The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 20, 1903, Page 14

14 THE SUNDAY CALL. THOMAS FITCH. STANFORD sTUDIO- PHOTO. _ - HIS is the first of a series of “Recollections and Reflections” about famous Americans of yes- terday by Thomas Fitch, “the silver-tongued orator,” who, better than any man of to-day, knows whereof he writes and writes whereof he knows with wit, wisdom and bril- iancy truly fascinating. Just watch for his “Recollections and Reflec- tions” of the Bonanza kings, who put & girdle of gold around the world. Next Sunday. by Thomas Fitch. .VER STATE. right, THE CE VERDLU plain, stret from the eastern slope of the pine s, with a few g In cascades and ins and cou: ore is pressed, silver eased, ns are gold thousands of the brightest, enterprising he Knight Pala- challenged the brute forces of faced rt and the base d out to Au- the aura sa and the savage, swa v ot dsor und 1 react and to the moun- Crawling like bald ekulls of lofty across alkaline des- » deluding mirages robbing light, and smiting x ner at the adamantine the earth’s treasure chamber, s engaged in thelr seif-im- ldt sk r with rifie or revolver than with quotations was the Nevadan of s and readler still with his coin the call of distress. Under the sometimes a ack at biue shirt might be foun: graduate of Yale, and somefimes a fugl- tive from Texas. No man assumed to be better than his neighbor and no man con- ceded b feriority to anybody. Frel- burg graduates and sheep herders, divin- ity students and Cornish miners, farmer boys and ex-Judges of the Supreme Court were all treasure seekers together, and & blow of a pick might make or unmake fortunes and equalize the beggars and the princes of this Aladd Some found fortunes and some found unmarked graves upon the hillsides, and many have become rich or renowned in other fleids, but not one among them all will remem- ber with other than affection the days away back “in the sixties,” when he wrought the warp and spun the woof of rainbows in the Bagebrush State. In those days only the upper levels of the Comstock were yielding their treas- ures, the great Bonanza was undiscov- ered, the California and Consolidated Vir- giria exhibited nothing but barren quartz and hope, and those who at a later day controlled the financial and political des- tinies of Nevada were working as labor- ers in the mines or mixing cocktalls or practicing as members of as brilliant a bar as could be found in any community of thrice its size in all the land. Never was there a Berserker in all the 's cave. vealm of Odin who loved to fights for the fight's sake, for the very joy of combat, better than United States Senator Willlam M. Stewart. Glo- rious, incomparable, indomitable, un- dismayed, tireless “Old BilL” Though tottune forsake him, though death snatch from him his nearest, though the favored of Plutus Intrigue for his togs, though the wand of age has changed his tawny halr and beard to sil- wer, his steel blue eyes have not lost their glitter, nor his port its erectness, &nd he springs to the front in the tourna- ment of Benatorial debate as vigorous end alert as when he engaged in the con- tests of the courtroom forty years ago. And it was a field of battle in which the warriers were inteliectual athletes. Ex-Bupreme Justice Charley Bryan, who e~caped from desert sand storms and A,.che arrows, and at last choked to death on & beefsteak In a Carson res- taurant; Thomas H. Willlams, who was forced to take a portion of the Califor- nia mine for a fee, and held it because he could not sell it, and was made a mil- lonaire in despite of himself; Frank Hereford, afterward Congressman and Senator from West Virginia; Mesiek, and Hillyer, and Baldwin, and DeLong, and Perley, and last but not least, Charles H. B. Williams, who once said to me, “I am going back to California. 1 have prac- ticed law In Virginia City for a year. I have taken In over forty thousand dollars in cash fees, and I have never tried a case in which I was not forced to know that either by my client or by the client of my opponent the Judge or the jury, or both, had been bribed.” He returned to Ban Francisco, failed to recover his Jost practice there, and too proud to be second where he had once been first, in & fit of despondency blew out his brains, General Willlams did not much overes- timate the situation, for the voters of Nevada who had previously voted almost unanimously to reject a constitution of Btate government, believing - themselves T S S — S . unable to sustain one, a few months later voted with equal unanimity to adopt one, and whatever reason for this change was glven to the public, the real reason was @ desire to get rid of the Judges of the Territorial courts. As was wittily said by @ delegate in the constitutional conven- tion when the report of the committee on State seal was read, “instead of ‘Volens et Potens,’ the motto of Nevada ought to be- ‘Nolens Volens.'” It was this same delegate who insisted that in consequence of the need of legislation it would be well to provide “that for the first two years the legislature shall hold its biennial ses- sions annually.” The public opinion of that day concern- ing the judicial tribunals of Nevada Ter- ritory was Inadvertently but aptly ex- pressed by a newly appointed bailiff of the Territorial Supreme Court. He was a long, lean gentleman, of great gravity and dignity of demeanor, with a sonorous voice, a most imposing manner and an exalted idea of the importance of his of- fice. It was his duty at the beginning of the term to announce to the assembled bar of the Territory that its highest judi- cial tribunal was open for business. No particular formula had been prescribed for such announcement, and it had not occurred to ‘“Baron Pumpernickel,” as the bailiff was nicknamed, that it would be all sufficient to say to the lawyers and litigants in waiting, “Gentlemen, the Su- preme Court.” 