496

THE GREEN BAG

into court at Fayette and said the steer be longed to Elijah. "Missouri John's " lawyers went through the long record of the last trial with a microscope, and then met their client at Macon. "The jig's up, John," said one of the barris ters, gravely. "There ain't the ghost of a ground to hang an appeal on this time." "We're beat, you mean?" asked the big ranchman. "You've guessed right." "Well," said John, "I hate a croaker. I went to law for a measley, spindle-shanked steer, and I'm going to take what the law hands out. Figure up what the fun has cost me, boys, and the check's ready." He sat awhile and calmly pulled at his pipe. Then he picked up his sombrero and walked to the door, where he hesitated and looked back. "But, say, fellers," he remarked, "that was my steer!" The defendant notified " Missouri John's" attorneys that he would file a motion for affirmance in the Court of Appeals at the fall term, and they told him to go ahead — they were tired. The steer is still enjoying life on Elijah's broad pastures. He has recently had it pho tographed and to show he entertains no illwill has sent copies of the picture to "Mis souri John" and his four lawyers. MACON, Mo., July, 1905. He Was Only Lieutenant. — It is said that legal documents are dry, yet, at times, much of humor and pathos, unknown to either the public or the profession, creep into the record. In a divorce proceeding recently instituted, when and where is immaterial, the parties had lived together more than seventeen years, and there were three children, the oldest a girl of six teen; and differences had arisen between the parents, concerning the hour at which a young man, who was waiting on the daughter, should leave. High words followed, and while they continued to occupy the same house their relations became strained. The husband was ,a mechanic, working some distance from home .and consequently was obliged to take his din•ner with him. The couple had accumulated rsome property and owned their own home, ithe title to which, however, was in the wife's

name. After he had eaten his breakfast one morning he went to his work, carrying with him his dinner, both prepared by his wife. During his absence the wife, advised by in termeddling friends, instituted divorce pro ceedings, alleging cruel and inhuman treat ment, making her life burdensome, etc., that her husband quarreled with her and applied, during such quarrels, abusive language to her, and obtained through her attorney an order on her husband to show cause why he should not be enjoined from returning home, or from Interfering with their property, alleged to be the wife's separate estate. The story told in the affidavits filed by the husband in response to the order, contains something of humor and all of pathos that can be compressed into words: We quote verbatim. "This defendant admits that he and the plaintiff quarreled, but such quarrels were not more serious than those arising in many fam ilies over differences concerning their domestic affairs, and the plaintiff bore her full share in their promotion and continuance, for it is pro verbial that ' It takes two to make a quarrel. ' "Affiant denies that he treated the plaintiff either cruelly or inhuman, but on the con trary he alleges that during their seventeen years of married life she has been in control of the house and swayed the scepter over, and ruled himself and his family with no uncertain hand; that hehasnever had any higher position than that of lieutenant in his own household in which his wife was the officer in command and that he has never been in the line of pro motion. "Affiant further says that he knows of noth ing more cruel than the treatment attempted to be meted out to him in this case by the plaintiff here — receiving from him but three days since his monthly earnings up to the last dollar, preparing his breakfast, handing him his dinner pail and bidding him good-bye this morning as he went forth to labor for her and those he loved, and then, without a word of warning and leaving him without a penny to procure himself a supper or a bed, among strangers, seeks to exclude him from the home built and made possible by his industry, and which he hoped would be his refuge in old age when his power to labor longer has passed awav. "