Rucker

“ The officer nodded as if in assent and the prisoner was led away.
My heart rose again. I was not to see Jot shot or hanged. It was not my former friend, thank God! but Adolph Von Rucker, his half-brother.
The excitement and the reaction was apparently too much for me. I was sick and prostrated. In this condition I was attended by our surgeon, who said briefly, “It’s the gas. I have been attending similar cases since the men have recrossed the river.” Then he became preoccupied in his own professional diagnosis, [149] as though there had never been neither a Von Rucker or a Jonathan Nickerson. ”

“ Crabtree as he put up the two boxes of baking-powder for the spouse of the poet, who stood beside his wife in the door of the store.
"Well," said Mr. Rucker in his long drawl as he dropped himself over the corner of the counter, "looks like the Honorable Gid kinder fooled along and let Cupid shed a feather on him and then along come somebody trying to pick his posey for him and in course it het him up. You all 'pear to forget that old saying that it's all's a fair fight in love and war." ”

“ After Rucker comes back, we’ll go down the hill and get ready to enjoy an old-fashioned restful Sunday. I don’t mind confessing that the strain has been getting next to me, Poictiers. I’m going to push the whole wretched tangle into the background, for one day, at least, and try to catch up with my nerve.”
“Good medicine!” laughed the one who had no nerves; and Rucker returning a few minutes later to resume his duties as resident watchman, they climbed into the yellow car and Tregarvon took the wheel to drive to the valley. ”

“ Rucker, or some one, had replaced the deflated tire and the motor-car had been brought upon the scene. The white glare of its headlamps focused upon the open space in front of the tool shanty. Judge Birrell, bowed and shrunken, was sitting upon the tool-house door-step with his face hidden in his hands; and on Rucker’s cot-bed, which had been placed under the light of the headlamps, lay [409] the body of a man covered with one of the blankets.
“Who is it?” Tregarvon muttered, leaning more heavily upon his helpers. ”

“ The small tool shanty served as the council-chamber, and the councillors were only two, Rucker having been heard and dismissed to take his place as chief mechanician in the drilling squad.
“Talk about fourteen-fifteen puzzles and the fourth dimension: this masquerade puts the kibosh on them all,” remarked Carfax, opening his pocket-case of freshly imported cigarettes. “Or are you wiping the slate clean by charging Billy Rucker with a bad supper or a drink or so too many?”
Tregarvon shook his head.
“It is too circumstantial to be a nightmare. ”

“ And Rucker answered, "I always come down once in the night to put coal on the fire."
"Another illusion destroyed," smiled Morris Blood. "Hang him, I'll promote him, anyway, for attending to his fire."
"But you couldn't do that again in a thousand years, Mr. Blood," ventured a young and enthusiastic operator who had helped to lay out poor Bud Cawkins.
The mountain man looked at him coldly. "I sha'n't want to do that again in a thousand years. In the railroad life it always comes different, every time. Go to your key." ”

“ While this scene was being enacted, Rucker leaned against the stern rail idly picking his teeth, as his dull, hard eye glanced alternately from the vessel's course to the parties most concerned.
"What in heaven's name is it all about?" asked Duff, when the two men were alone but for the man at the wheel, who appeared to give no heed. "What has the boy done?"
"He's too independent," replied the first mate. "He can't do nothing; he couldn't even climb the fo'mast or walk the deck in a breeze. Such green uns has no business bein' independent aboard ship. ”

“ It was John Rucker, coming home when we were not expecting him, and mad at finding me out of the factory.
"I'll learn yeh to steal my time!" he was saying. "I'll learn your mother to lie to me about your workin'. A great lubber like you traipsin' around idle, and my woman bringin' a doctor's bill on me by workin' night an' day to make up your wages to me--and lyin' to her husband! I'll track you by the blood! ”

“ If he is in the ticket-office you may be able to wake him—he may be awake. The Special can't pass there for ten minutes yet. Don't stare at me. Call Rucker, hard."
O'Neill seized the key and tried to sound the Rucker call. Again and again he attempted it and sent wild. The man that could hold a hundred trains in his head without a slip for eight hours at a stretch sat distracted.
"Let me help you, Garry," suggested Blood, in an undertone. The despatcher turned shaking from his chair and his superintendent slipped behind him into it. ”

“ Rucker!" exclaimed Rose Mary in distress. "But I am sure she would be proud of—"
"No, it looks like women don't take to poetry for a husband; they prefers the hefting of a hoe and plow handles. It's hard on Mis' Rucker that I ain't got no constitution to work with, and I feel it right to keep all my soul-squirmings and sech outen her sight. ”

“ The noise thus made, and Duff's loud calls to alarm the ship, caused Rucker and one or two seamen to run hastily down the companionway. Being unarmed they were forced into the cabin or back up the gangway, by a horde of frantic savages, who were being continually reinforced from the hold by way of the two holes, which they had somehow cut through the bulkhead into the storeroom, where among other things, was the barrel of rum. ”

“ Shore, we consults; but that don't come to nothin' ontil the o'casion when Doc Peets takes the tangle in ser'ous hand.
"Thar's a day dawns when Missis Rucker gets exasperated over Dave's ill-yoosage. Missis Rucker is a sperited person an' she canters over an' onloads her opinions on Tucson Jennie. Commonly, these yere ladies can't think too much of one another; but on this one division of the house of Tutt, Missis Rucker goes out on Dave's angle of the game. An' you-all should have seen the terror it inspires when Missis Rucker declar's her hostile intentions. ”

