Читать книгу The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him - Paul Leicester Ford - Страница 35

"Did you find country milk different from what you have here?" Peter asked the youngest.

"Oh, yes," she said. "Here it comes from a cart, but in the country it squirts from a cow."

"Order," said the judge to the gallery.

"Does it taste differently?"

"Yes. It's sweet, as if they put sugar in it. It's lovely I like cow milk better than cart milk."

"Damn those children!" said Dummer, to the man next him.

The event of the trial came, however, when Peter summed up. He spoke quietly, in the simplest language, using few adjectives and no invective. But as the girl at the Pierces' dinner had said, "he describes things so that one sees them." He told of the fever-stricken cows, and he told of the little fever-stricken children in such a way that the audience sobbed; his clients almost had to be ordered out of court; the man next Dummer mopped his eyes with his handkerchief; the judge and jury thoughtfully covered their eyes (so as to think the better); the reporters found difficulty (owing to the glary light), in writing the words despite their determination not to miss one; and even the prisoner wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Peter was unconscious that he was making a great speech; great in its simplicity, and great in its pathos. He afterwards said he had not given it a moment's thought and had merely said what he felt. Perhaps his conclusion indicated why he was able to speak with the feeling he did. For he said:

"This is not merely the case of the State versus James Goldman. It is the case of the tenement-house children, against the inhumanity of man's greed."

Dummer whispered to the man next him, "There's no good. He's done for us." Then he rose, and made a clever defence. He knew it was wasting his time. The judge charged against him, and the jury gave the full verdict: "Man-slaughter in the first degree." Except for the desire for it, the sentence created little stir. Every one was still feeling and thinking of Peter's speech.

And to this day that speech is talked of in "the district."