Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/152



CURRENT TOPICS. An Assassin's Handwriting.— Since paying his compliments to Mr. Schooling, the British expert in handwriting, who discovered that Napoleon was such a villain because he wrote such a villainous hand, the Chairman has turned up a forgotten MS. in his own archives, which he would like to show Mr. Schooling without disclosing the writer. The writ ing is exceptionally uniform, fluent, legible and elegant, and yet it is the writing of a lunatic and an assassin — the writing of Guiteau! Not one lawyer in a score writes such a beautiful hand. Certainly the Chairman does not, nor does any of his corres pondents save Judge Finch and Judge Dillon; nor of his correspondents who are gone can he recall any who wrote so well, except Judge Folger. The MS. is chiefly in a stiff clerk's hand, but it contains many additions and alterations in Guiteau's own hand. It is extensive, and is the draft of an opening speech to the jury .which Guiteau proposed to deliver in his action of libel against the New York Herald, but which never came to trial. It exhibits a good degree of tact and adroitness, although here and there crops out a crazy idea. For example : one of the HerahVs charges was that he had collected moneys for certain clients which he appropriated to himself. Guiteau explains this by saying that, rn the case referred to. he had an agreement to collect the claim on shares; that he had collected his own share, and that just as soon as he collected his client's share he proposed to remit it! Another hand which the Chairman would like to submit to Mr. Schooling is that of David Dudley Field, which is one of the worst imaginable.

Literary Advertising.— This Chair had some thing to say recently about the ingenious devices of literary advertising in modern times. A new device is shown in a late number of The Critic, that most excellent of American literary journals. It consists in getting up or inflaming a quarrel between two authors, by means of which, narrated in the news papers, they are made to puff and advertise one another. It seems from The Critic that once upon a

time a lady gave a reception to Crawford, the novel ist, at which Miss Wilkins was present, and with two hundred and ninety-nine others was presented to the lion, and that he failed to recognize her as a well-known story writer and to compliment her : whereupon her woman friends felt grieved and said he ought to be ashamed of such ignorance and illmanners. Whereupon the two writers proceed to write at each other through the hostess, Miss Wilkins protesting that she did not think it strange and did not feel hurt, and Mr. Crawford protesting that he ought not to be held to such instant rec ognition of Miss Wilkins, whom he had never met before, and that he did not mean to be nide, and each praising the other's works to the skies. All at the extent of a column and a half of The Critic's valuable space, and forming an excellent advertise ment of Miss Wilkins and her somewhat trifling wares. The only wonder in the premises is that on being " introduced," Mr. Crawford did not ask Miss Wilkins if she was a member of the Micawber family.

Liberty Pole Nuisance. — Taking down another book — not an old one this time, but the very newest — Mr. Roger Foster"s admirable "Commen taries on the Constitution of the United States," and opening at random in volume I, at page 661, we read that Alexander Addison, a Pennsylvania com mon pleas judge, about 1802, charged a grand jury that a liberty pole was a nuisance. He had been a Presbyterian preacher, and was an extreme Federal ist, who hated the Democrats and denounced all who sympathized with the French Revolution. He was removed from office in 1803. The Supreme Court of that State, in City of Allegheny v. Zimmer man, 95 Pa. St. 287; 40 Am. Rep. 249, held that a liberty pole is not per se a nuisance. This was erected by the Republicans. The Court uttered some very patriotic sentiments, saying, " It is a custom sanc tioned by a hundred years, and interwoven with the traditions, rights and memories of a free people. The people so desired it. The municipal authorities assented to it." Justices Gordon and Trunkey dis sented. In Dreher 7/. Yates, 43 New Jersey Law, '3'