“ Rucker’s suggestion that we’ve dropped down into a neighborhood of crazy people seems to fit better than anything else.”
Carfax was sitting on the cot with his hands locked over one knee. “It is rather pointedly our job to chase the shy guess into a corner, don’t you think? There is mischief in it. One’s bosom friends would hardly come here at night to shake their fists at things, or to run surveyors’ lines by moonlight.”
Tregarvon got up to tramp the floor, but there was no room in the cluttered tool shanty and he sat down again upon a coil of rope. ”

“ After they reached the head of the inclined track and had signalled to Tryon at the foot to let them down in the tip-car, Tregarvon outlined his plan for the broken day.
“We’ll go down and get out the auto and my engineering instruments, motor back to the drilling plant, and do a little surveying on our own account. Beyond that, you may take the car and kill time with it as you please. I’ll stay and help Rucker.” ”

“ The grant of authority to the Executive, as to other departments of the government, ought not to be amplified by judicial decisions. The Constitution is the legitimate source of authority of all who exercise power under its sanction, and its provisions are equally binding upon every officer of the government, from the highest to the lowest. ”

“ The engineer is constantly with the train and knows all of the signals, knows how the couplings are made, knows how the cars are switched and distributed, and knows how they are taken into the train and transported from one place to another. An engineer is so constantly associated with all the work of a conductor on a freight train that he should know as much about how a freight train should be operated by a conductor as the conductor himself. ”

“ When the Commission is called upon, on the complaint of an individual, to consider the reasonableness of an established rate, its power is invoked not merely to authorize a departure from such rate in favor of the complainant alone, but to exert the authority conferred upon it by the act, if the complaint is found to be just, to compel the establishment of a new schedule of rates, applicable to all. ”

“ When it is considered that the schedule must not only include claims of recent origin, but debts which have accrued many years before, and where the creditor may have changed his residence, it becomes evident that to lay down the general rule that the schedule must give the name of the creditor and the city and street number of the residence of those living in the largest cities would, in a multitude of cases, destroy the beneficent effect of the bankruptcy act. ”

“ It seems to me that the same rule in scheduling creditors cannot be applied to those who reside in large cities, where it may be essential, in order that the creditor receive notice, that street and number shall be given, as is applied to creditors residing in small communities where the postal authorities may be presumed to know the residence of the creditor by a more general form of address. ”

“ If private persons could acquire a privilege in public land by virtue of an implied congressional consent, then, for a much stronger reason, an implied grant of power to preserve the public interest would arise out of like congressional acquiescence. ”

“ When the affidavit of a juror, as to the misconduct of himself or the other members of the jury, is made the basis of a motion for a new trial, the court must choose between redressing the injury of the private litigant and inflicting the public injury which would result if jurors were permitted to testify as to what had happened in the jury room. ”

“ Both officers, lawmakers, and citizens naturally adjust themselves to any long-continued action of the Executive Department, on the presumption that unauthorized acts would not have been allowed to be so often repeated as to crystallize into a regular practice. That presumption is not reasoning in a circle, but the basis of a wise and quieting rule that, in determining the meaning of a statute or the existence of a power, weight shall be given to the usage itself,-even when the validity of the practice is the subject of investigation. ”

“ For while by statute in a few jurisdictions, and by decisions in others, the affidavit of a juror may be received to prove the misconduct of himself and his fellows, the weight of authority is that a juror cannot impeach his own verdict. ”

“ The President's powers are defined by the Constitution of the United States, and the government does not contend that he has any general authority in the disposition of the public land which the Constitution has committed to Congress, and freely concedes the general proposition as to the lack of authority in the President to deal with the laws otherwise than to see that they are faithfully executed. ”

“ What is or was a proper allowance is not a matter of law until after it has been fixed by the rate-regulating body. The courts can then apply that law, and, measuring what has been charged by what the Commission declares should have been charged, can award damages to the extent of the injuries occasioned by the payment of the allowance found to have been unreasonable and unlawful. ”

“ The commerce act prohibits the payment of rebates, and its command cannot be evaded by calling them differentials or concessions, nor by taking the money from the railroad itself or from a company that is proved to be the same as the railroad. Otherwise nothing would be easier than for lumber companies to charter a railroad, collect freight as a railroad, but pay it out as a lumber company to shippers. ”

“ Street railroads, on the other hand, are local, are laid in streets as aids to street traffic, and for the use of a single community, even though that community be divided by state lines, or under different municipal control. When these street railroads carry passengers across a state line they are, of course, engaged in interstate commerce, but not the commerce which Congress had in mind when legislating in 1887. ”

“ The provisions relating to motive power, prohibiting the hauling of freight cars, and declaring a forfeiture for a violation of the ordinance, are so far separable that they do not necessarily stand or fall together, and therefore the regulation against the use of steam can be enforced without regard to the validity of the prohibition against hauling freight cars. ”

“ The conduct of parties, witnesses and counsel in a case, as well the conduct of the jurors and officers of the court, may be of such a character as not only to defeat the rights of litigants, but it may directly affect the administration of public justice. In the very nature of things the courts of each jurisdiction must each be in a position to adopt and enforce their own self-preserving rules. ”

“ Aggravating circumstances which, in themselves, constitute a crime specially punishable by law, or which are included by the law in defining a crime and prescribing the penalty therefor, shall not be taken into account for the purpose of increasing the penalty. ”

“ Equally obvious is it that the existence of such a power in the courts, independent of prior action by the Commission, would lead to favoritism, to the enforcement of one rate in one jurisdiction and a different one in another, would destroy the prohibitions against preferences and discrimination, and afford, moreover, a ready means by which, through collusive proceedings, the wrongs which the statute was intended to remedy could be successfully inflicted. ”