Page 341 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

" ' When must you go ? ’ says I, when he come, lookin’ kind o’ pale,
to tell me this,
“ ‘ Right off/ says he. 'T he court meets this mornin’, If I don’t
hurry up I ’ll have some: of 'em after me. But I wouldn't cry about
it, I don’t believe the case'll last more’n a day.'
“ The old man harnessed up an’ took Jone to the court house, an’
I went too, for I might as well keep up the idea, of a bridal trip as
not. I went up into the gallery an’ Jone he was set among the other
men in the jury-box.
“ The case was about a man named Brown, who married the half
sister of a man named Adams, who afterward married Brown's mother
an* sold Brown a house he had got from Brown’s grandfather in trade
for half a grist mill, which the other half of it was owned by Adams's
half sister’s first husband, who left all his property to a Soup Society,
in trust, till his son should come of age, which he never did, but left
a will which gave his half of the mill to Brown; an’ the suit was
between Brown an’ Adams an’ Brown again, an’ Adams's half-sister,
who was divorced from Brown, an’ a man named Ramsey, who had
put up a new over-shot wheel to the grist mill,
" That case wasn’t a easy one to understand, as you may sec lor
yourselves, an' it didn’t get finished that day. They argyed over it a
full week. When, there wasn’t no more witnesses to carve up, one
lawyer made a speech, ail' he set that crooked case so straight that
you could see through it from the over-shot wheel clean back to
Brown’s grandfather, Then another feller made a speech an’ he set
tlie whole thing up another way. It was ju s’ as clear to look through
but it was another case altogether, no more like the other one than a
apple pie is like a mug o' cider. A n’ then they both took it up, an'
they swung it around between 'em till it was all twisted an’ knotted
an’ wound up an' tangled worse than a skein o’ yarn in a nest o’
kittens, an’ then they give it to the jury.
"W ell, when them jurymen went out there wasn't none of ’em, as
Jone told me afterward, as knew whether it was Brown or Adarns as
was dead, or whether the mill was to gtind soup or to be run by soup