Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/538

 An Assassin's Plea.

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AN ASSASSIN'S PLEA. By Irving Browne.

AN English expert in chirography, who reads the characters of men from their writing, has recently discovered that the first Napoleon must have been a prodigious villain because he wrote such an abominable hand. On similar reasoning this ingenious gentleman must come to the conclusion that

Guiteau's own hand. It is the draft of the opening speech which he proposed to de liver to the jury, in his action against James Gordon Bennett, for a libel published in the New York " Herald," for which he claimed $100,000 damages. At the beginning he writes: "I shall deliver this from memory

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FACSIMILE OF GUITEAf's HANDWRITING.

Rufus Choate, Horace Greeley and David Dudley Field were exceedingly vicious per sons, for they certainly wrote atrocious hands. I have in my possession a manuscript, excep tionally uniform, fluent, legible and elegant, which is the writing of a half-lunatic and an assassin — the writing of Guiteau! Not one lawyer in a score writes such an excellent hand. It is as good as Garfield's and not greatly inferior to Lincoln's. The MS. is quite extensive, and is mainly in a lawclerk's stiff writing, but it begins with and contains many additions and alterations in

with all the power and pathos I can com mand. C. J. G." He left the document in the law office of the Hon. William Henry Arnoux, of the city of New York, in the endeavor to see him and secure his services as counsel on the trial of the cause; but they never met, and the action never came to trial. This was in 1874. In this paper he gives a pathetic account of his struggles in Chicago, where at length he had acquired a professional income of $2,000 a year, when his practice was ruined by the great fire, and he came to New York with only $10 in