and allowed the whole testimony, on the ground that the previous threats of deceased were competent to contradict the dying declaration. With this evidence before the jury, it appeared that there had been many threats on both sides, and each party was abundantly notified of the angry state of feeling of the other.

Perhaps no man in the State ever exhibited more talent than did Mr. Hardin in this case. Mr. Wolfe, who opened the argument, had made a most profound impression on the jury. He had alluded pathetically to the bereaved widow and children of the deceased, and had also made with great effect the point that the prisoner was an aristocrat-of an aristocratic family-who had no regard for the rights of a laboring man, etc. Mr. Hardin began his speech by instituting a comparison between Mr. Wolfe and Phillip York, afterward Lord Hardwick, and spoke of how he had risen to the highest round in the profession and his name as a prosecutor had become a terror throughout England. Mr. Hardin spoke of the fears which had been created in his own mind on account of Mr. Wolfe's great abilities.

"I had been applied to to defend Wickliffe and had promised to do so, and for that purpose had reached Bardstown the Saturday evening before court on my route to Springfield. I had just returned from Brandenburg, very much wearied by my long ride-made more fatiguing by having led a horse, which I had secured as a fee at the Meade court. As I came into my front yard, leading the horse, my little grandchild ran out to meet me. I dismounted. and without waiting to kiss me, she threw her little arms around my knees and her first exclamation was: 'O, grandpapa, did you know that Mr. Wolfe had come to town?' Tired as I was I answered as softly as I could: Well, my dear, what of that?' She answered: 'They say Mr. Wolfe is the greatest lawyer in Kentucky and that he is sure to hang Logan Wickliffe.' This agitation of the child discomposed me very much; however, I took my horses to the stable and put them away and returned to the house. It was about five o'clock in the evening, and of course the dinner hour was past. My wife, who was expecting me home, had set out a dish for my dinner, which was cold, it is true, but of which, as she knew, I am extremely fond-jowl and snap beans I sat down at the table feeling exceedingly hungry, and picked up my knife to help myself when my wife, who at the moment was pouring me a cup of coffee, observed: 'Mr. Hardin, did you know that Mr. Wolfe has come to town?' I had thought I had more self-control, but it took away my appetite in an instant. Pushing aside my plate, and rising from the table hastily, and I fear impolitely, I said: 'Good God, Betsy! can't a man eat his dinner in peace, even if Mr. Wolfe has come to town?'

"I left the table with no appetite at all, and went out under the Lombardy poplars in my front yard, when my daughter, Mrs. Helm, who was visiting my house, came out and joined me. Said she: 'Have you heard the news?' Said I, still somewhat ruffled from loss of my dinner, 'What news?' She replied: Mr. Wolfe has come to town with a barouche filled with law books, drawn by four horses.' Hearing this irritated me to such an extent that I said, Pshaw, my dear, don't trouble me about Mr. Wolfe.' I immediately left my home, and, after walking about four or five hours, I returned more composed, and went to sleep without saying anything more about it, feeling that I had controlled myself, and also that I would be able to do so in any emergency.

**It has been my custom, usually, not to pay much attention to my dress or beard just in my ordinary practice, but I am very particular about these matters whenever I have an important case like the present. Now you can see, gentlemen, that I have not shaved for three days, and I feel that I owe you an apology, but the fact is having lost the use of my right arm by a tree falling on my hand many years ago in a coon hunt on Beech Fork, I can not shave myself, and have to rely on a barber. There is an excellent barber in Bardstown who has a sign which looks as if it were modeled after the pattern of a stick of peppermint candy, having alternately red and white stripes up it which is the immemorial badge of that honorable and useful profession, derived from some mythical origin in the time of the Greeks and Romans. It was Sunday evening, and beyond the time when they ever shave customers. But I am accustomed on such occasions to go around to the back door, and the colored barber always knows my knock. Just as I reached the door I paused, attracted by a lively conversation going on within, and I confess that I was tempted to eavesdrop. Three or four colored men were discussing the approaching trial with great animation. My friend, the barber, had just concluded an elegant argument to the effect that this jury would certainly acquit Logan Wickliffe. This position was vehemently denied by three of his friends who insisted that he would certainly be convicted and hanged. The chief authority for this deplorable prophecy was the colored preacher. Meantime, I was an attentive auditor outside waiting to find out what the verdict of the barber shop would be The preacher was very animated in urging his views. He quoted several texts of Scripture much to the point, and, after a very logical demonstration, he said: 'And more and mostly of all, they have raised and paid two thousand dollars to prosecute Logan Wickliffe, and they have brought Mr. Wolfe, the greatest lawyer in Kentucky, to prosecute him, and if there is, in my judgment, anything certain in this terrestrial life, Logan Wickliffe is just bound to be hung.'

"Hearing this conclusion of the whole matter, I gave up, and fled in silence. I said no more; having told you this true story, I am here before you, gentlemen of the jury, in a most pitiable condition."

Early in the argument, Mr. Hardin referred to the false education that the prisoner had received as to personal responsibility and personal duties under unmerited affronts. This he traced to his parents who were the earliest settlers of Chaplin hills and the Beech Fork, and said that nearly every man in the court-house had grown up and known them from the days of the early pioneers until that time.

"Wickliffe," he continued, "was not of a vigorous frame, but of a high spirit and high intelligence. He had been charged with being of an aristocratic family. He was not to be censured on account of the distinction of his family, nor could the wretched notion of an aristocratic example be charged. If he had family pride, he had reason for it from the long and many services of the Wickliffes to the people of Kentucky in its councils and in its wars, and it would be the basest ingratitude for the jury to testify their consideration for the family by putting one of its sons to death."

