The weekly Anglo-African., 1859-10-08

teer 7" asked the Judge, glancing around
| the bar.
The lawyers were all silent
81 will, your HONOR said voice from
the thickest part of the crowd seated be-
hind the bar.
AT the tone of that voice, many started
half from their seats, and perhaps there
was not heart in that immense throng
which did not beat somewhat quicker-it
was so unearthly, sweet, ringing, and
mournful.
| The first sensation, however, was chang
ed into laughter, when tall, ga,nt, spec
trail figure, that no one remembered to have
seen before, elbowed his way through the
crowd, and placed himself within the bar.
His appearance was problem to puzzle
the Sphinx herself His high, pale brow,
and his small, nervously twitching face,
seemed active with the concentrated es-
sence and cream of genius but then his
infantine eyes, hardly visible beneath their
massive arches, looked dim, dreamy almost
unconscious, and his clothing was so shah
| by that the court almost hesitated to let the
case proceed under his management.
" Has your name been entered on the
rolls of the State 7" demanded the Judge,
suspiciously.
" 1t is immaterial about my name being
ON your rolls" answered the stranger, his
thin, bloodless lips curling up into fend-
ish sheer; may be allowed by the cour-
tesy of the court and the bar Here is my
license from the highest tribunal in Amer
ca p and he handed Judge Mills a broad
parchment The trial Immediately went
on.
In the examination of the witnesses, the
stranger evinced very little ingenuity, as
commonly thought. He suffered them to
tell their own story without interruption,
though he generally managed to make
each one tell it over two or three times.
He put few cross-questions, which, with
keen witnesses, only serve to correct mis-
takes, and he made no notes, which, in
mighty memories, always tend to embar-
rass. The examination being ended, as
counsel for the plaintiff, he had right to
the opening as well as the closing speech !;
but, to the astonishnent of all present, he
declined the former, and allowed the de-
fence to lead off Then shadow might
have been seen to fit across the features of
Pike, and to darken even the bright sYer CT
Prentiss. They saw that they had " eau CIR
Tartar" but who it was, or how i y
pened, was impossible to guess.
Colonel Ashley spoke first He dealt
the jury dish of that close, dry logic,
: which years afterwards rendered him ia
: nous in the Senate of the United States
The poet, Albert Pike, followed, with a
rich vein of wit and half torrent of ridi-
cule, in which neither the plaintiff nor her
ragged attorney were forgotten or spared.
The great Prentiss concluded for the de-
PENDANT, with glow of gorgeous words,
brilliant as a shower of falling stars, and
with bursts of oratory that brought the
house down in cheers, in which the sworn
jury themselves joined, notwithstanding
the stern Order p of the bench. Thus
wonderfully susceptible are the Southern
people to the charms of impassioned elo-
quence.
1t was the strangers turn. lie had re-
manned apparently distracted during all
the previous speeches still, straight and
motionless in his seat, his pale, smooth fore
head shooting high like mountain cone
of snow. But for that continual twitch
which came and went perpetually in his
sallow face, you would have taken him for
a mere man of marble or a human form
carved in ice. Even his dim, dreamy eyes
were invisible beneath those grey, shaggy
eyebrows.
But now, at last, he rises-before the
bar, not behind it-and so near the Won
dering jury that he might touch the fore
man with his long bony finger With
eyes still half shut, and standing rigid as a
pillar of iron, his thin lips curl as if in
measureless scorn, slightly part, and the
voice comes forth.
At first it is slow and sweet, insinuating
itself into the brain, as an artless tune
winning its way into the deepest heart, like
the melody of amagic incarnation, while the
speaker proceeds without gesture or the
least sign of excitement to tear to pieces
the arguments of Ashley, which melt away
at his touch as frost before the sunbeam
Every one looked surprised His logic
was at once so brief and so LUMINOSITY
clear that the rudest peasant could COM
prehend it without effort
Anon he came to the dazzling wit of the
poet-lawyer, Pike. Then the curl of his
lip grew sharper, his smooth face began to
kindle up, and his eyes began to open
dim and dreamy no longer, but vivid as
lightning, red as fire globes, and glaring
as twin meteors The whole soul was in
the eye; the full heart streamed out of his
face In FIVE minutes Pixies wit seemed
the foam of folly, and his finest satire hor-
rible profanity, when constrasted with the
inimitable sallies and exterminating sar-
casm of the stranger
Then, without so much as bestowing an
allusion upon Prentiss, he turned short on
the perjured witnesses of Hopkins, tore
their testimony into atoms, and hurled in
their faces such horrible invectives that all
trembled as with an ague, and two of them
actually fled in dismay ftom the room
The excitement of the crowd was becom-
/ incr