8o, swelling with his im- portance, . the baron stretched forth his arm—"Oyez, oyez, oyez” he cried, “the Honorable the Supreme Court of the Ter- COPYRIGHT 1903 . BY THOMAS FITCH. BARON PUMPERNICKEL" OYEZ, OYEZ,OYEZ" HE CRIED — God ritory of Nevada Is now in session. help the people of the Territory of Ne- vada.” Among the lesser lights of the bar of that day was Tom Cox. He was some- what too bibulous and too scattering to achlieve ,a leading practice in Virginia City, but in the neighboring district, of which Washoe City was the county seat, he was facile princeps. He was a North Carolinian, a college graduate, a student first of divinity, later of medicine and lastly of law. He was a typical “forty-niner,” for he had been a miner, a lumberman and a teamster, as well as a doctor, a preacher and a lawyer. He was an all around sport and as fond of fun as a boy. He was adroit and eloquent at the bar or on the hust- ings, and it was his boast that he could with equal facility draw a complicated bill in equity without an erasure or an interlineation, and that with a dragoon revolver he could shoot the head off a chicken at twenty paces. He was as free to borrow your money when you had any as he was to loan you his own—when he had anv—and he never drew a solvent breath from Monday morning to Satur- day night. He oecupied a dilapidated one- story wooden building in Washoe City, where he established his law office in the front reom, in the rear apartments he located his living rooms, where he did his own cooking and lived sometimes alone and sometimes with a companjon who ameliorated the acerbities bachelor life. of his the calendar of the court for four years, and for one reason or another its trial has been postponed many times, at the instance first of the plaintiff, and then of the defendant. The attorneys who brought the suit against the Ophir Com- pany have retired from the scene of inhu- man activities, one of them peaceably and the other forcibly, and I have taken their place, while the original attorneys for defendant now wear the toga and the er- mine. Many changes have taken place since Negus was driven from his wood ranch by the defendants. When this ac- tion was instituted the Ophir Company was the incorporate ‘High yu Muck a Muck’ of the sagebrush. Its stock sold for $4000 a foot—it paid monthly dividends on each foot of §150. It had a brick house at its reduction works which were sur- rounded by a high fence to exclude the gaze of the vulgar. It bullt a bridge across the muddy pond which, when it has any water in it, is called ‘Lake’ Wa- shoe, 80 inat when the trustees came down every Saturday for their wine din- ner they were not obliged to go around | the alleged lake to get there. “After their wine dinners the trustees occupled the night and sometimes the en- tire Babbath in playing the great Ameri- can game with blue chips and a celling limit. The Ophir had a United States Sen- ator and a United States District Judge Jfor its—attorneys and its stockholders walked along snuffing the stars. Now, gentlemen of the jury, how have the mighty fallen. Ophir stock has dropped from four hundred dollars to one hun- dred dollars per share. The diyidends have ceased. The decayed and untrav- eled bridge across the diminished lake has become useful chiefly as a shelter for young wild ducks, while their pin feathers are growing. The high fence has fallen so low that the lowliest wood packing Jackass of the ridge can straddle it, the pop of champagne corks Is heard no more in the dismantled brick house, and when the dejected trustees occasiomally assem- ble there they use beans for chips with one cent ante, and ten cents limit, and each director squealing for a sight all the time. The great Ophir Company has struck hot water and desert sand In its mine and come down to Whitman and Fitch for lawyer: There was much activity in the polit- ical arena In Nevada as elsewhere in the late sixties, and In the absence of thea- ters and concerts the crowds who attend- ed upon the hustings were large and ap- preclative of a good point, whoever it might hit. When the fourteenth amend- ment was under discussion a candidate for Congress was expatiating upon the dire results to flow from its adoption. “Under 1t,” sald he, “if Nevada refuses to admit Chinamen to vote her represent- ation In Congress will bé reduced.” *“Ne- vada has but one member of Congress,” retorted his opponent, “and I do not sce how we can reduce her representation un- less we elect you.” There was a great meeting at Austin called to listen to a joint debate between the Congressional ~candidates. One of these was a young man with a heavy head of brick-auburn halr, which he part- ed in the middle, and a well developed bump of