Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/397

 tongue^ and in a manner so indescribably comical, that it threw every one into a lit of laughter at the j)lciintiff, who stood up in the place usually allotted to criminals; and the defendant was let off, with little or no da- mages.''

The case of John Hook, to which my correspondent alludes, is worthy of insertion. Hook was a Scotchman, a man of wealth, and suspected of being unfriendly to the American cause. During the distresses of the American army, consequent on the joint invasion of Cornwallis and Phillips in 1781, a Mr. Venable, an army commissary, had taken two of Hook's steers for the use of the troops. The act had not been strictly legal; and on the establishment of peace. Hook, under the advice of Mr. Cowan, a gentleman of some distinction in the law, thought proper to bring an action of trespass against Mr. Venable, in the disti'ict court of New London. Mr. Henry appeared for the defendant, and is said to have disported himself in this cause to the infinite enjoyment of his hearers, the unfortunate Hook always excepted. After Mr. Henry became animated in the cause, says a correspondent,* he appeared to have complete controul over the passions of his audience: at one time he ex- cited their indignation against Hook: vengeance was visible in every countenance: again, when he chose to relax and ridicule him, the whole audience was in a roar of laughter. He painted the distresses of the American army, exposed almost naked to the rigour of a winter's sky, and marking the frozen ground over which they marched, with the blood of their unshod feet; where was the man, he said, who had an Ameri- <2Pan heart in his bosom, who would not have throwi^

'= xTudsre Stuari.

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