APPENDIX K.

THE SIX CHARACTERS IN THE TRIAL OF CAUSES.

PAPER BY C. A. TURNER, OF MACON.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

While this address was in the formative state it was advertised under the title, "Law, Logic and Love," but after its birth it was necessary to change the name to suit its sex. This is permissible and is frequently done, otherwise that literary prophet of the nineteenth century would have been called Victoria, and "Les Miserables" might never have been written. It was in an effort to trace the relationship between law and love, the present subject was evolved. For I discovered that law, like love, was a continuous warfare, in which most skillful stratagems were enacted, and fierce and decisive battles fought. And that law is like love in another respect, in that those who fight her battles generally go in pairs.

SIX CHARACTERS.

This suggested that there were three pairs, or six characters in the trial of most causes; yourself and your client; the judge and the jury; and your adversary and his client. In order to wage the battle successfully one must have complete control of the first two; he must capture the second two; and the third pair he must put to rout.

YOURSELF AND CLIENT.

First: Yourself and your client. There are young men in the audience, and a chapter from the practical experience of those who have preceded them may be of utility. There are three

books which have been of inestimable value to me in the practice of law.

First, there is an old book of laws which by reason of its origin and its authenticity is sacred, but it is not alone because of its sacred truths we would advise its study, but for its literature, its law, its language, and especially its illustration. No other book is comparable to it as a book of literature, because it treats of so many different subjects, and treats of them so correctly and so well. Its law is the very foundation of all our laws, and the basic principles are here laid down so simply and so clearly, that by a study of them, you may easily reach correct conclusions upon principles which would otherwise be difficult to distinguish and to solve. Its language is the language of the common people. While they may not read it closely, they hear it expounded more than all other books. They are taught its stories from childhood, and when before the court or jury you can illustrate your case in the language of this "Book of books" and with one of its simple stories, attention is assured, and nine times out of ten you win.

SOLOMON'S CASE.

For the sake of illustrating what I now say I know you will pardon two personal allusions. A few years ago I was employed in a case the circumstances of which were as follows: A negro man had died in Macon who had accumulated a considerable fortune, and two women claimed his estate by reason of the fact, as they alleged, that each was his lawful wife. My client had been his slave wife, but shortly after the war he left Monroe county, came to Macon and took another wife and lived with her for nearly thirty years and raised by her a family of children. He continued some years after the war to make occasional visits to his old slave wife in Monroe. The act of 1866 provided that when a slave had more than one wife, he could select either and she should be his lawful wife. The contention of the Macon wife, who was represented by Judge Clifford Anderson, was, that he had not selected my client as his wife under the act of 1866. I contended that he had, and on this issue we went to

trial. During the progress of the trial Colonel Anderson's client testified that on one occasion she had said to her husband, "Why can't you have both of us for your wives. Go to Monroe and tell Aunt Lylie you will build two rooms down here, and for her to come and live in one. I will live in the other, and you will be the husband of us both." The husband delivered the message to Aunt Lylie, which she declined with indignation, declaring that he was all of her husband or none of her husband. Colonel Anderson made the strongest argument to which I ever listened. The duty was put upon me to reply. I knew from the tears which he brought to the eyes of the jury, while he at the same time appealed to their reason, I could never answer his logic, and the only hope left me was to hit upon some homely illustration which would fit the case and which was familiar to the jury. During the course of my argument I recited the fact of his client's willingness to divide the husband with my client, and that mine gave him up rather than see him divided, and then told the story of how Solomon settled the dispute between the two women who claimed to be the mother of the same child. The jury very promptly adopted the wisdom of Solomon and this simple illustration won my case. This was an illustration from the Old Testament; just one from the new. I was recently engaged in the trial of a bankruptcy case before His Honor, Judge Speer. It is a rule in law that a corporation cannot go intc voluntary bankruptcy. I was engaged against the corporation, and in order to defeat my clients the officers and directors, claiming to be creditors, filed a petition to put the corporation into voluntary bankruptcy. I filed objections and moved to dismiss the petition on the ground that the directors were in collusion with the corporation, and that their act was the act of the corporation itself, and that it was only an effort in an indirect way for the corporation to go into voluntary bankruptcy. I was arguing the question to the court that a corporation could not do by indirection that which it was forbidden to do by direction. The court did not seem to be much interested in the argument, and it occurred to me to try him with an illustration. I repeated

this Scripture: "He that entereth not in at the door of the sheepfold, but seeketh to climb up in some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." I saw in an instant from the judge's look that he recognized the rule of law so tersely laid down in the great Book of laws, and that by this simple illustration I had argued my case more completely than I could otherwise have done in the hour alloted me. Of course I explained to the judge that I meant no personal allusion to my adversary, but had only quoted the Scriptures for the sake of the illustration. You know the devil can quote Scripture when it suits his purpose.

POWER OF ILLUSTRATION.

Speaking of illustration. The one thing next to character, most needful in becoming a successful lawyer and orator, is illustration. We should study to become great painters. To speak well, one must learn to speak in pictures.

The one thing which made Christ famous above all others as an orator was his power of illustration. He illustrated everything. "The Prince of orators," says another, "teaches a lesson of the immense value of pictorial eloquence in his habitual employment of illustrations. Each and all of his discourses have so many illustrations, and so brilliant are they, that they seem like stars in a firmament of thought. Those bright gems of im agination and originality rendered this great Orator's speech not only luminous but overwhelmingly persuasive. It is a very difficult task to shut the mind and heart against a beautiful image of truth. Like pictures that flash a world of objects upon the eye at once, so that what would take hours to present in detail is seen at a glance, so illustrations flash a multitude of thoughts instantaneously upon the mind; nor is this all; a thought once pictured remains forever. It is impossible to forget a truth that some illustration presents like a little drama, with many people acting."

Like this great Orator, we should study nature, and learn that in everything she has made there is a legal principle or moral conception, and like the flowers and the leaves, God has scat

tered them everywhere, in order that we may gather them, and with which we may illustrate some great truth.

You can find these illustrations in the heavens and the earththe sun, the moon, the stars-in the birds of the air and the beasts of the field-the fishes that swim and the serpent which creeps upon the ground:

"In the lion which shakes the earth with its roar,

And the lamb that skips upon the lawn."

The mighty elephant with his ponderous tread,
And the tiny ant which begs a crumb of bread.
The Leviathan which lashes the sea into foam,
And the playful minnow in the brook at your home.
In the eagle which soars aloft and gazes in the sun,

And the humming-bird which sips its nectar from the flower.

In the magnolia, queen of flowers, in its beauteous bloom,

And the modest violet, with its delicate perfume.

In man, the masterpiece of his Maker's skill,

Until he made woman with her sweet little will.

In the virago, who, by her power, makes us shake and squeak,
And the delicate hue upon the modest maiden's cheek.

I saw this attempted once in the Supreme Court. It was in the good old days when that grand old man Hiram Warner was Chief Justice.

Hon. Fred Foster, that prince of good fellows and best of story-tellers, was presenting a case in which the judge was impressed that Mr. Foster's client had taken an unfair advantage, and he asked if such was not the case. Mr. Foster replied, "Why may it please your honor, my case is as fair as the delicate blush upon a maiden's cheek."

The learned judge asked, "How old was she, Mr. Foster? How old was she?"

Foster replied, "Only sweet sixteen, your honor."

"No, no!" replied the Chief Justice, "I wager she was a sour old maid."

"Oh, no,” replied Mr. Foster, "that kind never blush.”

SHAKESPEARE.

Next to illustration the lawyer should learn to delineate character and study the motives of action. Life is one continuous