This eminent barrister was brought up at a time when
zeal for a client was one of the chief virtues of a lawyer—
the client standing in the place of truth, justice and decency,
and monopolizing the respect due to all. He, therefore,
went into all causes with equal zeal and confidence, and took
all points that could be raised with the same earnestness,
and belabored them with the same force. He personated
the client just as a great actor identifies himself with the
character he represents on the stage.

The faculty he chiefly employed was a talent for vituperation
which would have gained him distinction on any theatre,
from the village partisan press, down to the House of Representatives
itself. He had cultivated vituperation as a
science, which was like putting guano on the Mississippi bottoms,
the natural fertility of his mind for satirical productions
was so great. He was as much fitted by temper as by
talent for this sort of rhetoric, especially when kept from
his dinner or toddy by the trial of a case—then an alligator
whose digestion had been disturbed by the horns of a billygoat
taken for lunch, was no mean type of old Sar Kasm
(as the wags of the bar called him, by nickname, formed
by joining the last syllable of his christian, or rather, heathen
name, to his patronymic). After a case began to grow
interesting, the old fellow would get fully stirred up. He
grew as quarrelsome as a little bull terrier. He snapped at
witnesses, kept up a constant snarl at the counsel, and
growled, at intervals, at the judge, whom, whoever he was,
he considered as ex officio, his natural enemy, and so

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

regarded every thing got from him as so much wrung from an unwilling
witness.

But his great forte was in cross-examining a witness. His
countenance was the very expression of sneering incredulity.
Such a look of cold, unsympathizing, scornful penetration
as gleamed from his eyes of ice and face of brass, is not
often seen on the human face divine. Scarcely any eye
could meet unshrinkingly that basilisk gaze: it needed no
translation: the language was plain: “Now you are swearing
to a lie, and I'll catch you in it in a minute;” and then
the look of surprise which greeted each new fact stated, as
if to say, “I expected some lying, but really this exceeds
all my expectations.” The meek politeness with which he
would address a witness, was any thing but encouraging; and
the officious kindness with which he volunteered to remind
him of a real or fictitious embarrassment, by asking him to
take his time and not to suffer himself to be confused, as
far as possible from being a relief; while the air of triumph
that lit up his face the while, was too provoking for a saint
to endure.

Many a witness broke down under his examination, that
would have stood the fire of a masked battery unmoved, and
many another, voluble and animated enough in the opening
narrative, “slunk his pitch mightily,” when old Kasm put
him through on the cross-examination.

His last look at them as they left the box, was an advertisement
to come back, “and they would hear something to
their advantage;” and if they came, they heard it, if humility
is worth buying at such a price.

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

How it was, that in such a fighting country, old Kasm
continued at this dangerous business, can only be understood,
by those who know the entire readiness—nay, eagerness
of the old gentleman, to do reason to all serious inquirers;—
and one or two results which happened some years
before the time I am writing of, to say nothing of some traditions
in the army, convinced the public, that his practice
was as sharp at the small sword as at the cut and thrust of
professional digladiation.

Indeed, it was such an evident satisfaction to the old fellow
to meet these emergencies, which to him were merely lively
episodes breaking the monotony of the profession, that his
enemies, out of spite, resolutely refused to gratify him, or
answer the sneering challenge stereotyped on his countenance.
“Now if you can do any better, suppose you help
yourself?” So, by common consent, he was elected free
libeller of the bar. But it was very dangerous to repeat
after him.

When he argued a case, you would suppose he had
bursted his gall-bag—such, not vials but demijohns, of vituperation
as he poured out with a fluency only interrupted
by a pause to gather, like a tree-frog, the venom sweltering
under his tongue into a concentrated essence. He could
look more sarcasm than any body else could express; and
in his scornful gaze, virtue herself looked like something
sneaking and contemptible. He could not arouse the nobler
passions or emotions; but he could throw a wet blanket over
them. It took Frank Glendye and half a pint of good

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

French brandy, to warm the court-house after old Kasm was
done speaking: but they could do it.

My client was a respectable butcher: his opponent a
well-to-do farmer. On getting to the court-house, I found
the court in session. The clerk was just reading the minutes.
My case—I can well speak in the singular—was set
the first on the docket for that morning. I looked around
and saw old Kasm, who somehow had found out I was in
the case, with his green bag and half a library of old books
on the bar before him. The old fellow gave me a look of
malicious pleasure—like that of a hungry tiger from his
lair, cast upon an unsuspecting calf browsing near him. I
had tried to put on a bold face. I felt that it would be
very unprofessional to let on to my client that I was at all
scared, though my heart was running down like a jack-screw
under a heavy wagon. My conscience—I had not practised
it away then—was not quite easy. I couldn't help feeling
that it was hardly honest to be leading my client, like Falstaff
his men, where he was sure to be peppered. But then
it was my only chance; my bread depended on it; and I
reflected that the same thing has to happen in every lawyer's
practice. I tried to arrange my ideas in form and excogitate
a speech: they flitted through my brain in odds and
ends. I could neither think nor quit thinking. I would
lose myself in the first twenty words of the opening sentence
and stop at a particle;—the trail run clean out. I
would start it again with no better luck: then I thought a
moment of the disgrace of a dead break-down; and then I

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

would commence again with “gentlemen of the jury,” &c.,
and go on as before.

At length the judge signed the minutes and took up the
docket: “Special case—Higginbotham vs. Swink: Slander.
Mr. Glendye for plff.; Mr. Kasm for deft. Is Mr. G. in
court? Call him, Sheriff.” The sheriff called three times.
He might as well have called the dead. No answer of
course came. Mr. Kasm rose and told the court that he
was sorry his brother was too much (stroking his chin and
looking down and pausing) indisposed, or otherwise engaged,
to attend the case; but he must insist on its being disposed of,
&c.: the court said it would be. I then spoke up (though
my voice seemed to me very low down and very hard to get
up), that I had just been spoken to in the cause: I believed
we were ready, if the cause must be then tried; but I should
much prefer it to be laid over, if the court would consent,
until the next day, or even that evening. Kasm protested vehemently
against this; reminded the court of its peremptory
order; referred to the former proceedings, and was going on
to discuss the whole merits of the case, when he was interrupted
by the judge, who, turning himself to me, remarked that
he should be happy to oblige me, but that he was precluded
by what had happened: he hoped, however, that the counsel
on the other side would extend the desired indulgence; to
which Kasm immediately rejoined, that this was a case in
which he neither asked favors nor meant to give them. So
the case had to go on. Several members of the bar had
their hats in hand, ready to leave the room when the case

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

was called up; but seeing that I was in it alone, suffered
their curiosity to get the better of other engagements, and
staid to see it out; a circumstance which did not diminish
my trepidation in the least.

I had the witnesses called up, posted my client behind
me in the bar, and put the case to the jury. The defendant
had pleaded justification and not guilty. I got along pretty
well, I thought, on the proofs. The cross-examination of old
Kasm didn't seem to me to hurt any thing—though he
quibbled, misconstrued, and bullied mightily; objected to
all my questions as leading, and all the witnesses' answers
as irrelevant: but the judge, who was a very clever sort of a
man, and who didn't like Kasm much, helped me along and
over the bad places, occasionally taking the examination
himself when old Kasm had got the statements of the witness
in a fog.

I had a strong case; the plaintiff showed a good character:
that the lodge of Masons had refused to admit him to
fellowship until he could clear up these charges: that the
Methodist Church, of which he was a class-leader, had required
of him to have these charges judicially settled: that
he had offered to satisfy the defendant that they were false,
and proposed to refer it to disinterested men, and to be satisfied—
if they decided for him—to receive a written retraction,
in which the defendant should only declare he was mistaken;
that the defendant refused this proffer and reiterated
the charges with increased bitterness and aggravated insult;
that the defendant had suffered in reputation and credit;
that the defendant declared he meant to run him off and

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

buy his land at his (defendant's) own price; and that defendant
was rich, and often repeated his slanders at public
meetings, and once at the church door, and finally now justified.

The defendant's testimony was weak: it did not controvert
the proof as to the speaking of the words, or the matters
of aggravation. Many witnesses were examined as to
the character of the plaintiff; but those against us only referred
to what they had heard since the slanders, except one
who was unfriendly. Some witnesses spoke of butchering
hogs at night, and hearing them squeal at a late hour at the
plaintiff's slaughter house, and of the dead hogs they had
seen with various marks, and something of hogs having been
stolen in the neighborhood.

This was about all the proof.

The plaintiff laid his damages at $10,000.

I rose to address the jury. By this time a good deal
of the excitement had worn off. The tremor left, only gave
me that sort of feeling which is rather favorable than otherwise
to a public speaker.

I might have made a pretty good out of it, if I had
thrown myself upon the merits of my case, acknowledged
modestly my own inexperience, plainly stated the evidence
and the law, and let the case go—reserving myself in the
conclusion for a splurge, if I chose to make one. But the
evil genius that presides over the first bantlings of all lawyerlings,
would have it otherwise. The citizens of the town
and those of the country, then in the village, had gathered

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

in great numbers into the courthouse to hear the speeches,
and I could not miss such an opportunity for display.

Looking over the jury I found them a plain, matter-of-fact
looking set of fellows; but I did not note, or probably
know a fact or two about them, which I found out afterwards.

I started, as I thought, in pretty good style. As I went
on, however, my fancy began to get the better of my judgment.
Argument and common sense grew tame. Poetry
and declamation, and, at last, pathos and fiery invective,
took their place. I grew as quotatious as Richard Swiveller.
Shakspeare suffered. I quoted, among other things
of less value and aptness, “He who steals my purse steals
trash,” &c. I spoke of the woful sufferings of my poor
client, almost heart-broken beneath the weight of the terrible
persecutions of his enemy: and, growing bolder, I turned
on old Kasm, and congratulated the jury that the genius of
slander had found an appropriate defender in the genius of
chicane and malignity. I complimented the jury on their
patience—on their intelligence—on their estimate of the
value of character; spoke of the public expectation—of that
feeling outside of the box which would welcome with thundering
plaudits the righteous verdict the jury would render;
and wound up by declaring that I had never known a case
of slander so aggravated in the course of my practice at
that bar; and felicitated myself that its grossness and barbarity
justified my client in relying upon even the youth and
inexperience of an unpractised advocate, whose poverty of

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

resources was unaided by opportunities of previous preparation.
Much more I said that happily has now escaped me.

When I concluded Sam Hicks and one or two other
friends gave a faint sign of applause—but not enough to
make any impression.

I observed that old Kasm held his head down when I
was speaking. I entertained the hope that I had cowed
him! His usual port was that of cynical composure, or
bold and brazen defiance. It was a special kindness if he
only smiled in covert scorn: that was his most amiable expression
in a trial.

But when he raised up his head I saw the very devil
was to pay. His face was of a burning red. He seemed
almost to choke with rage. His eyes were blood-shot and
flamed out fire and fury. His queue stuck out behind, and
shook itself stiffly like a buffalo bull's tail when he is about
making a fatal plunge. I had struck him between wind and
water. There was an audacity in a stripling like me bearding
him, which infuriated him. He meant to massacre me—
and wanted to be a long time doing it. It was to be a
regular auto da fé. I was to be the representative of the
young bar, and to expiate his malice against all. The court
adjourned for dinner. It met again after an hour's recess.

By this time the public interest, and especially that of
the bar, grew very great. There was a rush to the privileged
seats, and the sheriff had to command order,—the
shuffling of feet and the pressure of the crowd forward was
so great.

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

I took my seat within the bar, looked around with an
affectation of indifference so belying the perturbation within,
that the same power of acting on the stage would have made
my fortune on that theatre.

Kasm rose—took a glass of water: his hand trembled a
little—I could see that; took a pinch of snuff, and led off
in a voice slow and measured, but slightly—very slightly—
tremulous. By a strong effort he had recovered his composure.
The bar was surprised at his calmness. They all
knew it was affected; but they wondered that he could affect
it. Nobody was deceived by it. We felt assured “it was
the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below.” I thought he
would come down on me in a tempest, and flattered myself
it would soon be over. But malice is cunning. He had no
idea of letting me off so easily.

He commenced by saying that he had been some years
in the practice. He would not say he was an old man: that
would be in bad taste, perhaps. The young gentleman who
had just closed his remarkable speech, harangue, poetic effusion,
or rigmarole, or whatever it might be called, if, indeed,
any name could be safely given to this motley mixture of
incongruous slang—the young gentleman evidently did not
think he was an old man; for he could hardly have been
guilty of such rank indecency as to have treated age with
such disrespect—he would not say with such insufferable impertinence:
and yet, “I am,” he continued, “of age enough
to recollect, if I had charged my memory with so inconsiderable
an event, the day of his birth, and then I was in full

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

practice in this courthouse. I confess, though, gentlemen, I
am old enough to remember the period when a youth's first
appearance at the bar was not signalized by impertinence towards
his seniors; and when public opinion did not think
flatulent bombast and florid trash, picked out of fifth-rate
romances and namby-pamby rhymes, redeemed by the upstart
sauciness of a raw popinjay, towards the experienced
members of the profession he disgraced. And yet, to some
extent, this ranting youth may be right: I am not old in
that sense which disables me from defending myself here by
words, or elsewhere, if need be, by blows: and that, this
young gentleman shall right well know before I have done
with him. You will bear in mind, gentlemen, that what I
say is in self-defence—that I did not begin this quarrel—
that it was forced on me; and that I am bound by no restraints
of courtesy, or of respect, or of kindness. Let
him charge to the account of his own rashness and rudeness,
whatever he receives in return therefor.

“Let me retort on this youth that he is a worthy advocate
of his butcher client. He fights with the dirty weapons
of his barbarous trade, and brings into his speech the reeking
odor of his client's slaughter-house.

“Perhaps something of this congeniality commended
him to the notice of his worthy client, and to this, his first
retainer: and no wonder, for when we heard his vehement
roaring, we might have supposed his client had brought his
most unruly bull-calf into court to defend him, had not the
matter of the roaring soon convinced us the animal was

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

more remarkable for the length of his ears, than even the
power of his lungs. Perhaps the young gentleman has taken
his retainer, and contracted for butchering my client on
the same terms as his client contracts in his line—that is,
on the shares. But I think, gentlemen, he will find the contract
a more dirty than profitable job. Or, perhaps, it might
not be uncharitable to suggest that his client, who seems to
be pretty well up to the business of saving other people's bacon,
may have desired, as far as possible, to save his own;
and, therefore turning from members of the bar who would
have charged him for their services according to their value,
took this occasion of getting off some of his stale wares:
for has not Shakspeare said—(the gentleman will allow me
to quote Shakspeare, too, while yet his reputation survives
his barbarous mouthing of the poet's words)—he knew an
attorney `who would defend a cause for a starved hen, or
leg of mutton fly-blown.' I trust, however, whatever was
the contract, that the gentleman will make his equally worthy
client stand up to it; for I should like, that on one occasion
it might be said the excellent butcher was made to
pay for his swine.

