just such a man as passes for a wonderful judge of law among the rustics - who usually mistake the silent blank of stupidity for the gravity of wisdom.

        We took Jefferson with us, in the recess of court, over to a place of departed spirits, - don't start, reader! we mean, an evacuated doggery, grocery or juicery, as, in the elegant nomenclature of the natives, it was variously called; the former occupant having suddenly decamped just before court, by reason of some apprehensions of being held responsible for practicing his profession without license.

        Having taken our seats, the examiners on the counter, and the examinee on an empty whiskey barrel, the examination began. My learned associate having been better grounded in the elemental learning of the books, into which his research was, as old H. used to say, "specially sarching,"

and being, besides, the State's attorney, was entitled to precedence in the examination; a claim I was very willing to allow. After some general questions, G. asked:

        "Mr. Knowly, what is a chose in action?"

        Knowly. - A chosen action? eh? - yes - exactly - just so - a chosen action? Why, a chosen action is - where a man's got a right to fetch two or three actions and he chuses one of 'em which he will fetch - the one that's chuse is the - chosen action: that's easy, squire.

        G. - Well, what is a chose is a chose in possession?

        K. - A chosen possession? A chosen possession - (G. - Don't repeat the question - answer it, if you please. K - Well - I won't - )

        K. - A chosen possession? - Yes - exactly - jess so - ahem - (here K. looked about for a stick, picked one up and began whittling with a knife - then muttering absently) - "A chosen possession? Why, squire, if a man has two possessions to be chose, which he is to chuse as a guardeen which the estate have not been divided, and they come to a divide of it in lots which the commissioners has set aside and prized, and he chooses one of them possessions, which one he chooses, that is the chosen possession. That aint hard nuther.

        G. - Mr. K. how many fees are there?

        K. - How many fees? - why squire, several: doctor's fees, lawyer's fees, sheriff's fees, jailer's fees, clerk's fees, both courts, and most every body else's.

        G. - What is the difference between a fee simple and a contingent fee?

        K. - The difference between a fee - (here G. told him not to repeat the question, K. promised he wouldn't, and resumed).

        The difference between - yes - exactly - jess so. Why, squire - a simple fee is where a client gives his lawyer so much any how, let it go how it will; and a contingent fee is where he takes it on the sheeres, and no cure no pay.

        G. - What are the marital rights of a husband at common law?

        K. - The martal rites? - (smiling) - concerning of what, squire?

        G. - Her property?

        K. - Oh - that - why - yes - jess so - why, squire, he gets her track, - i.e., if he can without committing a trespass - what's hers is his, and what's his is his own. Squire, I know'd that before ever I opened a law-book.

        G. - Is the wife entitled to dower in the husband's lands if she survives him?

        K. - O - yes, squire - in course - I've seen that tried in Alabama; that is, squire, you understand if the estate is solvent to pay the debts.

        G. - Suppose the husband's estate is insolvent - what then?

        K - Why, then, in course not.

        G. - Why not?

        K - Why not? - why, squire, it stands to reason: for then, you see, the husband might gather a whole heap of land, and then jest fraudently die to give his wife dower rights to

his land. I jest know plenty of men about here mean enough to do it, and jump at the chance.

        G. - Has a man a natural right to dispose of his property by will?

        K - Why, now, squire, concerning of that - my mind sent so clare as on tether pints - it strikes me sort a vague - something about a cow laying or that should have laid down in a place which she had a right, and another cow-beast, nor airy another havin' no rights to disturb her: - aint that it, squire?

        G. - Suppose, Mr. K., a tenant for life, should hold over after the termination of his estate, what kind of action would you bring against him?

        K - Tenant for life - hold - termination of the state? - ugh - um - jess so - Squire, sent that mortmain - the statue of mortmain - in Richard the 8th's time? - Blackstone says something about that.

        G. - Mr. K., if a man wants to keep his property in his family, how far can he make it descend to his children and grand-children, &c.

        K - Why as to that - something, squire, about all the candles burning - but, squire, I never could understand what burning candles had to do with it.

        G. - What is an estate tail female, contingent on the happening of a past event, limited by contingent devise to the children of grantees after possibility of issue extinct, considered with reference to the statute De Donis?

        K - Squire, the Devil himself couldn't answer that, and

I guess he's as smart as airy other lawyer - but I reckon it is -

        G. - Well, Mr. K., what is the distinction between Law and Equity?

        K - Why, squire, Law is as it happens - 'cordin' to proof and the way the juror goes; Eekity is jestis - and a man may git a devilish sight of law, and git devilish little jestis.

        G. - Does Equity ever interfere with Law?

        K. - Not that ever I seed, squire.

        G. - Whose son is a bastard considered in law?

        K - Why, squire, that's further than I've got - I've ginerally seed that it was laid to the young man in the settlement best able to pay over its maintainance; and, I suppose, it would be his son-in-law.

        G. - What is a libel?

        K. - Why, squire, if a man gits another in a room, and locks the door on him, and makes him sign a paper certifying he's told a lie on him, the paper is a lie-bill.

        G. - What is the difference between Trespass and Case?

        K. - Why, squire, Trespass ar when a man trespasses on another. Now, squire, your putting so many hard questions to me, that is a trespass.

        G. - Yes; and if the fellow can't answer a single one, I should say he was a Case.

        Here the examination closed. Jefferson walked slowly out of the grocery, and, after getting about thirty yards off on the green, beckoned me to him.

        As I came towards him, he drew himself up with some dignity, took aim at a chip, about fifteen feet off, and squirted a stream of tobacco juice at it with remarkable precision. Said he, slowly and with marked gravity, "B-, you needn't make any report of this thing to the Judge. I believe I won't go in. I don't know as it's any harder than I took it at the fust - but, then, B-, ther's, so, d-d, much, more, of, it."

THE END.