The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-24

~~-~'N~f
tween us
also once met Joseph Cook, who was
on his way to his regular work repairing
and editing some of the works of God, and
even he was kindly and almost sweet to
me.
So | say that people of prominence
should play into one another's hands.
"Reminiscences of Senator Plumb are so
plenty since his death that venture to
call up one of the incidents of his early
experience. We had been running around
over the capitol, looking at whatever was
curious In the way of memoranda sent in
to congress by the presidents. like APP
pointments, etc.-some III pencil on ma
nllla paper containing a whole cabinet
perhaps, but as informal as a list of vege-
tables Tor your cook to order for over Sun
day; then others would be stiff and for
NAL, like George Washington engaged in
taking the thirty-third degree in Ma
sorry.
We then went up into the gallery and
for an hour or two forgot our own great
ness; the Senate chamber faded away on
the drowsy, buzzing wings of the motion
to refer to the committee on rules: the
hot, Turkish-bath air which is used to
sprout the senatorial thought lulled Us to
half forgetfulness and hushed the
pop of the committees report. For
the time We were back again
In the Tar West, with widening miles be-
tween us and the ehaste refinement of
Senator Hoar; with biilowing, breezy
states between us and the classic Hiscock,
the deep, appealing ayes of Cameron and
the Roman noes of Edmunds; we were
again sitting astride the waspy 'cayuse or
returning hurriedly to camp, where kind
hands again pulled out the arrow of the
savage and told US how the place looked to
one who could get around there and see
for himself. How kflfd hands could ter
this to one leave the ready and versatile
reader to figure ont.
"We used to make our writing ink in the
early days where | lived. said Mr. Plumb,
''of maple bark, which was boiled down
till it was a little redder than umbrella
juice and little thicker than stump
water
at looked badly. but it was peri COM
pared to the way it smelled. 1t smelled
like the deluge at low tide. New York
when ii is opening up a subway on hot
day shows great possibilities, but it can
not get in the little trills and throbs of
measly and antique stencil that this home
made and fermented ink did.
"Once / went over TO try case before
poor white justice of the peace over thirty
man, who used his tongue in writing and
breathed heavily, like mush kettle, while
thinking.
Opposed to me as counsel was a man
who had been admitted TO the bar. had
not. He was rather pompous, and hated
to try case before country justice, but
he had TO do il. He was hot and cross, and
while he was. making his argument one of
the children got an acorn up its nose and
we had TO stop and bore it out with the
iron worm on an old ramrod. That made
counsel mad, and while he was making
dilatory motion the squire picked a briar
cut of the palm of his hand with a Barlow
knife and OYerruled 1t.
1.-The counsel got so hot that he forgot
himself and said things to the court
which ought TO have remained forever I'M
said. After that the court got angry and
threatened to commit counsel for con-
tempt Counsel allowed that the court
did not know enough TO draw the mitti-
mus.
"'All right; | will show you, says the
court, and thereupon he bit off a piece of
tobacco about the size of prayer book
and took down large, fat volume of
forms for justices OF the peace, weigh
ing about nine pounds and smelling of
pork gravy and childhood.
He wrote on and on until dinner time.
Then he glared at the man he was engaged
in committing, and ate the undemonstrst-
i've corn dodger with him meantime.
II didn't mind the bitterness between
the court and counsel, Tor II was all good
for nv side. After dinner the squire
rolled up one corner of the oilcloth table
cloth and went on with the mittimus.
All that afternoon, with bulging eye and
wet brow, while opposing counsel sat and
smoked under the shadow of the cotton
wood the broillng gentleman on the
superheated woolsack painfully wrote on.
Toward twilight, as the frogs in the
hollow smote the soft and eCholess gloara-
ing with their metallic song, the court
closed with the final whereof fail not at
your peril and the commitment was
duly drawn.
Looking over earnestly AT IL and lean
ing on the shoulder of the court can still
see the calm. pale face of counsel as he
looked searchingly over the still wet and
fragrant document.
Then firmly and deity upsetting the
big, quart ink bottle over the mighty legal
masterpiece, and thereby turning loose
upon the horrined night fragrance so
able, so durable and so pronounced that
Won could tie horses To II, he said:
There. YOU overgrown mushratl You
shameless paunch OF justice without Its
brains: YOU overgrown and fungus error
on the face Of nature; you old
he mudhen of the swamps; you
malarial old intellectual wart on the
brow of creation, by the time yop can go
down on the bottoms and gather your
maple bark and bring il home and boil 1t,
and put the caustic fragrance into II for
another quart of ink, | Will be In another
county; and by the time you can draw an
other mittimus will be in most any other
state which ! may select.
" / now hid YOU adieu, Csulihower. IA
ysgoir. old PoIypus on the membrane of
nature, blight upon the great JOB OF erea-
ton. farewell.
lie then kicked the old mother dog
across the kitchen and strobe ferceiy
down the chiId-bordered pathway.