Litchfield enquirer., 1871-02-02
LITCHFIET,D

|A'HAsou -. onltu atlaS 6tOQuafQ. In0 prisoner was convicted of bigamy. The facts of this aggravated case have already been given. Motion was made for new trial State ps Geo. Williams; acquitted. State os. Martin Myers, plea, guilty; sen- tence. mos. in jail Almon Bailey, plea, guilty; sentence, years in Reform School. State Us Charles Walton for rape con. victed, sentence, State Prison for life. The Morris injunction is to be tried Feb. 10th.
 = On Saturday night last, Charles H. Henry, Esq, delivered, at the Episcopal Chapel, bis lecture on 'sMen of Thought and Men of Action," advertised for Thurs day night and postponed on.account of the storm. It was ap admirably written, ad. mirably delivered lecture the finest to
 which we have listened for long time.
 Conspicuously avoiding the long worded,
 long -winded rhetoric which is the curse of
 American oratory, the lecturer developed
 his ideas in neat, incisive English, with
 very frequent, very apt quotations. His
 reading was quiet, but extremely effective,
 indicating special culture of that difficult
 art. His manifest preference of the Man
 of Thought to the Man of Action, though
 natural in the scholar, is perhaps hardly
 just. Certain it is. however, that our time
 and country sin in the opposite direction.
 and if they do not quite neglect Thought,
 absolutely deify Action. We doubt great fly, also, whether Wellington deserves the
 high place Mir. Henry gives him. His suc- cess as a soldier was scarcely more complete
 than his failure as statesman.
 Owing to imperfect notice and the nat
 ural sluggishness of the place, Mir. Henry s
 audience was small, but those who came
 seemed highly pleased with his lecture.
 Occasionally very laughable scene
 lightens up the customary dreariness of
 trials in court, Last week, one of the fun 'niest things of the kind we ever witnessed
 occurred during the trial of one Dennis
 Reardon for exceeding his kingly preroga-
 tives over wife and children to the extent of an assault and battery. The prosecu-
 tion offered the testimony of an, ancient Irish lady, co-tenant of Reardon's domicil in Plymouth, who gave her 'sividince" in the inimitable national style and dialect, and convulsed the audience,not to say the court and jury, for about the space of an hour.
 When the row commenced the old lady
 went into her neighbours apartment just to see fair play. Dennis was then engag- ed in pulling handfuls of hair, out of his
 wife's head, crazy drunk, in short. Wit ness oommencsds diversion by pulling his legs from under him. whereat the happy pair came on the floor in heap, Finding that the hair extracting exercise continued the witness then poured pail of studs oyerDen- his which cooled and sobered him for time. In fact he complained of being very wet and cold and the witness got him clean shirt and tried to set him up in life again. But as Dennis got comfortable the original drunk returned on him in full force, and he recommended his assaults and batteries. The ladies rightly concluding that he was becoming an unbearable nuis- ance then went for him, Mrs. Reardon with a hoe, and the witness with particularly heavy beetle, and horse pistol. Dennis succumbed to this combination and was elected. The mystery of the pistol (wbeth- CT loaded or not) the witness declined to explain, remarking that she might want to use it again. The contest lasted from ear- ly cock growing till sunrise. Dennis was tried before @ Plymouth justice and came up to jail dilapidated state, the witness beetle having apparently been inserted in his right eye. In last weeks trial the jury found him guilty and the court sentenced him to a months imprisonment We imag- inc he won't start another family TOW as long as the descendant of line of Irish Kings swings her beetle in the opposite in- terest. A yerbatim report of this witness testimony would have furnished one of the richest things in the Irish language. Col. Fenn of Plymouth conducted the prosecu- tion and MT. Graves the defence.
 MT. Geo. M. Butcher, who is to speak in the Congregational church next Sunday evening, at o'clock, is not known in this vicinity but comes with very strong testi- of success as an. advocate of Tem- perance At Worcester (where he residesl l Hartford, New York and other cities, crowds have listened to him, and large numbers have been moved by his appeals to break the bondage of drinking habits. | He is himself an illustration of their fear Iul power. and of the blessings attending 1 release from them. The son of drunken l father reared in proyerty, descending to the lowest depths of degredation and suf- | ierlng, he has for five years occupied 8 ! thoroughly respectable position. and be- came as great power for good as he had been an example ofleyil. With no advan- ages of education, he may be lacking in refinement of speech, but he is said to be eloquent and highly effective in the fruits of his own experience.