Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/438

 Rh and character could not be in any manner impeached and who was considered a man of the strictest probity and honesty. Deacon X., on direct examination, testified positively that the ground was frozen solid on November 20th, and remained frozen all winter. Colonel Hepburn and Judge McPherson were completely routed in their minds by this testimony, but without show ing a disturbing ripple on the surface, Hep burn addressed himself for cross-examination to the witness. After leading the witness to repeat the testimony and make it positive and) convincing, Colonel Hepburn said: "Deacon X., how do you fix with such cer tainty the exact day when the ground be came frozen?" "I always keep a diary," the Deacon re plied. "Have you that diary with you?" asked the Colonel. The Deacon responded in the affirmative, produced the diary, and, turning to Novem ber 20th passed it over for examination, with out reading. Colonel Hepburn, after reading the entry to himself, asked the witness: "This entry you'made on November 20th, did, you, Deacon?" "Oh, yes, yes!" replied the Deacon. "You have made no change in it since that day?" the Colonel asked. "Xone whatever," the Deacon replied with considerable earnestness. Thereupon Colonel Hepburn returned the diary to the Deacon and asked him to read that entry to the jury, and the Deacon with out discovering the situation until later, said: "This is the entry in my diary (reading), November 26th. Ground froze up and staid froze all winter." The effect can be better imagined than de scribed. Colonel Hepburn maintained his reputation as a cross-examiner and his client won the case, and the Deacon was forever after that known in that community as "the man who kept the diary." ROMANCES often come to light in dry-

395

looking law cases, but it is seldom that so much romance and picturesqueness is written into a case as in one which has just been taken to the Iowa Supreme Court. A state ment of an appeal, just filed in that court, in the case of Brier v. Davis, gives the facts in the following novel manner: "At the time of the transaction shown by this record, Mr. Brier, Sr., was about seventy-seven years of age. He lived on a farm near the Missouri li'ne, which belonged to his wife, and with them lived his son, the appellee, and an old-maid daughter. In his youth the old gentleman had been a miller in a water-power mill. To be such in those days was to be the principal citizen in the neighborhood of the mill. He lived so near the Missouri line that he had not learned that small water-power mills had ceased to be of value for any purposes, except to artists and pigeons, and so in his declining years his heart fondly turned to again being a miller in a water-power mill. He was never a giant intellectually, and hi's more than three-score and ten years bore heavily upon him at and prior to the time when he first met Mt. Vernon Davis. "Mr. Brier, Sr., was a pious old gentleman, who delighted in singing hymns, was weak and honest and presumed every one else to be so. His children, the appellee and the old maid, were living proofs of the rule that 'like begets like.' "Mt. Vernon Davis, on the other hand, was an astute business man, who had at one time been a farmer, but who had in latei years taken to shaving notes and loaning money. In this business he had foreclosed a mortgage on and came into possession of a picturesque ruin, once known as a mill, sit uated at Central City, Iowa. "The ways of Providence were such that the old gentleman from the Missouri line was brought in contact with the astute Mr. Davis from Mt. Vernon. Ina business transaction ¿n which the mail changed hands, the little farm down on the Missouri line became mortgaged and the old gentleman Brier and his old-maid daughter became ten