Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/426

 still continues to enjoy a good practice at the New Orleans bar, and has even been talked of as a candidate for Congress, but is not thought to be southern enough in his opinions.

Mr Grip Curtis's action against Montgomery for assault and battery, after lingering along in the Boston courts for three or four years, at last came on for trial. Mr Agrippa Curtis had retained on his side three or four celebrated Boston lawyers, and the one who closed the case argued, with great energy, that the Union would certainly be dissolved, and society uprooted from its foundations, if the jury did not visit with signal damages such an instance of colored insolence towards a citizen every way so amiable and highly respectable, and such a stanch supporter of the Union, — as Mr Agrippa Curtis. But all this grave, weighty argument, though aided by a most flowing oration, full, as the newspapers had it, of the most brilliant and beautiful tropes and figures from the junior counsel, resulted, much to their disappointment, only in a verdict of twenty-five cents damages, which, with costs to one quarter part of that amount, were duly paid over to Mr Agrippa Curtis's attorney. The jury, by some fortunate accident, happened to be composed of very low people, mechanics and others; there' was only a single wholesale merchant upon it, and he not engaged in the southern trade.

As to Messrs Gilmore and Curtis, they had a fate common with those who get their money over the devil's shoulder. Mr Curtis settled in New Orleans, engaged in great speculations; had at one time the reputation of a millionnaire; but failed, carried down Mr Gilmore with him, and a goodly number of his Boston friends, including the old firm of Curtis, Sawin, Byrne, and Co. The establishment of his brother's will, and the consequent necessity of disgorging, gave him the finishing blow. For several years he lived a disgraced and ruined man, very much under the weather-board. Some of Gilmore's trickeries towards white clients coming to light, — for cheating colored