The Funny Philosophers Part 38

"Pate's client has stolen the widow's hog, and the lawyer is getting ready to abuse the owner of the property. Hark! What's that?"

There was a noise in the bushes, and two men sprang out with clubs in their hands, and ran towards Pate, loudly shouting,--

"Here he is! Catch him! catch him!"

Pate looked around, and then leaped from the stump and fled through the wood with the speed of a frightened antelope.

"Stop! stop! Halt! halt!" cried Toney and Tom.

The men halted, and coming towards them, were recognized as two laborers employed on the Widow Wild's estate.

"What were you going to do?" asked Toney.

"Give that fellow a good beating," said one of the men.

"What has he been doing?" inquired Tom.

"He comes here every day and gets on that stump, and abuses the Widow Wild, who is as nice a woman as a man ever worked for, and we won't stand it! So we cut these clubs and lay in the bushes for him."

"You had better let him alone," said Toney. "He is a lawyer."

"Let him come here again!" said one of the men.

"Even if he was a priest!" said the other.

"What would you do?" asked Toney.

"Break every bone in his body!" said the man, brandishing his club. And with this emphatic declaration of their intentions, the men returned to their work, while Toney and Tom proceeded on their way to the residence of the Widow Wild.

CHAPTER XXIX.

The frequent delivery of his elaborate speech, before an audience of feathered bipeds and amphibious quadrupeds, had fully prepared M. T.

Pate for the day of trial. On the morning of that eventful day he was seen seated in court with a grave aspect, which indicated that he sensibly felt the weight of the tremendous responsibility which rested upon him.

The prisoner was put in the dock, when the Commonwealth's attorney and Mr. Pate announced themselves ready for trial, and were each furnished with a list of the jurors in attendance. The offense charged in the indictment being felony, the prisoner was ent.i.tled to twenty peremptory challenges. In exercising this important privilege, Mr. Pate displayed his great knowledge of human nature acquired by a thorough study of phrenology. He scrutinized closely the head of each juror as he was called to the book, and when the organ of benevolence appeared to be diminutive, he cried out, with a loud voice, "Challenge!" But if that merciful organ was largely developed, he eagerly exclaimed, "Swear _him_! swear _him_!" putting a strong emphasis on the word "_him_."

A jury having been impaneled, after a brief statement of the case by the Commonwealth's attorney, the Widow Wild was put upon the stand and proved property as alleged in the indictment. Pate put her under a cross-examination, and asked,--

"Madam, what was the s.e.x or gender of your hog?"

The widow hesitated and looked at the judge, who told her to answer the question.

"It was a gentleman hog," said she.

"How do you know it was a gentleman hog?" asked Pate.

"I know it just as well as I know that you are not a gentleman hog,"

said the widow, tartly.

"You may take your seat," said the lawyer.

"Thank you, sir," said the widow. And with a toss of her head, and a fiery look of indignation at the attorney, she glided to a seat in the corner of the room, where she announced to the Professor her intention to repay Pate for his impudence.

Simon Rump was now sworn, and testified to the facts already stated in the preceding chapter, and which appeared to be conclusive proof of the guilt of the accused. But Pate was not discouraged. He put Rump under a rigorous cross-examination, and asked him if he was not subjected to psychological illusions. The opposite counsel interposed an objection to this question, and the court inquired of Mr. Pate his object in asking it.

"May it please your Honor," said Pate, "I expect to show that this man Rump is one of those unfortunate individuals who are continually subjected to psychological illusions. This cla.s.s are quite numerous, and not long ago I heard one of them say that he had seen a heavy piano get up of its own accord and dance on nothing, half-way between the ceiling and the floor, all the while playing a tune, and keeping time with its feet to its own music.

"Another man told me that he had seen a certain doctor walk on the air, and pa.s.s out at one window in the third story of a house and come in at the other. And it is said that this Simon Rump alleges that he once saw a white ghost, in a clump of willows, in the rear of his barn. Now, learned men inform us that these objects have no real existence, but are simply projections from the disordered brain of the person who imagines that he sees them. May it please your Honor, it is not at all unlikely that Sam and the hog were nothing more than projections from the disordered brain of Simon Rump. If a man's brain can project a heavy piano and cause it to dance a jig on the air, could not Rump's brain project a big negro with a whole hog on his shoulder?"

In antic.i.p.ation of this testimony, Pate had carefully prepared his argument at home and had committed it to memory.

He now succeeded in carrying his point, the court deciding that, upon general principles, there was nothing to preclude the prisoner's counsel from proving, if he could so do, that Rump's brain was in such a disordered condition as to render his testimony unreliable. So the question was put to Rump, who said that he had walked at all hours of the night, and had never seen a psychological illusion; that he had never "heard tell of them" before, and did not know what they were.

After much badgering, however, he admitted that he had seen something behind his barn, which, to the best of his knowledge and belief, was a ghost. Having been worried until he had made this admission, poor Rump was finally dismissed from the stand.

The testimony of the State was here closed.

The court now inquired of Mr. Pate if he had any witnesses to examine on the part of the defense.

"Yes, may it please your Honor," was the reply, "we have one very important witness. Call Professor Joseph Boneskull."

Thereupon the crier called, in a loud voice, "Professor Joseph Boneskull! Professor Joseph Boneskull!"

Immediately a bald-headed little man, about five feet two inches in stature, walked up to the witness-stand, carrying in his hand a phrenological plaster cast of a human head. All eyes opened in amazement and looked with wonder, first at the head on the little man's shoulders, and then at the head in his hand.

This strange witness, who seemed to come on the stand under the impression that two heads were better than one, was sworn by the clerk in the usual form, when Mr. Pate asked,--

"What is your profession, trade, occupation, or calling?"

"My profession," said the witness, "is one of which all sensible men might be proud. I am a phrenologist. I tell the diversified mental and moral characteristics of men, women, and children, whether they be white or whether they be black, by a manipulatory examination of the superficial, distinctive developments of their respective craniums, vulgarly denominated skulls."

"Have you, or have you not, made, very recently, a critical examination of the cranium of the prisoner at the bar?"

"I answer, most unequivocally, I have."

"Can you inform the jury what are the respective developments of the prisoner's organs of alimentiveness, acquisitiveness, and conscientiousness?"

Here the opposite counsel rose and objected to the question; saying that the introduction of such testimony was wholly unwarranted by any of the established rules of evidence.

After an argument of some length, the court decided that the testimony in relation to the phrenological developments of Sam was inadmissible.

Thereupon Professor Boneskull retired from the stand, carrying both heads with him as he went.

"Mr. Pate, have you any further testimony to offer?" inquired the court.

"None whatever," was the mournful response.