The Green Bag
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principles to conditions with which they are so utterly unfamiliar as are the six country Supreme Court judges of Illinois with metropolitan conditions. An honest reapportionment of the Supreme Court districts will automati cally cause needed changes in the burdensome rules which now oppress litigants and obstruct justice. THE CHARGE OF THE GRAFT BRIGADE ( With apologies to the spirit of Tennyson) There were 600 claimants for $64,000 left by Jeremiah Moynihan, a St. Louis rag picker. — News item. EAGERLY, eagerly, Eagerly onward, Soon as they heard of his death Came the six hundred. Living they knew him not, But now with pace full hot Into the chamber of death Rush the six hundred. "Forward the Moynihans!" On come the warring clans. Altho by many leagues Their homes are sundered, They could not let go by This tempting slice of pie; That is the reason why Into the chamber of death Sneaked the six hundred. Dollars to right of them, Dollars to left of them, Dollars in front of them; Everyone wondered What kind of tale to tell His bank account to swell And with old Jerry's wealth To line his pockets well; Greedy six hundred. Behold them walking home! A ragged host they come, — Someone has blundered. They did but hold the bag While others took the swag, — Foolish six hundred. SIRIUS SINNICUS.
OUT OF HIS OFFICE FOR A WEEK. COL. J . T. HOLMES of Columbus, O., who has furnished the Green Bag with many good anecdotes, tells the following story: "Colonel James Watson of the 40th Ohio, in some charge on the Atlanta campaign — Kenesaw Mountain — was pulled in over the enemy's works by a stalwart Confederate. He was a rather short, slender, dark-featured, black-eyed, black-haired young man of high spirit, intelligence and courage, but on that occasion had gone so far that 'discretion was the better part of valor.' "They sent him to perhaps two different prisons and then to Libby, at Richmond. In course of two or three months, one of the Confederate prison surgeons conceived a great liking for the little Yankee Colonel, who some years after the war told the writer whose Ohio regiment was on that same cam paign that he read Grote's History of Greece, in fine print, while he was con fined in Libby. "At the end of the imprisonment, one day in the fall of 1864, the surgeon cargeon carried a bundle as he went to a small room in the prison, and the guards did not notice that the Colonel passed newly clad into the exchange line, much in advance, as he well knew, of his time and turn for passing beyond the lines — a practical escape. The Con federate friend had said cautiously, "Colonel Watson, have you any money?" "Not a cent." "Well, here are $800, Confederate money; this ought to help you through, good-bye." "The war closed; the Colonel had not heard from his 'friend in need,' and after a few years, at work in his law office in the Capital City, wrote to some cor respondent in Richmond in an effort to find him. The effort was a success and
