Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight Part 22

"In the election of a Judge, the standard of measurement of the conscientious voter should be one of fitness only.

"Shall not the Judge do right? And how can he do right if he is a crook?

"Shall not the Judge interpret the law with wisdom and understanding?

And how can he do that if he is a fool?

"Shall not the Judge be free? And how can a coward or a tool, worn blunt in crooked service, be free or cut straight and true?

"What an execration when a Judge is a Jeffries and what a benediction when he is a Marshall or a White.

"A Judge's mind must be open to argument and he must have power to discern between the false and the true.

"The Lord, the First and Last Judge, alone will be able to set some judgments straight and straighten some judges. He in majesty and power upholds the law, which is never broken. It is man who is broken by the law.

"The great curse of Kentucky is that many of her Judges belong to that very common species of Judge. Judex apiarius. Their capacity for hearing the facts and declaring the right is blurred by the buzz of the bee of political aspiration and self-interest.

"A Judge who belongs to this species can usually be cla.s.sed as of the family Judex timidus,--those whose ears are so great that they can never lift them from the ground, and when a mosquito hums in Covington their dreams of peace are disturbed in Frankfort.

"They are the secret enemies of the law's certainty and stability. Their decisions s.h.i.+ft with the tide of popular opinion. They wash their hands like Pilate (not always to cleanliness) and permit the crucifixion.

"A year or so ago, Chief Justice Grinder, in an address before a men's Bible cla.s.s, declared that the Court of Appeals upon an appeal to it would have reversed the Sanhedrin. There are more than several lawyers in this State, who, knowing the members of that court, have grave doubts about it, had that court sat in Jerusalem and the appeal been prosecuted A. D. 30.

"Saylor is worse. He would make a judicial tool. Judicial tools have generally been in politics for a number of years and, preceding their judicial service, a member of the legislature for several terms, like Saylor, where they are first tried out. This judge expects one day to be Governor and is willing to do any thing to further his political ambitions. By some hook or crook or pull he succeeded in obtaining his license to practice law and since has appeared in court occasionally; generally when a jury was to be influenced.

"He is more or less a wanderer and, when he changes his residence, changes his politics and votes with the majority. He is usually a candidate for office and spends more time on the street than in his office.

"He is a mere p.a.w.n on the political chess-board and his master occasionally has him elected to office. Then the master tells him how to decide, not all, but certain cases.

"His opinions are generally misstatements of the facts presented by the record and never mention an authority cited by counsel opposing his master's decree. His references are not complimentary to such counsel, his purpose being to make him appear ridiculous and to forestall all hope for modification by a pet.i.tion for rehearing, because it is barely possible that another judge may then read the record, though it is not considered judicial etiquette to do so.

"He being the only judge who has read the record, is careful to so state the facts in the consultation room as to meet with no dissent from his colleagues or to make them curious about the record.

"All of these demerits Saylor has in full measure. He is known to all of you. He lives in this county and the county is none the better for it.

He defends every bootlegger and crook that is indicted and they will vote for him as they respond to his demands when they are chosen for jury service, which is entirely too frequent for the administration of justice.

"Thirty years ago no man of his reputation and limited capacity would have dared run for this high office. Now it is another thing. If elected he will find some of his a.s.sociates not much better qualified, so far as knowledge of the law is concerned. Instead of being learned in the law they are politicians, who know their district and how to fool the people.

"Conditions force comparisons. Until the Civil War, opinions rendered by the Court of Appeals were quoted and cited with respect in every State of the nation. The Court since in personnel has deteriorated. Its opinions are captious, partisan, uninspired oracles, which perforce decide the case in hand; but as an authority for future reference, so far as the reasons given are concerned, are mere chit-chat.

"When I was young, and began the practice of law, there were lawyers at the bar in this State and real Judges occupied the bench. There was Clay and Crittenden and Judge Robinson and Judge Underwood. Now who have we?

Such lawyers as John Calhoun Saylor and such judges as Saylor will make when elected;--The Lord save us!"

At the November election Colonel Saylor was elected; but by a very small majority. He ran more than five thousand votes behind the head of the ticket, and in a district where little scratching is done. The State ticket pulled him through.

When the returns came in Searcy Chilton, commenting on the race, concluded his remarks by saying; "Next time we must throw that Jonah overboard."

A day or two before he qualified, Judge Saylor came to Frankfort, and visited the courtroom a few minutes after adjournment; he even went up and tried the chair of the Chief Justice, and found the seat was none too large. No one was present but Jake, the negro janitor.

"Jake, what do the lawyers and judges have to say about my election?"

"They don't say nothin, Boss; they jest laff."

NIRVANA.

We are told that at one time the British Isles were connected with the mainland of Europe; that Italy was at least within sight of the African coast; and that westward from Gibraltar, there was a continent which ultimately sank beneath the waves, leaving isolated mountain peaks, now islands and shoals, to mark its submerged position.

