The penny press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1859-1860, 1860-01-27

mny W uuuWOu NY tho VOufpOoy VI ohO
court and bar. Here is my license from
the highest tribunal in America" and he
handed Judge Miles parchment
The trial Immediately went on. In the
examination of the witnesses the stranger
evinced very little ingenuity as commonly
thought. He suffered each one to tell
his own story; without interruption,
though he generally managed to make
each tell it over two or three times. He
put few cross questions, which, with
keen witnesses, only served to correct
mistakes, and he made no notes, which,
in mighty memories, onl ] tend to embar-
rass.
The examination being ended, as coun-
sci for the plaintiff, he had right to the
opening as.well as the closing speech; but
to the astonishment Of every one he
declined the former and allowed the
defense to lead off, :.
Then shadow might have been seen to
Git across the features Of Pike, and to
darken the bright eyes of Prentiss. They
saw that they had Caught a Tartar" but
who it was, or how it happened, was i'm
possible to guess.
Colonel Ashley spoke first. He dealt
the jury dish Of that coarse, dry logic
which, years afterward, rendered him
famous in the Senate Of tho Union.
The poet Albert Pike followed with a
vein of wit and in half torrent of ridi.
cule, in which neither the plaintiff nor
the ragged attorney was forgotten or
sparel
The great Prentiss concluded for the
defendant with aglow of gorgeous words,
brilliant as a shower of falling stars, and
with bursts of oratory that brought the
house down in cheers, in which even the
sworn jury themselves joined, notwith.
standing the stern order of the bench.
Thus wonderfully susceptible ore the
the Southern people to the charms OF
impassioned eloquepce
1t was the strangers turn. He had re-
manned apparently abstracted during all
the previous speeches. Still, and strait,
and d5motionless in his seat, his pale, smooth
forehead shooting high like o mountain
cone Of snow, and but for that continued
twitch that came and went perpetually in
his face, you would have taken him for a
mere man of marble, or a human form
carved in ice. Even his dim, dreary eyes
were invisible beneath those gray, shaggy
eyebrows. -
But now at last he rises-before the
bar, not behind it--and 50 near the won
dering jury, that he might touch the fore
man with his long, bony fingers. With
eyes half shut, and standing rigid as a
piller of iron, his thin lips curled as if in
measureless scorn, slightly apart, and
then the sound came forth.
At first it is low and sweet, insinuating
itself into the brain, as an artless tune
winding its way into the deepest recesses
Of the heart, like the melody of magic
incarnation, while the speaker proceeds
without gesture or the least signal of
excitement, to tear to pieces the argument
Of Ashley, which melts away at his
touch as frost before @ sunbeam. Every
one looked surprised. His logic was at
once brief and SO luminously clear, that
the rudest peasant could comprehend it
without an effort
Anon he came to the dazzling wit of
the poet-lawyer Pike. Then the curl of
his lips grew sharper, his smooth face
began to kindle up and his eyes to open
dim and dreamy no longer; but vivid as
lightning, red as fire globes, as glaring as
twin meteors. The whole soul was in his
eye, the full heart streamed out Of his
face. In five minutes Pixies wit seemed
like foam Of folly, and his finest satire,
horrible profanity, when compared with
the inimitable sallies and exterminating
sarcasm of the stranger, interspersed with
jests and anecdotes that filled the forum
with laug ghter.
Then, without so much as bestowing an
allusion upon Prentiss, he turned round
short at the perjured witnesses of Hop
kins, tore their testimony into atoms, and
hurled into their faces such invectives
that all trembled as with ague, and two Of
them actually fled in dismay from the
Courthouse
The excitement of the crowd was be.
coming tremendous. Their united life
and souls seemed to hang upon the burn
ing tongue Of the stranger. He inspired
them with the power of his own passion.
He saturated them with the poison of his
own malicious feelings. He seemed to
have stolen natures long hidden secret Of
attraction. He was the son to the sea Of
all thought and emotion, which rose and
fell, and toiled in the pillows as he chose
But his greatest triumph was to come.
His eyes began to glance furtively at
the assassin Hopkins, as his lean taper
fingers assumed the same direction. He
hemmed the wretch with circumvalation
of strong evidence and impregnable argu.
ment cutting off all hope of escape.
He piled up large bastions of insur-
mountable facts. He dug beneath the
murderer and slanderers feet, bitches of
dilemmas, such as no sophistry could
overleap, no secrets of ingenuity evade;
and thus having, as one might say, i'm
pounded his victim, and girt about like a
scorpion in a circle of fire he stripped
himself to the work of massacre.
Oh! then it was vision both glorious
and dreadful to behold the orator. His
actions before graceful as the waves of
the golden willow in the breeze, grew i'm
petuous as the motion of an oak in hur.
ricane.
His voice became trumpet filled with
wild whirlpools, deafening the ear with
the crashes Of power, and yet intermin-
Cling all the while with sweet undersong
Of the softest cadence.