The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1882-11-14

Judge Mills broad parchment The
trial immediately weny on.
In the examination of witnesses the
stranger evinced but little ingenuity, as
was commonly thought. He suffered
each one to tell his own story without in
terruption, though he. .eontrived to make
each tell it over two $r three times. He
put few cross-questious,lw which, with keen
witnesses, only serve 70 correct mistakes,
and he made no notes, which in mighty
memories always tendto embarrass. The
examination beiag ended, as counsel for
plaintiff he had a right to the opening
speech, as we'll as to the close but to the
astomshment of every one, he declined
the former and allowed the defense to
lead off. Then a shadow might have
been observed to fit across the features
of Pike and to darken even the dark
bright eyes of Prentiss. They saw that
they had caught tartar" but who it
was and how it happened was impossible
to guess.
Col. Ashley spoke first. He dealt the
jury a dish of close, dry logic, which
years afterward rendered him famous in
the Senate of the Union.
The poet, Albert Pike, with rich vein
of wit and hail-torrent of ridicule. in
which, you may be sure, neither the plain
tiff nor the plaintiffs ragged attorney
were either forgotten or spared.
The great Prentiss concluded for the
defendant, with glow Of gorgeous words,
brilliant as shower Of falling stars, and
with burst of oratory that brought the
house down in cheers, in which the sworn
jury themselves joined, Notwithstanding
the stern "order" of the bench. Thus
wonderfully susceptible are the South
western people to the charms of impas-
stoned eloquence.
1t was then the strangers turn. He
remained apparently distracted during
all the previous speeches. Still and
straight and motonless in his seat, his
pale, smooth forehead shooting up high,
like mountain cone of snow; but for
that eternal twitch that came and went
perpetually in his salow cheeks, you
would have taken him for merely man
of marble, or a human form carved in ice
Even his dreamy eyes were invisible be-
meath those gray, shaggy eyebrows.
But now, at last, he rises-before the
bar railing, not behind-and 50 near to
the wondering jury that he might touch
the foreman with his long, bony finger.
With eyes still half shut, and standing
rigid as pillar of iron, his thin lips curl
as in a measureless scorn, slightly part,
and the voice comes forth. At first it is
low, and sweet, insnuating itself through
the brain as an artless tune winding its
way into the deepest heart, like the mel
ody of magic incantation; while the
speaker proceeds without a gesture
or the least sign of excitement to
tear in pieces the argument of Ashley,
that melts away at his touch as frost be-
fore the sunbeam.
Every one looked surprised His logic
was at once so brief and 80 luminously
clear that the rudest peasant could COM
prehend it without an effort.
Anon he came to the dazzling wit of
the poet-lawyer, Pike. Then the curl of
his lip grew sharper; his sallow face
kindled up, and his eyes began to open,
dim and dreary no longer, but vivid as
fire globes and glaring like twin meteors.
The whole soul was in the eye. The
full heart streamed out on the face. In
five minutes Pixies wit seemed like folly,
and his finest satire horrible profanity,
when contrasted to the inimitable salies
and exterminating sarcasm of the stran
ger, interspersing the jest and anecdote
that filled the room with roars of laugh
ter.
Then, without so much as bestowing
an allusion on Prentiss, he turned short
on the perjured witnesses of Hopkins,
tore their testimony into atoms, and
hurled into their faces such terrible in
vective that all trembled as with an ague,
and two of them actually fled dismayed
from the courthouse.
The excitement of the crowd was be-
coming tremendous. Their united life
and soul appeared to hang on the burn
ing tongue Of the stranger. He inspired
them with the power of his own passions
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 sun of the sea of
all thought and emotion, which rose and
fell and boiled in pillows as he chose.
But his greatest triumph was to come.
His eyes began to glare furtively at the
assassin, Hopkins, and his lean taper fin
gers slowly assumed the same direction. He
hemmed the wretch with a decentralization
of strong evidence and impregnable argu-
ment, cutting off all hope of escape. He
piled up huge bastions of unsurmountable
facts.
He dug beneath the murderer and SLAM
derer's feet bitches of dilemmas, such as
no sophistry could overleap, and no stretch
of ingenuity invade; and having thus, as
one might say, unbound his victim, and
girt him about like scorpion in circle
of fire, he stripped himself to the work of
massacre.
Oh !! then but it was vision both glo-
rious and dreadful to behold the orator
His actions, before graceful as the wave
of golden willow in the breeze, grew
impetuous as the motion of the oak in a
hurricane. His voice became a trumpet
filled with whirlpools, deafening the ear
with crashes Of powder, ye. intermingled
with all the softest cadence. His face
was as red as drunkard's forehead
glowed like a heated furnace-his coun-
tenance looked haggard-like that of a
maniac, and ever and anon, he flung his
long bony arms on high, as if grasping
after thunderbolts. He drew a picture Of
murder in such appalling colors that hell
itself might be considered beautiful. He
painted the slanderer so black that the
sun seemed dark at MONDAY when shin
ing on such an accursed monster; and he
then fixed both portraits on the shrinking