Strange Stories of the Great Valley: The Adventures of a Boy PioneerGrosvenor, Abbie Johnston
General
Strange Stories of the Great Valley: The Adventures of a Boy Pioneer
Grosvenor, Abbie Johnston
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ohio River Valley -- Juvenile fiction
Late in the afternoon the convention adjourned. Court sat. The case of
the cobbler's son was called. A stump was spread with the tools of
the law. There was a big family Bible for taking the oath, a gourd of
home-made poke-berry ink, goose-quills for pens, and a rare sheet or
two of paper.
At one side was a magpie nest of small, shining articles--silver spoons
and thimbles, gold beads and pewter cups, some pipes and a snuffer.
Brave among them was a knife in a "Long Hunter's" sheath--Doby's knife.
How the boy did gloat over that knife!
But he had to let it lie and go to take his place on a log with the
other witnesses.
"'Tis far and away the best thing there," thought he as the clerk of
the court picked up the leather sheath, took out the curious stone
knife, examined it with interest, tried its edge, and then began to
sharpen a goose-quill pen-point with it. "I'll keep an eye on it," the
nervous owner decided.
A bailiff drummed on the log with a stone until Doby had to shake his
ears as though he had been in swimming. This stone gavel called the
court to order. A curious crowd of country people, of townspeople, and
of delegates gathered under the elm.
Jonathan Jennings, president of the constitutional convention,
afterward first Governor of Indiana, and a member of Congress, acting
as local or associate judge, sat upon the bench, which in this case was
a sturdy, literal bench, it having been borrowed from under the tubs in
a neighbor's wash-house.
William Hendricks, afterward third Governor of Indiana and later
Senator from Indiana, who was secretary of the convention, became clerk
of this local court, by appointment, _pro tem_.
Both of these empire-builders gave to the case of Doby's old knife the
same formal attention that the cause of justice should always command
even in the smallest courts.
Jonathan Jennings was young, not much over thirty, and as rosy and
blond as Doby himself. His manner was grave and kind as he said: "The
court is ready to try the case of the State of Indiana versus Jerry
Cobbler. Is the State ready?"
Answer: "It is."
"Is the defendant ready?"
Answer: "He is."
"Then let the case proceed."
The genial clerk, Hendricks, for many years probably the most popular
man in Indiana, began, "If it please your Honor, I shall read the
information." And then went on to do so, rolling off big words in a
sonorous voice, declaring that "'the aforesaid Jerry Cobbler, in the
State of Indiana, on the twenty-fifth day of June, 1816, at the town of
Corydon, did then and there take and carry away a certain stone knife,
said stone knife being then and there the personal goods of one Obadiah
Holman, with the felonious intent then and there to deprive the said
Obadiah Holman thereof, against the peace and dignity of the State of
Indiana.'"
"Guilty or not guilty?"
"Not guilty."
Thereupon the witnesses were sworn to testify to the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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