The Egyptian priesthood told Solon of the greatness of the civilization of this submerged land, Atlantis or Kami, even then, as of an ancient past; and Homer, Horace and Plato have whispered of its greatness.

The soul of one of its ancient inhabitants, yet wandering upon this earth, may through transmigration have become in part your own, and you, in reverie at odd hours and in company with it, live again a few scenes of those old days.

Near Winchester, Kentucky, driving out the Lexington turnpike you pa.s.s an old brick farmhouse of ante-bellum days; flanked on the one side by an old stone springhouse under two spreading elms and on the other by a large tobacco barn that looks extremely modern and out of place. Behind the house is an orchard of ancient apple and pear trees, all dead at the top, a negro cabin beside which are two black heart cherry trees, higher than the farmhouse and more than three feet through; and yet farther back, hemp and tobacco fields and a woodland pasture of oak and walnut trees. At least this was a description of my home thirty years ago.

I had just graduated from Center College, and having in mind to practice law in Lexington, had during the summer formed the habit of going down to the springhouse and under the shade of its eaves and the overhanging elms, sit and read Kent's Commentaries.

A negro family lived in the cabin, Mose Hunter, his wife and boy. Mose was as black as they grow them in Kentucky; but his wife was the color of my old volumes of Kent and had build and features which fixed the country of her ancestry in northern Africa and seemed to identify her as a desert Berber. Mose worked on the farm, his wife was cook at the farmhouse, and the boy, who was said to be half imbecile, was as harmless and shy as a ground robin. I do not know of his ever having gone off the place. He was probably fourteen, had never been to school, and wandered about like a lost turkey hen. We could depend upon him to pick up the apples, feed the cider mill, water the stock, gather the eggs and feed the pigs and chickens.

The boy had the habit of coming to the springhouse and taking a nap each day on the milk crock bench, which had been discarded since we had bought our new refrigerator. Every warm summer afternoon about three o'clock, he would run down the path, dodge behind a tree out of sight, if his mother happened to step out of the kitchen door, and slipping into the springhouse, lie down and sleep quietly in its cool moist shade for a quarter of an hour; then, still asleep, sit up and in a startled way, talk earnestly for some time, his features transformed by a look of tragic intelligence, which they did not possess at other times. Then he would lie down again and after a few minutes quiet sleep, awake and return to the cabin.

His speech did not disturb me; his voice was low, though tense, and his words unintelligible. Gradually his murmurings became a familiar sound, as the call of the lark from the pasture gatepost.

Finally I noticed that he spoke in an apparently strange tongue and even mentioned time and again names given in my ancient atlas. Many times he used the words, pehu, Kami, Theni, horshesu, hik, nut, tash, hesoph, and un.

I wrote Professor Fales of Danville about this time, sending him a small box of crinoids, and casually mentioned the boy and his strange habit, writing out the above list of words, with others, that he habitually repeated.

He wrote back that the words were Egyptian or a kindred Hamite tongue.

Consulting the college library, he had discovered that the ancient Egyptian name for Atlantis was Kami. That Theni was the name of a very ancient prehistoric city, its location unknown. That pehu meant an overflowed land; un, uncultivated land; and the word tash, tribe; the others he was unable to translate.

He suggested that I find out from the boy's mother where she or her people were from; get a stenographer at Winchester to come out and make careful notes of his murmurings; and when made send a copy to him and one to----, a lawyer at Covington, who was an antiquarian and an Egyptologist.

The next day after the receipt of the letter I went to Winchester and inquired at the court-house for the official stenographer. I learned, as all courts in the district were adjourned for the summer, he had gone to Atlantic City for the month. So I went to Judge Buckner's office and borrowed his stenographer.

The Judge said the season was dull and except on county court day he could spare the girl for an hour or two almost any afternoon. He also asked if my father still had on hand that half barrel of Old Mock. The next afternoon when I went for the girl I brought the Judge a gallon jug of Dad's Old Mock, telling the folks I was taking him some cider.

When we returned, we found the boy asleep in the springhouse, but within five minutes of our arrival he sat up and went through the regular program. After he had talked for some time, he laid down and resumed his quiet slumber.

This program was repeated the next day except the girl brought out a slate and succeeded in making the boy write or draw upon it characters which were strange to us, and which he wrote from right to left with great ease, though he could not write his name.

The writings on the slate the stenographer carefully copied and after transcribing her notes gave me the copies, one of which I sent to Professor Fales, who forwarded it to his learned friend at Covington. He not only wrote but telegraphed for more.

Twice again the boy's words were taken down and twice he wrote again upon the slate. We might with patience and quiet have gotten a complete history of a generation of prehistoric people, but my mother, who still looked upon me as a young boy incapable of caring for himself in the company of a designing female person, and having noted our regular visits to the springhouse, rushed down unannounced with the boy's mother.