“I find it difficult, gentlemen, to reply to any part of the
young man's effort, except his argument, which is the smallest
part in compass, and, next to his pathos, the most amusing.
His figures of speech are some of them quite good,
and have been so considered by the best judges for the last
thousand years. I must confess, that as to these, I find no
other fault than that they were badly applied and

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

ridiculously pronounced; and this further fault, that they have
become so common-place by constant use, that, unless some
new vamping or felicity of application be given them, they
tire nearly as much as his original matter—videlicet, that
matter which being more ridiculous than we ever heard before,
carries internal evidence of its being his own. Indeed,
it was never hard to tell when the gentleman recurred to
his own ideas. He is like a cat-bird—the only intolerable
discord she makes being her own notes—though she gets on
well enough as long as she copies and cobbles the songs of
other warblers.

“But, gentlemen, if this young orator's argument was
amusing, what shall I say of his pathos? What farce ever
equalled the fun of it? The play of `The Liar' probably
approaches nearest to it, not only in the humor, but in the
veracious character of the incidents from which the humor
comes. Such a face—so woe-begone, so whimpering, as if the
short period since he was flogged at school (probably in
reference to those eggs falsely charged to the hound puppy)
had neither obliterated the remembrance of his juvenile affliction,
nor the looks he bore when he endured it.

“There was something exquisite in his picture of the
woes, the wasting grief of his disconsolate client, the butcher
Higginbotham, mourning—as Rachel mourned for her children—
for his character because it was not. Gentlemen,
look at him! Why he weighs twelve stone now! He has
three inches of fat on his ribs this minute! He would make
as many links of sausage as any hog that ever squealed at

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

midnight in his slaughter pen, and has lard enough in him
to cook it all. Look at his face! why, his chops remind a
hungry man of jowls and greens. If this is a shadow, in
the name of propriety, why didn't he show himself, when in
flesh, at the last Fair, beside the Kentucky ox; that were a
more honest way of making a living than stealing hogs.
But Hig is pining in grief! I wonder the poetic youth—
his learned connsel—did not quote Shakspeare again. `He
never told his'—woe—`but let concealment, like the worm
i' the bud, prey on his damask cheek.' He looked like
Patience on a monument smiling at grief—or beef I should
rather say. But, gentlemen, probably I am wrong; it may
be that this tender-hearted, sensitive butcher, was lean before,
and like Falstaff, throws the blame of his fat on sorrow
and sighing, which `has puffed him up like a bladder.'
(Here Higginbotham left in disgust.)

“There, gentlemen, he goes, `larding the lean earth as
he walks along.' Well has Doctor Johnson said, `who kills
fat oxen should himself be fat.' Poor Hig! stuffed like one
of his own blood-puddings, with a dropsical grief which
nothing short of ten thousand dollars of Swink's money can
cure. Well, as grief puffs him up, I don't wonder that
nothing but depleting another man can cure him.

“And now, gentlemen, I come to the blood and thunder
part of this young gentleman's harangue: empty and vapid;
words and nothing else. If any part of his rigmarole was
windier than any other part, this was it. He turned himself
into a small cascade, making a great deal of noise to

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

make a great deal of froth; tumbling; roaring; foaming;
the shallower it ran all the noisier it seemed. He fretted
and knitted his brows; he beat the air and he vociferated,
always emphasizing the meaningless words most loudly;
he puffed, swelled out and blowed off, until he seemed
like a new bellows, all brass and wind. How he mouthed it—
as those villainous stage players ranting out fustian in a
barn theatre, mimicking—`Who steals my purse, steals trash.'
(I don't deny it.) `'Tis something,' (query?) `nothing,'
(exactly.) `'Tis mine; 'twas his, and has been slave to
thousands—but he who filches from me my good name, robs
me of that which not enricheth him,' (not in the least,) `but
makes me poor indeed;' (just so, but whether any poorer
than before he parted with the encumbrance, is another matter.)

But the young gentleman refers to his youth. He ought
not to reproach us of maturer age in that indirect way: no one
would have suspected it of him, or him of it, if he had not
told it: indeed, from hearing him speak, we were prepared
to give him credit for almost any length of ears. But does
not the youth remember that Grotius was only seventeen
when he was in full practice, and that he was Attorney General
at twenty-two; and what is Grotius to this greater light?
Not the burning of my smoke house to the conflagration of
Moscow!

“And yet, young Grotius tells us in the next breath, that
he never knew such a slander in the course of his practice?
Wonderful, indeed! seeing that his practice has all been

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

done within the last six hours. Why, to hear him talk, you
would suppose that he was an old Continental lawyer, grown
grey in the service. H-i-s p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e! Why he is just in
his legal swaddling clothes! His Practice!! But I don't
wonder he can't see the absurdity of such talk. How long
does it take one of the canine tribe, after birth, to open his
eyes!

“He talked, too, of outside influences; of the public expectations,
and all that sort of demagoguism. I observed
no evidence of any great popular demonstrations in his favor,
unless it be a tailor I saw stamping his feet; but whether
that was because he had sat cross-legged so long he wanted
exercise, or was rejoicing because he had got orders for a new
suit, or a prospect of payment for an old one, the gentleman
can possibly tell better than I can. (Here Hicks left.) However,
if this case is to be decided by the populace here, the
gentleman will allow me the benefit of a writ of error to the
regimental muster, to be held, next Friday, at Reinhert's Distillery.

“But, I suppose he meant to frighten you into a verdict,
by intimating that the mob, frenzied by his eloquence, would
tear you to pieces if you gave a verdict for defendant; like
the equally eloquent barrister out West, who, concluding a
case, said, `Gentlemen, my client are as innocent of stealing
that cotting as the Sun at noonday, and if you give it agin
him, his brother, Sam Ketchins, next muster, will maul every
mother's son of you.' I hope the Sheriff will see to his
duty and keep the crowd from you, gentlemen, if you should
give us a verdict!

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

“But, gentlemen, I am tired of winnowing chaff; I have
not had the reward paid by Gratiano for sifting his discourse:
the two grains of wheat to the bushel. It is all froth—all
wind—all bubble.”

Kasm left me here for a time, and turned upon my client.
Poor Higginbotham caught it thick and heavy. He wooled
him, then skinned him, and then took to skinning off the under
cuticle. Hig never skinned a beef so thoroughly. He
put together all the facts about the witnesses' hearing the
hogs squealing at night; the different marks of the hogs; the
losses in the neighborhood; perverted the testimony and
supplied omissions, until you would suppose, on hearing him,
that it had been fully proved that poor Hig had stolen all
the meat he had ever sold in the market. He asseverated
that this suit was a malicious conspiracy between the Methodists
and Masons, to crush his client. But all this I leave
out, as not bearing on the main subject—myself.

He came back to me with a renewed appetite. He said
he would conclude by paying his valedictory respects to his
juvenile friend—as this was the last time he ever expected
to have the pleasure of meeting him.

“That poetic young gentleman had said, that by your
verdict against his client, you would blight for ever his reputation
and that of his family—`that you would bend down
the spirit of his manly son, and dim the radiance of his blooming
daughter's beauty.' Very pretty, upon my word! But,
gentlemen, not so fine—not so poetical by half, as a precious
morceau of poetry which adorns the columns of the village

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

newspaper, bearing the initials J. C. R. As this admirable
production has excited a great deal of applause in the nurseries
and boarding schools, I must beg to read it; not for
the instruction of the gentleman, he has already seen it; but
for the entertainment of the Jury. It is addressed to R***
B***, a young lady of this place. Here it goes.”

Judge my horror, when, on looking up, I saw him take an
old newspaper from his pocket, and, pulling down his spectacles,
begin to read off in a stage-actor style, some verses I
had written for Rose Bell's Album. Rose had been worrying
me for some time, to write her something. To get rid
of her importunities, I had scribbled off a few lines and copied
them in the precious volume. Rose, the little fool,
took them for something very clever (she never had more
than a thimbleful of brains in her doll-baby head)—and was
so tickled with them, that she got her brother, Bill, then
about fourteen, to copy them off, as well as he could, and
take them to the printing office. Bill threw them under the
door; the printer, as big a fool as either, not only published
them, but, in his infernal kindness, puffed them in some critical
commendations of his own, referring to “the gifted author,”
as “one of the most promising of the younger members
of our bar.”

The fun, by this time, grew fast and furious. The country
people, who have about as much sympathy for a young
town lawyer, badgered by an older one, as for a young cub
beset by curs; and who have about as much idea or respect
for poetry, as for witchcraft, joined in the mirth with great

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

The Cure of Poetry [figure description] 458EAF. Image of a courtroom. Kasm is standing and reading while the courtroom, including the portly judge, laughs.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

glee. They crowded around old Kasm, and stamped and
roared as at a circus. The Judge and Sheriff in vain tried
to keep order. Indeed, his honor smiled out loud once or
twice; and to cover his retreat, pretended to cough, and fined
the Sheriff five dollars for not keeping silence in court. Even
the old Clerk, whose immemorial pen behind his right ear,
had worn the hair from that side of his head, and who had
not smiled in court for twenty years, and boasted that Patrick
Henry couldn't disturb him in making up a judgment
entry, actually turned his chair from the desk and put down
his pen: afterwards he put his hand to his head three times
in search of it; forgetting, in his attention to old Kasm, what
he had done with it.

Old Kasm went on reading and commenting by turns. I
forget what the ineffable trash was. I wouldn't recollect it
if I could. My equanimity will only stand a phrase or two
that still lingers in my memory, fixed there by old Kasm's
ridicule. I had said something about my “bosom's anguish”—
about the passion that was consuming me; and, to illustrate
it, or to make the line jingle, put in something about
“Egypt's Queen taking the Asp to her bosom”—which, for
the sake of rhyme or metre, I called “the venomous worm”—
how the confounded thing was brought in, I neither know
nor want to know. When old Kasm came to that, he said
he fully appreciated what the young bard said—he believed
it. He spoke of venomous worms. Now, if he (Kasm) might
presume to give the young gentleman advice, he would recommend
Swain's Patent Vermifuge. He had no doubt that

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

it would effectually cure him of his malady, his love, and last,
but not least, of his rhymes—which would be the happiest
passage in his eventful history.

I couldn't stand it any longer. I had borne it to the last
point of human endurance. When it came only to skinning,
I was there; but when he showered down aquafortis on the
raw, and then seemed disposed to rub it in, I fled. Abii,
erupi, evasi. The last thing I heard was old Kasm calling
me back, amidst the shouts of the audidence—but no more.

The next information I received of the case, was in a letter
that came to me at Natchez, my new residence, from
Hicks, about a month afterwards, telling me that the jury (on
which I should have stated old Kasm had got two infidels
and four anti-masons) had given in a verdict for defendant:
that before the court adjourned, Frank Glendye had got sober,
and moved for a new trial, on the ground that the verdict
was against evidence, and that the plaintiff had not had
justice, by reason of the incompetency of his counsel, and the
abandonment of his cause; and that he got a new trial (as
well he should have done).

I learned through Hicks, some twelve months later, that
the case had been tried; that Frank Glendye had made one
of his greatest and most eloquent speeches; that Glendye
had joined the Temperance Society, and was now one of the
soberest and most attentive men to business at the bar, and
was at the head of it in practice; that Higginbotham had
recovered a verdict of $2000, and had put Swink in for $500
costs, besides.

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

Hicks' letter gave me, too, the melancholy intelligence of
old Kasm's death. He had died in an apoplectic fit, in the
court house, while abusing an old preacher who had testified
against him in a crim. con. case. He enclosed the proceedings
of a bar meeting, in which “the melancholy dispensation
which called our beloved brother hence while in the active
discharge of his duties,” was much deplored; but, with a pious
resignation, which was greatly to be admired, “they submitted
to the will,” &c., and, with a confidence old Kasm
himself, if alive, might have envied, “trusted he had gone to
a better and brighter world,” &c., &c., which carried the doctrine
of Universalism as far as it could well go. They concluded
by resolving that the bar would wear crape on the left
arm for thirty days. I don't know what the rest did, I
didn't. Though not mentioned in his will, he had left me
something to remember him by. Bright be the bloom and
sweet the fragrance of the thistles on his grave!

Reader! I eschewed genius from that day. I took to accounts;
did up every species of paper that came into my office
with a tape string; had pigeon holes for all the bits of paper
about me; walked down the street as if I were just going to
bank and it wanted only five minutes to three o'clock; got
me a green bag and stuffed it full of old newspapers, carefully
folded and labelled; read law, to fit imaginary cases,
with great industry; dunned one of the wealthiest men in the
city for fifty cents; sold out a widow for a twenty dollar debt,
and bought in her things myself, publicly (and gave them
back to her secretly, afterwards); associated only with

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

skinflints, brokers and married men, and discussed investments
and stocks; soon got into business; looked wise and shook
my head when I was consulted, and passed for a “powerful
good judge of law;” confirmed the opinion by reading, in
court, all the books and papers I could lay my hands on, and
clearing out the court-house by hum-drum details, common-place
and statistics, whenever I made a speech at the bar—
and thus, by this course of things, am able to write from my
sugar plantation, this memorable history of the fall of genius
and the rise of solemn humbug! J. C. R.

THE BENCH AND THE BAR.

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

In the month of March, A. D., 1836, the writer of these
faithful chronicles of law-doings in the South West, duly
equipped for forensic warfare, having perused nearly the whole
of Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of
England, left behind him the red hills of his native village,
in the valley of the Shenandoah, to seek his fortune. He
turned his horse's head to the setting sun. His loyalty
to the Old Dominion extorts the explanation that his was
no voluntary expatriation. He went under the compulsion
which produced the author's book—“Urged by hunger and
request of friends.” The gentle momentum of a female slipper,
too, it might as well be confessed, added its moral suasion
to the more pressing urgencies of breakfast, dinner and
supper. To the South West he started because magnificent
accounts came from that sunny land of most cheering and exhilarating
prospects of fussing, quarrelling, murdering, violation
of contracts, and the whole catalogue of crimen falsi—
in fine, of a flush tide of litigation in all of its departments,
civil and criminal. It was extolled as a legal Utopia, peopled

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

by a race of eager litigants, only waiting for the lawyers to come
on and divide out to them the shells of a bountiful system of
squabbling: a California of Law, whose surface strife only
indicated the vast placers of legal dispute waiting in untold
profusion, the presence of a few craftsmen to bring out the
crude suits to some forum, or into chancery for trial or essay.

He resigned prospects of great brilliancy at home. His
family connections were numerous, though those of influence
were lawyers themselves, which made this fact only contingently
beneficial—to wit, the contingency of their dying before
him—which was a sort of remotissima potentia, seeing
they were in the enjoyment of excellent health, the profession
being remarkably salubrious in that village; and seeing further,
that, after their death, their influence might be gone.
Not counting, therefore, too much on this advantage, it was a
well ascertained fact that no man of real talent and energy—
and, of course, every lawyerling has both at the start—had
ever come to that bar, who did not, in the course of five or
six years, with any thing like moderate luck, make expenses,
and, surviving that short probation on board wages, lay up
money, ranging from $250 to $500, according to merit and
good fortune, per annum. In evidence of the correctness of
this calculation, it may be added that seven young gentlemen,
all of fine promise, were enjoying high life—in upper stories—
cultivating the cardinal virtues of Faith and Hope in themselves,
and the greater virtue of Charity in their friends—
the only briefs as yet known to them being brief of money
and brief of credit; their barrenness of fruition in the day

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

time relieved by oriental dreams of fairy clients, with fifteen
shilling fees in each hand, and glorious ten dollar contingents
in the perspective, beckoning them on to Fame and Fortune.
But Poverty, the rugged mother of the wind-sellers of all
times and countries, as poor Peter Peebles so irreverently
calls our honorable craft,—the Necessity which knows no
Law, yet teaches so much of it, tore him from scenes and
prospects of such allurement: with the heroism of old Regulus,
he turned his back upon his country and put all to hazard—
videlicet, a pony valued at $35, a pair of saddle-bags
and contents, a new razor not much needed at that early day,
and $75 in Virginia bank bills.

