Heritage of American humor; The residing dignity of the law

Hero to American humor. We have many sources of worthwhile laughter all influence our outlook on life from the early days comes a unique heritage for the 20th century American. Heritage enhanced by being shared. The University of North Dakota broadcasting service presents 15 dramatized essays on the American humor found in newspapers books and anthologies old and new. From these the 20th century American can obtain a perspective on the intelligences attitudes styles and sensibilities of the American outlook as it concerns himself and his world neighbors. The heritage of American humor is produced by the University of North Dakota under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. The writer narrator is Professor Joseph F. Smeal of the University of North Dakota Department of English program

11 the residing dignity of the law. We surrender our program today into pieces that concern the relation of American humor to American law and to introduce these three pieces it may be said that men trained in the law may immigrate westward without losing their knowledge of the law. It may be said that law books may be carried westward without change in their texts but it may not be said that the British way of operating the legal system moved west to Massachusetts and Virginia or that the way of operating a legal system in those colonies moved west to the Ohio and the old Southwest. The system did not arrive in California unchanged. So between the old and the new There was a clash that called out humorous writings about the legal system.

The changes that undermined the residing dignity of the law were changes in situation changes in the system of the law itself and changes in the lawyers who professed it are three pieces today illustrate these changes. The first illustrates the changes due to a frontier situation. And is taken from Henry Hiram Riley's public papers are the humors of the West. They're a native of fighting for excess not too long past I had occasion to consult turtle on a point of law. The question was whether a certain woman who claimed dollar in Milan and could enjoy a state of the facts that would entitle her legally to recover Mr. Turtle's office was in one of the upper rooms of a tumbledown tailor shop in the village outside his sign swung to and fro. I took a tourney in all the courts. Mr Turtle when I entered was in one chair with his feet wide apart in another like the extremities of a letter A. Is this Mr. Turtle's office.

Yeah I should rather think it was have a chat. I have a little business and most people do have. I'm just put on the shelf. Suppose a man dies and leaves whether one that you claim that I don't know all right that supposing I don't do it here off ish. I never give opinions on fancy cases. Time's too precious. I want the real facts on the matter. Well as I was going say you ain't going to say Who Dat. Who's the widow. Them are the starting points in a new country. But that will not affect the principle in the law though and I want our principals to folks in a new country you take a resident we do a little good lookin and she can and she claims against the non resident juries have you know all I see is Joe. Well and the widow is a resident of Borden's on my and with all claims a life interest in one third of my own land around which she has she any children 12 and 14 years at a bad age for you.

Worse than two positive witnesses swear and straight into your favor. But what have children to do with the principle of the law you are green. You'll sprout if you get catched in the rain. Don't you know that the winter into children will be put right straight to the jury and they'll slap you in your case and all the while you can bring it you know. But as public for law all made for when it was babies and resident lived long here a new country is a kind of a self-sustaining machine. We've got to go in for ourselves. When folks take the brunt acetyl in wild land somebody has got to and residents have to pay tall taxes we can't afford to scare off the wild beasts and bring their property into market for nothing. Why old Sykes who lives down east in Connecticut he pays half the taxes a puddle of food and you don't moan for sections of land. The sensors kind of look at the spirit of the law when they lay taxis and the spirit of the ostrich is according to circumstances. And it's just so in love as to what is

favorable to the part of audience. Courts lean that way it's kind of secondary to do I'm kind of a self-preservation primary law teacher you know. Therefore I was particular to know who was clean when you land my fee for an opinion is one dot here thank you. Who is a woman. Old Mrs. Bridget and she signed the deed but she claims she was deranged when she did it. Now you've a half dozen defenses and each will blow the case guy first. Nobody can set up insanity in a new country because they make nothing here to make anybody insane and if there was judges and juries that think a little too much of themselves that is the Bushies are to allow them to prove yourself a fool in open court. There's a pride that will permit it and that's the law. But I have heard like most Western Settlements was made up of all kinds of materials all sorts of folks holing every sort of opinion and trained in many different ways for life in such a miscellaneous place were keen Yankee

stubborn Pennsylvania and reckless Southerner had brought together their early habits in associations and educations. It was to be expected that they established relationships of the mother country's legal system should weaken at the relations of lawyer client jurymen judge voter and taxpayer each with respect to each should change but the change in the legal system was only one thing from Tir conditions also produced a new breed of lawyers rawer and exuberant far from the famous and ancient schools of the law and on the making the shifting conditions of the new settlements. These new practitioners of the law were noted early by Americans with an eye and an ear for legal humor. Our second piece today is adapted from a book called flush times in Alabama and Mississippi. The scene is a meeting of three southern lawyers in San Francisco in the 1850s.

