Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1899 — On the Mercy of the Court. [ARTICLE]

On the Mercy of the Court.

A W«1 Without i Conscience. “I really think that an ostrich has more brains than an Arab,” declares Lilian Bell in the Woman’s Home Companion, when describing a visit to an ostrich farm near'Cairo. “They have the most-curious agate-colored eyes—colorless, cold, yet intelligent eyes But they are the eyes of a bird without a conscience. An ostrich looks as if he would really enjoy villainy, as if he could commit crime after crime from pure love of it and never know remorse; yet there is a fascination about the old birds and they have their good points. The father Is domestic in spite of looking as if he belonged to all the clubs, and, much to my delight, I saw one sitting on the eggs while the mother walked out and took the air. Ostriches and Arabs do women’s work with an admirable disreghrd of Mrs. Grundy. Ostriches have an irresistible way of waving their lovely plumy wings, and one old fellow twenty-five years old actually imitates the Dervishes. The keeper says to him, ‘Dance,’ and although he is about ten feet tall, he sits down with his legs spread out on each side of him, and shutting his eyes, he throws his long, ugly red neck from side to side, making a curious grunting noise and waving his wings in a billowy line like a skirtdancer.”

A youthful graduate of the Harvard Law School came West and opened an office in a small frontier town. His first client was a man accused of stealing a horse. The case came to trial before an old judge and a jury composed of bewhiskered ranchers, and though there was no doubt of the guilt of the defendant, he had a regiment of friends who swore he was forty miles off when the horse was stolen. This evidence the prosecution was unable to break down, and the young lawyer plumed himself on a certain acquittal. The jury retired, and five minutes later was back in court. “Have you agreed on a verdict?” asked the judge. “We hev,” answered the foreman, as he shifted a gun he carried on his hip. “We find the defendant not guilty, an’ recommend the defendant’s lawyer, owin’ to his youth an’ innocence, to the mercy of the court.”—San Francisco Wave.