University of Virginia Library

11. PAYING THE FIDDLER.

Being William Bradley's notions on the "law of compensation" in practical politics—and also the account of how old Judge Worthy Millring rendered a decision, ruled the political destinies of his district, indulged in romance and finally "settled his score with the fiddler."

Brokenstraw Ranch, —, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

There's nothing like the whirligig of time to take the kinks out of a crooked politician. Somehow I can't quite get over the notion that, sooner or later, we have to pay the fiddler in politics as well as in other things.

However, there's a lot of powerful cunning men who've made a big killing in politics and scored their heaviest hits by doing dirt to every man that came near enough to get tarred with their stick. These fellows don't believe in the fiddler doctrine. They seen to hold that so long as they keep their batting average up to a certain pitch they're entitled to a clean bill of exemption.

But, Ned, I can't see it that way. You've played I-spy enough in the village horse sheds to understand what I mean when I say that the man who makes his way in the game of politics by lying, cheating, and throwing down his friends isn't justified in expecting to hear the final call of "all in free." Sooner or later he'll have to take his turn at being "it" while the others are getting even with him.

These political scamps who climb to high places on the shoulders of the men they've betrayed and then expect to escape scot free, remind me of old Benage Tew's defense of the will left by the infidel, Keth, back in Busti. The way in which the old man distributed his property—which was the largest in the township—didn't appeal to the natural heirs, in spite of the fact that, during his lifetime, they had consistently impressed the old codger with the fact that they regarded him as a moral monstrosity whose fiery calling and election were already sealed.

Consequently, the bereaved heirs went up to the county seat and took counsel of a young sprig of a lawyer, who had a reputation for being uncommonly foxy. And they came out of the conference smiling, for he told them that it would be dead easy to break the will on the ground that the old man was of unsound mind when he made it.

"But how will you prove that?" one of the heirs had asked.

"I guess there isn't a court or a jury in this region," the lawyer had replied, "that won't accept the old man's infidelity as a proof of his mental unsoundness. All we've got to do is to establish that fact. The religious sentiment of the community will do the rest."

But one old friend of the deceased, who was a large beneficiary under the terms of the will, hired old Benage Tew to look over his interests in the case. Now, old Benage was as rough as a shag bark hickory but as sharp as a cooper's adz. While he knew about all the law that had ever been introduced into Cowbell county, he paid a heap more attention to the jury that he did to the law. He didn't introduce a particle of evidence to rebut or soften that establishing the rank infidelity of the deceased, and his client finally took fright and ventured to remind him of this oversight. But Benage was a hard-bitted and crusty old sinner and simply told his client to "shut up."

Right up to the last words of old Tew's speech to the jury he ignored the main issue. Then he disposed of it in these words:

"Gentlemen, it has been alleged that the testator was an infidel. I admit it. I don't hold to his views of the Deity and the future, and neither do you. But as I look into your honest and intelligent faces, I am willing to leave with you the question: Shall the maker of this last will and testament be adjudged crazy simply because he did not hold, with the persons who are seeking such a verdict, that through his lifetime a man may consistently break the ten commandments, smash the moral law into flinders, and on his deathbed assign to the Savior and cheat the devil out of his honest dues?"

It took the jury just ten minutes to bring in a verdict upholding the soundness of the will. And, Ned, I can't escape the conclusion that there's a law in the eternal fitness of things that brings the scalawag in politics around to face the music and settle with the fiddler for the tunes to which he has danced, just as you say the Hon. Bill has had to settle in your bailiwick.

Whenever I hear anything said about the law of compensation in politics my mind goes back to the career of Judge Worthy Millring, back in Coon county. That's while you were at college, and so I'll refresh your hearsay recollection of the affair. A finer looker than the old Judge never wore ermine or handed down an opinion. He was as tall and toppy as an elm by a meadow brook and judicial dignity hung about him like the halo of a saint in the family Bible. When he rubbed his spectacles with his silk handkerchief, after a closing argument, you felt that the voice of Justice was about to utter the last word on the subject.

But, just the same, every man who was mixed up in politics in his circuit knew, in his heart, that the old Judge had thrown down his best friends, sacrificed the men who had made him a political power, and smilingly lifted the scalps of the veterans who had been singed in fighting fire for him.

Just previous to each judicial election there was a murmur of revolt; but the old Judge smiled on the younger men of the party—the ones who really did the work—played the gallant at a few church sociables throughout his circuit, and carried the convention as easily as he decided a case. This went on until his long hair was white as his old fashioned "choker," and all thoughts of unseating him had practically been abandoned by the men who had felt his stiletto under their political ribs.

One day, however, a red-headed lawyer came to court to defend a young woman against a suit brought by her husband for the custody of their little boy. The man looked as if he'd steal the pennies out of the child's bank and beat the mother for protesting against it. You could set a dozen such heads as his on the bottom of an old fashioned sap bucket and still have room enough to play checkers.

There's no denying that the woman was uncommonly comely; but the courts in our state hadn't held that this was proof of bad character. However, the husband had enough of his relatives on the stand to make out a circumstantial case against her, while his lawyer made a strong point of her handsome face and her alleged weakness to flattery, insinuating that her ability to sham would make her a success on the stage. His whole contention was that the mother was an unfit person to have the custody of her child.

