Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1883 — Page 3

JUDGE BUCK AS A PATRIOT.

His Great Arguments Against the Crime of the Century. Fraud Wrapped in the Forms of Law Is Fraud—Votes and Not Forgeries Must Be Counted. The Waters of Truth Rise Gradually but Surely, and Then Look Out for the Flood!. (The “ Congressional Record’s ” Report of Judge Black’s Speech before the Electoral Commission, Feb. 3, 1877, over the Fraudulent Certificate from Florida.] Mb. President and Gentlemen of the Commission: The time allowed for the onening of this argument on our side Is nearly consumed. Ido not presume to do more than merely supplement or enforce by a few general propositions Mr. Merrick’s admirable statement ot our case, which is well calculated to impress the true nature of it on the minds thsi court, and to give a full notice to the gentlemen on the other side of what we intend to rely upon, as anything that could possibly have been said. lam only “gilding relined gold” when I attempt to add anything to it. You have before you the cjuestion whether this case is to be decided by you upon the evidence taken for the purpose of enabling the Seifite and House ot Representatives to doj the duty which the’ constitution cast upon them of count.ng the votes and of seeing that votes only were counted. For all the reasons that I gave this morning, and for many other reasons which I might add if I had time, 1 insist upon it that the evidence being once reported and filedin the cause is to be treated as a court of equity treats evidence in the same condition. You may throw it out; you are not required to give it, because you have admitted it, any particular force or weight or value in your final judgment; but you are to look at it and determine the case upon all that lain it Andi can give you an assurance, founded upon some little experience, that a Judge never decides upon any subject much tne worse for knowing a little about it before he does decide. This notion of determining the whole case upon an offer to admit evidence is a thing thut you have got to forget It is impressed upon those who practice the common law very strongly by. that peculiar and anomalous system that is adopted in the common law courts upon jury trials It is not natural; it does not belong to any other kind of tribunal. If there be any evidence here which comes through illegal channels, or if it comes from an improper source, let them move to suppress it. But being in already, and therefore part of tne case now, you cannot ask us to offer it over again I need not certainly produce “Chitty's Pleading’ and “Danniell’s Chancery Practice,” or “Starkie on Evidence,” or any of the rest of the books in which these rules are laid down I need not show you what is the code of procedure in courts of admiralty and courts of equity, for I take it for granted that these are things bn which I may speak as unto wise men One of the gentlemen who spoke yesterday repeated what had been said by Judge Marshall, and which lam glad he did. We have heard it before, but it cannot be told too often, for it contains a very wholesome moral. The Judge said to a counsellor who was addressing him that a Judge of the Supreme Court was presumed to know something. I hope that no decision which you make in this case wilt repel that presumption Indeed I think it will be extended and enlarged, and » that the presumption after this will be not only that Judges of the Supreme Court know something but that members of the Senate . and House of Representatives also know something. There has been much talk here about getting behind the action of the State. I do believe firmly in the sovereign power of the State to appoint any person elector that she pleases, if she does it in the manner prescribed by the Legislature; and after she has made the appointment in that manner no man has the right to go behind her act and say that it was an appointment not fit to be made. A man, whether he be an officer of the State, or an officer of the General Government, wuo undertakes to set aside such an appointment is guilty of a usurpation, and his act is utterly void. Therefore, if the Governor of the State of Florida, after this appointment of electors was made by the people, undertook to certify that they were not ejected, and put somebody else in the place which belonged , to them, his act was utterly void and false and fraudulent We, are not going behind the actions of the State; we are going behind the fraudulent act of an officer of the State, whose act had no validity in it whatever. This is a question of evidence. Who are the electors? Two sets of persons come here, each of them pretending to be the agent® of the State of Florida, for the purpose of performing that important function of the State, the election of a President and Vice President of the United States. It is the business of the two houses to count the votes. Now, remember the argument that Mr. Merrick made upon that constitution; let it sink into your hearts, and de not forget it, because it is God's truth. The word “votes” it is that controls the meaning of it “The votes shall then be counted; the votes, mind you—not the frauds; not the forgeries. But they on the other side tell us that, if the President of the Senate lays before the two Houses when the votes are to be counted a false paper, a paper which was absolutely counterfeited, that is an end of it; you cannot produce any extrinsic evidence for the purpose of showing that it was a forgery, or any evidence to show that it is not genuine. The doctrine goes that far if it is to be adopted at all. Carry that proposition to its logical consequences, and where does it take you? That you must simply receive whatever anybody chooses to fabricate and lay before Congress through the President of the Senate, and that neither the President of the Senate, nor either of the two Houses, nor both of them together, can