They introduce us to Kay Burton one of the new breed of like gentlemen down on the surface and have an hour but I don't it's a pleasure to have lawyers from the Alabama Mississippi country at table again here in San Francisco I must admit I felt homesick at times for my old stamping ground. Well Gordon here and always your old Devon groans All right Jim but you know that I'm new from Virginia Alabama Mississippi we're just stopover for me on the way out here. In any case Jim you've had excitement here with The Gold Rush in the city mushroom and talk of railroads from the east to the west. Now this comes on the side of my head. We're going to Barbados just brought up from the duck. You should compare with the Gulf Coast and even with those you know from Thailand you remember the oysters. Well gentlemen your cave Berton Tales Of The Long ago are now to be in order as well just sit back relax and when you

first came out to Alabama was prominent among the members of its bar man a mark not too deeply versed in the law IT departments of the profession. You went in for a gap accord he couldn't see the use of the jury it was him and he was for a jury and everything and for allowing the jury 12 of their privileges by any interference from the court gave any judge of court and aristocratic institution but a jury that was Republicanism in action. He liked a free swing at him. Yeah an interrupted misstatement irrelevant question. And so he was known to the Alabama. And in one sense his regard for truth was exceptional so

considerable indeed that he spent most of his time embellishing it. Burton Bob was a large red faced scrupulous fellow he was a monstrous demagogue and spellbinding and like all such he was considerable animal appetite. He was a very nice to the kind of the quality of the food or drink he could send out a frolic like a raven or carcass by a separate instinct. Money was tied inseparably to ideas of bread meat and money didn't stand out to me but for breakfast snack snacks snack and spirits. What about the oysters. Well Bob it was Christmas week of the year. He ate some of us were preparing to celebrate that like an office. There are about a dozen of us fun live in youth with the judge and the state's attorney among them. The

boat just got up on their first trip and they brought on a special of Irish whiskey and a box of lint. Those were not the days of invitations Office night or day was as public a place as you know. And among the members of the bar there were not like the smell in the car that was there before the bell had rung for the tavern's upper. And several of the rest were in before long and then the judge suggested a trick which was to give you know to sort of get him tell on one of these legal yarns and then while he was in the agony of tell it for everyone to withdraw one by one and eat up all the drive of success such as that one by one at last all of them he entered the room in a high feather remember that he was an animal. He said he had torn himself from the supper table scarcely

eating anything. You know three or four cups of coffee a pitcher of cream a card of spare ribs and one or two feet of sausage like a condiment of crackling bread and a half pint of hogs brains thrown in. These were to provoke his appetite for the main course of the evening when the fire was crackling. Remember that I have a heart and the night was clear in frost and in the back room you could hear the call and every preparation the oysters like clients were being forced to shell out the knives and scrape on the shelves mouthwatering. And you could see spirits rise in that congenial atmosphere. He was taken laughing gas. But then judge started the commands by asking about mutual acquaintances he knew friends of and then he asked to tell him the anecdote that he'd heard repeated but not in all of its particulars of the earthquake

story. And there he let indicate a strong suit for if there was anything that I like better than anything else eating and drinking except it was on the story right. And if you like one story better than any other it was the earthquake story. So refreshing himself with about a pint of hot stuff. He turned his back to the fire part of the squad to do it three times and he began. We can only give it to you Bob in our way and only such boxes with and without the slang. But as it is here goes a report. It's about as faithful as a Congressman's. When the thing happened in Steubenville Kentucky I prosecute the great suit which probably you heard Susan B. Samuel for breach of promise of marriage was an aggravated case. Susan and three sisters were crying like babies.

Her father the preacher was taken on to pretty Sodom and the women in general were going it pretty strong on the Bahraini side and I had touched them a little bit on the feelings you know I think it's pining away on a monument. Yeah but I hadn't probed them deep on these points. OK. Bone I mean there was always just like a take if you were all by way of relish and someone said you know OK I just went to her be ready in a bit. Van Tromp was the judge you know get didn't know where you ought to have known him it was the best tyrant to live. I'd reckon he'd find me not less than $500 at $10 a clip that was all RAM can't tell if he had a crazy fit for fighting. He thought he owed it to the people to pay off the expenses of the judicial system by fine. So everything was a contempt ram Kant was the bloodiest tyrant this side of France. I am now