Passing leisurely along through East Tennessee, he was
struck with the sturdy independence of the natives, of the
enervating refinements of artificial society and its concomitants;
not less than with the patriotic encouragement they
extended to their own productions and manufactures: the
writer frequently saw pretty farmers' daughters working barefooted
in the field, and his attention was often drawn to the
number of the distilleries and to evident symptoms of a liberal
patronage of their products. He stopped at a seat of
Justice for half a day, while court was in session, to witness
the manner in which the natives did up judicature; but with
the exception of a few cases under a statute of universal authority
and delicacy, he saw nothing of special interest; and
these did not seem to excite much attention beyond the domestic
circle.

The transition from East Tennessee to South Western

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

Alabama and East Mississippi was something marked. It
was somewhat like a sudden change from “Sleepy Hollow”
to the Strand. A man, retailing onions by the dozen in
Weathersfield, and the same man suddenly turned into a
real estate broker in San Francisco, would realize the contrast
between the picayune standard of the one region, and
the wild spendthriftism, the impetuous rush and the magnificent
scale of operations in the other.

The writer pitched his tabernacle on the thither side of
the state line of Alabama, in the charming village of P., one
of the loveliest hamlets of the plain, or rather it would be,
did it not stand on a hill. Gamblers, then a numerous class,
included, the village boasted a population of some five hundred
souls; about a third of whom were single gentlemen who
had come out on the vague errand of seeking their fortune,
or the more definite one of seeking somebody else's; philosophers
who mingled the spirit of Anacreon with the enterprise
of Astor, and who enjoyed the present as well as laid projects
for the future, to be worked out for their own profit upon the
safe plan of some other person's risk.

Why he selected this particular spot for his locus in quo,
is easily told. The capital he had invested in emigration
was nearly expended and had not as yet declared any dividend;
and, with native pride, he was ambitious to carry money
enough with him to excite the hopes of his landlord. Besides,
he was willing to try his hand on the practice where
competition was not formidable.

The “accommodations” at the “American Hotel” were

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

not such as were calculated to beguile a spiritual mind to
things of sense. The writer has been at the Astor, the Revere
and the St. Charles since, and did not note the resemblance.
A huge cross-piece, like a gibbet, stood before the
door—the usual inn-sign of the country; and though a very
apt device as typifying death, it was not happy in denoting
the specific kind of destruction that menaced the guest. The
vigor of his constitution, however, proved sufficient for the
trial; though, for a long time, the contest was dubious.

In the fall of the year so scarce were provisions—bullbeef
excepted, which seemed to be every where—that we
were forced to eat green corn, baked or fried with lard, for
bread; and he remembers, when biscuits came again, a mad
wag, Jim Cole, shouted out from the table that he should certainly
die now, for want of a new bolting cloth to his throat.

A shed for an office procured, the next thing was a license;
and this a Circuit Judge was authorized to grant,
which service was rendered by the Hon. J. F. T. in a manner
which shall ever inspire gratitude—he asking not a single
legal question; an eloquent silence which can never be appreciated
except by those who are unable to stand an examination.

This egotism over, and its purpose of merely introducing
the witness accomplished, the narrative will proceed without
further mention of him or his fortunes; and if any reader
thinks he loses any thing by this abbreviation, perhaps it will
be full consolation to him to know that if it proceeded further,
the author might lose a great deal more,

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

Dropping the third for the more convenient first person,
he will proceed to give some account of what was done by or
to Themis in that part of her noisy domain.

Those were jolly times. Imagine thirty or forty young
men collected together in a new country, armed with fresh
licenses which they had got gratuitously, and a plentiful
stock of brass which they had got in the natural way; and
standing ready to supply any distressed citizen who wanted
law, with their wares counterfeiting the article. I must confess
it looked to me something like a swindle. It was doing
business on the wooden nutmeg, or rather the patent brass-clock
principle. There was one consolation: the clients were
generally as sham as the counsellors. For the most part,
they were either broke or in a rapid decline. They usually
paid us the compliment of retaining us, but they usually retained
the fee too, a double retainer we did not much fancy.
However, we got as much as we were entitled to and something
over, videlicet, as much over as we got at all. The
most that we made was experience. We learned before long,
how every possible sort of case could be successfully lost; there
was no way of getting out of court that we had not tested. The
last way we learned was via a verdict: it was a considerable
triumph to get to the jury, though it seemed a sufficiently
easy matter to get away from one again. But the perils of
the road from the writ to an issue or issues—for there were
generally several of them—were great indeed. The way was
infested and ambushed, with all imaginable points of practice,

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

quirks and quibbles, that had strayed off from the litigation
of every sort of foreign judicature,—that had been successfully
tried in, or been driven out of, regularly organized forums,
besides a smart sprinkling of indigenous growth. Nothing
was settled. Chaos had come again, or rather, had never
gone away. Order, Heaven's first law, seemed unwilling to
remain where there was no other law to keep it company. I
spoke of the thirty or forty barristers on their first legs—
but I omitted to speak of the older members who had had
the advantage of several years' practice and precedence.
These were the leaders on the Circuit. They had the law—
that is the practice and rulings of the courts—and kept it as
a close monopoly. The earliest information we got of it was
when some precious dogma was drawn out on us with fatal
effect. They had conned the statutes for the last fifteen
years, which were inaccessible to us, and we occasionally,
much to our astonishment, got the benefit of instruction in a
clause or two of “the act in such cases made and provided”
at a considerable tuition fee to be paid by our clients. Occasionally,
too, a repealed statute was revived for our especial
benefit. The courts being forbidden to charge except as specially
asked, took away from us, in a great measure, the protection
of the natural guardians of our ignorant innocence:
there could be no prayer for general relief, and we did not—
many of us—know how to pray specially, and always ran
great risks of prejudicing our cases before the jury, by having
instructions refused. It was better to trust to the “uncovenanted
mercies” of the jury, and risk a decision on the

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

honesty of the thing, than blunder along after charges. As
to reserving points except as a bluff or scarecrow, that was a
thing unheard of: the Supreme Court was a perfect terra incognita:
we had all heard there was such a place, as we had
heard of Heaven's Chancery, to which the Accusing Spirit
took up Uncle Toby's oath, but we as little knew the way there,
and as little expected to go there. Out of one thousand
cases, butchered in cold blood without and with the forms of
law, not one in that first year's practice, ever got to the High
Court of Errors and Appeals; (or, as Prentiss called it, the
Court of High Errors and Appeals.) No wonder we never
started. How could we ever get them there? If we had to
run a gauntlet of technicalities and quibbles to get a judgment
on “a plain note of hand,” in the Circuit Court, Tam
O'Shanter's race through the witches, would be nothing to
the journey to and through the Supreme Court! It would
have been a writ of error indeed—or rather a writ of many
errors. This is but speculation, however—we never tried it—
the experiment was too much even for our brass. The
leaders were a good deal but not generally retained. The
reason was, they wanted the money, or like Falstaff's mercer,
good security; a most uncomfortable requisition with the
mass of our litigants. We, of the local bar trusted—so did
our clients: it is hard to say which did the wildest credit
business.

The leaders were sharp fellows—keen as briars—au fait
in all trap points—quick to discern small errors—perfect in
forms and ceremonies—very pharisees in “anise, mint and

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

cummin—but neglecting judgment and the weightier matters
of the law.” They seemed to think that judicature was
a tanyard—clients skins to be curried—the court the mill,
and the thing “to work on their leather” with—bark: the
idea that justice had any thing to do with trying causes, or
sense had any thing to do with legal principles, never seemed
to occur to them once, as a possible conception.

Those were quashing times, and they were the out quashingest
set of fellows ever known. They moved to quash every
thing, from a venire to a subpœna: indeed, I knew one of
them to quash the whole court, on the ground that the Board
of Police was bound by law to furnish the building for holding
the Court, and there was no proof that the building in
which the court was sitting was so furnished. They usually,
however, commenced at the capias—and kept quashing on
until they got to the forthcoming bond which, being set aside,
released the security for the debt, and then, generally, it was
no use to quash any thing more. In one court, forthcoming
bonds, to the amount of some hundred thousands of dollars,
were quashed, because the execution was written “State of
Mississippi”—instead of “the State of Mississippi,” the constitution
requiring the style of process to be the State of
Mississippi: a quashing process which vindicated the constitution
at the expense of the foreign creditors in the matter
of these bonds, almost as effectively as a subsequent vindication
in respect of other bonds, about which more clamor was
raised.

Attachments were much resorted to, there being about

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

that time as the pressure was coming on, a lively stampede
to Texas. It became the interest of the debtors and their
securities, and of rival creditors, to quash these, and quashed
they were, almost without exception. J. H. was sheriff of
W., and used to keep a book in which he noted the disposition
of the cases called on the docket. Opposite nearly every
attachment case, was the brief annotation—“quashed for
the lack of form.” This fatality surprised me at first, as the
statute declared the attachment law should be liberally construed,
and gave a form, and the act required only the substantial
requisites of the form to be observed: but it seems
the form given for the bond in the statute, varied materially
from the requirements of the statute in other portions of the
act: and so the circuit courts held the forms to be a sort of
legislative gull trap, by following which, the creditor lost his
debt.

This ingenious turn for quibbling derived great assistance
and many occasions of exercise from the manner in which
business had been done, and the character of the officials who
did it, or rather who didn't do it. The justices of the peace,
probate judges, and clerks, and sheriffs, were not unfrequently
in a state of as unsophisticated ignorance of conventionalities
as could be desired by J. J. Rousseau or any other eulogist
of the savage state. They were all elected by the people,
who neither knew nor cared whether they were qualified or
not. If they were “good fellows” and wanted the office,
that is, were too poor and lazy to support themselves in any
other way, that was enough. If poor John Rogers, with

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

nine small children and one at the breast, had been in Mississippi
instead of Smithfield, he could have got any office he
wanted, that is, if he had quit preaching and taken to treating.
The result of these official blunders was, that about
every other thing done at all, was done wrong: indeed, the
only question was as between void and voidable. Even in
capital cases, the convictions were worth nothing—the record
not showing enough to satisfy the High Court that the prisoner
was tried in the county, or at the place required by law,
or that the grand jury were freeholders, &c., of the county
where the offence was committed, or that they had found a
bill. They had put an old negro, Cupid, in C— county,
in question for his life, and convicted him three times, but
the conviction never would stick. The last time the jury
brought him in guilty, he was very composedly eating an
apple. The sheriff asked him how he liked the idea of being
hung. “Hung,” said he—“hung! You don't think they
are going to hang me, do you? I don't mind these little
circuit judges: wait till old Shurkey says the word in the
High Court, and then it will be time enough to be getting
ready.”

But if quashing was the general order of the day, it was
the special order when the State docket was taken up.
Such quashing of indictments! It seemed as by a curious
display of skill in missing, the pleader never could get an
indictment to hold water. I recollect S., who was prosecuting
pro tem. for the State, convicted a poor Indian of murder,
the Indian having only counsel volunteering on his

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

arraignment; S. turned around and said with emphatic complacency:
“I tell you, gentlemen, there is a fatality attending
my indictments.” “Yes,” rejoined B., “they are generally
quashed.”

It was in criminal trials that the juniors flourished.
We went into them with the same feeling of irresponsibility
that Allen Fairfield went into the trial of poor Peter Peeble's
suit vs. Plainstaines, namely—that there was but little
danger of hurting the case. Any ordinary jury would have
acquitted nine cases out of ten without counsel's instigating
them thereto—to say nothing of the hundred avenues of escape
through informalities and technical points. In fact,
criminals were so unskilfully defended in many instances,
that the jury had to acquit in spite of the counsel. Almost
any thing made out a case of self-defence—a threat—a quarrel—
an insult—going armed, as almost all the wild fellows
did—shooting from behind a corner, or out of a store door,
in front or from behind—it was all self-defence! The only
skill in the matter, was in getting the right sort of a jury,
which fact could be easily ascertained, either from the general
character of the men, or from certain discoveries the
defendant had been enabled to make in his mingling among
“his friends and the public generally,”—for they were all,
or nearly all, let out on bail or without it. Usually, the
sheriff, too, was a friendly man, and not inclined to omit a
kind service that was likely to be remembered with gratitude
at the next election.

The major part of criminal cases, except misdemeanors,

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

were for killing, or assaults with intent to kill. They were
usually defended upon points of chivalry. The iron rules
of British law were too tyrannical for free Americans, and
too cold and unfeeling for the hot blood of the sunny south.
They were denounced accordingly, and practically scouted
from Mississippi judicature, on the broad ground that they
were unsuited to the genius of American institutions and
the American character. There was nothing technical in
this, certainly.

But if the case was a hopeless or very dangerous one,
there was another way to get rid of it. “The world was all
before” the culprit “where to choose.” The jails were in
such a condition—generally small log pens—that they held
the prisoner very little better than did the indictment: for
the most part, they held no one but Indians, who had no
friend outside who could help them, and no skill inside to
prize out. It was a matter of free election for the culprit
in a desperate case, whether he would remain in jail or not;
and it is astonishing how few exercised their privilege in
favor of staying. The pains of exile seemed to present no
stronger bars to expatriation, than the jail doors or windows.

The inefficiency of the arresting officers, too, was generally
such that the malefactor could wind up his affairs and
leave before the constable was on his track. If he gave bail,
there were the chances of breaking the bond or recognizance,
and the assurance against injury, derived from the fact that
the recognizors were already broke.

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

The aforesaid leaders carried it with a high hand over
us lawyerlings. If they took nothing by their false clamor,
they certainly lost nothing by sleeping on their rights, or by
failing to claim all they were entitled to. What they couldn't
get by asking the court, they got by sneering and brow-beating.
It was pleasant to watch the countenances of some of
them when one of us made a motion, or took a point, or asked
a question of a witness that they disapproved of. They
could sneer like Malgroucher, and scold like Madame Caudle,
and hector like Bully Ajax.

