The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1892-10-06
THE LAST CELEBRATED CASE


Albright case. =.
Certainly that is fair question, and
it ought to be answered fairly.
A newspaper is no better than its
patrons. 1t ought to be, but it is not.
A stream never rises above its source,
and as the spring is to the brook, so Is
popular support to the worldly news
paper. A newspaper Is compelled to
print what the people want to know.
The best that the average newspaper
can do is to present bad news in the
most velvety guise, and adorn every
wicked tale with its Legitimate moral.
The Snyder Albright case is an un-
fortunate scandal; not only for the
parties involved, but the entire COM
munity. And yet the entire commun'
ity are absorbing its essence with an
avidity born of the lowest phase of our
weak human nature. Great
lawyers and eminent jurists
are studying this case with
an all-absorbing avidity, and it has
| already enlarged the former scope of
our jurisprudence.
For instance, it is entirely newin our
practice to introduce the private love
letters of a plaintiff,in civil action on
a promissory note, to show that his
claim is not based on good legal con-
sideration. And here is where an ele'
meut of sensational intensity attaches
to the case.
The plaintiff is dealer in tinware
and hardware. The defendant is a rich
banker. The testimony to date proves
both to be men of varied and many ac-
complishments.
Snyder has developed wonderful tai
eut as a letter writer, not short bankers
letters of figures and solid nouns,
but letters, full of words that breathe
and sentences that burn.
These letters do not bear on the case
| in controversy. They we're written to
a woman, (now in a millinery store in
Paris, France,) for whom the
| Massillon tinware merchant appears to
have conceived a tender passion,
Judge Day in bis cross examination of
the merchant poet asked him if his
love for Ida was of the Platonic sort,
This question the merchant poet did
not seem to comprehend, although he
quoted from Plato in one of his senti-
mental love letters to Ida. We are
surprised that lawyers Baldwin and
| Amber did not object to this question,
as being too Opaque and indefinite for
our modern jurisprudence. Had the
question been was your love for Ida
Byronical, or Pythagorean or Ovidical
it might be admissible on cross ex-
animation. But neither an ordinary
tiDware merchant, nor the average
iuryman can be expected to comprehend
the full scope of that ethical school of
nebulous philosophy to which Plato
belonged, We venture the assertion,
that even Judge Day, who is we'll up ia
the Pagan classics and the ancient Greek
philosophy of the school of Socrates,
Plato and Aristotle, cannot accurately
define PlatOnic love. The best authOri-
ties say Plato never loved a woman.
He never married, although he wrote
poetry and lived until he was 81 years
old, in the giddy whirl of the very elect
OF Greek society. Plato must have
been handsome fellow, as the Greeks
attributed his parentage to Apollo, and
ne was built tor as great a masher as
the Massillon banker, because contem-
poraneous poets speak of Plato, as one
whose honied sweetness of style
seemed the beckoning of honey bees
upon his lips. 1t is we'll known that
Plato wrote epics bofore Socrates got
hold of him and converted him into
philosopher. 1t is also related of Plato
that he wrote some powerful love
ditties to some Greek girl, which he
afterwards burned, when he read some
of the more intense odes of Homer.
1t is observed that In the love letters
of the Massillon tinware merchant to
Ida, he apes both Homeric ard Platonic
style. He also gives us snatches of orig
inal poetry, some of which is quite too
musical and rythmic to have originated
in an atmosphere of pots and kettles
and tin pans. An elevated tone seems
to prevade these letters to his Ida, and
it is unfortunate for fair and judicial
investigation of this case that Ida's
letters to the tin-ware merchant are
not before the court and jury, in order
TO measure the money value of his
damages, caused by the more recent |
and violent rupture of conjugal love
his only reliance, when the Platonic |
variety took itself across the Atlantic.
And yet this dealer in tin ware is not |
he only man of modern or ancient
lines, who has written poetry and In
iicted love letters to an un-con-
ugal love. His connubial iL-l
ellcities may have been born of
siren, or may have been
he result of indigestion, caused by too
lose confinement in the tinware store.
other aud greater men have been SINH
arly afflicted The highest of all the
Ieaven bestowed privileges of the poet
8 the power to immortalIze his victims
harmsinsong,a and to divide with her an
wreath of glory. Even Mil
on had his love, and like our first sire
Adam, he masqueraded with hyacin-
hiue locks, serene and blooming in a
Ike Eden. Spencer had his Rosalind