Looking Back: An AutobiographyRichardson, Merrick Abner
History
Looking Back: An Autobiography
Richardson, Merrick Abner
Richardson, Merrick Abner, 1841-
This so diminished the income of the Cook County wolves that a panic
ensued, which incensed the ever-irritable element and finally swelled
into anarchy, consummating in the Haymarket Riot, in 1886, in which
several officers were maimed or killed, and for which a few of the
chief conspiring anarchists were executed, and thus civilization was
restored.
Good men were then selected for responsible positions, while the dirty
constables and rotten, self-elected magistrates, who held courts in
extreme corners of the county, where victims were summoned to appear,
only to find that judgment had been rendered against them, were at last
stamped under the heels of decency.
Mr. Story, editor of the Chicago Times, who had amassed a large
fortune, as the story ran, became infatuated with a feminine spiritual
medium, who acted both as advisor and architect in the construction of
a marble mansion on Grand Boulevard, whose apparent cost would have
been four times his capital. The warmth of the medium did not offset
the chill of old age, and becoming weary, he laid down the burden of
life and the mansion was never completed.
Philip Hoyne was perhaps then the most noted criminal lawyer in
Chicago, and this was the story of how he first became famous.
A man had been arrested for horse stealing who had no lawyer and the
judge appointed Hoyne, then a young man, to defend him.
"What shall I do for him?" inquired Hoyne.
"Clear him if you can," said the judge.
Hoyne took the prisoner into the ante-room, used for counsel, and said
to him:
"Mr. O'Flerity, did you steal the horse?"
"I did, your honor."
"Do you expect to go to the penitentiary?"
"I do, sir."
"Do you want me to clear you?"
"If you can do it. I swear by the Holy Virgin Mary that I will come to
your wake and bring all me relations."
Hoyne raised the window and said, "Do you see those woods yonder?"
"Indade, I do, sir."
"Now, I will hold my watch and see how long it takes you to run there."
When Hoyne returned to court the judge inquired where his client was.
"I do not know."
"Did I not place him in your charge?"
"Yes, but you said, 'Clear him if you can,' and the last I saw of him
he was entering the woods about two miles away."
HORSE RACING IN CHICAGO
Mr. Billings, the original West Side gas monopolist, had a pacer which
could go on the street 2:40 or better, and my brother Gordon drove Tom,
the silver-tailed trotter, who could crowd 2:30 very close. Billings
lived on Lake Street, near Union Park, while we lived farther west, and
we used to race horses nearly every day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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