We had a goodly youth, a little our senior but more
their junior, a goodly youth from the Republic of South
Carolina, Jim T. by name. The elders had tried his mettle:
he wouldn't fag for them, but stood up to them like a man.
When he came to the bar, Sam J. made a motion at him on
the motion docket, requiring him to produce his original
book of entries on the trial or be non suit. (He had brought
an action of assumpsit on a blacksmith's account.) When
the case was called, Sam demanded whether the book was in
court. Jim told him “No, and it wouldn't be,” and denied
his right to call for it; whereupon, Sam let the motion go,
and suffered Jim T. to go on and prove the account and get
the verdict; a feat worthy of no little praise. Jim was equal
to any of them in law, knowledge and talent, and superior in
application and self-confidence, if that last could be justly
said of mere humanity. He rode over us rough-shod, but we
forgave him for it in consideration of his worrying the elders,
and standing up to the rack. He was the best lawyer of his

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

age I had ever seen. He had accomplished himself in the
elegant science of special pleading,—had learned all the arts
of confusing a case by all manner of pleas and motions, and
took as much interest in enveloping a plain suit in all the
cobwebs of technical defence as Vidocq ever took in laying
snares for a rogue. He could “entangle justice in such a
web of law,” that the blind hussey could have never found
her way out again if Theseus had been there to give her the
clew. His thought by day and his meditation by night,
was special pleas. He loved a demurrer as Domine Dobiensis
loved a pun—with a solemn affection. He could draw
a volume of pleas a night, each one so nearly presenting a
regular defence, that there was scarcely any telling whether
it hit it or not. If we replied, ten to one he demurred to
the replication, and would assign fifteen special causes of demurrer
in as many minutes. If we took issue, we ran an
imminent risk of either being caught up on the facts, or of
having the judgment set aside as rendered on an immaterial
issue. It was always dangerous to demur, for the demurrer
being overruled, the defendant was entitled to judgment
final. Cases were triable at the first term, if the writ had
been served twenty days before court. It may be seen, therefore,
at a glance, that, with an overwhelming docket, and
without books, or time to consult them if at hand, and without
previous knowledge, we were not reposing either on a
bed of roses or of safety. Jim T. was great on variances, too.
If the note was not described properly in the declaration,
we were sure to catch it before the jury: and, if any point

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

could be made on the proofs, he was sure to make it. How
we trembled when we began to read the note to the jury!
And how ominous seemed the words “I object”—of a most
cruel and untimely end about being put to our case. How
many cases where, on a full presentment of the legal merits
of them, there was no pretence of a defence, he gained, it is impossible
to tell. But if the ghosts of the murdered victims
could now arise, Macbeth would have had an easy time of it
compared with Jim T. How we admired, envied, feared and
hated him! With what a bold, self-relying air he took his
points! With what sarcastic emphasis he replied to our defences
and half defences! We thought that he knew all the
law there was: and when, in a short time, he caught the old
leaders up, we thought if we couldn't be George Washington,
how we should like to be Jim T.

He has risen since that time to merited distinction as a
ripe and finished lawyer; yet, “in his noon of fame,” he never
so tasted the luxury of power,—never so knew the bliss
of envied and unapproached preëmenence, as when in the old
log court-houses he was throwing the boys right and left as
fast as they came to him, by pleas dilatory, sham and meritorious,
demurrers, motions and variances. So infallible was
his skill in these infernal arts, that it was almost a tempting
of Providence not to employ him.

I never thought Jim acted altogether fairly by squire A.
The squire had come to the bar rather late in life, and though
an excellent justice and a sensible man, was not profoundly
versed in the metaphysics of special pleading. He was

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

particularly pleased when he got to a jury on `a plain note,' and
particularly annoyed when the road was blocked up by pleas
in abatement and demurrers or special pleas in bar. He
had the most unlimited admiration of Jim. Indeed, he had
an awful reverence for him. He looked up to him as Boswell
looked up to Sam Johnson, or Timothy to Paul. The
squire had a note he was anxious to get judgment on. He
had declared with great care and after anxious deliberation.
Not only was the declaration copied from the most approved
precedent, but the common counts were all put in with
all due punctilios, to meet every imaginable phase the case
could assume. Jim found a variance in the count on the
note: but how to get rid of the common counts was the difficulty.
He put a bold face on the matter, however, went
up to A. in the court-house, and threw himself into a passion.
“Well,” said he, with freezing dignity—“I see, sir
you have gone and put the common counts in this declaration—
do I understand you to mean them to stand? I desire
to be informed, sir?” “Why, y-e-s, that is, I put 'em there—
but look here, H—, what are you mad at? What's
wrong?” “What's wrong?”—a pretty question! Do you
pretend, sir, that my client ever borrowed any money of
yours—that yours ever paid out money for mine? Did your
client ever give you instructions to sue mine for borrowed
money? No, sir, you know he didn't. Is that endorsed on
the writ? No, sir. Don't you know the statute requires
the cause of action to be endorsed on the capias ad respondendum?
I mean to see whether an action for a malicious

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suit wouldn't lie for this; and shall move to strike out all
these counts as multifarious and incongruous and heterogeneous.”
“Well, Jim, don't get mad about it, old fellow—I
took it from the books.” “Yes, from the English books—but
didn't you know we don't govern ourselves by the British
statute?—if you don't, I'll instruct you.” “Now,” said A.,
“Jim, hold on—all I want is a fair trial—if you will let me
go to the jury, I'll strike out these common counts.” “Well,”
said Jim, “I will this time, as it is you; but let this be a
warning to you, A., how you get to suing my clients on promiscuous,
and fictitious, and pretensed causes of action.”

Accordingly they joined issue on the count in chief—A.
offered to read his note—H. objected—it was voted out, and
A. was nonsuited. “Now,” said Jim, “that is doing the
thing in the regular way. See how pleasant it is to get on
with business when the rules are observed!”

The case of most interest at the fall term of N—e court,
1837, was the State of Mississippi vs. Major Foreman, charged
with assault with intent to kill one Tommy Peabody, a
Yankee schoolmaster in the neighborhood of M—ville. The
District Attorney being absent, the court appointed J. T. to
prosecute. All the preliminary motions and points of order
having been gone through, and having failed of success, the
defendant had to go to trial before the jury. The defendant
being a warm democrat, selected T. M., the then leader of
that party, and Washington B. T., then a rising light of the
same political sect, to defend him. The evidence was not

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very clear or positive. It seemed that an altercation had
arisen at the grocery (fashionably called doggery), between
a son of the defendant and the schoolmaster, which led to
the shooting of the pistol by the younger F. at the aforesaid
Thomas, as the said Thomas was making his way with equal
regard to speed of transit and safety of conveyance from that
locality. As it was Thomas's business to teach the young
idea to shoot, he had no idea of putting to hazard “the delightful
task” by being shot himself: and by thinking him
of “what troubles do environ the man that meddles with cold
iron” on the drawing thereof, resolved himself into a committee
of safety, and proceeded energetically to the dispatch
of the appropriate business of the board. But fast as Thomas
travelled, a bevy of mischievous buckshot, as full of devilment
as Thomas's scholars just escaped from school, rushed
after, and one of them, striking him about two feet above
the calf of his right leg, made his seat on the scholastic tripod
for a while rather unpleasant to him. In fact, Thomas
suffered a good deal in that particular region in which he
had been the cause of much suffering in others. Thomas
also added to the fun naturally attaching, in the eyes of
the mercurial and reckless population of the time, to a Yankee
schoolmaster's being shot while running, in so tender a
point, by clapping his hands behind at the fire, and bellowing
out that the murderer had blown out his brains! A mistake
very pardonable in one who had come fresh from a country
where pistols were not known, and who could not be expected,
under these distressing circumstances, to estimate, with
much precision, the effect of a gun-shot wound.

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

Young Foreman, immediately after the pistol went off,
followed its example. And not being of a curious turn, did
not come back to see what the sheriff had done with a document
he had for him, though assured that it related to important
business. The proof against him—as it usually was
against any one who couldn't be hurt by it—was clear enough,
but it was not so much so against his father. The Major was
there, had participated in the quarrel, and about the time of
the firing, a voice the witness took—but wasn't certain—to
be the Major's, was heard to cry out, “Shoot! Shoot!” and,
shortly after the firing, the Major was heard to halloo to
Peabody, “Run—Run, you d—d rascal—run!” This was
about the strength of the testimony. The Major was a gentleman
of about fifty-five—of ruddy complexion, which he
had got out of a jug he kept under his bed of cold nights,
without acknowledging his obligations for the loan—about
five feet eight inches high and nearly that much broad. Nature
or accident had shortened one leg, so that he limped
when he walked. His eyes stood out and were streaked like
a boy's white alley—and he wore a ruffled shirt; the same,
perhaps, which he had worn on training days in Georgia, but
which did not match very well with a yellow linsey vest,
and a pair of copperas-colored jeans pantaloons he had
squeezed in the form of a crescent over his protuberant
paunch: on the whole, he was a pretty good live parody on
an enormous goggle-eyed sun perch.

He had come from Georgia, where he had been a major
in the militia, if that is not tautology; for I believe that

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

every man that ever comes from Georgia is a major,—repaying
the honor of the commission or title by undeviating fidelity
to the democratic ticket. He would almost as soon been
convicted as to have been successfully defended by a whig
lawyer.

Old F. held up his head for some time—indeed, seemed
to enjoy the mirth that was going on during the testimony,
very much. But when J. T. began to pour broadside after
broadside into him, and bring up fact after fact and appeal
after appeal, and the court-house grew still and solemn, the
old fellow could stand it no longer. Like the Kentucky
militia at New Orleans, he ingloriously fled, sneaking out
when no one was looking at him. The sheriff, however,
soon missed him, and seeing him crossing the bridge and
moving towards the swamp, raised a posse and followed after.
The trial in the mean time proceeded—as did the Major.

I said he was defended in part by W. B. T.

You didn't know Wash? Well, you missed a good
deal. He would have impressed you. He was about
thirty years old at the time I am writing of. He came to
N. from East Tennessee, among whose romantic mountains
he had “beat the drum ecclesiastic” as a Methodist preacher.
He had, however, doffed the cassock, or rather, the shadbelly,
for the gown. He had fallen from grace—not a high
fall—and having warred against the devil for a time—a quarter
or more—Dalgetty-like, he got him a law license, and
took arms on the other side. His mind was not cramped,
nor his originality fettered by technical rules or other

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

learning. His voice, had not affectation injured the effect of it,
was remarkably fine, full, musical and sonorous, and of any
degree of compass and strength. He was as fluent of words
as a Frenchman. He was never known to falter for a word,
and if he ever paused for an idea, he paused in vain. He
practised on his voice as on an organ, and had as many ups
and downs, high keys and low, as many gyrations and windings
as an opera singer or a stage horn. H. G—y used to
say of him that he just shined his eyes, threw up his arms,
twirled his tongue, opened his mouth, and left the consequences
to heaven. He practised on the injunction to the apostles,
and took no thought what he should say, but spoke
without labor—mental or physical. To add to the charms
of his delivery, he wore a poppaw smile, a sort of sickly-sweet
expression on his countenance, that worked like Dover's
powders on the spectator.

After J. T. had concluded his opening speech, Washington
rose to open for the defence. The speech was a remarkable
specimen of forensic eloquence. It had all the charms
of Counsellor Phillips' most ornate efforts, lacking only the
ideas. Great was the sensation when Wash. turned upon
the prosecutor. “Gentlemen of the jury,” said the orator,
“this prosecutor is one of the vilest ingrates that ever
lived since the time of Judas Iscariot; for, gentlemen, did
you not hear from the witnesses, that when this prosecutor
was in the very extremity of his peril, my client, moved by
the tenderest emotions of pity and compassion, shouted out,
`Run! run! you d—d rascal—run!' It is true (lowering

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

his voice and smiling), gentlemen, he said `you d—d rascal,'
but the honorable court will instruct you that that was merely
descriptio personæ.” The effect was prodigious.

After Washington had made an end, old Tallabola rose
slowly, as if oppressed by the weight of his subject. Now
T. never made a jury speech without telling an anecdote.
Whatever else was omitted the anecdote had to come. It is
true, the point and application were both sometimes hard to
see; and it is also true that as T's stock was by no means
extensive, he had to make up in repetition what he lacked
in variety. He had, however, one stand-by which never
failed him. He might be said to have chartered it. He
had told it until it had got to be a necessity of speech.
The anecdote was a relation of a Georgia major's prowess
in war. It ran thus: The major was very brave when the
enemy was at a distance, and exhorted his men to fight to
the death;—the enemy came nearer—the major told his soldiers
to fight bravely, but to be prudent;—the foe came in
sight, their arms gleaming in the sunshine—and the major
told the men that, if they could not do better, they ought to
retreat; and added he, “being a little lame, I believe I
will leave now.” And so, said T., it was with the prosecutor.
At length after a long speech, T. concluded. J. T. rose to
reply. He said, before proceeding to the argument, he
would pay his respects to his old acquaintance, the anecdote
of the Georgia major. He had known it a long while, indeed
almost as long as he had known his friend T. It had
afforded him amusement for many courts—how many he

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

couldn't now stop to count. Knowing the major to have been
drafted into Mr. T's speeches for many a campaign, he had
hoped the war-worn veteran had been discharged from duty
and pensioned off, in consideration of long and hard usage,
or at least, that he was resting on furlough; but it seems he
was still in active service. His friend had not been very
happy in his anecdote on other occasions, but, he must say,
on this occasion he was most felicitously unhappy; for the
DEFENDANT was a major—he was a Georgia major too; unfortunately,
he was a little lame also; and, to complete the
parallel, “in the heat of this action, on looking around,” said
J. T., “I find he has left!” T. jumped up—“No evidence
of that, Mr. H. Confine yourself to the record, if you
please.” “Well,” said J. T., “gentlemen, my friend is a
little restive. You may look around, and judge for yourselves.”
Tallabola never told that anecdote any more;—
he had to get another.

The jury having been sufficiently confused as to the law
by which about twenty abstract propositions bearing various,
and some of them no relation to the facts (the legislature,
in its excessive veneration for the sanctity of jury trial having
prohibited the judges from charging in an intelligible
way), retired from the bar to consider of their verdict. In
a few moments they returned into court. But where was
the prisoner? Like Lara, he wouldn't come. The court refused
to receive the verdict in the absence of the defendant.
Finally, after waiting a long while, the Major was brought,
an officer holding on to each arm, and a crowd following at

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

his heels. (The Major had been caught in the swamp.)
When he came in, he thought he was a gone sucker. The
court directed the clerk to call over the jury: they were
called, and severally answered to their names. The perspiration
rolled from the Major's face—his eyes stuck out as
if he had been choked. At the end of the call, the judge
asked “Are you agreed on your verdict?” The foreman
answered “Yes,” and handed to the clerk the indictment
on which the verdict was endorsed. The clerk read it slowly.
“We—the jury—find the—de—fen—dant (the Major
held his breath) not guilty.” One moment more and he
had fainted. He breathed easy, then uttering a sort of relieving
groan shortly after, he came to Tallabola—“Tal,”
said he, blubbering and wiping his nose on his cuff, “I'm
going to quit the dimmycratic party and jine the whigs.”
“Why, Major,” said Tal, “what do you mean? you're one
of our chief spokes at your box. Don't you believe in our
doctrines?” “Yes,” said the Major, “I do; but after my
disgraceful run I'm not fit to be a dimmycrat any longer—
I'd disgrace the party—and am no better than a dratted,
blue-bellied, federal whig!”

HOW THE TIMES SERVED THE VIRGINIANS. VIRGINIANS IN A NEW COUNTRY. THE RISE, DECLINE, AND FALL OF THE RAG EMPIRE.

