Life — December 2, 1915 — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

1070 Perhaps that’s one reason we made so much of her, Just turned two she was, and a little bundle of winsomeness. . . . She gathered to herself all the glint- ing morning sunlight of the mountain tops.” People stirred restlessly, This was not like Wallace. True, he sometimes indulged in sentiment before a jury and ofttimes moved the sturdy yeomanry to free some red-handed rascal regardless of the facts, But to parade his own early rural days and his little sister—well, it only indicated that he was sore pressed. But now the discerning could note the least little shade of resonance and pur- pose. And, too, he half turned from time to time toward the man in the dock, “Through that valley the magnificent Blue Diamond Express went thundering by, bearing its burden of the prosperous and contented But then there were other trains, the long slow freights that wended their way, laden, down the valley. They too carried passengers + + om the couplings . . . cramped up underneath . . . or smuggled into the corner of a box-car. These were of the underworld—the discontented and the disinherited. The tramp, the out- cast. . . perchance the criminal, making his getaway from city to city.” He glanced keenly, quickly; his client was beginning to emerge from stolid in- difference. “The Old Grove Crossing, as they called it, was not so well guarded twenty years ago as now, your Honor. And one day this little two-year-old took it into her baby head to roam. Perhaps childish fancy paints the wild flowers on a distant hill brighter ; per- haps some errant butter- fly winged its random way across the tracks — who knows? “ At all events, the wan- derlust seized her tiny feet and she had come just so near Montour County that she had but to cross the far track to have com- pletely changed jurisdic- tion, And there she stood, for a big slow-moving train of empties occupied that track. Puzzled? Perhaps, a little; but still it was a matter of no moment. +. 4 Neither, your Honor, was the big, thun- dering Blue Diamond. Why should it be? There existed in all this world “HELLO! Christmas Life no such thing as either evil or fear. And so she waited, trans- fixed only by wonderment as the mon- ster thing bore down on her. . . . I'm aware, your Honor, that in every well-appointed melodrama the hero al- ways appears at the proper instant. . . . But in real life sometimes—well, we have tried cases in our courts, the pur- pose of which was to determine the dollar value of that for which there can be no recompense—a baby life crushed out.” He paused for an impressive second. “ And this was my baby sister. “Oh, yes, they saw her when less than two hundred feet away. Along that straightaway the Montour Valley Railroad Company, in its corporate wis- dom, shot its Blue Diamond seventy miles an hour, The engineer was the best man on the line—and he fainted dead away. That's what their best man did, He had a baby of his own. Instinct made him throw on the brakes . . . as well a child's bucket of sand on the tracks! Down, down it came, shrieking, crashing, pounding and swirl- ing from side to side; belching its hell of destruction and rasping its million sparks as the brakes half gripped. . . . Only one small mercy vouchsafed—by its awful might and momentum—instant death!" Dramatically Wallace passed his hand over his forehead. The Judge had done the same. So well had he played upon their emotions that he sensed to perfec- tion the proper pause duration. A MULTITUDE Is THIS CHARITY? 1 WANT TO GIVE A CHRISTMAS DINNER FOR MY SINS! COVERS FOR THREE THOUSAND, PLEASE.” “No, your Honor,” he said quietly, “she did not die. This little story of real life followed the conven- tional. . . . Sometimes God is as good as the dramatist. They told us the meagre details, He didn’t; he had a pressing engagement and slipped away, resuming, I suppose, his ‘reservations’ on his Blue Diamond. . . . He wasn't very prepossessing, anyway, from all ac- counts. Any ten-twenty-thirty dramatist could have given us a more present- able, better manicured hero.” Wallace sauntered a little. “This object that tumbled from a box-car, sprawled, picked himself up and then jumped like a cat, was, as a matter of fact, a nobody, an outcast, a crook—" Casually, it seemed, his hand rested on the bowed shoulder of the broken old man. “ Just a one-eyed yeggman, making his way: " He got no further. The court room was in an uproar and unrestrained ap- plause ran its riotous course. There was none to check it. His Honor, savagely surreptitious with his handkerchief, finally took command of himself and the situation. “Mr. Wallace, the Court requires no argument in this case. We will accept the guarantee of future good conduct which you were about to offer, and, if necessary, underwrite it ourselves. . . . Sentence suspended!” Then as the Court was adjourned and they crowded about the pair of them, counsel and client, a shouldering, demon- strative throng a dozen deep, the Judge, before retiring, stilled them for a brief afterword. “Mr. Wallace, in the matter of the—ah, of cer- tain refreshments, in which we had rendered a mental ruling incidental to the costs thereof, we would say that ruling is hereby reversed and the—the re- freshments — are on — the Court.” just RANDALL: I borrowed five dol- lars from a friend. Rocers: Give me his address quick. Ranpatt: Why? Rocers: A man who would lend money to you would lend it to any- one. Comicbooks.com