It seems to be an unwritten law of human life that every great joy shall be quickly followed by a great sorrow. The materialized forms of our spirit loved-ones had scarcely vanished from sight, when the trouble of which my brother had forewarned us fell like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky.
We had, without a thought of deception, and at prices which then prevailed, sold to many persons, lands in Florida, some for settlement, some as investments. Phosphate had been discovered in the immediate vicinity of some of our tracts, and this fact had led speculators to buy our lands, hoping that these deposits might greatly enhance values; but the usual competition to sell this valuable fertilizer had for the time reduced prices to a non-paying basis; then, too, an unprecedented freeze, which once in about a hundred years visits all semi-tropical countries, had destroyed many orange groves in the State, and so frightened short-sighted, timid people, that Florida lands were at a great discount, and, as when a panic sweeps over Wall Street, many frantically hastened to sell, and there were but few buyers.
This led several of my customers to conspire to frighten me into paying them large sums as hush money, pretending that I had secured their purchases under false pretenses; but the Yankee spirit of our fathers, "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," prompted me to defy their infamous demands.
Under the lead of a fiendishly "smart" lawyer, they declared that I told them their lands were full of phosphate, and within city limits, although my published circulars and maps stated nothing of the kind. They denounced me as a fraud in the newspapers, brought lawsuits against me, attached property, and proceeded in a most brutal manner to compel payment of their unjust claims.
My word for half a century had everywhere been as good as my bond, and my bond as good as gold. I had never before had a lawsuit or any trouble with any one, and so in my inexperience I employed a lawyer friend, who was no match for my enemies' human tiger. They testified unfairly in court, and after many crushing annoyances from the law's delays, my lawyer, putting in no defense, in order, as he said, to save his ammunition for use in the Superior Court, to which he appealed, they secured judgment.
All these slanders broke my never firm health; I was soon on the verge of nervous prostration, and was ordered by my physician to at once secure a change of climate to save my life. My innocent lawyer supposed that a court of justice would postpone my trial until my return; but we have now some "courts of injustice."
Some lawyers are worse than highway robbers; they make the laws as legislators to suit their own iniquitous, selfish purposes, so worded that they are susceptible of almost any interpretation, thus leading to endless litigations by which these cannibal devourers of reputations are robbing the public of their possessions. They employ spies to stir up strife, and some lawyers and judges seem to be banded together to fleece the confiding lambs of the public. The judge not only refused to postpone the trial until I was able to attend, but refused to have the jury informed that I was absent on account of serious sickness.
We are bound hand and foot, the slaves of these law-sharks, and it seems as if nothing but revolution and the banishing of these tyrants, will ever deliver the public from the worse than African slavery to which some lawyers subject us. We have seen innocent, modest lady witnesses subjected to bull-dozing and abuse by barbarous lawyers, until they suffered tortures to which those of the Spanish Inquisition were merciful.
As I was obliged to go or die, I accepted the offer of my wife's brother, a member of the publishing firm of Webster's Dictionaries, and went to California to fight their battles against the new Standard Dictionary which was rapidly driving the Webster books out of the markets of the entire Pacific slope.
The trial took place during my enforced absence; my enemies' crafty attorney told the jury that my failure to appear was a sure evidence of guilt; my doctor's affidavit that he sent me away to save my life was not allowed to be presented in court; each plaintiff claimed to have heard the statements imputed to have been made by me to the others, one of them making love to, and afterwards marrying one of my most important witnesses, and so the verdict was against me.