self-esteem. Austin was in the eastern portion of Nevada, 160 miles from the western section, with a desert wilder- ness between. “My opponent,” sald one of the speakers, ‘has been called the young Samson of his party, and I admit the aptness of the comparison. Like Samson he has a heavy head of halr in which his strength mainly lies and which he parts in the middle to avold disturbing the equilibrium of his intellect. He has come across the desert which divides Aus- tin from Virginia City in order to enligh- ten us Philistines upon constitutional law. Like Samson he has come up out of the wilderness hoping to prevall against us, and with the same weapon that was used by his predecessor.” The speaker did not say what the weapon was, but the audience caught on. “Mr. Smith,” sald Judge Caleb Bur- ‘bank, “you have been convicted of the crime of murder in the second degree, and for some reason not apparent to the court, the jury has recommended you to its mercy. Your crime was dastardly. While your vietim was seated you tame Lehind him, and without any apparent provocation you stabbed him in the back. You are a man over fifty years of age, and it is in the power of this court to sentence you to imprisonment for the remainder of your natural life, but the jury which convicted you has seen fit 1o recommend you to mercy, and as this court does not feel at liberty to entirely disregard the recommendation of the jury, it will comply with it to the extent of not giving you a life sentence. The sentence of this court is that you be con- fined at hard labor in the Nevada Peni- tentlary for fifty years.” o “From what you know of yourself,” said Charley Bryan to a smooth-tongued witness who had given damaging testi- mony against him, “from what you know of yourself and of your reputation for truth and veracity in this community, would you believe yourself under oath where you were personally interested.” The reply is not chronicled.. “Judge G.,” said his partner, “you have violated our partnership agreement and this law firm must be dissolved at once. It was distinctly agreed between us that ‘we were to take turns impartially in get- ting drunk—week and week about. You have now been drunk two days in my week. You have failed to control your inordinate appetite for liquor; you have usurped my privileges; you have deprived me of my bargained rights, and we break up right here and now.” Colonel Calhoun Thompson, aspirant for Sheriff in an outlying county, pe- rused with indignation an article which MOUNTING MIS HORSE THE COLONEL COLLECTIONS AND EFLECTIONS O "THOMAS FIT The Swver SvearE. CAAPTER I. e~ 7 A %/ AL 2 RODE INTO CARSON-. istics of all members of the colonel's par- ty, and especifally upon those who sup- ported the colonel for office. Determined to vindicate or avenge his friends, the colonel armed himself with a huge hick- ory cane, a bowie-knife and a pair of Derringers, and, mounting his horse, he rode into Carson. Having hitched his horse and quehched his thirst at the MODERN FABLES TMMER had coms and the voice of the unassuming but deadly green apple and of the icecream parlor were heard in the land. The ther- mometer was working overtime and the ice man warbled his cheerful lay as he lald the householder’s dally portion of congealed bacteria on the slide of the microscope and trundled his bill into the elevator. The asphalt melted patlently away in the gentle but persistent rays of the sun even as the dividends of the trust that laid it and the coal man sailed @way on his yacht to gather strength and a new schedule of prices agalnst the day when a beneficent Providence should once more place the caloric destiny of the h'. man race into his philanthropic hands. It was the season when the dwellers in the cities fold up their household gods. and their consciences and put them away in camphor, and laden down with good intentions and bales of greenbacks hie them to the mountain and the seashore to get next to nature. It was the time of the year when every man feels the stir of that longing of which the poet—who had probably been on a vacation himself— sings in those “touching” strains: Oh, for a 'odge In some vast wilderness Where i may loaf all day and pleasure seek, Feast upon canned goods, sleep on bags of hay, And pay the landlord twenty bones a week. In the fullness of time and of his pock- etbook the longing came to George Van Smithers to go forth and let the great heart of Mother Nature beat against his own for a few comsecutive beats. The summer is a good time for beats of all kinds, but*George didn’t know that when he first began to foregather with the sald longing. During the long, hard winter George's calling and election was to reel off hoslery and refined underwear at a genteel haberdashery in the busy city at an assessed valuation of $16 per week. ‘When the news was broken to him that the hobbles were to be taken off for as much as two weeks during the heated term he had difficulty in expressing his gratitude; after the two weeks were over he could bave sent his gratitude under a 2-cent stamp with room to spare. After a prolonged wrestle with a table of logarithms masquerading as a railroad and hotel guide he decided on a quiet place in the country, “tesms moderate, all the comforts of home,” that might have been an exact reproduction of the ofiginal Adam