University of Virginia Library

2. MY FIRST APPEARANCE AT THE BAR.

Higginbotham
vs.
Swink.
} Slander.

Did you ever, reader, get a merciless barrister of the old
school after you when you were on your first legs—in the
callow tenderness of your virgin epidermis? I hope not. I
wish I could say the same for myself; but I cannot: and
with the faint hope of inspiring some small pity in the
breasts of the seniors, I now, one of them myself, give in
my lively experience of what befell me at my first appearance
on the forensic boards.

I must premise by observing that, some twenty years
ago—more or less—shortly after I obtained license to practise
law in the town of H—, State of Alabama, an unfortunate
client called at my office to retain my services in
a celebrated suit for slander. The case stands on record,
Stephen O. Higginbotham vs. Caleb Swink. The aforesaid
Caleb, “greatly envying the happy state and condition
of said Stephen,” who, “until the grievances,” &c., “never
had been suspected of the crime of hog-stealing,” &c., said,

“in the hearing and presence of one Samuel Eads and other
good and worthy citizens,” of and concerning the plaintiff,
“you” (the said Stephen meaning) “are a noted hog thief,
and stole more hogs than all the wagons in M— could
haul off in a week on a turnpike road.” The way I came to
be employed was this: Higginbotham had retained Frank
Glendye, a great brick in “damage cases,” to bring the suit,
and G. had prepared the papers, and got the case on the
pleadings, ready for trial. But, while the case was getting
ready, Frank was suddenly taken dangerously drunk, a disease
to which his constitution was subject. The case had been
continued for several terms, and had been set for a particular
day of the term then going on, to be disposed of finally
and positively when called. It was hoped that the lawyer
would recover his health in time to prosecute the case; but
he had continued the drunken fit with the suit. The morning
of the trial came on; and, on going to see his counsel,
the client found him utterly prostrate; not a hope remained
of his being able to get to the court-house. He was in collapse;
a perfect cholera case. Passing down the street, almost
in despair, as my good or evil genius would have it,
Higginbotham met Sam Hicks, a tailor, whom I had honored
with my patronage (as his books showed) for many years;
and, as one good turn deserves another—a suit for a suit—
he, on hearing the predicament H. was in, boldly suggested
my name to supply the place of the fallen Glendye; adding
certain assurances and encomiums which did infinite credit
to his friendship and his imagination.

I gathered from my calumniated client, as well as I could,
the facts of the case, and got a young friend to look me up
the law of slander, to be ready when it should be put
through, if it ever did get to the jury.

The defendant was represented by old Cæsar Kasm, a
famous man in those days; and well might he be. This
venerable limb of the law had long practised at the M—
bar, and been the terror of this generation. He was an old-time
lawyer, the race of which is now fortunately extinct, or
else the survivors “lag superfluous on the stage.” He was
about sixty-five years old at the time I am writing of; was
of stout build, and something less than six feet in height.
He dressed in the old-fashioned fair-top boots and shorts;
ruffled shirt, buff vest, and hair, a grizzly gray, roached up
flat and stiff in front, and hanging down in a queue behind,
tied with an eel-skin and pomatumed. He was close shaven
and powdered every morning; and, except a few scattering
grains of snuff which fell occasionally between his nose and
an old-fashioned gold snuff-box, a speek of dirt was never
seen on or about his carefully preserved person. The taking
out of his deliciously perfumed handkerchief, scattered
incense around like the shaking of a lilac bush in full flower.
His face was round, and a sickly florid, interspersed with
purple spots, overspread it, as if the natural dye of the old
cogniac were maintaining an unequal contest with the decay
of the vital energies. His bearing was decidedly soldierly, as
it had a right to be, he having served as a captain some eight
years before he took to the bar, as being the more pugnacious

profession. His features, especially the mouth, turned
down at the corners like a bull-dog's or a crescent, and a
nose perked up with unutterable scorn and self-conceit, and
eyes of a sensual, bluish gray, that seemed to be all light
and no heat, were never pleasing to the opposing side. In
his way, old Kasm was a very polite man. Whenever he
chose, which was when it was his interest, to be polite, and
when his blood was cool and he was not trying a law case, he
would have made Chesterfield and Beau Brummel ashamed
of themselves. He knew all the gymnastics of manners,
and all forms and ceremonies of deportment; but there was
no more soul or kindness in the manual he went through,
than in an iceberg. His politeness, however seemingly
deferential, had a frost-bitten air, as if it had lain out over
night and got the rheumatics before it came in; and really,
one felt less at ease under his frozen smiles, than under any
body else's frowns.

He was the proudest man I ever saw: he would have
made the Warwicks and the Nevilles, not to say the Plantagenets
or Mr. Dombey, feel very limber and meek if introduced
into their company; and selfish to that extent, that,
if by giving up the nutmeg on his noon glass of toddy, he
could have christianized the Burmese empire, millennium
never would come for him.

How far back he traced his lineage, I do not remember,
but he had the best blood of both worlds in his veins; sired
high up on the paternal side by some Prince or Duke, and
dammed on the mother's by one or two Pocahontases. Of

course, from this, he was a Virginian, and the only one I
ever knew that did not quote those Eleusinian mysteries,
the Resolutions of 1798-99. He did not. He was a Federalist,
and denounced Jefferson as a low-flung demagogue,
and Madison as his tool. He bragged largely on Virginia,
though—he was not eccentric on this point—but it was the
Virginia of Washington, the Lees, Henry, &c., of which he
boasted. The old dame may take it as a compliment that
he bragged of her at all.

The old Captain had a few negroes, which, with a declining
practice, furnished him a support. His credit, in
consequence of his not having paid any thing in the shape
of a debt for something less than a quarter of a century,
was rather limited. The property was covered up by a deed
or other instrument, drawn up by Kasm himself, with such
infernal artifice and diabolical skill, that all the lawyers in
the county were not able to decide, by a legal construction
of its various clauses, who the negroes belonged to, or
whether they belonged to any body at all.

He was an inveterate opponent of new laws, new books,
new men. He would have revolutionized the government
if he could, should a law have been passed, curing defects
in Indictments.

Yet he was a friend of strong government and strong
laws: he might approve of a law making it death for a man
to blow his nose in the street, but would be for rebelling if
it allowed the indictment to dispense with stating in which
hand he held it.

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 billy-goat
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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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

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

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

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!

“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

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

The Cure of Poetry

[Description: 458EAF. Illustration Page. Image of a courtroom. Kasm is standing and reading while the courtroom, including the portly judge, laughs.]

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

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.

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 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.