do anything but just take what is given to them without inquiring into its genuineness at all I affirm, everybody affirms, and I hope to God that nobody here, even on the other side, will attempt to deny that the Congress of the United States has the verifying power, the power that enables it to inquire whether this is a forgery or not; and, if you have the right to inquire whether it is counterfeit, you have a right to inquire whether it is or is not invalidated by the base fraud in which this was concocted. The work of the counterfeiter is as well entitled to be received for truth as this spawn of a criminal conspiracy, got up to cheat the State and the Union, overturning and overthrowing the great principle that lies at the foundation of all our security. Why, this doctrine that a thing which is false, ’ willfully false, is utterly void and good for nothing, has been by this court (I mean by the Supreme Court) asserted a thousand times. Nay, I undertake to say that the contrary doctrine has never yet been set up by any Judge or any lawyer whose authority is wof th one straw. Suppose you have a ca c e of a patent issued by the Secretary of the Interior or the Commissioner of the General Land Office, the validity of which depends upon a confirmation by the court, and he falsely recites that the court delivered a judgment, which the record shows it never did pronounce, and Upon that basis puts the patent Is this patent worth anything? why is it worthless* Because it is based upon a fact which is untrue. “False” is “fraudulent” in all cases of this kind. When a man undertakes to say, “I certify to this fact,” and at the same time he does ft there glares upon him from the record that lips before him the evidence that the fact is ihe other way. is not that a fraudulent certificate ? And, if it be fraudulent, is lt.not as well void in law and as corrupt in morals as if it were a simple counterfeit? In this case we show that it was fraudulent How? By producing the evidence which the Governor was as well aware of as we ar&, Which every man and woman and Child in this whole nation knew or had reason

to believe was true, namely, that the other set of electors had a decis e and clear majority of the votes that were received and counted at the polls. He knew it, because It was recorded in every county of his State; the votes were collected together and filed in the office of the Secretary of State. That is one way in which we show the falsehood and the froud; but we show it again by the evidence of an act of the Legislature containing the solemn protest of tbe State against the cheat which her de facto Governor attempted to palm off upon her and Upon the nation. We prove it again by showing that the Governor himself—not the same person, but the same officer—rebuked this fraud, declaring that the other parties, and not those whose votes are now offered, were elected and chosen, and authorized exclusively to cast the vote of the State. Thus acted two departments of the State Government of the State. But the State,de-termined-sot to be cheated out of her vote and determined that she would ascertain in some undeniable form by a proceeding, the correctness and truth of which could never be impeached, took those usurpers by the throat and dragged them into a court of justice, and there, in the presence of a competent tribunal, she impleaded them, charged them with the offence, brought the other parties who also claimed to be her agents for this purpose and set them face to face. The proofs were given upon both sides, and it ended in a solemn adjudication by that court of competent jurisdiction that the persons who claimed to cast these votes for Hayes and Wheeler had no right nor authority nor power whatever to do that thing Now look at this. Whenever a cause has been decided by a court of competent jurisdiction, the determination of that court, as a plea is a bar, as evidence is conclusive of every fact and every matter of law which was or could have been adjudged there, and neither law nor fact there determined shall ever afterward, collaterally or directly, be drawn into controversy again. Is not that the rule? It was so laid down in the Duchess of Kingston’s case, which has been followed in every court in Christendom from that day to this. There is not in England or America one Judge or one lawyer who has undertaken to assert that the law is otherwise stated, nor has it ever been attempted to be clothed in any other words than the clear and felicitous language used by Chief Justice De Grey in that case This doctrine has been applied over and over 'again to election returns as well as to all other things. It would be perfectly absurd to say that, when the title to a horse is in question before a Justice of the Peace, the doctrine that makes the title void may be applied so as to save the horse to the honesvowner of it, should not be applied to a case in which the rights of a whole nation are involved. False returns have been made many times; false counts have been made at the polls; election officers have altered the count afterward. No man that I know of has ever said that an election fraud ought to be held to be successful merely because it was put into the forms of law'; never before this time, except on two occasions. In New Jersey the Governor of that State stamped the broad seal upon a commission as members of Congress for five gentlemen whom he knew not to be elected. Congress said that certificate was void. They, the House of Representatives, did precisely what we ask the two Houses of Congress and you, their substitute, to do in this case. It was contended then, as now, that the certificate of the Governor was conclusive evidence of the right of the commissioned men to take their seats in the first place and participate in the organization of the House Do not let it be said that this arose out of the right of a legislative body to pass upon