Thomas Nelson Page

“ Tall, grave, and with a little bend, not in the shoulders but in the neck; with white hair just long enough to be brushed behind in a way to suggest the knot which had once appeared at the back; with calm, quiet eyes under bushy white eyebrows; a face of pinkish red inherited from Saxon ancestors, who once lived in the sun and on the brine, and a mouth and chin which bespoke decision and self-respect in every line and wrinkle, wherever he moved he produced an impression of one who had survived from a preceding age. ”

“ It hopes that the incarceration of one night in the common gaol may prove in case of a young man like yourself sufficiently efficacious to deter you from the repetition of so grave a misdemeanor, and at the same time not crush too much that generous spirit of youth which in its proper exercise may prove so advantageous to its possessor, and redound so much to the benefit of the Commonwealth. The order of the Court, therefore, is that the Sheriff discharge you from further imprisonment. ”

“ Whiskey is a queer thing. I must have been a lot drunker than I thought I was, because if the Court had n't ruled it, I would have sworn I slept in that there wing room last night.”
“Well, that 's the best bluff I ever put up,” said Thompson to the throng about him as he turned back to the court-house.
The Sheriff's bluff became the topic of the rest of the term. Such audacity, such resourcefulness had never been known. Thompson became more popular than ever, and his re-election the following spring was admitted to be certain. ”

“ Dolittle's Ex'ex.,” and the array of counsel drew their chairs up to the bar and prepared for the work of the day, when the Judge, taking off his spectacles, turned to the Sheriff's desk.
“Mr. Sheriff, bring in that unfortunate inebriate whom I sentenced to confinement in the gaol yesterday. The Court, while sensible of the imperative necessity of protecting itself from all unseemly disorder and preserving its dignity undiminished, nevertheless always leans to the side of mercy. The Court trusts that a night's incarceration may have sufficiently sobered and chastened the poor creature. ”

“ And I don't want you to be Mary-in' me, either. If Dick chooses to let you get him drunk and make a beast and a fool of him and drag him up before the Court like a—a—like that drunkard, Jim Turkle, what don't know how to behave himself seemly in Court, and Circuit Court at that—he may; but I 'll let you know, I'm not goin' to do it. I don't mean the Judge to think my husband's a thing like that. I mean to set him right. And I 'll tell him you are nothing but an old gambler who spends your time ruinin' young men, and braggin' as how you can bluff anybody. ”

“ Order must be preserved and the dignity of the Court maintained.”
There was a stir—half of horror—throughout the court-room. Put a man in that jail just for being tight!
Then the Sheriff on one side and his deputy on the other, led the culprit out, now sufficiently quiet and half whimpering. A considerable portion of the crowd followed him.
Outside, the prisoner was sober enough, and he begged hard to be let off and allowed to go home. His friends, too, joined in his petition and promised to guarantee that he would not come back again during the term of court. But the Sheriff was firm. ”

“ The Sheriff urged something in a low voice, but Turkle would not be silenced.
“Now you see thar,” he broke out with a laugh to those about him, “did n't I tell you Aleck wa' n 't nothin' but a' ol' drunkard? What d' you s'pose the ol' rascal wants me to do? He wants me to go over there to the bar and git drunk like 'im, and I ain't goin' to do it. I never drink. I 've come here to see that my cousin Mandy's chil'ern gits their patrimony, and I ain' a goin' to 'sociate with these here drunken fellows like Aleck Thompson.” ”

“ To the inhibition of Holy Writ is added the cumulative if inferential prohibition of the Law, which declines to consider inebriety, though extreme enough in degree to impair if not destroy the reasoning faculty, in mitigation of crime of the highest—— dignity. ”

“ He tried to steady himself against the bar.
“I ain't is-turbed no Court of function, and anybody 't says so, Jedge, iz a liar.” He dragged his hand across his mouth and tried to look around upon the crowd with an air of drunken triumph, but he staggered and would have fallen had not the Sheriff caught and supported him.
The Judge's eyes had never left him.
“Mr. Sheriff, take this intoxicated creature and confine him in the county gaol until the expiration of the term. The very existence of a court of justice depends upon the observance of order. ”

“ Still, Thompson was elected overwhelmingly, and few people believed Mary Creel's charge that the Sheriff had got Dick drunk on purpose to beat him. Thompson said, “Did n't anybody have to git Dick drunk—the work was t'other way.”
II
The session of the Circuit Court in the “——— year of the Commonwealth,” as the writs ran, and “in the sixteenth year of Aleck Thompson's Sheriffalty,” as that official used to say, was more than usually important. The noted case of “Dolittle et al. vs. ”