“You say you beat my son last night—he did not leave the house: You say you beat him—he certainly does not look in that plight.”
The man stared, evidently puzzled; but fumbling at his pocket, he pulled out a bundle of letters, and spread them before his honor.
“I don’t know who I did beat last night. I did beat some one, that’s a fact. But maybe you’d tell me who writ them?”
The judge took the first papers. It was Dudley’s writing, and, at arm’s length, looked frightfully like poetry. He examined it closely, and found a lyric of seventeen verses, of an amorous, mystic character. The reader must not think me romancing if I give as specimens a few lines of the best. Men in love will spin out just such gossamer threads, that, floating in the merry sunlight of youth, look very beautiful. A steady member of the bar, who, I doubt not, is at this moment in his dull, grim office, pouring over musty law books, looking as if the jingle of a rhyme would be as annoying as a poor client, did, once upon a time, address volumes of verse to me, until he found that I was in a fair mood to label all as “rejected addresses,” when he suddenly took to special pleading with eminent success. To poor Dudley’s poetry.
’Tis sad, sweet May, to part with thee,
More sad than words may tell;
To give thy form to Memory,
To breathe a last farewell;
How long thy every thought and tone
Of mine have been a part;