the beholder. And yet it was
not altogether French. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch,
marked the difference. The men painted as they spoke--with certainty.
The club indulges in revelries which it calls "jinks"--high and low, at
intervals--and each of these gatherings is faithfully portrayed in oils by
hands that know their business. In this club were no amateurs spoiling
canvas, because they fancied they could handle oils without knowledge
of shadows or anatomy--no gentleman of leisure ruining the temper of
publishers and an already ruined market with attempts to write
"because everybody writes something these days."
My hosts were working, or had worked for their daily bread with pen or
paint, and their talk for the most part was of the shop--shoppy--that is
to say, delightful. They extended a large hand of welcome, and were as
brethren, and I did homage to the owl and listened to their talk. An
Indian club about Christmas-time will yield, if properly worked, an
abundant harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering of Americans from
the uttermost ends of their own continent, the tales are larger, thicker,
more spinous, and even more azure than any Indian variety. Tales of
the war I heard told by an ex-officer of the South over his evening
drink to a colonel of the Northern army, my introducer, who had served
as a trooper in the Northern Horse, throwing in emendations from time
to time. "Tales of the Law," which in this country is an amazingly
elastic affair, followed from the lips of a judge. Forgive me for
recording one tale that struck me as new. It may interest the up-country
Bar in India.
Once upon a time there was Samuelson, a young lawyer, who feared
not God, neither regarded the Bench. (Name, age, and town of the man
were given at great length.) To him no case had ever come as a client,
partly because he lived in a district where lynch law prevailed, and
partly because the most desperate prisoner shrunk from intrusting
himself to the mercies of a phenomenal stammerer. But in time there
happened an aggravated murder--so bad, indeed, that by common
consent the citizens decided, as a prelude to lynching, to give the real
law a chance. They could, in fact, gambol round that murder. They
met--the court in its shirt-sleeves--and against the raw square of the
Court House window a temptingly suggestive branch of a tree fretted
the sky. No one appeared for the prisoner, and, partly in jest, the court
advised young Samuelson to take up the case.
"The prisoner is undefended, Sam," said the court. "The square thing to
do would be for you to take him aside and do the best you can for him."
Court, jury, and witness then adjourned to the veranda, while
Samuelson led his client aside to the Court House cells. An hour passed
ere the lawyer returned alone. Mutely the audience questioned.
"May it p-p-please the c-court," said Samuel-son, "my client's case is a
b-b-b-bad one--a d-d-amn bad one. You told me to do the b-b-best I
c-could for him, judge, so I've jest given him y-your b-b-bay gelding,
an' told him to light out for healthier c-climes, my p-p-professional
opinion being he'd be hanged quicker'n h-h-hades if he dallied here.
B-by this time my client's 'bout fifteen mile out yonder somewheres.
That was the b-b-best I could do for him, may it p-p-please the court."
The young man, escaping punishment in lieu of the prisoner, made his
fortune ere five years.
Other voices followed, with equally wondrous tales of riata-throwing in
Mexico and Arizona, of gambling at army posts in Texas, of newspaper
wars waged in godless Chicago (I could not help being interested, but
they were not pretty tricks), of deaths sudden and violent in Montana
and Dakota, of the loves of half-breed maidens in the South, and
fantastic huntings for gold in mysterious Alaska. Above all, they told
the story of the building of old San Francisco, when the "finest
collection of humanity on God's earth, sir, started this town, and the
water came up to the foot of Market Street." Very terrible were some of
the tales, grimly humorous the others, and the men in broadcloth and
fine linen who told them had played their parts in them.
"And now and again when things got too bad they would toll the city
bell, and the Vigilance Committee turned out and hanged the
suspicious characters. A man didn't begin to be suspected in those days
till he had committed at least one unprovoked murder," said a
calm-eyed, portly old gentleman.
I looked at the pictures around me, the noiseless, neat-uniformed waiter
behind me, the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvet carpet beneath. It
was hard to realize that even twenty years ago
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