Jurgen and the Law _This edition is limited to one thousand and eighty numbered copies, of which one thousand are for sale._ _Copy Number_ 675 JURGEN AND THE LAW A STATEMENT With Exhibits, including the Court’s Opinion, and the Brief for the Defendants on Motion to Direct an Acquittal EDITED BY GUY HOLT [Illustration] NEW YORK ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 1923 Copyright, 1922, by +Robert M. McBride & Co.+ Printed in the United States of America Published, January, 1923 JURGEN AND THE LAW A STATEMENT A STATEMENT If Mr. Cabell had not pre-empted the phrase, the words with which he characterized the tale _Jurgen_ might well be used as a title for an account of the tale’s adventures with the law. Those adventures, which the matter of this book commemorates no less effectively than it helped to divert them from a less happy outcome, form indeed a comedy of justice: a comedy which, perhaps, aroused more of indignation than of mirth, and which, in its duration, somewhat exceeded the time-limit that a canny dramatist allots himself, but which ended appropriately on a note of justice, and thus showed Mr. Cabell to be not only the maker of a happily descriptive phrase but also somewhat of a prophet. Well, the comedy of _Jurgen’s_ suppression is ended. The book is admitted once more to the freedom of the library, and the pawnbroker is again at liberty to wander throughout the universe in search of rationality and fair dealing. And in due course, time and the wisdom of other generations will decide whether the pawnbroker, or the book, or the adventures of either be in any way memorable.