“That stuff wouldn’t hold a Texas steer a holy minute,” said they.
Gates was put on his mettle. “I’ll show you whether it will or not,” said he.
This was in the picturesque town of San Antonio, which is dotted liberally with small open spaces, or plazas. Gates hired the nearest plaza, and got together a drove of twenty-five of the wildest Texas steers that could be found. Then he fenced his plaza with barbed wire, put the steers inside, and gave the cattlemen a free show. The steers charged the wire, and were pricked by the barbs. They shook their heads and charged again, with the same result. After two or three of these defeats they huddled together on the inside and tried to think it over. Gates sold hundreds of miles of his wire that day at eighteen cents a pound.—Munsey’s.
(731)
Men are sometimes condemned on hearsay, who would be approved if their critics gave them an actual and fair hearing.
When Chief Justice Holt was on the bench, a society had sprung up called “The Society for the Suppression of Vice or the Reformation of manners” (and probably it still exists), and they resolved to prosecute for indecency one of the famous singers of the day named Leveridge. This artist used to sing Dryden’s ode, “The Praise of Love and Wine,” so as to excite great enthusiasm among the depraved votaries of the theater by his peculiar manner of execution. The judge saw the craze under which the prosecutor acted, and resolved to defeat them by the following course: He said to the jury that he had read carefully the words of the song, and he could see nothing very culpable in the words, and therefore he could only come to the conclusion that it must be the manner in which the ode was sung that had occasioned this prosecution. The fairest manner, therefore, to all parties would be for the defendant to sing the song in presence of the court and jury, when they could readily determine the matter in a satisfactory way. The performer took this hint, and, of course, sang with his very greatest power and good taste, so that not only the jury, without leaving the box, acquitted him, but the mob insisted on carrying him home on their shoulders. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
(732)
Tolstoy, in his “Coffee-house Parable,” tells of how some men of different faiths had met in a place of public resort and had, after a time, begun to argue about God, each claiming alone to possess a true knowledge of Him, to have alone received His revelation. One, wiser than the others, led them all forth at last till they stood in the sunlight. That sun is a great fact and manifests itself to every creature on earth. Man sees it, or does not see it, being blind, yet is ever cheered by it; the earth is kissed by its rays till it blossoms and brings forth its fruit; even the hard, inanimate things, like the rocks, are warmed by the sun’s rays. And God is the great central fact of life.