Summerfield / or, Life on a Farm

by Day Kellogg Lee

Cicero Bray, Esq., appeared as counsel for the plaintiff, and C. Fox
Faddle, Esq., was counsel for the prisoner.

Lawyer Bray was a mountainous man, about thirty-five years old; and he had impudence ingrained with his brawny meat and muscles, and his tongue, let loose, would run like a mill-stream. His head rose a little above his ears, and was huge of girth in a horizontal measure. His hair was a sort of wolf's gray, was clipped all over within an inch of his head, and stood up like the bristles on a wild boar's back. His brows were bushy, and jutted, roof-like, over his deeply-sunken eyes; his nose was bluff as a bull-dog's; his cheek-bones were rough and high; his eyes were wide-set; his mouth was cut square across almost from ear to ear; his chin was square and massy; he had an Adam's apple as large as a gilly-flower ripening on his throat; his hands were large and bony, and his voice "grated harsh thunder," as Milton said of the gates of hell.

Lawyer Bray was prompt and saucy in court, and often won his case in other towns by the thunder of his voice and the force of his action while on the floor. He could always read an abundance of law to sustain any point he argued, although the law quoted might not be found written in the book. He was a capital shot, and kept a pair of the fleetest hounds, and often hauled in his shingle and hunted week in and week out, leaving business to follow suit. He made light of religious and sacred things; he could curse the sky when it thundered, and swear the lights blue with the boldest voluble tongue; and yet he would appeal to God to judge him in a plea, and silence, and exclude a witness for any unpopular religious belief. He rose to an extensive business in the towns about, at last; and is quoted at this day, for some wild gale of a speech, or some saucy joke, or strange adventure.

Lawyer Faddle was equally original. He was as tall as Bray, whenever he straightened up in an animated speech; but his long form commonly bent over, and described a segment of a rainbow. His head was small, and his hair long and thin, and light and shiny as flax; his eyes were almost white, and were set obliquely; his nose was long, aquiline, and pinched together in the nostrils; his teeth were long and broad, and those above shut over upon his lower lip and kept it in a constant chafe. His voice was clear enough, and it never failed in a speech; but it seemed to reside in his little thirsty throat, and it piped like a killdeer's in its proudest swell.

Lawyer Faddle excited some mirth for his originalities, and more contempt for his vices among the farmers of Summerfield. The opinion of the town at that time may be given in the language of Uncle Walter, who declared he was "hollow and foul as a sooty stove-pipe."

Lawyer Faddle however succeeded in creating an extensive business in time, though most of his cases an honorable lawyer would have scorned; and he reared a large family, and wanted to figure in later times as one of the aristocracy of Summerfield.

Cicero Bray opened the case by a lengthened speech of very ambitious eloquence, paying several unfelt compliments to the 'justice' and 'wisdom' of the 'worthy magistrate;' while he glanced through the course of the trial, with an air and tone of triumph, stating in thunder what he should undertake to sustain in evidence; and after a most exhausting peroration, he hauled in his ragged voice, and arrested its rumbling echoes, and gave way for a brief remark from the counsel for the prisoner. A son of the plaintiff, Welcome Bogle, was then introduced to the stand, and testified that his father had owned a log-chain with the initials of his name, "S. B." marked on one of the hooks; and the chain in court being shown him, he said with audible and honest emphasis, "Yes, that's the article." He was cross-examined, with considerable tact and much severity by C. Fox Faddle, Esq.; but he stood the trial with remarkable composure and consistency, making no variation of the facts testified, although he gave them in different connections and words.

'Becca Ann Teezle was next introduced. She had again and again declared she was not afraid of a lawyer, and on this occasion her words proved true. Without the slightest diffidence, but with a boldness rather which encouraged the other witnesses, and with a toss of the head that Lawyer Faddle did not like, she said, "she had been out in the woods pasture picking blackberries, and saw Mr. Sculpin pass that way from the direction of Mr. Bogle's barn, with a chain on his back."

When cross-examined, she stated that "it was slung over his right shoulder, and under his left arm, and it was not a trace chain, nor a halter chain, nor a breast chain, as Mr. C. Fox Faddle endeavored to have it appear, but a log-chain; yes, sir, a log chain, for I saw it with my own eyes."

"Then you sometimes see with eyes not your own, do you, Miss Teezle?" said Lawyer Faddle with a comical leer, and a peculiar pipe of that killdeer voice.