Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/60



CURRENT TOPICS.

PREXTISS' WIT AND ADROITNESS. — In reading Oakey Hall's memoir of Sergeant S. Prentiss, ve are reminded of a jest that he made as he was about to fight one of his duels with Foote. A boy had climbed into a neighboring tree to see the fun, and Prentiss warned him to come down and go away, "for my friend Foote shoots very wildly." E non •vero, ben tróvalo. His brilliant argument on the trial of Judge Wilkinson for murder is given in full in Snydefs •• Great Speeches by Great Lawyers. "' Prentiss in this speech quoted several times from Byron. Was this on account of a fellow feeling for him by reason of his pedal deformity? There is a good deal of fustian in the speech, but it was well designed to go down with a jury. The circum stances, as narrated by Mr. Snyder, partake some what of the ludicrous. The Judge, who lived in Mississippi, had gone up to Louisville with his brother, who was a physician, and another Mississippian named Murdaugh, to make preparations for the Judge's marriage. The Doctor, wishing to have a proper wedding garment, ordered a suit there from Mr. Redding, a fashionable tailor. Two days be fore the day fixed for the wedding, the three went to the shop to try on the garments. The coat did not fit, and the tailor promised to correct it. The trousers had been sent to the hotel, but the Doctor was about to pay for the whole suit, when the Judge (who believed in having suits tried) suggested that he had better try them on first, for they might prove no better than the coat. Redding thereupon re marked, as he testified, that too much had been said about that already, or as the other party testified, "You are too damned meddlesome." The Judge retorted that he did not come there to be insulted, and seizing a poker struck the tailor a violent blow. The Doctor and Murdaugh also fell on him with drawn knives, the tailor then seized his shears, but as Pren tiss said, '• did not succeed in cabbaging therewith any part of his assailants." Redding and the Judge brought up in the street, and the tailor offered to fight the whole party if they would lay down their knives. The parties separated however without fur ther trouble. Redding resolved to have the Wilkin sons arrested, but needing to learn their names, was

going to the hotel for the purpose that evening, when encountering some friends on the way, he narrated the occurrence to them, and they accompanied him thither. The Wilkinson party were there attacked. Knives and pistols were freely used, and two of the tailor's party were killed. Although the original fault was thus on the part of the Judge and his party, Prentiss had the art to make the jury believe that the tailor's party went there in a conspiracy to kill or de grade the Wilkinsons, and he got them off scot-free, in a State where they were strangers, and where the feeling was so hostile to them, at first, as aristocratic slaveholders who had slain poor mechanics, that they were safe only in jail, — very much to the delight of two hundred ladies who flocked to hear the charming advocate. He had a better field for his display than Pinckney had in the Supreme Court on an occasion when the ladies crowded to hear him, and he was obliged to make a dry legal argument in respect to insurance upon a cargo of asses. Not the least amusing circumstance in the affray came out in the testimony of one Oldham. who testified that he was not in the fight and knew nothing of the affair nor of the defendents, but as he was in the passage-way the door opened and he received a cut from the Doctor, whom he knocked down for his pains. Then he saw Murdaugh retreating upstairs, and heard him asking for a pistol. This reminded him of his own, which he thereupon drew and dis charged at Murdaugh. Thus, says Prentiss. "he fought, to use his own descriptive and unrivaled phraseology, entirely • upon his own hook.' " A parallel to this however may be found in Scott's "Fair Maid of Perth," where Harry of the Wynd volunteered to fill a vacancy in the ranks of one of the two rival Scottish clans which contested to the death, not that he had any special bias or choice, but fought, as he phrased it, " on his own hand." One is gratified to observe that Prentiss did not wholly justify his client's conduct at the tailor's shop; he admitted that it was " reprehensible," and that they were speedily " ashamed " of it. Between the lines we imagine that we can read an excuse for it, and we think Prentiss might well have urged it, in the potent and unaccustomed Kentucky whiskey and the rarified atmosphere of the Blue Grass State. The 39