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

The disposition to be proud and vain of one's country, and
to boast of it, is a natural feeling, indulged or not in respect
to the pride, vanity, and boasting, according to the
character of the native: but, with a Virginian, it is a passion.
It inheres in him even as the flavor of a York river
oyster in that bivalve, and no distance of deportation, and
no trimmings of a gracious prosperity, and no pickling in
the sharp acids of adversity, can destroy it. It is a part of
the Virginia character—just as the flavor is a distinctive
part of the oyster—“which cannot, save by annihilating, die.”
It is no use talking about it—the thing may be right, or
wrong:—like Falstaff's victims at Gadshill, it is past praying
for: it is a sort of cocoa grass that has got into the soil,
and has so matted over it, and so fibred through it, as to
have become a part of it; at least, there is no telling which
is the grass and which is the soil; and certainly it is useless

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

labor to try to root it out. You may destroy the soil, but
you can't root out the grass.

Patriotism with a Virginian is a noun personal. It is
the Virginian himself and something over. He loves Virginia
per se and propter se: he loves her for herself and
for himself—because she is Virginia and—every thing else
beside. He loves to talk about her: out of the abundance
of the heart the mouth speaketh. It makes no odds where
he goes, he carries Virginia with him; not in the entirety
always—but the little spot he came from is Virginia—as
Swedenborg says the smallest part of the brain is an abridgment
of all of it. “Cœlum non animum mutant qui
trans mare current,” was made for a Virginian. He
never gets acclimated elsewhere; he never loses citizenship
to the old Home. The right of expatriation is a pure abstraction
to him. He may breathe in Alabama, but he lives in
Virginia. His treasure is there, and his heart also. If he
looks at the Delta of the Mississippi, it reminds him of
James River “low grounds;” if he sees the vast prairies of
Texas, it is a memorial of the meadows of the Valley.
Richmond is the centre of attraction, the depot of all that
is grand, great, good and glorious. “It is the Kentucky of
a place,” which the preacher described Heaven to be to the
Kentucky congregation.

Those who came many years ago from the borough towns,
especially from the vicinity of Williamsburg, exceed, in attachment
to their birthplace, if possible, the emigrés from
the metropolis. It is refreshing in these costermonger times,

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

to hear them speak of it:—they remember it when the old
burg was the seat of fashion, taste, refinement, hospitality,
wealth, wit, and all social graces; when genius threw its
spell over the public assemblages and illumined the halls of
justice, and when beauty brightened the social hour with her
unmatched and matchless brilliancy.

Then the spirited and gifted youths of the College of old
William and Mary, some of them just giving out the first
scintillations of the genius that afterwards shone refulgent
in the forum and the senate, added to the attractions of a
society gay, cultivated and refined beyond example—even in
the Old Dominion. A hallowed charm seems to rest upon
the venerable city, clothing its very dilapidation in a drapery
of romance and of serene and classic interest: as if all
the sweet and softened splendor which invests the “Midsummer
Night's Dream” were poured in a flood of mellow and
poetic radiance over the now quiet and half “deserted village.”
There is something in the shadow from the old college
walls, cast by the moon upon the grass and sleeping on
the sward, that throws a like shadow soft, sad and melancholy
upon the heart of the returning pilgrim who saunters out
to view again, by moonlight, his old Alma Mater—the nursing
mother of such a list and such a line of statesmen and
heroes.

There is nothing presumptuously froward in this Virginianism.
The Virginian does not make broad his phylacteries
and crow over the poor Carolinian and Tennesseeian. He
does not reproach him with his misfortune of birthplace.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

No, he thinks the affliction is enough without the triumph.
The franchise of having been born in Virginia, and the prerogative
founded thereon, are too patent of honor and distinction
to be arrogantly pretended. The bare mention is
enough. He finds occasion to let the fact be known, and
then the fact is fully able to protect and take care of itself.
Like a ducal title, there is no need of saying more than to
name it: modesty then is a becoming and expected virtue;
forbearance to boast is true dignity.

The Virginian is a magnanimous man. He never throws
up to a Yankee the fact of his birthplace. He feels on the
subject as a man of delicacy feels in alluding to a rope in the
presence of a person, one of whose brothers “stood upon
nothing and kicked at the U. S.,” or to a female indiscretion,
where there had been scandal concerning the family. So far
do they carry this refinement, that I have known one of my
countrymen, on occasion of a Bostonian owning where he was
born, generously protest that he had never heard of it before.
As if honest confession half obliterated the shame of the fact.
Yet he does not lack the grace to acknowledge worth or merit
in another, wherever the native place of that other: for it
is a common thing to hear them say of a neighbor, “he is a
clever fellow, though he did come from New Jersey or even
Connecticut.”

In politics the Virginian is learned much beyond what is
written—for they have heard a great deal of speaking on that
prolific subject, especially by one or two Randolphs and any
number of Barbours. They read the same papers here they

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

read in Virginia—the Richmond Enquirer and the Richmond
Whig. The democrat stoutly asseverates a fact, and
gives the Enquirer as his authority with an air that means to
say, that settles it: while the whig quoted Hampden Pleasants
with the same confidence. But the faculty of personalizing
every thing which the exceeding social turn of a Virginian
gives him, rarely allowed a reference to the paper, eo
nomine; but made him refer to the editor: as “Ritchie
said” so and so, or “Hampden Pleasants said” this or that.
When two of opposite politics got together, it was amusing,
if you had nothing else to do that day, to hear the discussion.
I never knew a debate that did not start ab urbe condita.
They not only went back to first principles, but also to first
times; nor did I ever hear a discussion in which old John
Adams and Thomas Jefferson did not figure—as if an interminable
dispute had been going on for so many generations
between those disputatious personages; as if the quarrel had
begun before time, but was not to end with it. But the
strangest part of it to me was, that the dispute seemed to be
going on without poor Adams having any defence or champion;
and never waxed hotter than when both parties agreed
in denouncing the man of Braintree as the worst of public
sinners and the vilest of political heretics. They both agreed
on one thing, and that was to refer the matter to the Resolutions
of 1798-99; which said Resolutions, like Goldsmith's
“Good Natured Man,” arbitrating between Mr. and Mrs.
Croaker, seemed so impartial that they agreed with both parties
on every occasion.

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

Nor do I recollect of hearing any question debated that
did not resolve itself into a question of constitution—strict
construction, &c.,—the constitution being a thing of that curious
virtue that its chief excellency consisted in not allowing
the government to do any thing; or in being a regular
prize fighter that knocked all laws and legislators into a cocked
hat, except those of the objector's party.

Frequent reference was reciprocally made to “gorgons,
hydras, and chimeras dire,” to black cockades, blue lights,
Essex juntos, the Reign of Terror, and some other mystic
entities—but who or what these monsters were, I never could
distinctly learn; and was surprised, on looking into the history
of the country, to find that, by some strange oversight,
no allusion was made to them.

Great is the Virginian's reverence of great men, that is
to say, of great Virginians. This reverence is not Unitarian.
He is a Polytheist. He believes in a multitude of Virginia
Gods. As the Romans of every province and village had
their tutelary or other divinities, besides having divers national
gods, so the Virginian of every county has his great
man, the like of whom cannot be found in the new country
he has exiled himself to. This sentiment of veneration for
talent, especially for speaking talent,—this amiable propensity
to lionize men, is not peculiar to any class of Virginians
among us: it abides in all. I was amused to hear “old Culpepper,”
as we call him (by nickname derived from the county
he came from), declaiming in favor of the Union. “What,
gentlemen,” said the old man, with a sonorous swell—“what,

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

burst up this glorious Union! and who, if this Union is torn
up, could write another? Nobody except Henry Clay and
J— S. B—, of Culpepper—and may be they wouldn't—and
what then would you do for another?”

The greatest compliment a Virginian can ever pay to a
speaker, is to say that he reminds him of a Col. Broadhorn
or a Captain Smith, who represented some royal-named county
some forty years or less in the Virginia House of Delegates;
and of whom, the auditor, of course, has heard, as he
made several speeches in the capitol at Richmond. But
the force of the compliment is somewhat broken, by a long
narrative, in which the personal reminiscences of the speaker
go back to sundry sketches of the Virginia statesman's efforts,
and recapitulations of his sayings, interspersed par parenthèse,
with many valuable notes illustrative of his pedigree
and performances; the whole of which, given with great historical
fidelity of detail, leaves nothing to be wished for except
the point, or rather, two points, the gist and the period.

It is not to be denied that Virginia is the land of orators,
heroes and statesmen; and that, directly or indirectly, she
has exerted an influence upon the national councils nearly as
great as all the rest of the States combined. It is wonderful
that a State of its size and population should have turned out
such an unprecedented quantum of talent, and of talent as
various in kind as prodigious in amount. She has reason to
be proud; and the other States so largely in her debt (for,
from Cape May to Puget's Sound she has colonized the other
States and the territories with her surplus talent,) ought to

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

allow her the harmless privilege of a little bragging. In the
showy talent of oratory has she especially shone. To accomplish
her in this art the State has been turned into a
debating society, and while she has been talking for the
benefit of the nation, as she thought, the other, and, by nature,
less favored States, have been doing for their own.
Consequently, what she has gained in reputation, she has
lost in wealth and material aids. Certainly the Virginia
character has been less distinguished for its practical than
its ornamental traits, and for its business qualities than for
its speculative temper. Cui bono and utilitarianism, at least
until latterly, were not favorite or congenial inquiries and
subjects of attention to the Virginia politician. What the
Virginian was upon his native soil, that he was abroad; indeed,
it may be said that the amor patriæ, strengthened by
absence, made him more of a conservative abroad than he
would have been if he had staid at home; for most of them
here would not, had they been consulted, have changed
either of the old constitutions.

It is far, however, from my purpose to treat of such
themes. I only glance at them to show their influence on
the character as it was developed on a new theatre.

Eminently social and hospitable, kind, humane and generous
is a Virginian, at home or abroad. They are so by
nature and habit. These qualities and their exercise develope
and strengthen other virtues. By reason of these social
traits, they necessarily become well mannered, honorable,
spirited, and careful of reputation, desirous of pleasing, and

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

skilled in the accomplishments which please. Their insular
position and sparse population, mostly rural, and easy
but not affluent fortunes kept them from the artificial refinements
and the strong temptations which corrupt so much of
the society of the old world and some portions of the new.
There was no character more attractive than that of a young
Virginian, fifteen years ago, of intelligence, of good family,
education and breeding.

It was of the instinct of a Virginian to seek society: he
belongs to the gregarious, not to the solitary division of
animals; and society can only be kept up by grub and gab—
something to eat, and, if not something to talk about, talk.
Accordingly they came accomplished already in the knowledge
and the talent for these important duties.

A Virginian could always get up a good dinner. He
could also do his share—a full hand's work—in disposing
of one after it was got up. The qualifications for hostmanship
were signal—the old Udaller himself, assisted by Claud
Halrco, could not do up the thing in better style, or with a
heartier relish, or a more cordial hospitality. In petite
manners—the little attentions of the table, the filling up of
the chinks of the conversation with small fugitive observations,
the supplying the hooks and eyes that kept the discourse
together, the genial good humor, which, like that of the
family of the good Vicar, made up in laughter what was
wanting in wit—in these, and in the science of getting up
and in getting through a picnic or chowder party, or fish fry,
the Virginian, like Eclipse, was first, and there was no

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

second. Great was he too at mixing an apple toddy, or mint
julep, where ice could be got for love or money; and not deficient,
by any means, when it came to his turn to do honor to
his own fabrics. It was in this department, that he not
only shone but outshone, not merely all others but himself.
Here he was at home indeed. His elocution, his matter,
his learning, his education, were of the first order. He could
discourse of every thing around him with an accuracy and a
fulness which would have put Coleridge's or Mrs. Ellis's table
talk to the blush. Every dish was a text, horticulture,
hunting, poultry, fishing—(Isaac Walton or Daniel Webster
would have been charmed and instructed to hear him discourse
piscatory-wise,)—a slight divergence in favor of foxchasing
and a detour towards a horse-race now and then, and
continual parentheses of recommendation of particular dishes
or glasses—Oh! I tell you if ever there was an interesting
man it was he. Others might be agreeable, but he was fascinating,
irresistible, not-to-be-done-without.

In the fulness of time the new era had set in—the era
of the second great experiment of independence: the experiment,
namely, of credit without capital, and enterprise without
honesty. The Age of Brass had succeeded the Arcadian
period when men got rich by saving a part of their earnings,
and lived at their own cost and in ignorance of the new
plan of making fortunes on the profits of what they owed.
A new theory, not found in the works on political economy,
was broached. It was found out that the prejudice in favor
of the metals (brass excluded) was an absurd superstition;

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

and that, in reality, any thing else, which the parties interested
in giving it currency chose, might serve as a representative
of value and medium for exchange of property; and
as gold and silver had served for a great number of years as
representatives, the republican doctrine of rotation in office
required they should give way. Accordingly it was decided
that Rags, a very familiar character, and very popular and
easy of access, should take their place. Rags belonged to
the school of progress. He was representative of the then
Young America. His administration was not tame. It was
very spirited. It was based on the Bonapartist idea of
keeping the imagination of the people excited. The leading
fiscal idea of his system was to democratize capital, and to
make, for all purposes of trade, credit and enjoyment of
wealth, the man that had no money a little richer, if any thing,
than the man that had a million. The principle of success
and basis of operation, though inexplicable in the hurry of the
time, is plain enough now: it was faith. Let the public believe
that a smutted rag is money, it is money: in other
words, it was a sort of financial biology, which made, at
night, the thing conjured for, the thing that was seen, so far
as the patient was concerned, while the fit was on him—except
that now a man does not do his trading when under the
mesmeric influence: in the flush times he did.

This country was just settling up. Marvellous accounts
had gone forth of the fertility of its virgin lands; and the
productions of the soil were commanding a price remunerating
to slave labor as it had never been remunerated before.

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

Emigrants came flocking in from all quarters of the Union,
especially from the slaveholding States. The new country
seemed to be a reservoir, and every road leading to it a vagrant
stream of enterprise and adventure. Money, or what
passed for money, was the only cheap thing to be had. Every
cross-road and every avocation presented an opening,—
through which a fortune was seen by the adventurer in near
perspective. Credit was a thing of course. To refuse it—
if the thing was ever done—were an insult for which a bowieknife
were not a too summary or exemplary a means of redress.
The State banks were issuing their bills by the
sheet, like a patent steam printing-press its issues; and no
other showing was asked of the applicant for the loan than
an authentication of his great distress for money. Finance,
even in its most exclusive quarter, had thus already got, in
this wonderful revolution, to work upon the principles of
the charity hospital. If an overseer grew tired of supervising
a plantation and felt a call to the mercantile life, even
if he omitted the compendious method of buying out a merchant
wholesale, stock, house and good will, and laying down,
at once, his bull-whip for the yard-stick—all he had to do
was to go on to New-York, and present himself in Pearlstreet
with a letter avouching his citizenship, and a clean
shirt, and he was regularly given a through ticket to speedy
bankruptcy.

