Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/612

 An Old-Time juryman By EDGAR WHITE OR forty-ﬁve years “Uncle Eben” Reynolds of Middle

Fork town

township seventy-two years ago.

The

only time he ever had a chance to see

ship has been a familiar ﬁgure when

any of the world was when he was

court was “settin’ ” in Macon, Mo., the county seat. During the war “Uncle

“soljerin' " with "Pap” Price, and then he says the Yankees kept him so all

Ebe” was a “Johnnie Reb," not the kind

ﬁred busy he didn't have a chance to

that sat around the village store and

take notes of the country. In eight out of ten cases tried in cir cuit' court the lawyers leave “Uncle

ﬁgured out a plan for Lee to surround the Army of the Potomac, but the sort

that grabbed up an old deer riﬂe and mixed in where the most trouble was. The aged juryman has a dent on his bald head that would make a German

student duelist green with envy.

It

was made at Shiloh by a minie ball, and looks like some one had taken a gouge and worked out a place to lay a hen egg. For this big dent “Uncle Ebe" draws no pension from the government, but at the proper legal intervals they sum

mon him to the county seat for jury duty.

It’s become so much a habit

with him that if they don't put him on the list he comes anyhow, trusting that

Ebe's” name on the list of twelve. That's because they have become satis ﬁed with the old gentleman's good sense and fairness. But there was a case the other day wherein "Uncle Ebe" balked. The clerk called out a panel of ten, and the judge asked this question :— “Gentlemen, are your opinions such

that you would refuse to return a ver dict of guilty, wherein the punishment would be death, although justiﬁed by

the law and the evidence?" “Uncle Ebe" shook his head. agin it, judge,” he said.

“11m

The judge repeated the question, care

some fellow will fail to show up and fully explaining its every meaning, but he'll get on as a “scrub," i. e. pick-up. the old man shook his head again. When "Uncle Ebe” came marching “I wouldn’t vote to hang a man under home in '65 they wouldn't let him vote no sarcumstances, judge," he replied, or serve on a jury or anything else, but with such ﬁnality he had to be excused. when they "reconstructed” him they Later on some one asked "Uncle Ebe" immediately haled him into court as a how he could reconcile his bloody war juror. He didn't want to go a bit, as record with his squeamishness in a court he was middlin’ busy straightening up of justice. the old farm, which had sorter gone to seed during his effort to bust the govern ment, but when he got into court, and found his old captain (Ben Eli Guthrie)

“The law ain't got no right to kill a man,” he explained. “Go back to the

among the big-wigs, it looked all right, and “Uncle Ebe” has been a juryman

Why, he banished him. He knew it wasn't his place to kill Cain, although he knew he was a murderer. These

every year since that time. “Uncle Ebe” was born in Middle Fork

Garden of Eden. When Adam found Cain had killed Abel, what did he do?

lawyers talk a good deal about prece