the qualifications of its own members. They had’ no right to pass on the qualifications of their own members until they were organized. The right of those men to hold their seats until the time when their seats were declared vacant upon a petition of their adversaries to unseat them was as conclusive as anything can be. supposing it to be honest. But it was not honest, and that made it all void. Mr. Commissioner Strong—Were those persons who held the certificate of the Governor of New Jersey admitted to their seats at all? Mr. Black—They were not Mr. Commissioner Strong—Not allowed to take seats and participate in the organization? Mr. Black—Not allowed to take seats at all Mr. Commissioner Strong—l understood yon to say that they were. Mr. Black—l do not know but that your honor was in Congress at that time. Mr. Commissioner Strong—No, sir. Mr. Black—l supposed you were. That was in 1839. You were not in Congress then. There was a very great struggle over it, and it lasted four or five weeks, one set of men pressing the fraud with as much vigor as any of our friends can press this one, and it being resisted at the same time with perhaps more firmness than we are resisting now. There is another case, however, that one of the Judges upon this bench will recollect more distinctly. Ido not say that there was any judicial or legislative determination of that question which makes it authority in this case, but it is an illustration of the condition in which we are to be thrown if a mere fraud —a counterfeit—is to be accepted as sufficient to carry everything before it. In 1838 Mr. Porter was elected Governor of Pennsylvania by a majority of about 14,000. It was thought desiraole that the election should be set aside and treated as though it had not been had, and in order to do that it was necessary that his opponents should have possession, not only of the Senate and Executive, which they had already, but of the other house of the Legislature, the Lower House; and in order to effectuate that they just simply manufactured, fabricated, impudently and boldly, a fraudulent and false return of eleven members from the county of Philadelphia. The law was that the returns were to be made to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and he was to make out from those returns a list of the persons who were entitled to be members of the House. They said that certificate was conclusive evidence, and it was conclusive evidence if the fourth section of the act of Congress in this case makes the Governor’s certificate ’conclusive of the elector’s election, because it is very nearly in the same language. You ’know what became of it—the Buckshot war. They intended to carry that out at the expense of covering the whole commonwealth with blood and ashes, and would have done it only they could not get Gen. Patterson and his men to fire on the people who were there assembled. Until now, except In those two cases, nobody in this country has ever had the portentous impudence to offer a fraudulent vote«and insist that the fraud could not be inquired into because, forsooth, it came wrapped in the forms of law. I believe my time is out, and I am not going to trespass upon your Honors any further. Mr. Black—There is one thing which I omitted to mention, and which it is necessary to call the attention of the court to; ana that is the evidence which we have produced here to show that one of the Hayes electors was ineligible on account of his being an officer of the Federal Government on the day the election took place. I suppose that makes a clear case as against him. / [The Record’s repert of Judge Black’s speech on Feb. 27, 1877, over the fraudulent certificate of South Carolina.] Mr. President and Gentlemen: I had not, and have not now, any intention to argue this case. I never heard the objections nor knew what they were until they were read in your presence this morning. It would be presumptuous in me to attempt an argument before a tribunal like this on such a case as this, having had no previous opportunity to consider it. which might put me in a condition better than the Judges themselves. You have heard as much of this case and know as much about it as I do. My idea of the duty which a counselor owes to a court or to any other tribunal, judicial or quasi-judicial, is that he should never open his mouth except for the purpose of assisting the Judges in coming to a

correct conclusion; and if he is not in a sitnation to do that he ought to keep silence. Besides that, I am, I suppose, the very last man in this whole nation who should be called upon to speak here and now. Everybody has suffered more or less by events and proceedings of the recent past, some by wear and tear of conscience and some by a deep sense of oppression and wrong. But perhaps I, more than most others, have felt the consciousness that I have lost the dignity of an American citizen. I, in common with the lest, am degraded and humiliated. This nation has got her great big foot in' a trap. It is vain to struggle for her extrication. I am so fallen from the proud estate of a free citizen, you have so abjected me, that I am tit for nothing on earth but to repieseut the poor, defrauded, broken-hearted Democracy. And because I suffer more, they think me more good for nothing than the rest, and conclude to send me out on thia forlorn hope, judging, no doubt truly, that it matters nothing what becomes of ma I ought to go gladly if anything which I can do or say might have the effect of mitigating the horrible calamity with which the country is threatened; a President deriving his title from a shameless swindle, not merely of fraud, but a fraud detected and exposed. I know not how I would feel if caMed upon to suffer death for my country. lam not the stuff that martyrs are made of, but, if my life could redeem this nation from the infamy with which she is clothed, I ought to go to my grave as