Under this stimulating process prices rose like smoke.
Lots in obscure villages were held at city prices; lands,
bought at the minimum cost of government, were sold at

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

from thirty to forty dollars per acre, and considered dirt
cheap at that. In short, the country had got to be a full
ante-type of California, in all except the gold. Society was
wholly unorganized: there was no restraining public opinion:
the law was well-nigh powerless—and religion scarcely was
heard of except as furnishing the oaths and technics of profanity.
The world saw a fair experiment of what it would
have been, if the fiat had never been pronounced which decreed
subsistence as the price of labor.

Money, got without work, by those unaccustomed to it,
turned the heads of its possessors, and they spent it with a
recklessness like that with which they gained it. The pursuits
of industry neglected, riot and coarse debauchery filled
up the vacant hours. “Where the carcass is, there will the
eagles be gathered together;” and the eagles that flocked to
the Southwest, were of the same sort as the black eagles the
Duke of Saxe-Weimar saw on his celebrated journey to the
Natural Bridge. “The cankers of a long peace and a calm
world”—there were no Mexican wars and filibuster expeditions
in those days—gathered in the villages and cities by
scores.

Even the little boys caught the taint of the general infection
of morals; and I knew one of them—Jim Ellett by
name—to give a man ten dollars to hold him up to bet at
the table of a faro-bank. James was a fast youth; and I
sincerely hope he may not fulfil his early promise, and some
day be assisted up still higher.

The groceries—vulgice—doggeries, were in full blast in

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

those days, no village having less than a half-dozen all busy
all the time: gaming and horse-racing were polite and well
patronized amusements. I knew of a Judge to adjourn two
courts (or court twice) to attend a horse-race, at which he
officiated judicially and ministerially, and with more appropriateness
than in the judicial chair. Occasionally the scene
was diversified by a murder or two, which though perpetrated
from behind a corner, or behind the back of the deceased,
whenever the accused chose to stand his trial, was always
found to be committed in self-defence, securing the homicide
an honorable acquittal at the hands of his peers.

The old rules of business and the calculations of prudence
were alike disregarded, and profligacy, in all the departments
of the crimen falsi, held riotous carnival. Larceny
grew not only respectable, but genteel, and ruffled it in
all the pomp of purple and fine linen. Swindling was raised
to the dignity of the fine arts. Felony came forth from its
covert, put on more seemly habiliments, and took its seat
with unabashed front in the upper places of the synagogue.
Before the first circles of the patrons of this brilliant and
dashing villainy, Blunt Honesty felt as abashed as poor Halbert
Glendinning by the courtly refinement and supercilious
airs of Sir Piercie Shafton.

Public office represented, by its incumbents, the state of
public morals with some approach to accuracy. Out of sixty-six
receivers of public money in the new States, sixty-two
were discovered to be defaulters; and the agent, sent to
look into the affairs of a peccant office-holder in the

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

South-West, reported him minus some tens of thousands, but
advised the government to retain him, for a reason one of
æsop's fables illustrates: the agent ingeniously surmising
that the appointee succeeding would do his stealing without
any regard to the proficiency already made by his predecessor;
while the present incumbent would probably consider,
in mercy to the treasury, that he had done something of the
pious duty of providing for his household.

There was no petit larceny: there was all the difference
between stealing by the small and the “operations” manipulated,
that there is between a single assassination and an
hundred thousand men killed in an opium war. The placeman
robbed with the gorgeous magnificence of a Governor-General
of Bengal.

The man of straw, not worth the buttons on his shirt,
with a sublime audacity, bought lands and negroes, and provided
times and terms of payment which a Wall-street capitalist
would have to re-cast his arrangements to meet.

Oh, Paul Clifford and Augustus Tomlinson, philosophers
of the road, practical and theoretical! if ye had lived to
see those times, how great an improvement on your ruder
scheme of distribution would these gentle arts have seemed;
arts whereby, without risk, or loss of character, or the vulgar
barbarism of personal violence, the same beneficial results
flowed with no greater injury to the superstitions of moral
education!

With the change of times and the imagination of wealth
easily acquired came a change in the thoughts and habits of
the people. “Old times were changed—old manners gone.”

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

Visions of affluence, such as crowded Dr. Samuel Johnson's
mind, when advertising a sale of Thrale's Brewery, and casting
a soft sheep's eye towards Thrale's widow, thronged upon
the popular fancy. Avarice and hope joined partnership.
It was strange how the reptile arts of humanity, as at a faro
table, warmed into life beneath their heat. The cacoethes
accrescendi became epidemic. It seized upon the universal
community. The pulpits even were not safe from its insidious
invasion. What men anxiously desire they willingly
believe; and all believed a good time was coming—nay, had
come.

“Commerce was king”—and Rags, Tag and Bobtail
his cabinet council. Rags was treasurer. Banks, chartered
on a specie basis, did a very flourishing business on the promissory
notes of the individual stockholders ingeniously substituted
in lieu of cash. They issued ten for one, the one being
fictitious. They generously loaned all the directors could
not use themselves, and were not choice whether Bardolph
was the endorser for Falstaff, or Falstaff borrowed on his
own proper credit, or the funds advanced him by Shallow.
The stampede towards the golden temple became general:
the delusion prevailed far and wide that this thing was not
a burlesque on commerce and finance. Even the directors
of the banks began to have their doubts whether the intended
swindle was not a failure. Like Lord Clive, when reproached
for extortion to the extent of some millions in
Bengal, they exclaimed, after the bubble burst, “When they
thought of what they had got, and what they might have got,
they were astounded at their own moderation.”

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

The old capitalists for a while stood out. With the Tory
conservatism of cash in hand, worked for, they couldn't reconcile
their old notions to the new regime. They looked
for the thing's ending, and then their time. But the stampede
still kept on. Paper fortunes still multiplied—houses
and lands changed hands—real estate see-sawed up as morals
went down on the other end of the plank—men of straw,
corpulent with bank bills, strutted past them on 'Change.
They began, too, to think there might be something in this
new thing. Peeping cautiously, like hedge-hogs out of their
holes, they saw the stream of wealth and adventurers passing
by—then, looking carefully around, they inched themselves
half way out—then, sallying forth and snatching up a morsel,
ran back, until, at last, grown more bold, they ran out
too with their hoarded store, in full chase with the other unclean
beasts of adventure. They never got back again.
Jonah's gourd withered one night, and next morning the
vermin that had nestled under its broad shade were left unprotected,
a prey to the swift retribution that came upon
them. They were left naked, or only clothed themselves
with cursing (the Specie Circular on the United States Bank)
as with a garment. To drop the figure: Shylock himself
couldn't live in those times, so reversed was every thing.
Shaving paper and loaning money at a usury of fifty per cent,
was for the first time since the Jews left Jerusalem, a breaking
business to the operator.

The condition of society may be imagined:—vulgarity—
ignorance—fussy and arrogant pretension—unmitigated

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

rowdyism—bullying insolence, if they did not rule the hour,
seemed to wield unchecked dominion. The workings of
these choice spirits were patent upon the face of society;
and the modest, unobtrusive, retiring men of worth and character
(for there were many, perhaps a large majority of such)
were almost lost sight of in the hurly-burly of those strange
and shifting scenes.

Even in the professions were the same characteristics
visible. Men dropped down into their places as from the
clouds. Nobody knew who or what they were, except as
they claimed, or as a surface view of their characters indicated.
Instead of taking to the highway and magnanimously
calling upon the wayfarer to stand and deliver, or to the
fashionable larceny of credit without prospect or design of
paying, some unscrupulous horse-doctor would set up his
sign as “Physician and Surgeon,” and draw his lancet on
you, or fire at random a box of his pills into your bowels,
with a vague chance of hitting some disease unknown to him,
but with a better prospect of killing the patient, whom or
whose administrator he charged some ten dollars a trial for
his markmanship.

A superannuated justice or constable in one of the old
States was metamorphosed into a lawyer; and though he
knew not the distinction between a fee tail and a female,
would undertake to construe, off-hand, a will involving all
the subtleties of uses and trusts.

But this state of things could not last for ever: society
cannot always stand on its head with its heels in the air.

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

The Jupiter Tonans of the White House saw the monster
of a free credit prowling about like a beast of apocalyptic
vision, and marked him for his prey. Gathering all
his bolts in his sinewy grasp, and standing back on his heels,
and waving his wiry arm, he let them all fly, hard and swift
upon all the hydra's heads. Then came a crash, as “if the
ribs of nature broke,” and a scattering, like the bursting of
a thousand magazines, and a smell of brimstone, as if Pandemonium
had opened a window next to earth for ventilation,—
and all was silent. The beast never stirred in his tracks.
To get down from the clouds to level ground, the Specie
Circular was issued without warning, and the splendid lie of
a false credit burst into fragments. It came in the midst of
the dance and the frolic—as Tam O'Shanter came to disturb
the infernal glee of the warlocks, and to disperse the
rioters. Its effect was like that of a general creditor's bill
in the chancery court, and marshalling of all the assets of
the trades-people. Gen. Jackson was no fairy; but he did
some very pretty fairy work, in converting the bank bills back
again into rags and oak-leaves. Men worth a million were
insolvent for two millions: promising young cities marched
back again into the wilderness. The ambitious town plat
was re-annexed to the plantation, like a country girl taken
home from the city. The frolic was ended, and what headaches,
and feverish limbs the next morning! The retreat
from Moscow was performed over again, and “Devil take the
hindmost” was the tune to which the soldiers of fortune
marched. The only question was as to the means of escape,

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

and the nearest and best route to Texas. The sheriff was as
busy as a militia adjutant on review day; and the lawyers
were mere wreckers, earning salvage. Where are ye now my
ruffling gallants? Where now the braw cloths and watch
chains and rings and fine horses? Alas! for ye—they are
glimmering among the things that were—the wonder of an
hour! They live only in memory, as unsubstantial as the
promissory notes ye gave for them. When it came to be
tested, the whole matter was found to be hollow and fallacious.
Like a sum ciphered out through a long column, the
first figure an error, the whole, and all the parts were wrong,
throughout the entire calculation.

Such is a charcoal sketch of the interesting region—now
inferior to none in resources, and the character of its population—
during the FLUSH TIMES; a period constituting an episode
in the commercial history of the world—the reign of
humbug, and wholesale insanity, just overthrown in time to
save the whole country from ruin. But while it lasted,
many of our countrymen came into the South-West in time
to get “a benefit.” The auri sacra fames is a catching disease.
Many Virginians had lived too fast for their fortunes,
and naturally desired to recuperate: many others, with a
competency, longed for wealth; and others again, with wealth,
yearned—the common frailty—for still more. Perhaps
some friend or relative, who had come out, wrote back flattering
accounts of the El Dorado, and fired with dissatisfaction
those who were doing well enough at home, by the report
of his real or imagined success; for who that ever moved

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

off, was not “doing well” in the new country, himself or
friends being chroniclers?

Superior to many of the settlers in elegance of manners,
and general intelligence, it was the weakness of the Virginia
to imagine he was superior too in the essential art of being
able to hold his hand and make his way in a new country,
and especially such a country, and at such a time.
What a mistake that was! The times were out of joint.
It was hard to say whether it were more dangerous to stand
still or to move. If the emigrant stood still, he was consumed,
by no slow degrees, by expenses: if he moved, ten
to one he went off in a galloping consumption, by a ruinous
investment. Expenses then—necessary articles about three
times as high, and extra articles still more extra-priced—
were a different thing in the new country from what they
were in the old. In the old country, a jolly Virginian, startting
the business of free living on a capital of a plantation,
and fifty or sixty negroes, might reasonably calculate, if no
ill luck befell him, by the aid of a usurer, and the occasional
sale of a negro or two, to hold out without declared insolvency,
until a green old age. His estate melted like an estate
in chancery, under the gradual thaw of expenses; but
in this fast country, it went by the sheer cost of living—
some poker losses included—like the fortune of the confectioner
in California, who failed for one hundred thousand dollars
in the six months keeping of a candy-shop. But all the
habits of his life, his taste, his associations, his education—
every thing—the trustingness of his disposition—his want

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

of business qualifications—his sanguine temper—all that was
Virginian in him, made him the prey, if not of imposture,
at least of unfortunate speculations. Where the keenest
jockey often was bit, what chance had he? About the same
that the verdant Moses had with the venerable old gentleman,
his father's friend, at the fair, when he traded the Vicar's
pony for the green spectacles. But how could he believe
it? how could he believe that that stuttering, grammarless
Georgian, who had never heard of the resolutions
of '98, could beat him in a land trade? “Have no money
dealings with my father,” said the friendly Martha to Lord
Nigel, “for, idiot though he seems, he will make an ass of
thee.” What a pity some monitor, equally wise and equally
successful with old Trapbois' daughter, had not been at the
elbow of every Virginian! “Twad frae monie a blunder
free'd him—an' foolish notion.”

If he made a had bargain, how could he expect to get
rid of it? He knew nothing of the elaborate machinery of
ingenious chicane,—such as feigning bankruptcy—fraudulent
conveyances—making over to his wife—running property—
and had never heard of such tricks of trade as sending out
coffins to the graveyard, with negroes inside, carried off by
sudden spells of imaginary disease, to be “resurrected,” in
due time, grinning, on the banks of the Brazos.

The new philosophy, too, had commended itself to his speculative
temper. He readily caught at the idea of a new
spirit of the age having set in, which rejected the saws of Poor
Richard as being as much out of date as his almanacs. He

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

was already, by the great rise of property, compared to his
condition under the old-time prices, rich; and what were a
few thousands of debt, which two or three crops would pay
off, compared to the value of his estate? (He never thought
that the value of property might come down, while the debt
was a fixed fact.) He lived freely, for it was a liberal time,
and liberal fashions were in vogue, and it was not for a
Virginian to be behind others in hospitality and liberality.
He required credit and security, and, of course, had to
stand security in return. When the crash came, and no
“accommodations” could be had, except in a few instances,
and in those on the most ruinous terms, he fell an easy victim.
They broke by neighborhoods. They usually endorsed
for each other, and when one fell—like the child's play of
putting bricks on end at equal distances, and dropping the
first in the line against the second, which fell against the
third, and so on to the last—all fell; each got broke as security,
and yet few or none were able to pay their own debts!
So powerless of protection were they in those times, that the
witty H. G. used to say they reminded him of an oyster,
both shells torn off, lying on the beach, with the sea-gulls
screaming over them; the only question being, which should
“gobble them up.”

There was one consolation—if the Virginian involved
himself like a fool, he suffered himself to be sold out like a
gentleman. When his card house of visionary projects came
tumbling about his ears, the next question was, the one
Webster plagiarised—“Where am I to go?” Those who

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

had fathers, uncles, aunts, or other like dernier resorts, in
Virginia, limped back with feathers moulted and crestfallen,
to the old stamping ground, carrying the returned Californian's
fortune of ten thousand dollars—six bits in money, and
the balance in experience. Those who were in the condition
of the prodigal, (barring the father, the calf—the fatted one
I mean—and the fiddle,) had to turn their accomplishments
to account; and many of them, having lost all by eating and
drinking, sought the retributive justice from meat and drink,
which might, at least, support them in poverty. Accordingly,
they kept tavern, and made a barter of hospitality, a business,
the only disagreeable part of which was receiving the
money, and the only one I know of for which a man can eat
and drink himself into qualification. And while I confess I
never knew a Virginian, out of the State, to keep a bad
tavern, I never knew one to draw a solvent breath from the
time he opened house, until death or the sheriff closed it.

