The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862

Whether the Deacon and his son were what they professed to be, I will leave the reader to judge from the following conversation, which took place between them, one Saturday night, just before closing the store:

'Jacob!'

'Sir?'

'Dit you charge Mr. T– mit te ham?'

'Yes, father.'

'Vell, so dit I.'

A pause.

'Jacob!'

'Sir?'

'You had petter charge him again, so you won't forget him.'

'Yes, father.

Another pause.

'Jacob!'

'Sir?'

'Now you can water te vinegar, sand te sugar, and close te store, un den we vill haf family worship, un go ter ped!'

'Yes, father.'

'Law is,' to use the frequent phrase of a Gothamite contemporary, 'a cu'ros thing;' and not the least curious phase which it presents is the difference between what people say before juries and what they think; as is fully illustrated in the following, by Frank Hackett:

'Gracchus,' as the town called him, was a broken-down lawyer, who, as he got old, had prostituted the talents of his early days to the meanest kind of pettifogging and rascality. Everybody did their best to keep out of his clutches, and his 'make up' was seedy enough; yet he managed to keep in court half a dozen 'cranky suits,' in which, to be sure, he figured as a party himself, on one side or the other. The circumstances of one of them, which have just come to our memory, are perhaps worth jotting down:

For some quarters, Gracchus had not paid any rent, and his landlord made repeated requests of him to move out. Even a promise to cancel all arrears would not make him stir. A writ of ejectment would have delighted this 'legal spider;' but Mr. R. knew 'when he was well off,' and refused to resort to that. ' My dear sir, you must go,' said he one day, annoyed at the fellow's obstinacy; 'I have a man coming in right away, who will pay me a good tenant's rent, and I am going to have the office repaired for him. So just make up your mind to quit this afternoon.'

As Mr. R. turned to go out, he examined the window nearest him, and poked his cane through the decayed sash and crumbling glass in two or three places, with the remark: 'A pretty condition this for a business man's office to be in!' Nobody was surprised to hear that evening that a suit had been brought against Mr. R. for damages in trespass.

Mr. R.'s counsel told him that the best thing he could do would be to go to trial as soon as possible, and if he got out of it with a small sum for damages and no further annoyance, he would be lucky. Gracchus had secured 'Squire Sweet to argue the case to the jury—probably 'on shares.' To hear Sweet 'warm up' before the panel, you would have sworn that the 'palladium of justice' and the other 'fixtures' had their salvation staked on the success of his client. And if there was anything he thought himself competent to 'operate largely' on, it was a damage suit. On this occasion, the vivid picture he drew of an unwarrantable intrusion upon this aged and indefatigable servant of the public, the injury inflicted upon his 'valuable health,' and his generous conduct in contenting himself with the paltry sum of eighty dollars by way of damages, was to be set down as the 'Squire's best effort.

The jury went out just as the court was on the point of adjournment, and received orders to seal up their verdict for the morning. Each man had to 'chalk' what in his judgment was a sufficient sum for damages. They ranged all along in the neighborhood of three or four dollars, except one or two individuals, who had believed the whole of the plaintiff's complaint, and went in for something more than nominal damages. One in particular, who always swore by Sweet, aimed so high that the average came above the $13.33 that was necessary to carry costs.

After they had determined upon a verdict, our high-priced friend, with one or two others, went around to the hotel to retire for the night. As they went in, the clerk of the court met them with a pack of cards in his hands, with which a party had just finished playing whist. 'It didn't take us half so long to agree on that case. Sweet and the rest of us marked around on that verdict, just before we finished the last game, and we made it out—two dollars and twenty-five cents.' 'The d– you did,' replied our astonished friend. 'Why, how much did 'Squire Sweet mark, himself?' 'Uncommon high. He said he thought five dollars was about the fair thing.' 'Five dollars!' gasped the juryman; 'Squire Sweet put down only five dollars, when he went and told the jury that eighty dollars wasn't nothin' to it. Look a-here, can't I go back and change that figure of mine, afore the verdict comes in?'

It was decided pretty unanimously that—he couldn't.

Our readers will recall the author of the following poem, as a writer who has more than once given us poems indicating much refinement of taste, based on sound old English scholarship:

NO CROSS, NO CROWN

BY HENRY DUMARS

No mortal yet e'er gained the golden crown
Who did not in his search the cross upbear;
For heaven he need entertain no care
Who fears to sinfulness the Devil's frown,
And lays, if once espoused, his burdens down,
Because so many of his followers have no burden there.

And thus it is so many are awrong;
'Tis easier, they deem, the crown to gain
With limbs at will and shoulders free from pain,
Than bearing this great burden still along:
Besides, will not my brothers be among
The crowned ere I, unless I free my loins again?

Columbia doth seek the crown,—and sooth
No nation of the earth deserves it more;
But, ah! she is unwise as lands before
In hoping thus, what time she quits the Truth,
And showing unto enemies more ruth
Than even God doth show to us, weak worldlings sore.

Where once against the heavens men rebelled,
And forced the Prince of Peace to deadly war,
Did not He spread a deluge deep and far,
Not sweeping them alone, but all they held?
When they His awful earnestness beheld,
Were not they penitent, though vain, as bad sons are?

And why should we but lighten through a spell
These murderous madmen in our country here,
Their craziness to come or far or near
Anew, as more they learn of prompting hell?
Must not we now the CAUSE forever quell,
As Hercules did one time slay a source of fear?

If Truth is mighty, 'tis not so alone;
There's more availability in Error;
That end's not gained that's gained alone With terror:
The way of Right but leadeth to the crown;
Who conquer perfectly, peace-seed have sown;
Reform's remaining ill usurps at last the furrow.

A Correspondent, who is interested in education and not uninterested in humanity, sends us the following bona fide advertisement, specifying the qualifications and accomplishments expected from the lady teachers of a certain Western community:

'When employing a lady as teacher in our Public Schools, we desire, in addition to a thorough education, to secure the following qualifications;