freely as I ever went to my bed. I see, however, no practical good that I can do, and it is mere weakness to complain. We have certain objections to the counting of this Hayes vote from South Carolina which look to me insuperable, but I cannot hope that they will wear that appearance in other men's eyes. Perhaps the feeling which I, in common with millions of others, entertain on this subject prevents us from seeing this thing in its true light But you are wise, you are calm. You can look all through this awful business with a learned spirit; no passionate hatred of this great fraud can cloud your mental vision or shake the even balance of your judgment You do not think it any wrong that a nation should be cheated by false election returns. On the contrary, it is rather a blessing which Heaven has sent us in this strange disguise When the omnipotent lie shall be throned and sceptred and crowned you think we ought all of us to fall down and worship it as the hope of our political salvation. You will teach us, and, perhaps we will learn (perhaps not) that, under such a rule, we are better off than if truth had prevailed and justice been triumphant. Give, then, your cool consideration to these objections, and try them by the standard of the law—l mean the law as it was before the organization of this Commission. I admit that since then a great revolution has taken place in the law. It is not now what it used to ba All our notions of public right and public wrong have suffered a complete boulevereement. The question submitted to you is whether the persons who gave these votes were “duly appointed.” Duly, of course, means according to law. What law? The Constitution of the United States, the acts of Congress passed in pursuance thereof, the Constitution of South Carolina, and the authorized acts of her Legislature—these, taken altogether, constitute the law of the case before you. By these laws the right, duty and power of appointing electors is given to the people of South Carolina—that is to say, the citizens of the State qualified to vote at general elections. Who are they? By the constitution of the State, in order to qualify them as voters they must be registered. The registry of a native citizen is a sine qua non to his right of voting as much as the naturalization of a foreigner. Now, the Legislature never passed any law for the registration of Voters, and no registration of them was ever made. No doubt has been or can be entertained that the object and purpose of this omission was fraudulent and dishonest; for the Legislature as well as the executive department of that Government has been in the hands of the most redemptionless rogues on the face of the earth. But whatever may have been the motive, nobody can doubt that the legal effect of this omission is to make the election illegal This is hardly the worst of it. The election itself, emancipated from all law and all authority, was no better than a riot, a mob, a general saturnalia, in which the soldiers of the United States army cut the principal as well as the decentest figura We offer to prove—the offer will go upon record, and there it will stand forever—that every poll in Charleston county, where they rushed into the baUot box 7,000 majority was in possession of the soldiers A Government whose elections are controlled by military force cannot be republican in form or substance. For this I cite the authority of Luther vs. Borden, if perchance the old-t'me law has yet any influence. Do you not see the hideous depth of national degradation into which you will plunge us if you sanctify this mode of making a President Brush up your historical memory and think of it for a moment The man whom you elect in this way is as purely the creature o f tbe military power as Caligula or Domitian, for whom the Praetorian guards controlled the hustings and counted thevotes. But then we cannot get behind the returns, forsooth! Not we! You will not let u& We cannotget behind them. No. This is the law, of coursa We may struggle for justice; we may cry for mercy; we may go down on our knees and beg and woo for some little recognition of our rights as American citizens; but we might as well put up our prayers to Jupiter or Mars as bring suit in the court where Rhadamanthus presides. There is not a god on Olympus that would not listen-to us with more favor than we shall be heard by our adversaries We are at their mercy; it is only to them that we can appeal, because you gentlemen unfortunately cannot help us. You are bound by the new law which you have made. You are, of course, addicted, like other people, to the vice of consistency, and what is done once must be done over again. In the Louisiana case the people apoointed electors in favor of Tilden, recorded their act, finished it, and left their work in such a state that nobody could misunderstand it But other persons, who had no power to appoint, falsified the record of the actual appointment. partly by plain forgery and partly by fraud, whicn was as corrupt in morals and as void in law as any foigery could be. You thought it right and legal and just to say that you would not look at the record which the people had made; the forgery, the fraud and the corruption were too sacred to be int:rfer£d with; the truth must not be allowed to oome in conflict with the imposture, lest the concussion might be damaging. This precedent must be followed. It Is new law, to be sure, but we must give it due welcome; and the new lords that it brings into power must be regarded as our “very noble and approved good masters. ” 'Having decided that electors were duly appointed in Louisiana who were knownnotto tie duly appointed, we cannot expect you to take notice of anv fact similar or kindred to it in South Carolina. Then, again, the question of “duly appointed” was decided in the case of Leyißsee, an elector who was an officer of the United States Government at the time he