Page:06-24-1920 -The Story of the Jones County Calf Case.pdf/5

 chair and pretends to read a newspaper, but goes to sleep, and when he is suddenly and rudely awakened he pretends he has not been asleep at all.

Now, gentlemen, the Jones County Calf Case has probably attained more notoriety than any other case ever tried in this State, because of the small amount involved, and because of the long litigation, and the great amount of costs, and all that sort of thing. Of course, the supposed English case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce never did occur except in the mind of the great Charles Dickens, who made it immortal.

This story that I am about to tell you deals largely with a red-headed hero by the name of Bob Johnson. Bob, of course, was my client or he would not be a hero. It is always spoken of in the singular—the Jones County Calf Case, whereas, there were in truth and in fact three separate law suits growing out of the same facts.

The first one that occurred was what we call the Note Case. It was on a note for twenty-four dollars that Bob gave—I called him Bob—that Bob gave when he was made to believe that he had handled the stolen calves. That note was for twenty-four dollars, and it was litigated about every full of the moon for several years, the note bought by an innocent purchaser, a bank. You know, the innocent purchaser bank. Now, Bob had found out after giving the note that it was a mistake to have given it, that he had not handled the stolen calves at all, so Bob refused to pay the note, and litigated it and was finally beaten, and I think that the note cost Bob something like $1400.00.

The next case was upon an indictment in which Bob was charged with stealing the Foreman calves. That was begun in Jones County where all of the parties lived, and where the calves lived; and there was an indictment found against Bob charging him with stealing the Foreman calves, and he hired Colonel Preston, then a very distinguished advocate at this bar, and we went to the mat.

First we moved to quash the indictment because of an error in drawing and impaneling the grand jury. While that motion