Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 24.pdf/213

 The Appellate Autocrats, or Simon Ordinary's Concrete Justice BY A. G. ZIMMERMAN1 IT was evident that he had never been in a law office before. He entered in a lumbering diffident sort of way. He removed his hat and in his indifferent English wanted to know "if this be a lawyer office." He was Simon Ordinary and he looked his name to perfection. He was a simple ignorant country laboring-man, well along in the sixties. He had a steady, kindly blue eye, and an affidavit face that bespoke his thorough-going honesty and his freedom from guile. He was a man of peace, but he had reached a settled conviction that he must now fight — in an orderly way if possible — to get his rights. He in tended to have and keep what belonged to him, but he wanted to pursue ap proved methods. He was law-abiding to a fault. During his twenty years or more in this land, Simon Ordinary had by honest toil and frugality managed to accumulate a very modest competence. Much of this was invested in two little houses and cheap lots in a small country town. In one of these houses he lived; the other he leased to tenants. He was grateful for his opportunities and had an inno cent pride in his success. He had great respect for authority, for position whether official or social, and for the rights of others. But he was determined to have his own, and his appeal to the law was for simple justice. After patient and persistent question ing, young Lawyer Tryem managed to 'Judge of Dane County Court, Madison, Wis.

extract the essential details of his diffi dent client's trouble. It seemed such a clear case of premeditated spoliation on the part of an influential well-to-do citizen, that the lawyer hesitated. Yet the man had such evidence of honesty and truthfulness about him as to carry conviction in spite of the apparent im probability. Subsequent investigation and development more than substan tiated the old man's story. Captain James Somebody was a promi nent business man of the town — so much so that in imagination he saw the letters P.B.M. after his name with as much pride as a college president sees his LL.D. He was in the habit of run ning things and getting what he wanted. To him his country social position and financial standing was "might," and he was a firm believer in the theory that "might makes right." Moreover, he was willing to put the theory in practice.especially in the case of his neighbor, Simon Ordinary, whose comparative suc cess and assumption of rights the cap tain appeared to resent. Between the two lots of Simon, chance or some bygone public-spirited citizen had left an eight-foot alley or passage way that nobody seemed to own or claim and that had never been legally dedicated to the public. Back of the lots at one end of the strip was a pasture made up of vacant lots belonging to Captain Somebody. On the sides of the strip were old out-of-repair fences, one being just four feet from the tenant house. A side entrance to this house opened on to a platform with front and