"
Some lawyers are worse than highway robbers; they make the laws as
legislators to suit their own iniquitous, selfish purposes, so worded
that they are susceptible of almost any interpretation, thus
leading to endless litigations by which these cannibal devourers of
reputations are robbing the public of their possessions. They employ
spies to stir up strife, and some lawyers and judges seem to be banded
together to fleece the confiding lambs of the public. The judge not
only refused to postpone the trial until I was able to attend, but
refused to have the jury informed that I was absent on account of
serious sickness.
We are bound hand and foot, the slaves of these law-sharks, and it
seems as if nothing but revolution and the banishing of these tyrants,
will ever deliver the public from the worse than African slavery to
which some lawyers subject us. We have seen innocent, modest lady
witnesses subjected to bull-dozing and abuse by barbarous lawyers,
until they suffered tortures to which those of the Spanish Inquisition
were merciful.
As I was obliged to go or die, I accepted the offer of my wife's
brother, a member of the publishing firm of Webster's Dictionaries,
and went to California to fight their battles against the new Standard
Dictionary which was rapidly driving the Webster books out of the
markets of the entire Pacific slope.
The trial took place during my enforced absence; my enemies' crafty
attorney told the jury that my failure to appear was a sure evidence
of guilt; my doctor's affidavit that he sent me away to save my life
was not allowed to be presented in court; each plaintiff claimed to
have heard the statements imputed to have been made by me to the
others, one of them making love to, and afterwards marrying one of my
most important witnesses, and so the verdict was against me.
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