The weekly tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1891-1894, 1893-04-28
TOLD BY AN ATTORNEY.

| ~ EN Llt2L members 81 inc oar were
sitting around the stove in tho
court room, the judge amongst
them, witnesses, litiEants, jurors and
spectators having mostly retired. There
was "A lull in the proceedings. and the
lawyers were INDUCING i'll commissioners
of the bench and bar.
The Judge had recalled the familiar in
ciGcnt related in one of McGufIcN's school
readers wherein it is told of the famous
Chief Justice Marshall that at some coun-
try inn in Virginia he had listened in
silence to an argument Gmongst some
young law students discussing and vcnti-
lating their views on the evidences of
Christianity, and after they had exhausted
the subject as they supposed. how they
turned TO the venerable Old man whom
they took for some old haysccl in tho
neighborhool, and how the great chief
justice of the United states rose w and
fell upon their pucrile argument against
Christianity like Il thousand of bricks and
smotc the pr%csuinptlous young fools hip
and thigh.
THAT story is somewhat fishy." added
tho Judge, for Marshall was not likely to
surprise anyone in that way. II always
struck me as being on "A par with the other
sbciN III Alc iNHN.'i "po'N 'lII I''N VI III
climbed up the wall of the Natural Bridge
to carve his name higher thar all the
others to carve his name with his jack
knife. As tho rock is limestone 10 carve
ones name on it with a jach-knifc would
be "A difficult task"
perhaps tho story was written by an
Englishman," added a lawyer, land he
made the very natural mistake Of auppos-
ing that the rocli was tho same as that
found in England which is mostly soft
enough to be easily cut by a knife
"Nell," remarked the district attorney.
81 never placed much faith in tho Mar
! shall story for | suppose it is like many
other goody-Goody stories which are told
to point a moral, but tho story may have
had a grain of truth in it.. | know of a
similar incident, however, within my wi
experience"
'How was that?"
~ was living in the town of F, and
had just commenced the practice of law.
OF course clients were scarce and with
my diploma from a law school and my Ii.
cense TO practice had waited ard waited
for business which did not show
up until, to keep tho wolfe
from the door, | accepted the
nomination for police magistrate Of tho
town of T., and on account of my poverty,
/ suppose, was elected by a good major
it j."
I've got fees instead of salary, the mar.
shall and l, and of course it behooyed the
marshal to let no guilty man cs-
| cape arrest, and whenever q wretch was
charged in my court with violating a town
ordinance, ] am afraid that tue merciful
prcsu nption of the law that every man
charged with n crime is presumed to be in.
nocent until he is proven guilty beyond n
reasonable doubt, was totally reversed. IN
fact, the marshal, who was older than /,
and had n family to support, insisted that
it was better for ninety and nine innocent
men 10 suffer than one guilty should es.
cane.
City attorney, we had none.
T. was a university town and MANY
of tho students made ii a practice to be al
the railroad depot TO sec the incoming and
outgoing rains They also had IA habit oi
getting on the trains, riding out Of town q
short distance and, jumping or. walk back
to This they did at considcrabl,
risk 10 themselves. Although trains dit
not run so fast at that time as they dc
now there was some complaint made
about II and the town council passed al
ordinance against the practice.
ut was intended for the benefit of ths