Washington Letter. shark, if you please. With his heart bleed ing for the homeless widow, Comstock lets the reverend hypocrite have the money. The months roll by. The time for payment ar rives. "Comstock don't need the money, but the widow Dennis needs the home of which she has been so cruelly—so villainously deprived, if you please. Comstock tells Mr. Preacher man that he must put up or vacate. He pleads for a renewal—this 'robber of the widow and the orphans.' Comstock is relent less. It is a poor, friendless woman against a great strong man, and Comstock—'the money-lender,' 'the note-shaver,' 'the userer,' as my friend Colonel Wilson would have it, takes the part of the woman in distress. The sanctimonious hypocrite is forced to leave, and the widow and her tattered children are restored to their own by this 'scheming trickster/ Comstock! "Find against him if you will, gentlemen; but I want you to remember this when you
333
go to your jury room to make up your ver dict." It is stated the jury was back inside of five minutes with a verdict for Comstock. They had accepted Wilson's story as true, and felt bound to accord the same respect to Dabney's sequel. As Dabney was leaving the courtroom. Judge Henry pulled him to one side and said : "See here, both of you fellows ought to have been ashamed of yourselves for running off to the brush that way, but now that it's all over, I want you to tell me honestly, was that wind-up story of yours facts or pure imagination?" The little lawyer's gray eyes twinkled, as they sought the ceiling, and the owner of them replied musingly: "Your Honor, I've gone through the books pretty thoroughly, and I failed to find any rule directing a man to meet an argu ment outside of the record with facts."
WASHINGTON LETTER. WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL, 1904. THE name of a great man usually hangs like an ill-fitting garment upon a name sake. The personality of the original pos sessor has been so impressed upon it that he to whom it is subsequently given must be possessed of a robust individuality to escape the acting of a life-long masquerade. Mr. Justice John Marshall Harían began life with such a name. The fact that undue emphasis is not laid upon his first two names is attributable to a mentality the virility of which is undiininished after more than a quarter of a century of service upon that Bench with which all of his names are now inseparably connected. justice Harían was born in Boyle County,
Kentucky, on the first day of June, 1833. His profession was an inheritance, the enjoy ment of which was interrupted by the Civil War, in which he served his country, and by subsequent political aspirations which were never fully gratified. He was at one time Attorney General for his State, and, after being defeated in gubernatorial con tests, he again took up his profession. There after he followed, as a wise man, that legal star whose name he bears, and was led to that Court which sits at the feet of the God dess of Liberty and watches over the law which is there given birth. On the tenth day of December, 1877. he took the oath of office which he now holds, and the reports of the
