After they had determined upon a verdict, our high-priced friend, with one or two others, went around to the hotel to retire for the night. As they went in, the clerk of the court met them with a pack of cards in his hands, with which a party had just finished playing whist. 'It didn't take us half so long to agree on that case. SWEET and the rest of us marked around on that verdict, just before we finished the last game, and we made it out--two dollars and twenty-five cents.' 'The d---- you did,' replied our astonished friend. 'Why, how much did 'Squire SWEET mark, himself?' 'Uncommon high. He said he thought five dollars was about the fair thing.' '_Five dollars!_' gasped the juryman; 'Squire SWEET put down only _five dollars_, when he went and told the jury that eighty dollars wasn't nothin' to it. Look a-here, can't I go back and change that figure of mine, afore the verdict comes in?'
It was decided pretty unanimously that--he _couldn't_.
Our readers will recall the author of the following poem, as a writer who has more than once given us poems indicating much refinement of taste, based on sound old English scholarship:
No mortal yet e'er gained the golden crown Who did not in his search the cross upbear; For heaven he need entertain no care Who fears to sinfulness the Devil's frown, And lays, if once espoused, his burdens down, Because so many of his followers have no burden there.
And thus it is so many are awrong; 'Tis easier, they deem, the crown to gain With limbs at will and shoulders free from pain, Than bearing this great burden still along: Besides, will not my brothers be among The crowned ere I, unless I free my loins again?
Columbia doth seek the crown,--and sooth No nation of the earth deserves it more; But, ah! she is unwise as lands before In hoping thus, what time she quits the Truth, And showing unto enemies more ruth Than even God doth show to us, weak worldlings sore.
Where once against the heavens men rebelled, And forced the Prince of Peace to deadly war, Did not He spread a deluge deep and far, Not sweeping them alone, but all they held? When they His awful earnestness beheld, Were not they penitent, though vain, as bad sons are?
And why should we but lighten through a spell These murderous madmen in our country here, Their craziness to come or far or near Anew, as more they learn of prompting hell? Must not we now the CAUSE forever quell, As Hercules did one time slay a source of fear?