Others again got to be, not exactly overseers, but some
nameless thing, the duties of which were nearly analogous,
for some more fortunate Virginian, who had escaped the
wreck, and who had got his former boon companion to live
with him on board, or other wages, in some such relation
that the friend was not often found at table at the dinings
given to the neighbors, and had got to be called Mr. Flournoy
instead of Bob, and slept in an out-house in the yard,
and only read the Enquirer of nights and Sundays.

Some of the younger scions that had been transplanted
carly, and stripped of their foliage at a tender age, had been

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

turned into birches for the corrective discipline of youth.
Yes; many, who had received academical or collegiate educations,
disregarding the allurements of the highway—turning
from the gala-day exercise of ditching—scorning the
effeminate relaxation of splitting rails—heroically led the
Forlorn Hope of the battle of life, the corps of pedagogues
of country schools—academies, I beg pardon for not saying;
for, under the Virginia economy, every cross-road log-cabin,
where boys were flogged from B-a-k-e-r to Constantinople,
grew into the dignity of a sort of runt college; and the
teacher vainly endeavored to hide the meanness of the calling
beneath the sonorous sobriquet of Professor. “Were
there no wars?” Had all the oysters been opened? Where
was the regular army? Could not interest procure service
as a deck-hand on a steamboat? Did no stage-driver, with a
contract for running at night, through the prairies in mid-winter,
want help, at board wages, and sweet lying in the
loft, when off duty, thrown in? What right had the Dutch
Jews to monopolize all the peddling? “To such vile uses
may we come at last, Horatio.” The subject grows melancholy.
I had a friend on whom this catastrophe descended.
Tom Edmundson was a buck of the first head—gay, witty,
dashing, vain, proud, handsome and volatile, and, withal, a
dandy and lady's man to the last intent in particular. He
had graduated at the University, and had just settled with
his guardian, and received his patrimony of ten thousand
dollars in money. Being a young gentleman of enterprise,
he sought the alluring fields of South-Western adventure,

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

and found them in this State. Before he well knew the
condition of his exchequer, he had made a permanent investment
of one-half of his fortune in cigars, Champagne,
trinkets, buggies, horses, and current expenses, including
some small losses at poker, which game he patronized merely
for amusement; and found that it diverted him a good deal,
but diverted his cash much more. He invested the balance,
on private information kindly given him, in “Choctaw
Floats;” a most lucrative investment it would have turned
out, but for the facts: 1. That the Indians never had any
title; 2. The white men who kindly interposed to act as
guardians for the Indians did not have the Indian title; and
3dly, the land, left subject to entry, if the “Floats” had
been good, was not worth entering. “These imperfections
off its head,” I know of no fancy stock I would prefer to a
“Choctaw Float.” “Brief, brave and glorious” was “Tom's
young career.” When Thomas found, as he did shortly,
that he had bought five thousand dollars' worth of moonshine,
and had no title to it, he honestly informed his landlord of
the state of his “fiscality,” and that worthy kindly consented
to take a new buggy, at half price, in payment of the old
balance. The horse, a nick-tailed trotter, Tom had raffled
off; but omitting to require cash, the process of collection
resulted in his getting the price of one chance—the winner
of the horse magnanimously paying his subscription. The
rest either had gambling offsets, or else were not prepared
just at any one particular, given moment, to pay up, though
always ready, generally and in a general way.

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

Unlike his namesake, Tom and his landlady were not—
for a sufficient reason—very gracious; and so, the only
common bond, Tom's money, being gone, Tom received
“notice to quit” in regular form.

In the hurly-burly of the times, I had lost sight of Tom
for a considerable period. One day, as I was travelling
over the hills in Greene, by a cross-road, leading me near a
country mill, I stopped to get water at a spring at the bottom
of a hill. Clambering up the hill, after remounting, on
the other side, the summit of it brought me to a view,
through the bushes, of a log country school-house, the door
being wide open, and who did I see but Tom Edmundson,
dressed as fine as ever, sitting back in an arm-chair, one
thumb in his waistcoat armhole, the other hand brandishing
a long switch, or rather pole. As I approached a little
nearer, I heard him speak out: “Sir—Thomas Jefferson,
of Virginia, was the author of the Declaration of Independence—
mind that. I thought everybody knew that—even the
Georgians.” Just then he saw me coming through the bushes
and entering the path that led by the door. Suddenly he
broke from the chair of state, and the door was slammed to,
and I heard some one of the boys, as I passed the door, say—
“Tell him he can't come in—the master's sick.” This is
the last I ever saw of Tom. I understand he afterwards
moved to Louisiana, where he married a rich French widow,
having first, however, to fight a duel with one of her sons,
whose opposition couldn't be appeased, until some such
expiatory sacrifice to the manes of his worthy father was

The Schoolmaster Abroad, p. 98 [figure description] 458EAF. Image of the Schoolmaster sitting in a chair, holding his switch, while young boys mill around him. Behind the schoolmaster sits a child glancing out, with a sly grin, at the reader.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

attempted; which failing, he made rather a lame apology
for his zealous indiscretion—the poor fellow could make no
other—for Tom had unfortunately fixed him for visiting his
mother on crutches the balance of his life.

One thing I will say for the Virginians—I never knew
one of them, under any pressure, extemporize a profession.
The sentiment of reverence for the mysteries of medicine
and law was too large for a deliberate quackery; as to the
pulpit, a man might as well do his starving without the
hypocrisy.

But others were not so nice. I have known them to rush,
when the wolf was after them, from the counting-house or the
plantation, into a doctor's shop or a law office, as if those
places were the sanctuaries from the avenger; some pretending
to be doctors that did not know a liver from a gizzard,
administering medicine by the guess, without knowing enough
of pharmacy to tell whether the stuff exhibited in the bigbellied
blue, red and green bottles at the show-windows of
the apothecaries' shops, was given by the drop or the half-pint.

Divers others left, but what became of them, I never
knew any more than they know what becomes of the sora
after frost.

Many were the instances of suffering; of pitiable misfortune,
involving and crushing whole families; of pride
abased; of honorable sensibilities wounded; of the provision
for old age destroyed; of the hopes of manhood overcast;
of independence dissipated, and the poor victim

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

without help, or hope, or sympathy, forced to petty shifts for a
bare subsistence, and a ground-scuffle, for what in happier
days, he threw away. But there were too many examples
of this sort for the expenditure of a useless compassion;
just as the surgeon after a battle, grows case-hardened, from
an excess of objects of pity.

My memory, however, fixes itself on one honored exception,
the noblest of the noble, the best of the good. Old
Major Willis Wormley had come in long before the new era.
He belonged to the old school of Virginians. Nothing could
have torn him from the Virginia he loved, as Jacopi Foscari,
Venice, but the marrying of his eldest daughter, Mary, to a
gentleman of Alabama. The Major was something between,
or made of about equal parts, of Uncle Toby and Mr. Pickwick,
with a slight flavor of Mr. Micawber. He was the
soul of kindness, disinterestedness and hospitality. Love to
every thing that had life in it, burned like a flame in his
large and benignant soul; it flowed over in his countenance,
and glowed through every feature, and moved every muscle
in the frame it animated. The Major lived freely, was
rather corpulent, and had not a lean thing on his plantations;
the negroes; the dogs; the horses; the cattle; the very
chickens, wore an air of corpulent complacency, and bustled
about with a good-humored rotundity. There was more
laughing, singing and whistling at “Hollywood,” than would
have set up a dozen Irish fairs. The Major's wife had, from
a long life of affection, and the practice of the same pursuits,
and the indulgence of the same feelings and tastes, got so

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

much like him, that she seemed a feminine and modest edition
of himself. Four daughters were all that remained in the
family—two had been married off—and they had no son.
The girls ranged from sixteen to twenty-two, fine, hearty,
whole-souled, wholesome, cheerful lasses, with constitutions
to last, and a flow of spirits like mountain springs—not
beauties, but good housewife girls, whose open countenances,
and neat figures, and rosy cheeks, and laughing eyes,
and frank and cordial manners, made them, at home, abroad,
on horseback or on foot, at the piano or discoursing on the
old English books, or Washington Irving's Sketch Book, a
favorite in the family ever since it was written, as entertaining
and as well calculated to fix solid impressions on the
heart, as any four girls in the country. The only difficulty
was, they were so much alike, that you were put to fault
which to fall in love with. They were all good housewives,
or women, rather. But Mrs. Wormley, or Aunt Wormley,
as we called her, was as far ahead of any other woman in that
way, as could be found this side of the Virginia border. If there
was any thing good in the culinary line that she couldn't make,
I should like to know it. The Major lived on the main stage
road, and if any decently dressed man ever passed the house
after sundown, he escaped by sheer accident. The house
was greatly visited. The Major knew every body, and everybody
near him knew the Major. The stage coach couldn't stop
long, but in the hot summer days, about noon, as the driver tooted
his horn at the top of the red hill, two negro boys stood
opposite the door, with trays of the finest fruit, and a pitcher

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

of cider for the refreshment of the wayfarers. The Major
himself being on the look-out, with his hands over his eyes,
bowing—as he only could bow—vaguely into the coach, and
looking wistfully, to find among the passengers an acquaintance
whom he could prevail upon to get out and stay a week
with him. There wasn't a poor neighbor to whom the Major
had not been as good as an insurer, without premium, for
his stock, or for his crop; and from the way he rendered
the service, you would think he was the party obliged—as
he was.

This is not, in any country I have ever been in, a moneymaking
business; and the Major, though he always made
good crops, must have broke at it long ago, but for the fortunate
death of a few Aunts, after whom the girls were
named, who, paying their several debts of nature, left the
Major the means to pay his less serious, but still weighty
obligations.

The Major—for a wonder, being a Virginian—had no
partisan politics. He could not have. His heart could not
hold any thing that implied a warfare upon the thoughts or
feelings of others. He voted all the time for his friend, that
is, the candidate living nearest to him, regretting, generally,
that he did not have another vote for the other man.

It would have done a Camanche Indian's heart good to
see all the family together—grand-children and all—of a
winter evening, with a guest or two, to excite sociability a
little—not company enough to embarrass the manifestations
of affection. Such a concordance—as if all hearts were

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

attuned to the same feeling—the old lady knitting in the
corner—the old man smoking his pipe opposite—both of
their fine faces radiating in the pauses of the laugh, the jest,
or the caress, the infinite satisfaction within.

It was enough to convert an abolitionist, to see the old
Major when he came home from a long journey of two days
to the county town; the negroes running in a string to the
buggy; this one to hold the horse, that one to help the old
man out, and the others to inquire how he was; and to
observe the benignity with which—the kissing of the girls
and the old lady hardly over—he distributed a piece of
calico here, a plug of tobacco there, or a card of town
ginger-bread to the little snow-balls that grinned around
him; what was given being but a small part of the gift,
divested of the kind, cheerful, rollicking way the old fellow
had of giving it.

The Major had given out his autograph (as had almost
every body else) as endorser on three several bills of exchange,
of even tenor and date, and all maturing at or about the
same time. His friend's friend failed to pay as he or his
firm agreed, the friend himself did no better, and the Major,
before he knew any thing at all of his danger, found a writ
served upon him, and was told by his friend that he was
dead broke, and all he could give him was his sympathy;
the which, the Major as gratefully received as if it was a
legal tender and would pay the debt. The Major's friends
advised him he could get clear of it; that notice of
protest not having been sent to the Major's post-office,

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

released him; but the Major wouldn't hear of such a defence;
he said his understanding was, that he was to pay the debt if
his friend didn't; and to slip out of it by a quibble, was
little better than pleading the gambling act. Besides,
what would the lawyers say? And what would be said by
his old friends in Virginia, when it reached their ears,
that he had plead want of notice, to get clear of a debt,
when every body knew it was the same thing as if he had got
notice. And if this defence were good at law, it would not
be in equity; and if they took it into chancery, it mattered
not what became of the case, the property would all go, and
he never could expect to see the last of it. No, no; he
would pay it, and had as well set about it at once.

The rumor of the Major's condition spread far and wide.
It reached old N. D., “an angel,” whom the Major had
“entertained,” and one of the few that ever travelled that
road. He came, post haste, to see into the affair; saw the
creditor; made him, upon threat of defence, agree to take
half the amount, and discharge the Major; advanced the
money, and took the Major's negroes—except the houseservants—
and put them on his Mississippi plantation to work
out the debt.

The Major's heart pained him at the thought of the
negroes going off; he couldn't witness it; though he consoled
himself with the idea of the discipline and exercise
being good for the health of sundry of them who had contracted
sedentary diseases.

The Major turned his house into a tavern—that is,

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

changed its name—put up a sign, and three weeks afterwards,
you couldn't have told that any thing had happened.
The family were as happy as ever—the Major never having
put on airs of arrogance in prosperity, felt no humiliation in
adversity; the girls were as cheerful, as bustling, and as
light-hearted as ever, and seemed to think of the duties of
hostesses as mere bagatelles, to enliven the time. The old
Major was as profluent of anecdotes as ever, and never grew
tired of telling the same ones to every new guest; and yet,
the Major's anecdotes were all of Virginia growth, and not
one of them under the legal age of twenty-one. If the Major
had worked his negroes as he had those anccdotes, he would
have been able to pay off the bills of exchange without any
difficulty.

The old lady and the girls laughed at the anecdotes,
though they must have heard them at least a thousand times,
and knew them by heart; for the Major told them without
the variations; and the other friends of the Major laughed
too; indeed, with such an air of thorough benevolence, and
in such a truly social spirit did the old fellow proceed “the
tale to unfold,” that a Cassius like rascal that wouldn't laugh,
whether he saw any thing to laugh at or not, ought to have
been sent to the Penitentiary for life—half of the time to be
spent in solitary confinement.

ASSAULT AND BATTERY.

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

A trial came off not precisely in our bailiwick, but in the
neighborhood, of great comic interest. It was really a case
of a good deal of aggravation, and the defendants, fearing
the result, employed four of the ablest lawyers practising at
the M. bar, to defend them. The offence charged was only
assault and battery; but the evidence showed a conspiracy
to inflict great violence on the person of the prosecutor, who
had done nothing to provoke it, and that the attempt to effect
it was followed by severe injury to him. The prosecutor
was an original. He had been an old-field schoolmaster, and
was as conceited and pedantic a fellow as could be found in a
summer's day, even in that profession. It was thought the
policy of the defence to make as light of the case as possible,
and to cast as much ridicule on the affair as they could. J.
E. and W. M. led the defence, and, although the talents of
the former were rather adapted to grave discussion than pleasantry,
he agreed to doff his heavy armor for the lighter weapons
of wit and ridicule. M. was in his element. He was
at all times and on all occasions at home when fun was to be

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

raised: the difficulty with him was rather to restrain than to
create mirth and laughter. The case was called and put to
the jury. The witness, one Burwell Shines, was called for
the prosecution. A broad grin was upon the faces of the
counsel for the defence as he came forward. It was increased
when the clerk said, “Burrell Shines come to the book;”
and the witness, with deliberate emphasis, remarked—“My
christian name is not Burrell, but Burwell—though I am
vulgarly denominated by the former epithet.” “Well,” said
said the clerk, “Bur-well Shines come to the book and be
sworn.” He was sworn and directed to take the stand. He
was a picture!

