658
The Green Bag
this can ever come to pass, and that
an Assistant District Attorney," said
the present war against industrial com binations can have no such useful re
Mr. Battle, ‘'1 was frequently retained as counsel in criminal cases. One win ter night, just as I was about to leave my oflice, I was called to the telephone. The man at the other end of the wire was a stranger to me, and, without revealing his identity, he asked me to defend a young man named Walcott, then in the Tombs on a charge of highway robbery.
sult. CROW vs. CROW
.
HERE may be nothing in a name when it stands alone, but there is often much amusement in the associa tion of several names. For instance, there was tried some years ago at New ark, N. 1., a case that stood on the
docket as Crow v. Crow. A man by the name of Crow, a resi dent of Newark, left his wife and struck
out for the wilds of Montana.
After
living there a few months, he applied to the territorial court for a divorce from Mrs. Crow on the ground of
cruelty. The court would not listen to his appeal, but bade him go to New Jer
The speaker, whom I judged to be about sixty years old, agreed to send me a re taining fee of $500, but insisted that I should not tell Walcott in what circum stances I had been retained for his de fense. “The next morning I received at the hands of a messenger boy an envelope
containing 3500 in crisp $100 bills. The envelope was addressed in typewriting and there was absolutely nothing to
sey and there seek redress for his grievances. When the trial came on in Newark, Mr. Crow preferred to act as his own
show from whom it had come. I went to the Tombs and had a talk with Val cott. He was a sullen chap, and when I
counsel. The principal witnesses brought on by the plaintiff were named, respec
man over the telephone, and that he had sent me the retaining fee, Walcott’s face clouded. “ ‘I know the man,’ he said, after a
tively, Daw, Linnet and Thrush!
The
defendant’s counsel was a lawyer by the name of Howell. But the stenog rapher, who took down the testimony,
was an Englishman, who persisted in addressing him as Mr. 'Owl.
The case created no little merriment in the court at the time, and it was remarked that the only thing needed to
complete this strange combination of names was to have had Vice-Chancellor Bird preside.
told him that I had been retained by a
pause. ‘Rather than accept any help from him I would rot in prison or die in the electric chair.’ “I argued with him in vain. I said that as long as he was properly defended it vided madethelittle money difi'erence for histodefense. him who The pro~ man swore bitterly and displayed a deep seated hatred for the man who had
talked with me over the telephone, but whose name he refused to disclose.
I
finally gave up the task and asked him ALL ON ACCOUNT OF MILDRED SINGULAR reminiscence is given by George Gordon Battle, Esq., of
to at least give me the address of the man who had sent me the money and to tell me what I was to say when I returned
37 Wall street, New York, in an inter
the fee.
view in the New York Herald: “Some years ago, after I ceased to be
an oath, ‘that the reason why I decline
“ ‘Tell him,’ answered Walcott, with
