man shall right well know before I have done with him. You will bear in mind, gentlemen, that what I say is in self-defence that I did not begin this quarrel-that it was forced on me; and that I am bound by no restraints of courtesy, or of respect, or of kindness. Let him charge to the account of his own rashness and rudeness, whatever he receives in return therefor.

"Let me retort on this youth that he is a worthy advocate of his butcher client. He fights with the dirty weapons of his barbarous trade, and brings into his speech the reeking odor of his client's slaughter-house.

But

"Perhaps something of this congeniality commended him to the notice of his worthy client, and to this, his first retainer and no wonder, for when we heard his vehement roaring, we might have supposed his client had brought his most unruly bull-calf into court to defend him, had not the matter of the roaring soon convinced us the animal was more remarkable for the length of his ears, then even the power of his lungs. Perhaps the young gentleman has taken his retainer, and contracted for butchering, my client on the same terms as his client contracts in this line that is, on the shares. I think, gentlemen, he will find the contract a more dirty than profitable job. Or, perhaps, it might not be uncharitable to suggest that his client, who seems to be pretty well up to the business of saving other people's bacon, may have desired, as far as possible, to save his own; and, therefore, turning from members of the bar who would have charged him for their services according to their value, took this occasion of getting off some of his stale wares; for has not Shakespeare said the gentlemen will allow me to quote Shakespeare, too, while yet his reputation survives his barbarous mouthing of the poet's word's)—he knew an attorney 'who would defend a cause for a starved hen, or leg of mutton fly-blown.' I trust, however, whatever was the contract, that the gentleman will make his equally worthy client stand up to it; for I should like, that on one occasion it might be said the excellent butcher was made to pay for his swine.

"I find it difficult, gentlemen, to reply to any part of the young man's effort, except his argument, which is the smallest

part in compass, and, next to his pathos, the most amusing. His figures of speech are some of them quite good, and have been so considered by the best judges for the last thousand years. I must confess, that as to these, I find no other fault than that they were badly applied and ridiculously pronounced; and this further fault, that they have become so common-place by constant use, that, ununless some new vamping or felicity of application be given them, they tire nearly as much as his original mattervidelicet, that matter which, being more ridiculous than we ever heard before. carries internal evidence of its being his own. Indeed, it was never hard to tell when the gentleman recurred to his own ideas. He is like a cat-bird-the only intolerable discord she makes being her own notes-though she gets on well enough as long as she copies and cobbles the songs of other warblers.

But, gentlemen, if this young orator's argument was amusing, what shall I say of his pathos? What farce ever equalled the fun of it? The play of 'The Liar' probably approaches nearest to it, not only in the humor, but in the veracious character of the incidents from which the humor comes. Such a face-so woebegone, so whimpering, as if the short period since he was flogged at school probably in reference to those eggs falsely charged to the hound puppy) had neither obliterated the remembrance of his juvenile affliction, nor the looks he bore when he endured it.

"There was something exquisite in his picture of the woes, the wasting grief of his disconsolate client, the butcher Higginbotham, mourning-as Rachel mourned for her children-for his character because it was not. Gentlemen, look at him! Why he weighs twelve stone now! He has three inches of fat on his ribs this minute! He would make as many links of sausage as any hog that ever squealed at midnight in his slaughter pen, and has lard enough in him to cook it all. Look at his face! why, his chops remind a hungry man of jowls and greens. If this is a shadow, in the name of propriety, why didn't he show himself, when in flesh, at the last fair, beside the Kentucky ox; that were a more honest way of making a living than stealing hogs. But Hig is pining in grief! I wonder the

turned upon my client. Poor Higginbotham caught it thick and heavy. He wooled him, then skinned him, and then took to skinning off the under cuticle. Hig never skinned a beef so thoroughly. He put together all the facts about the witnesses' hearing the hogs squealing at night; the different marks of the hogs; the losses in the neighborhood; perverted the testimony and supplied omissions, until you would suppose, on hearing him, that it had been fully proved that poor Hig had stolen all the meat he had ever sold in the market. He asseverated that this suit was a malicious conspiracy between the Methodists and Masons, to crush his client. But all this I leave out as not bearing on the main subject-myself.

He came back to me with a renewed appetite. He said he would conclude by paying his valedictory respects to his juvenile friend-as this was the last time he ever expected to have the pleasure of meeting him.

That poetic young gentleman had said, that by your verdict against his client, you would blight for ever his reputation and that of his family-that you would bend down the spirit of his manly son, and dim the radiance of his blooming daughter's beauty. Very pretty, upon my word! But, gentlemen, not so fine-not so poetical by half, as a precious morceau of poetry which adorns the columns of the village newspapers, bearing the initials J. C. R. As this admirable production has excited a great deal of applause in the nurseries and boarding schools, I must beg to read it; not for the instruction of the gentleman, he has already seen it; but for the entertainment of the jury. It is addressed to R*** B***, a young lady of this place. Here it goes."

Judge my horror, when, looking up, I saw him take an old newspaper from his pocket, and, pulling down his spectacles, begin to read off in a stage-actor style, some verses I had written for Rose Bell's Album. Rose had been worrying me for some time, to write her something. To get rid of her importunities, I had scribbled off a few lines and copied them in the precious volume. Rose, the little fool, took them for something very clever (she never had more than a thimbleful of brains in her doll-baby head)—and was so tickied with them, that she got brother

VOL. III-W. H.

