§ 63 Absolutely Bored by the Whole Thing
A youth in southeastern Missouri became involved in legal proceedings as the result of the mysterious disappearance of a neighbor’s mare and the upshot was that a jury went so far as to find him guilty of horse-stealing and the judge gave him a sentence of five years at hard labor. A friend of mine defended him at his trial.
Some months after his late client had been taken away to begin serving his sentence this friend was sitting one morning in his office when the door opened and there entered the father of the youth, an elderly bearded hillsman.
“Hal,” began the newcomer, “I come to see you to git you to do somethin’ ’bout my boy Wesley Junior.”
“Well, Uncle Wes,” said the lawyer, “I don’t believe there is anything I can do. You remember how hard I worked for him at his trial—how I sweated down two or three collars over yonder in that courthouse and how I wasted all the oratory I had in my system and how I snapped both my suspenders. But in spite of all I could say, you know as well as I do what happened. The case went against us and the Judge gave Wesley five years in the State penitentiary and there he is!”
“Yas, suh, Hal,” said the father. “Wesley Junior, is up thar in that there penitentiary and that’s jest the p’int! I got a letter frum him this mawnin’. And he told me to come to see you and to tell you to git him out of that place right-away—he’s plum dissatisfied.”