Having ingratiated himself with the passions of his auditory, he referred to the statement of Gray on his dying bed, that he had never intended to harm Wickliffe. Mr. Hardin accused him of perjury in the last moments of his life; that, although he was a member of a church, yet he was one of the most violent men in the State, and most powerful physically. He sought to bully a weaker adversary, and was armed with a deadly weapon, and tried to provoke a difficulty with the intention of killing Wickliffe; he had advanced on him next morning after breakfast with the same fell intent; he had driven Wickliffe into the clerk's office, and thought he had disgraced him, but it was a dreadful mistake.

"Such a man should beware when a gentleman retreats under insult and without complaint. Seizing the first weapon he could find, Wickliffe reappeared with the fixed resolution that he would be bullied no longer, and that either he or Gray should die. Their meeting, therefore, was to be treated as a mere duel, not a murder. It was a duel on full notice, in which each man was allowed to act at his own pleasure as to time, place, and weapons."

This is but a short and imperfect sketch (says General Preston, to whom the author is indebted for it) of the speech, which at times was marked by episodes of singular humor and affecting pathos. The parallel between Lord Hardwick as a prosecutor and Mr. Wolfe was oddly-conceived and so comically consistent that the judge, jurors, and audience were unable to restrain their mirth, to the evident embarrassment of the eloquent prosecutor from Louisville, who grew angry and asked the court if that was a proper way to conduct a criminal trial, and if it were proper license to indulge counsel in such com

parisons? Mr. Hardin respectfully halted to give place to objections, and promptly said if any wrong were done Mr. Wolfe or his sensibilities in comparing him to Phillip York, afterward Lord Hardwick, he had not intended it, and regretted it deeply. The peals of laughter produced by the apology, which was unobjectionable in its fullness, and the manner in which it was made, overcame the effect that Mr. Wolfe had produced upon the jury. This diversion won the case.

Mr. Hardin said in course of his speech that Mr. Wolfe must not be disappointed if he failed to obtain a verdict of guilty from that jury, for, indeed, he had noticed that he seemed to be a little hoarse, no doubt, the effect of a cold (or, at least, such was the rumor), which, of course, had greatly impaired the effect of his speech. The farmers of Washington county were possessed of fine sense and taste, and it was always a rule with them in a horse trade to have nothing to do with an animal at all touched in the wind. The gentleman reminded. him of a young lawyer that George Thurman wanted to take into partnership, who, after graduating at the University of Virginia, came to Springfield and put up his sign and opened an office. He had begun to receive considerable patronage, when, suddenly, he took down his sign and announced his purpose to remove to Louisville. The tavernkeeper with whom he boarded, unwilling to lose his patronage, remonstrated against removal, saying that if he had any difficulty about money matters that he could board at his hotel and he would indulge him in the payment of his bills until he made the money. The young man thanked him, but said that he could not alter his determination; that he was afraid that on account of the frugality of the county court he would, if he remained, ruin his voice, and that no man could ever produce the proper effect on the jury, in his judgment, in a courthouse that was not plastered. (The court would now and then interrupt these episodes, admonishing Mr. Hardin to confine himself to the case, but the latter, after flourishing his bandana handkerchief and assuming an air of much deference, and pressing his thumb on one side of his long, flexible nose, never allowed the merriment to abate, and the court had a suspicious way of covering his mouth with his handkerchief and turning red in the face, that belied his cries of "order.")

He quoted a song of Eric the Norseman or some Scandinavian ditty-alluding to Mr. Wolfe-to the effect that the path of his glory was terrible, being lined with the faces of dead men on swinging gibbets, and that long lines of vultures marked the way of the hero. It required only fifteen minutes for a verdict of "not guilty."

CHAPTER XXIV.

AT THE BAR-WITH POLITICAL INTERLUDES.

URING the period commencing with the termination of his congressional career, in 1837, and extending to the time he became Secretary of State, in 1844, Mr. Hardin held no public office, and was a candidate for no position save that of presidential elector, in the last named year. He was never more actively employed, professionally, and never with greater profit, both pecuniarily and in reputation, than during this interval. Without abandoning his practice at home, he annually visited the State of Mississippi, and became a regular practitioner in its courts, whence he derived a valuable income. One of the celebrated cases of his career occurred in the course of his Southern practice-Vick's heirs against Lane, etc. Sergeant S. Prentiss was a party to the case, and practiced it in opposition to Mr. Hardin. Prentiss won in the court below, but the case was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States and reversed, and thus he unluckily lost his fortune. Outside of Nelson, he was a regular attendant on the courts of many neighboring counties. He attended the semi-annual sessions of the Court of Appeals, at the State capital-his retainers there, however, usually being in cases in which he had been counsel in the courts below.

The routine of a busy lawyer's life is not a little monotonous. Its most stirring events are those important cases that excite public attention and interest. The Wilkinson case, and many others hardly less tragic in character, though less famous, occurred during this period. The history of important cases is very much the history of the lawyers engaged in them. The details of one case are strikingly similar to those of another and of all, and the work of one lawyer is much like that which another performs. The labors of a weak lawyer outwardly differ little, save in argument, from those of his stronger brother-results chiefly distinguishing between them.

Mr. Hardin, like most lawyers of his time who rode the circuit, traveled horseback, carrying with him such changes of clothing as the period of absence from home demanded. He had his stopping-places on the journey and his lodgings at his destination to which he had