Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/640

 The Testimony of the Rocks.

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THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS. BY HENRY BURNS GEER. IT was an injunction case, and the injunc edge of the art of storing sounds that stood tion was sought by the widow Jenkins, him well,—as the sequel will show. —the keeper of a summer boarding-house Mr. Ransom, who valued most highly the out on the bluff overlooking the Cumberland good opinion and the sweet smiles of Miss River,—to restrain Thomas Partee, a street Pattie Jenkins, lost no time, after a consul contractor and quarryman, from carrying on tation with the mother, in hieing himself to operations in his stone quarry at an unsea a lawyer, and in having drawn up a bill for sonable, as well as an unreasonably early injunction to restrain the operator of the hour of a morning. stone quarry from working at such an un heard-of hour for business operations as halfOne day, a small army of negro quarrypast four in the morning, or for two hours men, blasters and stone breakers, armed with drills, sledges, picks, dynamite and fuses, thereafter. came trooping out and pitched camp at the The case was duly brought to court, and rear of the widow's select boarding-house. the oral evidence given; and the judge early They were late in arriving the first morning, gave unmistakable indications of a disposi and the pandemonium they raised was barely tion to minimize the disturbance and the tolerable that day. But imagine, if you can, nuisance created by Thomas Partee, street the consternation and the indignation of Mrs. contractor, at his stone quarry on the bluff. Jenkins and her summer boarders the next Then it was that Frank Ransom proved morning—the early morning—when at the himself an individual of original thought and unseemly hour of half-past four o'clock, the a resourceful mind. Through his attorney he had placed, as an exhibit in evidence, one intolerable racket was renewed! Miss Pattie, the nineteen-year-old daughter of his latest and best phonographs; and when of the landlady, swept into the dining-room that previously posted individual exclaimed that morning with fire in the liquid depths of dramatically: her beautiful dark eyes—real southern eyes! "Shall the widows and orphans of this She went straight to the young man with the beautiful city of ours have their sweet slum light moustache, who was honored with a bers rudely broken by such harrowing, dis seat at her mother's right hand. He glanced tracting sounds, as are now literally repro at her with a look that revealed the old, old duced in evidence before this honorable court? Such sounds, at such an hour, in a story,—but she heeded it not. "Frank Ransom!" she exclaimed, "if you Christian land, are not to be en " do not do something to get those horrid —he did not finish the sentence; for Ran noises stopped, I'll—I'll never speak to you som had quietly fitted the trumpet, or reson ator to his phonograph, and set in motion again i" "Why, Miss Pattie," he replied in mild sur the records of the stone quarry,—the sounds prise, "I shall certainly aid your mother in of the sledges, the picks, the drills, the shouts taking any legal steps necessary to suppress of the bosses to the men,—and one terrific blast that had been fired while he sat at close the nuisance." Now it so happened that Mr. Ransom was range one morning early, with the blank an expert in phonographs, and other instru records of his instrument exposed and set to ments that record sound, and had a knowl properly record the sounds of the quarry.