Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1898 — TOLD HIS CLAM STORY. [ARTICLE]

TOLD HIS CLAM STORY.

How a Funny Detroit Mau Won Ilia Cn»c With the Jury. Marshall P. Wilder, the funny little man, is charged with having with malice aforethought and evil intent sprung a few of his tales on a jury and thereby turned their verdict in his direction, says the Detroit Journal. A few weeks ago Marshall came to town and in the circuit court sued Dr. Hercules Sanche on a promissory note for SI,OOO. He won the case, and now the counsel for the defense has applied for a new trial on the ground that the jury was improperly influenced. The lawyer says that during a recess Marshall went out into the hall and told the jurymen a lot of funny stories, including that one about the New Jersey clam digger who fed his family on clams so long that their stomachs rose and fell with the tide. That settled it, the Sanche lawyer says, and the man who laughs was solid as a boarding house biscuit with the jury. They went into court, he says, and chuckled out a verdict in his fnvor. The counsel for the defense says Wilder’s jokes would win a favorable verdict from a jury of pine stumps, hence the application for a uew trial.