The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 10 (of 12) / Dresden Edition—Legal

by Robert Green Ingersoll

Now, was that will made? Have they impeached Mr. Keith? I tell them now that they cannot impeach him. He has sworn to the making of that will, apart and separate from Mr. Knight. Oh, they say, why didn't they bring Knight in, and prove by him that he then recollected Mr. Keith? What has that to do with it? Mr. Keith recollected Mr. Knight, swore that he wrote the will, and that he was writing it when he came in, and swore that he attested it, that Davis signed it, and Irvine also signed it. What more do we want on that will? I say, gentlemen, that the will of 1880 ends this case. There is not ingenuity enough in the world to get around it, and there was and never will be enough brains crammed into one head to dodge it. That will was made, and every man on the jury knows it. That will was executed by Andrew J. Davis, every man of you knows it, and the will was afterwards destroyed.

Now, the question is, did that second will revoke the first will? Had it a revoking clause in it? E. W. Knight swears it had, and he swears that he copied it from a will made by an uncle of his named John Knight, and he had that will in his possession here and in that will there are two revocation clauses, and Knight swears that he copied those clauses, and right here it may be well enough to make another remark. When he read the will to A. J. Davis, and the passage "hereby revoking all wills," Davis said: "There is no need of putting that in. I never made any other will. This is the first." Knight said to him, "Well, that is the way, that is the form, and I think it is safer to have it that way." And Davis said: "All right; let it go."

How do you fix that? There is no way out of it, that the will was made in 1880, revoking all former wills. What else? The conditions of the will of 1880, with regard to working the mine, with regard to bequests to nephews, with regard to bequests to others, with regard to the twenty thousand dollars given to Jeff Davis, and the twenty thousand dollars given to the girl; these provisions are absolutely inconsistent with the provisions of this will of 1866. So on both grounds the will of 1880 destroys, cancels, and forever renders null and void the will of 1866, even if it had been the genuine will of A. J. Davis, and the Court will instruct you to that effect.

And after Mr. Keith had testified, the proponents in this case subpoenaed Mr. Knight, and if they thought that Knight would swear that Keith was not the man, why did they not put him on the stand? They ran no risk. He is an honest man. He would tell the truth. I never had the slightest fear in bringing an honest man on the stand. Never. I want facts, and I hope as long as I live that I shall never win a case that I ought not to win on the facts. No man should wish or endeavor to win a case that he knows is wrong.

I say there is not a man on this jury but believes in his heart and soul this minute that this will was made. You have to throw aside the testimony of a perfectly good man, and no matter whether what he said about Erwin Davis to Judge Knowles was true or not—and I must say that I never saw a witness on the stand in my life more eager to tell his story than Judge Knowles was. Never. He was bound to get it in or die. He answered questions over objections before the Court was allowed to pass upon the objections. Why? Because he is the President of the First National Bank. Now, without saying that he was dishonest about it, I say he was mistaken. Knight never said one word of that kind to him.

It was impossible that he could have said it. So is Mr. Talbot mistaken. So is Andrew J. Davis, Jr. mistaken, and so is John A. Davis mistaken. Think of the idiotic idea that a will, not signed, was given to Knight to keep, attested by two witnesses, and not signed by the testator. Idiotic! Now, as I understand it, gentlemen, you will have to find that that will was made.

Now, what is the next great question in this case, and the question that will be argued at some length, probably, by the other side? And why? Because it is the first and only point, so far as facts are concerned, that they have won in this case. Just one. And what is that? Our experts said that they thought that the ink was nigrosin ink, and the fact that they wanted a test proves that they were sincere. Their witnesses said they did not think it was nigrosin ink. Mr. Hodges said it had too much lustre, but that there was only one way in which it could be absolutely determined and that was by a chemical test. But, say these gentlemen, or rather said Judge Dixon, "the moment that ink turned red the whole case of the contestants was wrecked." Let us see.

If there had been no logwood ink in existence—not a particle—after the 20th day of July, 1866; if, on the night of the 20th of July, 1866, all the logwood ink on earth had been destroyed and then this ink had turned out to be logwood, why, of course, it would have been a demonstration that this paper was written as far back as the 20th of July, 1866. If it had turned out that it was written in nigrosin ink and that that had only been invented in 1878, it would have been a demonstration that the will was a forgery. But you must recollect the fact that it is written in logwood ink is not only consistent with its genuineness, but consistent with its being a forgery. Why? There was logwood ink in existence in 1890, plenty of it, and if Mr. Eddy wrote this will in 1890, he could have written it in logwood ink; and the fact that it is written in logwood ink does not show that it was written in 1866. Why? Because there was logwood ink in existence every year since 1866, till now.

Suppose I said that the paper was only ten years old and it turned out that it was forty, is that a demonstration in favor of the other side? If it turned out to be ten, it is a demonstration on our side.

But if it turned out to be forty, is not that consistent with the genuineness of the instrument, and also with the spuriousness of the same instrument? You can see that. Nobody's smart enough to fool you on that. Nobody. Take the whole question of ink out and the question is still whether Eddy wrote it or not. Take the ink all out and it is still the question whether Job Davis wrote it or not. Absolutely, and all the test proved was, that our experts—some of them—were mistaken about its being nigrosin ink. Mr. Tolman stated that it was impossible to tell without a chemical test; that it looked like nigrosin ink and from the manner in which it seemed to run he thought it was nigrosin ink, but that it was impossible to tell without a test. Mr. Hodges, their expert, said it looked to him like logwood ink; that it had too much lustre for nigrosin, but he added that it was impossible to tell without a chemical test. That is what he said. Mr. Ames said the same thing, and I appeal to you, gentlemen, if Mr. Ames did not have the appearance of an honest, of a candid, and of a fair man. Professor Hagan said that it was nigrosin ink, but he admitted that the only way to know was to test it. And what else? Their own expert, Mr. Hodges, said that logwood ink penetrates the paper. If this ink has been on here twenty-five years it penetrates the paper.