Assured to the contrary, he settled back in his chair for a while, but, unable to stand it longer, he retired to the judge’s room, where he remained during the rest of the speech. “Mr. Kern,” writes A. B. Kirkpatrick, then prosecuting attorney, “was at his best and held the jury and audience spellbound as he swept everything before him by his irresistible logic and eloquence. At its conclusion, Senator Voorhees said with a qualifying adjective that it was a shame to have a man like John Kern make the closing speech in such a case. Kern easily won the laurels over the senator.” The defendant was found guilty, and there are reasons to believe that Voorhees never forgave Kern’s ridicule of him, and in time found a way to make his displeasure felt. During his Kokomo days the bar of Howard and surrounding counties, while having its full share of backwoodsmen, was strong in a number of exceptionally able lawyers. Kern’s practice extended over Howard, Tipton, Grant, Miami and Cass counties. In those days he frequently crossed swords with D. D. Pratt, Horace P. Biddle, Judge Nathaniel R. Lindsay, McDowell Van Devanter, father of the present justice of the United States Supreme Court, Col. Asbury Steele, R. T. St. John, Joseph A. Lewis, Nathan Overman, Joel F. Vaile, now the leader of the Denver bar, Dan Waugh, and of course all the leaders of the Howard bar. As a criminal lawyer he surpassed them all and held his own with the greatest in the state. “As a criminal lawyer,” writes A. B. Kirkpatrick, “Kern in his prime was perhaps not excelled in Indiana. I have seen Senator Voorhees, Major Gordon, John S. Duncan, Henry N. Spaan and Major Blackburn in the trial of criminal cases and in my opinion none of them excelled Kern.” Such was his status professionally during his Kokomo days. IV The Kokomo of Kern’s time was one of the live-wire towns of the state. He has himself described it in his address at the James Whitcomb Riley birthday dinner many years afterward, when he said: “And where did I first meet Riley? Where do you suppose I met him? Why, in Kokomo, of course! Where else could I have met him? What was he doing in Kokomo? Why did he come to Kokomo? Because the afflatus was in Kokomo in those days. The divine afflatus, the prophetic afflatus, afflatus in unbroken and original packages; some in broken and aboriginal packages.”