was appointed and continued to be afterward. The Federal constitution says that no man shall be appointed who is in that relation to the Federal Government But you held to law, mind you. that he Was a lawful elector and his vote a good vote. In other words, a.thing is perfectly constitutional although it is known to be in the very teeth of a constitutional interdict Now you see why we are hopeless. The present state of the law is sadly against us. The friends of honest elections and honest government are in deep despair. We once thought that the verifying power of the two Houses of Congress ought to be brought always into requisition for the purpose of seeing whether the thing that is brought here is a forgery and a fraud on the one hand, or whether it is a genuine and true certificate on the other. But, while we cannot ask you to go back behind this certificate, will you just please to go to it —only to it—not stop behind? If

yon do you win find that it is no certificate at all such as is required by law. The electors must vote by ballot, and they are required to be on oath before they vote. That certificate does not show that either of these requirements was met, and where a party is exercising a special authority like this they must keep strictly within it, and you are not to presume anything except what appears on the face of their act to be done. If anybody will cast back his mind a little into the history of Presidential elections, or look at the debates of less than a year ago, he will remember that Mr. Jefferson was charged, when he was Vice President, with having elected himself by means of, not a fraudulent, but a merely informal vote sent up from Georgia Tbe informality was not in the certificate inside the enyelope, but outside verification. Mr. Matthew L. Davis in 1837 got up that story. It was not true, but it was believed for a while, and it cast great odium on Mr. Jefferson s memory. It was not an informality that was nearly as important as this, nothing like it. But one of the Senators now on this bench referred to it in a debate only a short time ago, and denounced Mr; Jefferson as having elected himself by fraud because he did not call the attention of the Senate and the House of Representatives to that fact If Mr. Jefferson’s memory ought to be sent down to posterity covered with infamy because he in his own case allowed a vote to be counted which was slightly informal on the outside of the envelope, I should be glad to know what ought to be done to those who would count this vote, which has neither form nor substance, which leaves out all the essential particulars that they are requifed to certify. This great nation still struggles for justica A million majority of white people send up their cry, and a majority of more than a quarter of a million of all colors demand it But we cannot complain. 1 want you to understand that we do not complain. Uusnally it is said that “the fowler setteth not forth his net in sight of the bird;” but this fowler set the net in sight of the birds that went into it It is largely our own fault that we were caught We are promised—and I hope the promise will be kept—that we shall ha vegood Government, fraudulent though it be; that the rights of the States shall be respected, and individual liberty be protected. We are promised the same reformation which the Turkish Government is now proposing to its people. The Saltan promises that if he is sustained in his present contest he will establish and act upon certain principles. First, the work of decehtrallazation shall commence immediately, and the autonomy of the provinces shall be carefully looked after. Secondly, the people, shall be governed by their natural judges; they will nob send Mohammedans nor Christian renegades from Constantinople down on them, but they shall be governed by people of their own faith. Thirdly, no subordinate officer when he commits an illegal act shall be permitted to plead 'ln justification the orders of his superior. How much we need exactly that kind of reform in this country and how glad we ought to be that our Government is going to be as good hereafter as the Turk’s! They offer us everything now. They denounce negro supremacy and carpet-bag thieves. Their pet policy is for the South to be abandoned. They offer us everything but one; but on that subject their lips are closely sealed. They refuse to say that they will not cheat us hereafter in the elections. If they would only agree to that; if they would only repent of their election frauds and make restitution of the votes they have stolen, the circle of our felicities would be full If this thing stands accepted, and the law vou have made for this occasion shall be the law for all occasions, we can never expect such a thing as an honest election again. If you want to know who will be President by a future election, do nqj; inquire how the people of the State are going to vote. You need only to know what kind of scoundrels constitute the returning boards and how much it will take to buy them. But I think that even that will end some day. At present you have us down and under your feet. Never had you a better right to rejoica Well may you say: “We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.” But nevertheless wait a little while. The waters of truth will rise gradually, and slowly but surely, and then 100 l out for the overflowing scourge. “Ths refuge of lies shall be swept away and the hiding place of falsehood shall be uncovered. ” This mighty and puissant nation will yet rise herself up like a strong man after sleep and shake her invincible locks in a fashion you little think of now. Wait; retribution will come in due tima Justice travels with a leaden heel, but strikes with an iron hand. God’s mill grinds slow, but dreadfully fine. Wait till the flood gate is lifted ana a full head of water comes rushing on. Wait and you will see fine grinding then.

