I shall ever argue. I do not wish to fall short in my duty to my client, and at the same time I feel a certain constraint by rea son of what my brothers of the bar might consider as due to the proprieties of the po sition I am about to occupy. There have been times when you railroad lawyers have been rather ready to intimate that, in my arguments, I occasionally lapsed into appeals which you were tempted to criticise. I have great confi dence in you, and I should like to get your ideas as to the speech I should make under the cir cumstances." The old Judge took the matter seriously, and gave him his ideas of a conservative ar gument. The next morning Judge Har ían delivered the closing argument to the jury. It seemed as if he intended to put into that one speech all the ap peals of an advocate to a jury and all the JOHN M. power he would have had left for his prac tice for the rest of his life if he had not gone upon the bench. He summed up the evidence in a terrible way. He stamped the floor, he pounded the table, he roared against corporations and their oppression of the poor. He gave vent to every agrarian and socialistic prejudice against railroads. After an effort of two hours of tremendous energy and scathing force, the case was submitted to the jury, which promptly returned a ver dict of five thousand dollars, the full amount sued for, for damages to property worth seven or eight thousand. All through the
speech, in spite of his getting red in the face and looking severe, there was a trace of laughter in his voice. He dared not look at Judge Houston when the jury came in; but the next morning, meeting him in the court room, with an affectation of serious interest he inquired, "Well, Judge, how did I do?" The old Judge only said, " John, you be damned." A strong firm which practiced for years in Louisville was composed of John W. Barr and Kemp Goodloe. Judge Barr is now judge of the United States district court for Kentucky. The purity of his private and professional life has won him the es teem of all. He was the legal adviser of my family, and I was brought up to believe implicitly in his sense and goodness. Great was my horror, there fore, when I was told he was a Republican. In those days Repub HARI.AN. licans were scarce in Kentucky, and I had the same opinion of them as the little child who said : " What is a Republican? Why, a sinner mentioned in the Bible." Judge Goodloe was an able lawyer. He died some years ago, loved by all his associates. Thomas Gibson was a brilliant lawyer. He defended Gen. Jefferson Davis, of the Federal army, when he was tried for killing Gen. Nelson. Gen. Nelson, who was Gen. Davis' superior in command, was very dicta torial with his subordinates, and struck Gen. Davis in the Louisville Gait House, before Davis killed him. Mr. Gibson's son, Charles
