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THE GREEN BAG

COMMONWEALTH v. LAMB BY HENRY BURNHAM BOONE MR. LAMB stands at the vanishing point of human importance, if at this moment he is still in existence. At the time when his actions were the subject of judicial investigation he was as inconsider able as it is possible for a creature to be. His personality was hardly more palpable than thin air. He could almost be said not to exist at all. His life did not cast a shadow. Whether he lived or died could not have been of any importance to any one, could not have mattered much even to himself. Any broken-kneed cab-horse, any homeless, ownerless street dog had more in dividuality than he. His personality denied the existence of the Ego. A philosophy that defines men as ex pressions of a will would be puzzled to account for his existence. He was charged with a deliberate attempt to commit murder. The charge itself reflected the man's futility. He had only attempted — and failed. The lawyer who came to defend him be fore the trial justice, journeyed six hours in a buggy through the pine forests of South Florida, following a wagon-track. The yielding sand that gave way to his buggywheels flowed back over their rims. The shoeless horse sank up to his fet-locks at every step. Mr. ELrown, the lawyer, had brought with him the Statutes of the State and a volume of criminal law. He had never -heard of the man until a fellow-lawyer , put a telegram into his hand the night before and told him he was welcome to the job if he wanted it. The name of the hamlet near which the affair occurred is on the map. Unless every cross-road and store in South Florida is inscribed with an appropriate title upon the county maps, such maps would merely dis play blank parallelograms and rhombuses. The settlement lay between a virgin pine forest and a swamp where the ax had been

employed by the settlers only to clear a spot for the town, and the sun, in revenge for the desecration of nature, concentrated her heat upon these criminals and made their town comparable to a seventh circle in the " Inferno of Dante." In the straggling orange groves, the trees had been killed by belting, and each threw its long ghostly shadow in the morning sun. There was a weedy, sickly crop of corn in a dip between the hamlet and the swamp. There were no fences anywhere. The town proper con sisted of a few cabins, apparently deserted for the mud had fallen from the chinks, and two stores built of unplaned planks nailed up and down and cured to a gray color by the sun. In the curing the boards had, drawn apart as if contact were too hot for comfort. Another store had been framed and was in the leisurely process of building. "I wonder why," thought Mr. Brown as his driver pulled up before one of the stores. In the shade a considerable number of men were sitting with their backs against the planks, expectorating the juices of tobacco at chips which they had stuck up in the sand or at stones which were within spittable distance. Their lean mounts tied to the store porches, full in the sun, were worn out with beating flies, but their owners had considerately tied their bridle-reins to posts and the animals contrived to use them as slings for the support of their heads. One had broken his rein but every now and then he would forget it and, just as he was dozing off, he would lurch forward and wake up. Naturally he was annoyed by these jerky awakenings and envious of his companions. His temper had suffered from the strain and occasionally he made as if to kick a neighbor, but somnolence always overcame him be fore he had come to the point of doing so. Mr. Brown was new to South Florida and new to the law.