He was dressed with care. His toilet was elaborate and
befitting the magnitude and dignity of the occasion, the part
he was to fill and the high presence into which he had come.
He was evidently favorably impressed with his own personal
pulchritude; yet, with an air of modest deprecation, as if he
said by his manner, “after all, what is beauty that man
should be proud of it, and what are fine clothes, that the
wearers should put themselves above the unfortunate mortals
who have them not?”

He advanced with deliberate gravity to the stand. There
he stood, his large bell-crowned hat with nankeen-colored
nap an inch long in his hand; which hat he carefully handed
over the bar to the clerk, to hold until he should get
through his testimony. He wore a blue single-breasted coat
with new brass buttons; a vest of bluish calico; nankeen
pants that struggled to make both ends meet, but failed, by

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a few inches, in the legs, yet made up for it by fitting a little
better than the skin every where else; his head stood upon
a shirt collar that held it up by the ears, and a cravat something
smaller than a table-cloth, bandaged his throat: his
face was narrow, long and grave, with an indescribable air of
ponderous wisdom, which, as Fox said of Thurlow, “proved
him necessarily a hypocrite; as it was impossible for any
man to be as wise as he looked.” Gravity and decorum marked
every lineament of his countenance, and every line of his
body. All the wit of Hudibras could not have moved a muscle
of his face. His conscience would have smitten him for
a laugh almost as soon as for an oath. His hair was roached
up, and stood as erect and upright as his body; and his
voice was slow, deep, in “linked sweetness long drawn out,”
and modulated according to the camp-meeting standard of
elocution. Three such men at a country frolic, would have
turned an old Virginia Reel into a Dead March. He was
one of Carlyle's earnest men. Cromwell would have made
him Ensign of the Ironsides, and ex-officio chaplain at first
sight. He took out his pocket hankerchief, slowly unfolded
it from the shape in which it came from the washerwoman's,
and awaited the interrogation. As he waited, he spat on the
floor and nicely wiped it out with his foot. The solicitor told
him to tell about the difficulty in hand. He gazed around
on the court—then on the bar—then on the jury—then on
the crowd—addressing each respectively as he turned:
“May it please your honor—Gentlemen of the bar—Gentlemen
of the jury—Audience. Before proceeding to give my

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testimonial observations, I must premise that I am a member
of the Methodist Episcopal, otherwise called Wesleyan
persuasion of Christian individuals One bright Sabbath
morning in May, the 15th day of the month, the past year,
while the birds were singing their matutinal songs from the
trees, I sallied forth from the dormitory of my Seminary, to
enjoy the reflections so well suited to that auspicious occasion.
I had not proceeded far, before my ears were accosted
with certain Bacchanalian sounds of revelry, which proceeded
from one of those haunts of vicious depravity, located
at the Cross Roads, near the place of my boyhood, and fashionably
denominated a doggery. No sooner had I passed
beyond the precincts of this diabolical rendezvous of rioting
debauchees, than I heard behind me the sounds of approaching
footsteps as if in pursuit. Having heard previously, sundry
menaces, which had been made by these proposterous
and incarnadine individuals of hell, now on trial in prospect
of condign punishment, fulminated against the longer continuance
of my corporeal salubrity, for no better reason than
that I reprobated their criminal orgies, and not wishing my
reflections to be disturbed, I hurried my steps with a gradual
accelerated motion. Hearing, however, their continued advance,
and the repeated shoutings, articulating the murderous
accents, “Kill him! Kill Shadbelly with his praying
clothes on!” (which was a profane designation of myself
and my religious profession;) and casting my head over my
left shoulder in a manner somehow reluctantly thus, (throwing
his head to one side,) and perceiving their near

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

approximation, I augmented my speed into what might be denominated
a gentle slope—and subsequently augmented the
same into a species of dog-trot. But all would not do.
Gentlemen, the destroyer came. As I reached the fence and
was about propelling my body over the same, felicitating myself
on my prospect of escape from my remorseless pursuers,
they arrived, and James William Jones, called, by nickname,
Buck Jones, that red-headed character now at the bar
of this honorable court, seized a fence rail, grasped it in both
hands, and standing on tip-toe, hurled the same, with mighty
emphasis, against my cerebellum: which blow felled me to
the earth. Straightway, like ignoble curs upon a disabled
lion, these bandit ruffians and incarnadine assassins leaped
upon me, some pelting, some bruising, some gouging—“every
thing by turns, and nothing long,” as the poet hath it; and
one of them, which one unknown to me—having no eyes behind—
inflicted with his teeth, a grievous wound upon my
person—where, I need not specify. At length, when thus
prostrate on the ground, one of those bright ideas, common
to minds of men of genius, struck me: I forthwith sprang
to my feet—drew forth my cutto—circulated the same with
much vivacity among their several and respective corporeal
systems, and every time I circulated the same I felt their
iron grasp relax. As cowardly recreants, even to their own
guilty friendships, two of these miscreants, though but slightly
perforated by my cutto, fled, leaving the other two, whom
I had disabled by the vigor and energy of my incisions, prostrate
and in my power: these lustily called for quarter,

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

shouting out “enough!” or, in their barbarous dialect, being
as corrupt in language as in morals, “nuff;” which quarter
I magnanimously extended them, as unworthy of my farther
vengeance, and fit only as subject of penal infliction, at the
hands of the offended laws of their country; to which laws
I do now consign them: hoping such mercy for them as their
crimes will permit; which, in my judgment, (having read the
code,) is not much. This is my statement on oath, fully and
truly, nothing extenuating and naught setting down in malice;
and, if I have omitted any thing, in form or substance, I
stand ready to supply the omission; and if I have stated any
thing amiss, I will cheerfully correct the same, limiting the
averment, with appropriate modifications, provisions and restrictions.
The learned counsel may now proceed more
particularly to interrogate me of and respecting the premises.”

After this oration, Burwell wiped the perspiration from
his brow, and the counsel for the State took him. Few
questions were asked him, however, by that official; he confining
himself to a recapitulation in simple terms, of what
the witness had declared, and procuring Burwell's assent to
his translation. Long and searching was the cross-examination
by the defendants' counsel; but it elicited nothing favorable
to the defence, and nothing shaking, but much to confirm
Burwell's statement.

After some other evidence, the examination closed, and
the argument to the jury commenced. The solicitor very
briefly adverted to the leading facts, deprecated any attempt

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

to turn the case into ridicule—admitted that the witness
was a man of eccentricity and pedantry, but harmless and
inoffensive—a man evidently of conscientiousness and
respectability; that he had shown himself to be a peaceable
man, but when occasion demanded, a brave man; that there
was a conspiracy to assassinate him upon no cause except an
independence, which was honorable to him, and an attempt
to execute the purpose, in pursuance of previous threats and
severe injury by several confederates on a single person,
and this on the Sabbath, and when he was seeking to avoid
them.

W. M. rose to reply. All Screamersville turned out to
hear him. William was a great favorite—the most popular
speaker in the country—had the versatility of a mockingbird,
an aptitude for burlesque that would have given him
celebrity as a dramatist, and a power of acting that would
have made his fortune on the boards of a theatre. A rich
treat was expected, but it didn't come. The witness had
taken all the wind out of William's sails. He had rendered
burlesque impossible. The thing as acted was more ludicrous
than it could be as described. The crowd had laughed
themselves hoarse already; and even M.'s comic powers
seemed and were felt by himself to be humble imitations of
a greater master. For once in his life, M. dragged his subject
heavily along—the matter began to grow serious—fun
failed to come when M. called it up. M. closed between a
lame argument, a timid deprecation, and some only tolerable
humor. He was followed by E., in a discursive,

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

argumentative, sarcastic, drag-net sort of speech, which did all that
could be done for the defence. The solicitor briefly closed—
seriously and confidently confining himself to a repetition
of the matters first insisted, and answering some of the points
of the counsel.

It was an ominous fact that a juror, before the jury
retired under leave of the court, recalled a witness for the
purpose of putting a question to him—the question was, how
much the defendants were worth; the answer was, about
two thousand dollars.

The jury shortly after returned into court with a verdict
which “sized their pile.”

SIMON SUGGS, JR. , ESQ. A Legal Biography. CORRESPONDENCE.

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

Office of the Jurist-maker,
City of Got-him, Nov. 18, 1852.
Col. Simon Suggs, Jr.

My Dear Sir,—Having established, at great expense,
and from motives purely patriotic and disinterested, a monthly
periodical for the purpose of supplying a desideratum in
American Literature, namely, the commemoration and perpetuation
of the names, characters, and personal and professional
traits and histories of American lawyers and jurists, I
have taken the liberty of soliciting your consent to be made
the subject of one of the memoirs, which shall adorn the columns
of this Journal. This suggestion is made from my
knowledge, shared by the intelligence of the whole country,
of your distinguished standing and merits in our noble profession;
and it is seconded by the wishes and requests of
many of the most prominent gentlemen in public and private
life, who have the honor of your acquaintance.

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

The advantages of a work of this sort, in its more public
and general bearing, are so patent, that it would be useless
for me to refer to them. The effect of the publication upon
the fame of the individual commemorated is, if not equally
apparent, at least, equally decided. The fame of an American
lawyer, like that of an actor, though sufficiently marked
and cognizable within the region of his practice, and by the
witnesses of his performances, is nevertheless, for the want
of an organ for its national dissemination, or of an enduring
memorial for its preservation, apt to be ephemeral, or, at
most, to survive among succeeding generations, only in the
form of unauthentic and vague traditions. What do we know
of Henry or of Grundy as lawyers, except that they were
eloquent and successful advocates. But what they did
was to acquire reputation, and, of course, the true value of
it, is left to conjecture; or, as in the case of the former, especially,
to posthumous invention or embellishment.

It was the observation of the great Pinkney, that the
lawyer's distinction was preferable to all others, since it
was impossible to acquire in our profession, a false or fraudulent
reputation. How true this aphorism is, the pages of
this L.w M......e will abundantly illustrate.

The value, and, indeed, the fact of distinction, consists
in its uncommonness. In a whole nation of giants, the
Welsh monster in Barnum's Museum would be undistinguished.
Therefore, we—excuse the editorial plural—strive
to collect the histories only of the most eminent of the profession
in the several States; the aggregate of whom reaches

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

some two or three hundred names. You have undoubtedly
seen some of the numbers of our work, which will better illustrate
our plan, and the mode of its past, as well as the
intended mode of its future, execution.

It would be affectation, my dear sir, to deny that what
mainly consoles us under a sense of the hazardous nature of
such an enterprise to our personal fortunes—pardon the pun,
if you please—and amidst the anxieties of so laborious an
undertaking, is the expectation, that, through our labors,
the reputation of distinguished men of the country, constituting
its moral treasure, may be preserved for the admiration
and direction of mankind, not for a day, but for all time.
And it has occurred to me, that such true merit as yours
might find a motive for your enrolment among the known sages
and profound intellects of the land, not less in the natural desire
of a just perpetuation of renown, than in the patriotism
which desires the improvement of the race of lawyers who
are to come after you, and the adding to the accredited standards
of public taste and professional attainment and genius.

We know from experience, that the characteristic diffidence
of the profession, in many instances, shrinks from the
seeming, though falsely seeming, indelicacy of an egotistical parade of one's own talents and accomplishments, and from
walking into a niche of the Pantheon of American genius we
have opened, and over the entrance to which, “FOR THE
GREAT” is inscribed. But the facility with which this difficulty
has been surmounted by some, of whose success we had
reason to entertain apprehensions, adds but further evidence

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

of the capacity which the noble profession of the law gives
for the most arduous exploits. Besides, sir, although the
facts are expected to be furnished by the subject, yet the
first person is but seldom used in the memoir—some complaisant
friend, or some friend's name being employed as editor
of the work; the subject sometimes, indeed, having nothing
to do except to revise it and transmit it to this office.

You may remember, my dear Colonel, the exclamatory
line of the poet—

And so it used to be: but in this wonderfully progressive
age it is no longer so. It is the pride of your humble
correspondent to have constructed a plan, by means of his
journal, whereby a gentleman of genius may, with the assistance
of a single friend, or even without it, wind himself, up
from the vale below, as by a windlass, up to the very cupola
of the temple.

May we rely upon your sending us the necessary papers,
viz., a sketch of your life, genius, exploits, successes, accomplishments,
virtues, family antecedents, personal pulchritudes,
professional habitudes, and whatever else you may
deem interesting. You can see from former numbers of our
work, that nothing will be irrelevant or out of place. The
sketch may be from ten to sixty pages in length.

Please send also a good daguerreotype likeness of yourself,
from which an engraving may be executed, to accompany the

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

sketch. The daguerreotype had better be taken with reference
to the engraving to accompany the memoir—the hair
combed or brushed from the brow, so as to show a high forehead—
the expression meditative—a book in the hand, &c.

Hoping soon to hear favorably from you, I am, with
great respect and esteem,

Rackinsack,
Dec. 1, 1852.
To Mr. Editor.

Dear Sir—I got your letter dated 18 Nov., asking me
to send you my life and karackter for your Journal. Im
obleeged to you for your perlite say so, and so forth. I got
a friend to rite it—my own ritin being mostly perfeshunal.
He done it—but he rites such a cussed bad hand I cant rede
it: I reckon its all korrect tho'.

As to my doggerrytype I cant send it there aint any doggerytype
man about here now. There never was but won,
and he tried his mershine on Jemmy O. a lawyer here, and
Jem was so mortal ugly it bust his mershine all to pieces
trying to git him down, and liked to killed the man that ingineered
the wurks.

You can take father's picter on Jonce Hooper's book—

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

take off the bend in the back, and about twenty years of age
off en it and make it a leetle likelier and it 'll suit me but dress
it up gentele in store close.

City of Got-Him,
Dec. 11, 1852.
Col. Simon Suggs, Jr.

My Dear Sir—The very interesting sketch of your life
requested by us, reached here accompanied by your favor of
the 1st inst., for which please receive our thanks.

We were very much pleased with the sketch, and think it
throws light on a new phase of character, and supplies a desideratum
in the branch of literature we are engaged in—the
description of a lawyer distinguished in the out-door labors of
the profession, and directing great energies to the preparation
of proof.

We fear, however, the suggestion you made of the use of
the engraving of your distinguished father will not avail; as
the author, Mr. Hooper, has copyrighted his work, and we
should be exposing ourselves to a prosecution by trespassing
on his patent. Besides, the execution of such a work by no
better standard, would not be creditable either to our artist,
yourself, or our Journal. We hope you will conclude to
send on your daguerreotype to be appended to the lively and
instructive sketch you furnish; and we entertain no doubt

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

that the contemplated publication will redound greatly to
your honor, and establish yours among the classical names
of the American bar.

Rackinsack, Dec. 25, 1852.

Dear Mr. Editor—In your p. s. which seems to be the
creem of your correspondents you say I can't get in your
book without paying one hundred and fifty dollars—pretty
tall entrants fee! I suppose though children and niggers
half price—I believe I will pass. I'll enter a nolly prossy
q. O-n-e-h-u-n-d-r-e-d dollars and fifty better! Je-whellikens!

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