Political Notes.

Turn the rascals out. The Republican party must go. Dorsey and Jay Gould tell different stories in the Stanley Matthews matter. As a general proposition Dorsey’s word stands highest in the market. Mr. Blackburn has withdrawn from the Speakership contest. He thinks that Western Congressmen should combine against Randall. Mr. Blackbum has his eye upon a seat in the United States Senate. The Rochester Post-Express, a Republican paper, advises the Republicans to turn themselves inside out; for echoing Dana’s New York Sun “cries,” it says: “ ‘The Republicans must go’ and ‘turn the rascals out.’ ” Keifer’s support of Randall for the Speakership ought to be enough to settle the question against him at once. The Democracy could not ask for a better indication what not to do than Keifer’s desire to have it done. The remedy for extravagance at Washington, according to a contemporary, is “to keep the Government poor.” That is what the Republican starroute gang and other political bummers of the same general complexion think. Turn the rascals out. A shrewd philosopher suggests that all the talk about running the old ticket in 1884 is designed to make Mr. Hendricks the Democratic candidate for President. It is certain that Mr. Tilden will not accept a nomination, and we are told that, when this fact is established, the enthusiasm so industriously worked up for the old ticket will naturally transfer itself to Mr. Hendricks, so that he will be nominated by acclamation. This seems to us rather a profound view of the complication, such as could only occur to men accustomed to looking very deeply into a millstone. But suppose Mr. Hendricks should be the candidate for President what harm would there be in that ? He is a most respectable man, without a single blot or stain in his history. He has filled various public offices with credit; and, if he should be elected President, we are sure that he would fill that office with credit also. Let them run the old ticket in the newspapers, then, and let us see if it comes out as our Mephistophelian philosopher supposes. Anyway, we could vote for Hendricks with a good conscience. The Republican party must go!— New York Sun.

THE BAD BOY.

“Want to buy any cabbages?” said the bad boy to the grocery man, as he stopped at the door of the grocery, dressed in a bine wamus, his breeches tucked in. his boots, and old hat on his head, with a hole that let out his hair through the top. He Jtiad got out of a democrat wagon, and was holding the lines hitched to a horse about 40 years old, that leaned against the hitchingpost to rest.. “Only a shilling apiece.” “Oh, go ’way,” said the grocery man. “I only pay 3 cents apiece.” And then he looked at the boy and said, “Hello, Hennery, is that you ? I have missed you all the week, and now you come on to me sudden, disguised as a granger. What does this all mean ?” “It means that I have been the victim of as vile a conspiracy as ever was known since Csesar was stabbed and Mark Antony orated over his prostrate corpse in the Roman forum, to an audience of supes and sceneshifters, "and the boy dropped the lines on the sidewalk, said, “Whoa, gol darn you,” to the horse that was asleep, wiped his boots on the grass in front of the store and came in and seated himself on the old half bushel. “There, this seems like home again.” “What’s the row? Who has been playing it on you ?” and the grocery man smelled a sharp trade in cabbages, as well as other farm odors. “Weil, I’ll tell you. Lately our folks have been constantly talking of the independent life of the farmer, and how easy it is, and how they would like it if I would learn to be a farmer. They said there was nothing like it, and several of the neighbors joined in and said I had the natural ability to be one of the most successful farmers in the State. They all drew pictures of the fun it was ’ to work on a farm, where you could get your work done and take your fish-pole and go off and catch fish, or a gun and go out and kill game, and how you could ride horses, and pitoh hay, and Smell the sweet perfume, and go to husking-bees and dances, and everything,, and they got me worked up so I wanted to go to work on a farm. Then an old deacon that belongs to our church, who runs a farm about eight miles out of town, he came on the scene and said he wanted a boy, and if I-would go out and work for him he would be easy on me because he knew my folks, and we belonged to the same church. I can see it now. It was all a put-up job on me, just like they play threecard monte on a fresh stranger. I was took in. By gosh, I have been out there a week, and here’s what there is left of me. The only way I got a chance to come to town was to tell the farmer I could sell cabbage to you for a shilling apiece. I knew you sold