There was a hush in the court when the Judge polished his spectacles and gave his decision, ordering that the child be taken from the mother and given into the hands of the grandmother on the father's side. Then the woman slowly arose, took the little boy by the hand and walked down the aisle—a strange, unsteady light in her eyes. Reaching the bench fronting at one end the Sheriff's room and at the other the Judge's chamber, she dropped down and gazed vacantly about.

The Sheriff offered the little fellow an apple, and, as the child stepped forward shyly and took it, picked him up and dodged quickly into the private room, snapping the lock behind him. This aroused the woman from her stupor. She leaped forward and fairly flung herself against the door.

Just then the old Judge stepped to the door of his chamber. With a cry the mother made a rush for him—but again threw herself against a closed door! She was beside herself when the bailiffs and her lawyer led her away. I never heard what became of her—but I can give you a few pertinent particulars about that red-headed lawyer and old Judge Millring.

The papers commented at length upon the "painful incident," but praised the "clearly judicial and impartial" nature of the decision, and added that the county was "fortunate in being able to furnish the circuit bench with so distinguished and scholarly a jurist, one that would be an ornament to the highest tribunal in the land." That was the first gun in the judicial campaign—but not the last.

The red-headed lawyer had his dander up, but kept it under cover, and started out, quietly, to make things merry for the old Judge. But that unsuspecting ornament of the bench simply continued in the even tenor of his way, living the life of a solitary and scholarly old widower in the big mansion on the hill, cared for by a half-deaf housekeeper whose smile would have soured fresh milk.

Secretly the young lawyer organized into a band of insurgents a choice lot of the men who had been tricked, shammed and deserted by the Judge in years past. Then he bought the Blade, the new county-seat paper, published in the Judge's own town. When he had acquired the property he coyly suggested to the Judge that, as he needed a little ready money just then, he would be willing to sell a two-thirds interest. This bait caught the Judge instantly, and he drew his check for the required amount, charging it up to campaign expenses. Then he went into the city for a few days' rest, a habit he had fallen into in late years. He liked to come in contact with bright minds, he said, and keep in touch with the great world of affairs; it kept him from "getting rusty."

There was no open contest against the Judge in his own county; the new paper printed a few columns of conventional praise of "our distinguished and learned fellow-townsman," and the red-headed lawyer rode the country picking out the delegates to the Judicial convention. He didn't claim directly to represent the Judge, and even went so far as to say that he had no objection to letting any "sorehead" in on the delegation who cared to go to the convention. This was winked at as a magnanimous and clever thing—and an amazing number of soreheads took advantage of his generosity.

The convention met on Friday, the regular publication day of the Blade being Thursday. Somehow the papers got into the post office uncommonly early that day and in a few hours the county was in an uproar—for the news spread like a prairie fire after a drought. In headlines printed in black handbill type, the editor announced the fact that it had been discovered that the Hon. Worthy Millring was the husband of a young woman forty years his junior and the father of a little daughter. The wife was the daughter of a former housekeeper of the judicial mansion.

In proof of the existence of the wife, the paper published the facsimile reproduction of a registered letter receipt signed by Mrs. Worthy Millring. No comments were made aside from the simple statement that it was feared that the neighbors and political supporters of the venerable jurist would resent the fact that they had not been taken more intimately into the confidence of their distinguished fellow-townsman.

That convention was the hottest that ever convened in the county. The old Judge was full of fight. He made a bold dash to stampede the younger delegates.

"Just come over to the hotel," he told them; "meet my wife and then, if you blame me, vote against me." They accepted the challenge, met the woman—and went back to fight for the Judge. She was a city woman with a certain social grace and cleverness that dazzled the young farmers, and, for a time, it looked as if the Judge's high play would win out for him.

But a good many of the delegates had brought their wives to town with them—just to do a little shopping—and, somehow, the redheaded lawyer managed to meet most of these women and drop a word with them. And, incidentally, the convention, the stores, and the whole town generally were well supplied with handbills giving the text of the Judge's decision in which he had taken the child from the mother on the grounds of "unwholesome home influences." More than one delegate was called out of that convention by his wife—but somehow not a great many women called on the Judge's wife that first day of her appearance in local society.

In the convention the fight was something fierce. The balloting hung on until night and the insurgents forced an adjournment. That gave the wives of the delegates a chance to express their sentiments—and the next day, on the eighty-ninth ballot, there was a break in the Judge's forces and the nomination went to a dark horse candidate who was as awkward as a "pip" turkey, but straight and fairly able.

After that the old Judge grew thinner and frailer. He held his head just as high as ever when he took his dignified walks about town, but it was hard work for him to do it. His deep set eyes sunk further back into their caverns behind his bushy brows. Before the summer was over, he took to his bed and, in the language of the red-headed lawyer, "turned up his toes and submitted to the eternal decree of justice and retribution."

The politicians who, like the old Judge, made a practice of throwing dead cats in other people's wells are divided into two classes: First come those who do it from spite, because they're not allowed to draw all the water they want themselves. These are mean enough, but they don't trot in the same class with those who do it just for pure cussedness, poisoning the waters from which their friends must drink, simply because they are natural political degenerates. And it's my experience that this latter class is mainly made up of the men who prate loudest about political purity.

It's my notion that the politicians of this stripe generally get their taste of poisoned waters before they're through with the game. And I always take a heap of comfort every time I see one of them laid out for good.

Tell the wife that if she'll cure you of politics and come out west with you there's a chance for you to make more money here and get more solid enjoyment than in holding down the fattest job in the old state.

Yours as ever,

William Bradley.