The Cordova daily times., 1922-03-22
WEDNESDAY, MARCH, p, 1922
AWYERS OF AMERICA are demand

ing, through thelr National Bar ASSOC -A0 iation, higher standards for their pro- fession and greater care as to moral fitness ln admitting persons to practice
 Perhaps the standard today is just as high as it was in the days of Lincoln, but ev- eryone will admit there is room for improve ment. Without intending to criticise the great legal profession, which has given civilization it's laws and governmental system, the press generally will laud the effort to oust the scrub from practice.
 Tit for tat, some lawyers will retort, the press should go cleanse itself and little pots must not call little kettles black. There are just as many scrubs in one profession as III the other-granted-a the same IS perllously near to truth concerning all other activities and men, for EThe human heart is depraved and desperately wicked," saith the Good Book.
 But isn't it remarkable, the way great law yers like Gavin McNab, Dolphin M. Delmas, George B. Grigsby (and all the others) will leap to the defense of monsters of inquity when tie m. O. i. can pumgle up a nce-ln-a-fetlme feel
 The Times contends, however, that lawyers are improving in ethics and methods if not Tn morals and ideals-these latter being lofty enough and hard to improve.
 The Hon. Gavin McNab is defending fat arbuckle but Sargent S. Prentss, the Cicero of the South in the days of Lincoln, whose silver tongue could coax the birds off the bushes and make them eat out of his hand, once exerted his talent for magnificent or atorv in defense of common bed-bug. 1t IS a true story, and historic.
 Henry Clay and Mr. Prentiss were travelling together through Mississippi the latters home State, on their way to grand political rally. Domiciled at an inn one stormy night, they slept together, upstairs, and the bedbugs be- gan eating them up.
 MT. Clay arose. Maledictions resounded. He fired his horse pistol out of the window to fetch the sleepy landlord. This also brought numerous other guests. There stood Clay, tousled and angry, pistol in hand, bedbug on table-at which he pointed
 Leaping out of bed Prentiss intevened to save the life of the bedbug, and then with quite an audience, after an old-fashioned drink all round they empaneled jury, designated a judge, and put the bedbug, in a snuff-boX, on trial for his life.
 Clav-the Mill-Boy of the Slashes-nev- CT was more eloquent, logical and impressive. The thunders of his rhetoric resounded. He traced the life history of the vile and atro- cious bedbug from earliest times down to date; told how he was pest and nuisance since Pharaoh was a boy. He concluded with an anathema intermingled with maledictions that made the hair rise on his hearers heads. He had finished The belbug was doomed, ap- parently.
 The great Prentiss, majestic of personality, magnetic and impressive, began his reply with the skill of an Ingersoll and the eloquence of Demosthenes. Admitting the lowy origin of the bedbug, its propensity for night prowl- ing and ravenous disposition, still, he pleaded, God made the creature for some special pur- pose and it was not for poor and wicked men to sit in judgment upon it. By logical steps he proved that the bedbug had a right to bite, whomsoever and whensoever it could, and he raised Unreasonable doubt" in the minds of the jury by pleading that scientists yet might discover that the bite of the bedbug was a