Bill, then about fourteen, to copy them off, as well as he could, and take them to the printing office. Bill threw them under the door; the printer, as big a fool as either, not only published them, but, in his infernal kindness, puffed them in some critical commendation of his own, referring to "the gifted author," as of the most promising of the younger members of our bar."

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The fun, by this time, grew fast and furious. The country people, who have about as much sympathy for a young town lawyer, badgered by an older one, as for a young cub beset by curs; and who have about as much idea or respect for poetry, as for witchcraft, joined in the mirth with great glee. They crowded around old Kasm, and stamped and roared as at a circus. The Judge and Sheriff in vain tried to keep order. Indeed, his honor smiled out loud once or twice; and to recover his retreat, pretended to cough, and fined the Sheriff five dollars for not keeping silence in the court. Even the old Clerk, whose immemorial pen behind his right ear had worn the hair from that side of his head, and who had not smiled in court for twenty years, and boasted that Patrick Henry couldn't disturb him in making up a judgment entry, actually turned his chair from the desk and put down his pen: afterwards he put his hand to his head three times in search of it; forgetting, in his attention to old Kasm, what he had done with it.

Old Kasm went on reading and commenting by turns. I forget what the ineffable trash was. I wouldn't recollect it if I could. My equanimity will only stand a phrase or two that still lingers in my memory, fixed there by old Kasm's ridicule. I had said something about my "bosom's anguish "-about the passion that was consuming me; and, to illustrate it, or to make the line jingle, put in sometime about "Egypt's Queen taking the Asp to her bosom "--which, for the sake of rhyme or metre, I called “the venomous worm "-how the confounded thing was brought in, I neither know nor want to know. When old Kasm came to that, he said he fully appreciated what the young bard said he believed it. He spoke of venomous worms. Now, if he (Kasm) might presume to give the young gentleman advice, he would recommend Swain's Patent Vermifuge. He had no

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doubt that it would effectually cure him of his malady, his love, and last, but not least, of his rhymes-which would be the happiest passage in his eventful history. I couldn't stand it any longer. I had borne it to the last point of human endurance. When it came only to skinning, I was there; but when he showered down aquafortis on the raw, and then seemed disposed to rub it in, I fled. Abii, erubi, erasi. The last thing I heard was old Kasm calling me back, amidst the shouts of the audience-but no more.

The next information I received of the case, was in a letter that came to me at Natchez, my new residence, from Hicks, about a month afterwards, telling me that the jury (on which I should have stated old Kasm had got two infidels and four antimasons) had given in a verdict for defendant: that before the court adjourned, Frank Glendye had got sober, and moved for a new trial, on the ground that the verdict was against evidence, and that the plaintiff had not had justice, by reason of the incompetency of his counsel, and the abandonment of the cause; and that he got a new trial (as well he should have done.)

I learned through Hicks, some twelve months later, that the case had been tried; that Frank Glendye had made one of his greatest and most eloquent speeches; that Glendye had joined the Temperance Society, and was now one of the soberest and most attentive men to business at the bar, and was at the head of it in practice; that Higginbotham had recovered a verdict of $2,000, and had put Swink in for $500 costs, besides.

Hicks' letter gave me, too, the melancholy intelligence of old Kasm's death. He had died in an apoplectic fit, in the court-house, while abusing an old preacher who had testified against him in a crim. con. case. He enclosed the proceedings of a bar meeting, in which "the melancholy dispensation which called our beloved brother hence while in the active discharge of his duties," was much deplored; but, with a pious resignation, which was greatly to be admired; "they submitted to the will," etc., and with a confidence old Kasm himself, if alive, might have envied, "trusted he had gone to a better and brighter world," etc., etc., which carried the doctrine of Universal

ism as far as it could well go. They concluded by resolving that the bar would wear crape on the left arm for thirty days. I don't know what the rest did, I didn't. Though not mentioned in his will, he had left me something to remember him by. Bright be the bloom and sweet the fragrance of the thistles on his grave!

Reader! I eschewed genius from that day. I took to accounts; did up every species of paper that came into my office with a tape string; had pigeon holes for all the bits of paper about me; walked down the street as if I were just going to bank and it wanted only five minutes to three o'clock; got a green bag and stuffed it full of old newspapers, carefully folded and labelled; read law, to fit imaginary cases, with great industry; dunned one of the wealthiest men in the city for fifty cents; sold out a widow for a twenty dollar debt, and bought in her things myself, publicly (and gave them back to her secretly, afterwards); associated only with skin-flints, brokers and married men, and discussed investments and stocks; soon got into business; looked wise and shook my head when I was consulted, and passed for a "powerful good judge of law; confirmed the opinion by reading, in court, all the books and papers I could lay my hands on, and clearing out the court-house by hum-drum details, common-place and statistics, whenever I made a speech at the bar-and thus, by this course of things, am able to write from my sugar plantation, this memorable history of the fall of genius and the rise of solemn humbug!

J. G. BALDWIN.

IN FAVOR OF THE HOG.-In County C, Ala., there lived one John Smith, who was ignorant of the laws relating to

meum et tuum." Now, the said John Smith, being impelled by the vociferations of an empty stomach, went, under cover of night, and felonously carried away from his neighbor's pen, a shoat, valued at one dollar and fifty cents, with the intention of appropriating the same to his own use. But Johnny was detected, and in due course of time was carried before Judge P. for trial. The witnesses were introduced, and the fact of the theft was proven beyond a doubt. The jury retired, to make up their verdict, to an adjacent