The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

First: The evidence of all the parties is that Job Davis wrote a very good hand; that his letters were even. He wrote a good hand; a kind of schoolmaster, copy-book hand. Is this will written in that kind of hand? I ask Judge Woolworth to tell you whether that is written in a clerkly hand; whether it was written by a man who wrote an even hand; whether it was written by a man who closed his "a's" and "o's"; whether it was written by one who made his "h's" and "b's" different. Job Davis was a good scholar.

No good penman ever wrote the body of that will. If there were nothing else I would be satisfied, and, in my judgment, you would be, that it is not the writing of Job Davis.

It is the writing; of a poor penman; it is the writing of a careless penman, who, for that time, endeavored to write a little smaller than usual, and why? When people forge a will they write the names first on the blank paper. They will not write the body of the will and then forge the name to it, because if they are not successful in the forgery of the name they would have to write the whole business over again; so the first thing they would do would be to write the name and the next thing that they would do would be to write the will so as to bring it within the space that was left, and here they wrote it a little shorter even than was necessary and quit there [indicating on the will] and made these six or seven marks and then turned over, and on the other side they were a little crowded before they got to the name of A. J. Davis.

Now, the next question is, was Job Davis a good speller? Let us be honest about it. How delighted they would have been to show that he was an ignorant booby. But their witnesses and our witnesses both swear that he was the best speller in the neighborhood; and when they brought men from other communities to a spelling match, after all had fallen on the field, after the floor was covered with dead and wounded, Job Davis stood proudly up, not having missed a word. He was the best speller in that county, and not only so, but at sixteen years of age he wasn't simply studying arithmetic, he was in algebra; and not only so, after he had finished what you may call this common school education in Salt Creek township, he went to the Normal school of Iowa and prepared himself to be a teacher, and came back and taught a school.

Now, did Job Davis write this will? Senator Sanders says there are three or four misspelled words in this document, while the fact is there are twenty words in the document that are clearly and absolutely misspelled. And what kind of words are misspelled? Some of the easiest and most common in the English language. Will you say upon your oaths that Job Davis, having the reputation of the champion speller of the neighborhood—will you, upon your oaths, say that when he wrote this will (probably the only document of any importance, if he did write it, that he ever wrote) he spelled shall "shal" every time it occurs in the will? Will you say that this champion speller spelled the word whether with two "r's," and made it "wherther," making two mistakes, first as to the word itself, and second, as to the spelling? Will you say that this champion speller could not spell the word dispose, but wrote it "depose"? And will you say the ordinary word give was spelled by this educated young man "guive"? And it seems that Colonel Sanders has ransacked the misspelled world to find somebody idiotic enough to twist a "u" in the word give, and even in the Century dictionary—I suppose they call it the Century dictionary because they looked a hundred years to find that peculiarity of spelling—even there, although give is spelled four ways, besides the right way, no "u" is there. And will you say that Job Davis did not know the word administrators?

Now, let us be honest about this matter—let us be fair. It is not a personal quarrel between lawyers. I never quarrel with anybody; my philosophy being that everybody does as he must, and if he is in bad luck and does wrong, why, let us pity him, and if we happen to have good luck, and take the path where roses bloom, why, let us be joyful. That is my doctrine; no need of fighting about these little things. They are all over in a little while anyway. Do you believe that Job Davis spelled sheet—a sheet of paper—"sheat"? That is the way he spells it in this document. Now, let us be honor bright with each other, and do not let the lawyers on the other side treat you as if you were twelve imbeciles. You would better be misled by a sensible sinner than by the most pious absurdities that ever floated out from the lips of man. Let us have some good, hard sense, as we would in ordinary business life. Do you believe that Job Davis, the educated young man, the school teacher, the one who attended the Normal school would put periods in the middle of sentences and none at the end? That he would put a period on one side of an "n" and then fearing the "n" might get away, put one on the other; and then when he got the sentence done, be out of periods, so that he could not put one there, and put so many periods in the writing that it looked as if it had broken out with some kind of punctuation measles?

Job Davis, an educated man! And you are going to tell this jury that that man wrote that will! I think your cheeks will get a little red while you are doing it. This man, when he comes to this little word "is" in the middle of a sentence, his desire for equality is so great that he wishes to put that word on a level with others, and starts it with a capital, so that it will not be ashamed to appear with longer words.

And yet the will was written by Job Davis, and Sconce saw him write it, and Mrs. Downey saw him write it. If there were one million Sconces, and a million Mrs. Downeys, and they held their hands up high and swore that they did, I know that they did not, unless all the witnesses who have testified to the education of Job Davis have testified lies. There is where I told you a little while ago that when a lie comes in contact with a fact it will not fit. These other people in Salt Creek township that have come here and sworn to that, did not know whether it was spelled right or wrong. They did not take that into consideration.

It seems to me utterly, absolutely, infinitely impossible that this will was written by a good speller. I know it was not. So do you. There is not a man on the jury that does not know it was not written by a good speller—not a man. And you cannot, upon your oaths, say that you believe two things—first, that Job Davis was a good speller, and, secondly, that he wrote this will. Utterly impossible. There is another word here, "wordly"—"all my wordly goods." "Worldly" it ought to be; but this Job Davis, this scholar, did not know that there was such a word as worldly, he left out the "l" and called it wordly, "all my wordly goods," and they want you to find on your oath that it was written by a good speller. There are twenty words misspelled in this short will, and the most common words, some of them, in the English language. Now, I say that these twenty misspelled words are twenty witnesses—twenty witnesses that tell the truth without being on their oath, and that you cannot mix by cross-examination. Twenty witnesses! Every misspelled word holds up its maimed and mutilated hand and swears that Job Davis did not write that will—every one. Suppose witnesses had sworn that Judge Woolworth wrote this will. How many Salt Creekers do you think it would take to convince you that he was around spelling sheet "sheat"?

Mr. Woolworth. I have done worse than that a great many times.