sanitarium in the garden of Eden, if one could judge from the ad- vertisement. One of ~George's accom- plices in the hoslery profession was en- ticed Into accompanying him and to- Journey: gether they ed of promise. Howling Wilderness saloon the ecolonel strode over to the newspaper office. It was the noon hour, and all the Appeal force had departed save an undersized, beardless, fragile-looking young man, who was seated at a table in the corner scissor- ing a plle of exchanges. “Are you,” sald Colorel Thompson, as he pounded Kis cane upon the office floor, “are you the And he was accorded them, and the scrimmage did not coms off. AnAverageldiot’s Summer Vacation. By Nicholas Nemo ks " 4 Their hearts and their collars were high with hope and gloss starch as they ple- tured to themselves the delights of a real home in the country that they were soon to taste. They would rise early In the morning when all the world was bathed in sunshine and fresh buttermilk, and st to the sweet carol of the birds and eke the hired man as he fared forth to tap the brindle heifer in the back pasture or to commit assault and battery on the sweet scented clover in the meadow abaft the barn. They dreamed sweet dreams of the new mown eggs and the fresh laid honey that should gladden their sensitive palates, of milk innocent of the corrod- ing touch of eau de Croton and of butter that should be kind but firm. The wily advertisement had spoken to them of gentle but amusing pastimes, of tennis and golf, even the unsuspecting croquet, and in their unsuspecting young hearts they believed it all. They had not yet learned that there are three varieties of lars: Common or garden liars, poets and men who advertise. Their first view of the pleasant country home that was to be theirs for two hap- py weeks was caiculated to dishearten any one less optimistic than a summer boarder or a perennial candidate for of- fice. The magnificent view that had been promised them was bounded on the south by a creamery, on the east by a barn- yard, on the north by the rear elevation of a glue factory, and on the west by a grindstone and a discouraged wheel- barrow. It was ten miles from a rall- road, fifteen miles from a stream of water deep enough to float a seagoing mosqui- to, and. about three thousand miles from any resemblance to the paradise deseribed in the advertisement. All the comforts of home that it appeared to possess were of the sort that a man leaves home to get away from. One of the things that they desired to secure they were granted the first thing off the bat, and that was early rising. In fact, they rose several times the first night to organize a posse for the pursuit of bappiness and other things that in- sisted on occupying une bed with them. in the intervals of this amusing pastime FOR THE FOOLISH _———— % they the selected and highly trained cholr of mes- Quitoes singing portions of the latest ope- ras and a company of canines afficted lwm: lguomm; who were busily n telling the moon what they thoug! of it. The large, slegant and e‘o'mnou-:: apartment which they occupied on the sbicon deck of the kitchen nrlll.ho gentle zephyrs that were wafted across the bed ever and anon were reminiscent of the cool wave that comes up from the stoke hole of an ocean liner when all the dampers are turned. About the mid- dle of the night, as it seemed to their decadent city intellects, the sun began to make preparations for getting up and from that time on there was nothing do- ing for gentle Morpaeus. He had about as much chance with George and his fei- low victim was an undersized snowball In the place where summer hotel-keepers and other enemlies of the human race are supposed to land eventually. The breakfast was another grand con- firmation of the theory that anticipation bas realization beaten hands down about ten times out of nine. The eggs that were surnamed fresh in the prospectus had apparently suffered an early disap- pointment that had permanently em- bittered their entire natures: the milk had a pale and drawn look, as though it had risen too early—and been skimmed; and the butter, when it was led in by its keeper, seemed shorn of its pristine slory, although it must be admitted that the amateur Delilah who had officiated on it had not performed her task with the thoroughness that had caused the downfall of the original Samson. At last, to thelr deep joy, spring chicken appeared and thélr hopes sat up and breathed again, But alas, for the frality of hy- man hopes, the springs were rubber. They tasted the joys of country life for exactly five days, during the which they amused themselves by comparing mos- quito bites and watching the mercury and their bills do a daily steeplechase. At the end of that time they pooied their surplus and journeyed back to town on the bumpers of a freight train to take a little rest in their hall bedrooms, where nothing disturbed them save the stately rustle of the cable cars and the deep, regular breathing of the policeman on the corner. Hereafter when George takes a sum- mer vacation it will be in hypodermic injections within reach of a pitcher of icewater and an electric fan. Also, he is of the opinion that the man who as- cribed a divine origin to the country would be willing to make an exception ofmawmmmvm-nm board lers. (Copyright, 133, by Albert Britt)