Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/214

 more familiar with them than he. His voice was weak. When he charged a jury their effort to hear and to untwist his involved sentences left them in a state of utter despair. As a nisi prius judge, he cannot, therefore, be regarded as an entire success. Fell has at times said that if we could have kept him on tap in a back room ready to be called upon in special emergencies and have done the work ourselves, it would have produced better results. Along with him sat Fell. He was a Quaker who, before going on to the bench by appointment of Governor Hartranft, had been in the war and had built up a large practice. He was the incarnation of good common sense. Nobody could be more helpful. He had a knack of getting the things of life, not for himself alone but for those in whom he was interested. Nobody knew better the effect upon an earnest advocate of the Socratian statement, “Perhaps I was wrong.” He has been deservedly successful in all directions, living a smooth and even life, gathering friends, money and repute and is now the chief justice. He came from Bucks County, prolific in the production of judges.

When I entered the court, the run of business was such as to give me the term in the quarter sessions. I hesitated to begin in that way. In my practice I had made the common mistake of civil lawyers of not going into that court, not so much because of the feeling that it was unworthy practice as because of the fear that through some lack of skill on my part an innocent man might be deprived of life or liberty. The fear was for the most part unnecessary. Only in those cases affected by public clamor is there much danger of the punishment of innocence. As a general thing, when men begin a career of crime their first offenses are overlooked and forgiven. It is only when they have been repeated often enough to wear out the patience of those injured that accusations are apt to be made and arrests to follow. Magistrates, grand juries, petit juries 200