them for 15 cer?ts and I thought you would give a shilling. So the farmer said he would pay me my wages in cabbages at a shilling apiece and only charge me a dollar for the horse and wagon to bring them in. So you only pay 3 cents. Here are thirty cabbages, which will come to 90 cents. I pay a dollar for the horse, and when I get back to the farm I owe the farmer 10 cents, beside working a week for nothing. Oh, it is all right. I don’t kick, but this ends farming for Hennery. I know when I have got enough of an easy life on a farm. I prefer a hard life, breaking stones on the streets, to an easy, dreamy life on a farm.” “They did play it on you, didn’t they, ” said the grocery man. “But wasn’t the old deacon a good man to work for ?” “Good man nothin’,” said the boy, as he took up a piece of horse-radish and began to grate it ©n the inside of his rough hand. “I tell you there’s a heap of difference in a deacon in Sundayschool, telling about sowing wheat and tares, and a deacon out on a farm in a hurrying season, when there is hay to get in and wheat to harvest all at the same time. I went out to the farm Sunday evening with the deacon and Eis wife, and they couldn’t talk too much about the nice time we would have and the fun; but the deacon changed more than forty degrees in five minutes after we got out to the farm. He jumped out of the wagon and pulled off his coat, and let his wife climb out over the wheel, and yelled to the hired girl to bring on the milk-pail, and told me to fly around and unharness the horse, and throw down a lot of hay for all the work animals, and then told me to run down to the pasture and drive up a lot of cows. The pasture was half a mile away, and the cows were scattered around in the woods, and the mosquitoes were thick, and I got all covered with mud and burrs, and stung with thistles, and when I got the cattle near to the house the old deacon yelled to me that I was slower than molasses in the winter, and then I took a club and tried to hurry the cows, and he yelled at me to stop hurrying, ’cause I would retard the flow of milk. By gosh I was mad. I asked for a mosquito bar to put over me next time I went after the oows, and the people all laughed at me, and when I sat down on the fence to scrape the mud off my Sunday pants, the deacon yelled like he does in the revival, only he said, ‘Come, come, procrastination is the thief of time. You get up and hump yourself and go and feed the pigs.’ He was so darn mean that I could not help throwing a burrdock bur against the side of the cow he was milking, and it struck her right in the flank on the other side from where the deacon was. "Well, you’d a dide to see the cow jump up and blat. All four of her feet were off the ground at a time and I guess most of them hit the deacon on his Bunday vest, and the rest hit the milkpail, and the cow backed against the ence and bellered, and the deacon was all covered with milk and cowhair, and he got up and throwed the three-legged stool at the cow and hit her on the horn and it glanced off and hit me on the pants just as I went over the fence to feed the pigs. I didn’t know a deacon could talk so sassy at a cow, and come so near swearing without actually saying cuss-words. Well, I lugged swill until I was homesick to my stomach, and then I had to clean off horses, and go to the neighbors about a mile away to borrow a lot of rakes to use the next day. I was so tired I almost cried, and then I had to draw two barrels of water with a well-

bucket, to cleanse for washing the next day, and by that time I wanted to die. It was most 9 o’clock, and I began to think about supper, when the deacon said all they had was bread and milk for supper Sunday night, and I rasseled with a tin basin of skun-milk, and some old back-number bread, and I wanted to go to bed, but the deacon wanted to know if I was heathen enough to want to go to bed without evening prayers. There was no one thing I was less mashed on than evening prayers about that minute, but I had to take a prayer half an hour long on top of that skimmilk, and I guess it curdled the milk, for I hadn’t been in bed more than half an hour before I had the worst colic a boy ever had, and I thought I should die all alone up in that garret, on the floor, with nothing to make my last hours pleasant but some rats playing with ears of seed corn on the floqr, and mice running through some dry pea-pods. But, oh, how different the deacon talked in the evening devotions from what he did when the cow was galloping on him in the barn-yard. Well, I got through the colic and was just getting to sleep when the deacon yelled for me to get up and hustle down stairs. I thought maybe the house was on fire, ’cause I smelled smoke, and I got into my trousers and came down stairs on a jump, yelling ‘fire,’ when the deacon grabbed me and told me to get down on my knees, and before I knew it he was into the morning devotions, and then he said ‘ amen ’ and jumped up and said for us to fire breakfast into us quick and get to work doing the chores. I looked at the clock and it was just 3 o’clock in the morning, just the time pa comes home and goes to bed in town, when he is running a political campaign. Well, sir, I had t 6 jump from one thing to another from 3 in the morning till 9 at night, pitching hay, driving reaper, raking and binding, shocking wheat, hoeing corn, and everything, and I never got a kind word. I spoiled my clothes, and I think another week would make a pirate of me. But during it all I had -the advantage of a pious example. I tell you, you think more of such a man as the deacon if you don’t work for him, but only see him when he comes to town, and you hear him sing ‘Heaven is my Home,’through his nose. Heavven is farther from his home than any place I ever heard of. He would be a good mate on a Mississippi river steamboat if he could swear, and I guess he could soon learn, Now, you take these cabbages and give me 90 cents, and I will go home and borrow 10 cents to make up the dollar, and send my chum back with the horse and wagon and my resignation. I was not cut out for a farmer. Talk about fishing, the only fish I saw was a salt white fish we had for breakfast one morning, which was salted by Noah, in the ark,” and while the grocery man was unloading the cabbages the boy went off to look for his chum, and later the two boys were seen driving off towards the farm with the fish poles sticking out of the hind end of the wagon.— Peck's Sun.

A Dead City.

But, really, do you know it is extremely difficult to realize it is 1883, and that we are still in America, says a Quebec letter. The old town (which ascends in conformation as it decreases in age) was founded in 1608 by the indomitable Cartier, and successive generations have contributed to its store of historic memories until now it stands confessed the most ancient and most interesting city north of Mexico. It is built on three terraces, the first of which is called the lower town, and forms, with Beauport, the oldest portion of the settlement; the second is known as upper town, and contains the Basilica, Laval University, the new Parliament house, the convent of the Ursulines, the seminary chapel, the Gray nunnery, the old Jesuit barracks, the Governor’s garden, and all the nicer class of dwellings and stores; the third is crowned by the citadel, the Plains of Abraham, the jail and the Wolfe monu* ment, and from its .summit there is a view I have never seen surpassed. To the right, the St. Lawrence rolls its mighty flood, the harbor is filled with shipping, the new quay creeps slowly out into its “deep-sea” destination, and Point Levy is idealaled by distance into a cloudland city. To the left slopes away the relenting ruggedness of Gape Diamond, until it meets in the Plains of Sillcoy, and is lost in the purple bosom of the Laurentine hills. The Plains of Abraham have turned their harvest of death to a wealth of turf, where the cattle browse unmoisted about the grave of Wolfe, the martello towers crumble away in the sunshine, the birds’-nests choke the loopholes, and vines flaunt from the eaves. Below, the city looks like a page out of the “Arabian Nights,” for the roofs and spire i are sheathed in tin and.sparkle as bravely as if of silver. This, by the way, is a distinctive feature of Quebec; the tin is of so pure a quality that it does not need to be painted to preserve it from the weather, and some of the “shingles” on the Basillica, which were fifty years old were almost as bright as their new neighbors on the English cathedral.

Human Obesity.

We recorded recently the death of the “fattest woman in the world,” a member and special curiosity of Nathan’s Cleveland circus in America, who appears to have been smothered in bed. Miss Conley, though the most enormous of her sex, weighing as she did 497 pounds, fell far short of that prodigy of human bulk, the famous Daniel Lambert, who died in 1809, during Stamford fair, at the age of 40. Lambert weighed no less than 52 stone 11 pounds—that is, 739 pounds, or close upon half as much again as. the American lady. Daniel Lambert’s cofln with his body could- not be brought down the stairs of the house in which he died, and the walls at the side of the window had to be brokeir away to provide an exit. He was 5 feet 11 inches in height, measured 9 feet 4 inches around the body, and 3 feet 1 inch around the leg. He never drank any beverage but water, and slept less than eight hours per day. The “Claimant” at hisatoutest weighed only *2O stone, or less than half the weight of Daniel Lambert.-- London Times.