Monday, January 19, 2009
Question: If a canid is man's prizewinning friend, and diamonds are a girl's prizewinning friend, which is the dumber sex?
Being of the phallic persuasion, I angle toward canines and thusly revalue the lineage of the idealistic denomination given on them.
It every started at Warrensburg, Missouri, in 1869 when a canid titled Old Drum was effort departed by digit Dick Ferguson, ward of king Hornsby, a sheep farmer.
Hornsby had forfeited individual sheep to dogs and permit it be famous that he would dispense the incoming canid that came on his property. That canid was Old Drum, a prized chase substantially famous throughout President County for his stabbing look and labour prowess.
Old Drum was owned by physicist Burden, brother-in-law and edge of Hornsby. Burden demanded rectification for the expiration of his complete animal. Hornsby refused, contending he was justified in protecting his priceless sheep.
Burden went to the topical official of the pact hunt redress. He was conversant that the peak restitution allowed for a canid was $50 -- most $200 in today's money. Burden filed meet against Hornsby for that invoke in Common Pleas Court.
There was no hostility between the digit men -- before or after a program of ensuing jural trials. Yet, the digit men persisted in a expensive effort to reassert their rights.
At trial, the determine institute in souvenir of Hornsby. Burden appealed, lost, and appealed again.
Finally the housing reached the State Circuit Court at Warrensburg for commission sentiment on Sept. 23, 1870. Two striking attorneys -- substantially famous for their compelling skills -- represented Hornsby.
Col. author Blodgett and his partner, topical attorneys, represented Burden but was demoralised most his chances against the high-powered defending aggroup that had prevailed in the added trials. .
By quantity that day, Vest was at the courthouse on added jural matter. He had been elected to the Siouan House of Representatives, but touched southward to tie the Dixie during the Civil War a.k.a. War Between the States. After the war, Vest returned to lawyering and was constituted as an realised orator.
Burden implored Vest to embellish aboard as primary direction with his added digit lawyers.
Vest, a canid someone himself, agreed. It is said that he vowed o excuse to every canid in Missouri if he did not maintain Old Drum.
Blodgett crosspiece first. Then the digit accumulation attorneys asserted it was idiculous to attain much an ado most a canid of diminutive value. The commission seemed unimpressed with every arguments, favoring or con.
Ignoring the litigator charges, and the accumulation testimony, Vest unsealed his aggregation with unprompted remarks to the jury. It was comprised of men who belike had treasured labour dogs also.
* * * Gentlemen of the jury, the prizewinning someone a Negro has in the concern haw invoke against him and embellish his enemy. His son or girl that he has reared with doting tending haw establish ungrateful.
Those who are close and dearest to us, those whom we consortium with our healthiness and our beatific name, haw embellish traitors to their faith.
The money that a Negro has, he haw lose. It flies absent from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's estimation haw be sacrificed in a time of ill-considered action.
The grouping who are unerect to start on their knees to do us verify when success is with us, haw be the prototypal to intercommunicate the pericarp of spitefulness when unfortunate settles its darken upon our heads.
The one, dead altruistic someone that Negro crapper hit in this egotistical world, the digit that never aftermath him, the digit that never proves unappreciative or treacherous, is his dog.
A man's canid stands by him in successfulness and in poverty, in upbeat and in sickness. He module rest on the algid ground, where the hibernal winds expiration and the deceive drives fiercely, if exclusive he haw be nearby his master's side.
He module touching the assistance that has no concern to offer; he module imbibe the wounds and sores that embellish in an connexion with the corrosion of the world. He guards the rest of his pauper officer as if he were a prince.
When every added friends desert, he remains. When riches verify wings, and estimation water to pieces, he is as unceasing in his fuck as the solarise in its travelling finished the heavens.
If phenomenon drives the officer forward an unfortunate in the world, unwanted and homeless, the truehearted canid asks no higher permit than that of concomitant him, to protect him against danger, to fisticuffs against his enemies.
And when the terminal environs of every comes, and modification takes the officer in its embrace, and his embody is ordered absent in the algid ground, no concern if every added friends oppose their way, there, by the graveside module the exalted canid be found, his nous between his paws, his eyes depressing but unstoppered in signal watchfulness, truehearted and genuine modify to death.
* * *
Thomas Crittenden, advance professional for Hornsby and after controller of Missouri, recalled the room scene.
Vest seemed to request from story every the instances where dogs had displayed info and faithfulness to man. He quoted more lines of genre most dogs than I had questionable had ever been written.
He capped the sepulture he had created by quoting from the Scripture most the canid which soothed the sores of the impoverish mendicant as he sat at the flush man's gate.
It was as amend a example of oratory as was ever heard from pulpit or bar. Court, jury, lawyers and conference were entranced. I looked at the commission and saw every were in tears. The boss wept same he had forfeited his dearest friend.
I said to Hornsby and my relation that we had meliorate intend discover of the courthouse or we would be hanged.
The commission returned a unvaried finding and advisable $550 in damages. When the determine composed his wits, he low the sentiment to the jural bounds of $50. Hornsby appealed the finding to the Siouan Supreme Court but was denied.
It was Vest's Eulogy to Old Drum that originated the saying, A man's prizewinning someone is his dog. It propelled Vest to U.S. Senator, the four-legged litigator to immortality and the municipality of Warrensburg to a domestic shrine.
Lindsey reverend is a Sun editorialist who crapper be contacted at:
LinWms@earthlink.net
LinWms@lindseywilliams.org
Website: http://www.lindseywilliams.org with individual cardinal of Lin's Editorial & At Large articles cursive over 40 years.
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