and where I begin did them all these days must be ready by this time. Seems to me I've smelled them for the last half hour and someone said there's a big Tory once gave it would be a bit yet. But what about the way. OK you haven't mentioned the earthquake. True exactly my mind so disturbed by the idea of those oysters being stewed out of all for me that's that I ramble. Now where was I. Oh yes I recollect now. I was commenting on Tom Marshall's attack on Molly Megan's testimony when Ma was our main witness she was an Irish servant girl and had peeped through the keyhole and seen the breach of promise going on upon the sofa. When I was speaking of Aaron and the oil and I had my arms stretched out in the jury were agape. Even old ram can't lean over the bench. Everything's death when what should have been such a clatter and noise above stairs as if the living were tumbling down. It

seems that the jury was hung upstairs in the other court room six and six at deadlock on a case of Jim Snipes versus Jerry leg. What are you getting all Steubenville was an excitement. 40 witnesses to his side not including impeaching and sustaining witnesses. Well the sheriff had summoned the witnesses from the muster roll at random. 14 so far one way and 20 the other as to identity you know in a ship and it turned out that the calf belonged to neither. There was more perjury than would pale the lower regions. One witness swore. And then someone interrupted but came about that case you were tried. Oh yeah. Well the jury upstairs wanted to hear my speech but the sheriff wouldn't let him out. He locked the door and he came down. But one of the jurors kicked at the locked door so hard that the jar broke the stove pipe off from the wires in the Mason's lodge room in about 40 yards of stove pipe about to stick around as a

barrow came lumbering over the banisters and Farrow with a crash like thunder in the grand jury room below and then came rolling down stairs four steps at a leap like a rock from a mountainside. Well. I had prepared the minds of the audience for a catastrophe and I was standing with my outstretched and this coming as it did had a fearful effect and the hung jury coming down the back stairs hearing all that noise started running down like so many wild buffalo so blase smiling at the prospect of so much good finding shirts. Before me all that confusion. But just then the plaster began to fall and the women began to shriek that billowed should consider the whole audience in contempt and fined them $10 apiece. But another section of the stovepipe came thundering down just then. And about an eighth of an acre of plaster knocking down sixty or seventy men and

women and the people in the galleries came rushing down some jumping over into the crowd below and a piece of plaster struck All right cat over their head and knocked him out of the judge's stand into the box where he turned over I have been on the record at Williams the bailiff shouted. What we mean went into hysterics and not knowing what to do. The bell rope and began tugging at it seriously. So it showed. There was a rush to the doors but the day being cold they were closed and locked from the inside and the crowd pressed in such a mass and a mist against them that I suppose there was a hundred tons of pressure on them and they could not be got open. And meantime the very devil was to pay in the court room. Old ram cat ran up the steps to the judges but he hoisted a window and he jumped through the green spraining an ankle. And Frank do it once a most eloquent man at the bar but who had flattened out three

hundred ninety. If I don't write behind the judge through the same window came thundering down on the ground like a real earthquake bumps the foot and fail senseless on RAM can't get help but jar and mashed and if he thought the earth quake it shook down a wall of the court house on him and he began to shout in a smothered call or a call or two and then someone shouted for an axe to cut through the front door and one was brought a big negro struck with all his might with a back of the Axe to knock it off. But there were about twenty heads pushed up against the door and these were knocked as dead by the blow as ever you saw under ice. Oh well most of them came to after a while. There was only three that were buried and Tyson had his skull fractured but they put silver plate in the cracks and he got over it. A few brains spilled out something of the sort but his appetite was restored. Well

I reckon you'd like to know what became of my case. Now you see about a week later but there came in smacking his lips and he remarked how the oysters had been fine. Have you been eating oysters. Joe get my ready. A few dozen. I have had all the better stewed soup and put on plenty of crackers and butter and pickles Joe and then Joe made his appearance and the day's all gone past Digimon ate every one. Speaking of the frolic afterwards he said that he didn't care a dern for oysters but it pained him to think that men he took to be friends should have done him secretly I'm sure it was. Not only did America change the dignified relations of the legal system the relations

between lawyer client jury judge voter and taxpayer. But it also educated a new breed of legal personalities men who in the eyes of conservatives must have seemed more politicians than lawyers and like most really new things these new lawyers like Burton seemed without dignity to the lawmen of older more established systems and mistrust mockery and laughter on either side. The dignity of the law diminished changes in its established ways seem feasible and desirable. And it changed conception of the law itself appeared. Instead of conceiving of it as a body of precedence as present decision based on former decisions men began to think of it as an enacted code. And the conflicts between the old and new law give rise to many amusing situations especially where the new codes fail to look deeply or comprehensively into the variety and complexity of human life. For

example there is this story of a case tried under the Code of California far to the west and long after the Magna Carta. We give it as it was reported in The Los Angeles weekly express of December 18th 1873. The case is that of the people vs.. Oh it's January last odes an Englishman of good education married Mrs Nancy Foreland a widow of great beauty and yeah. And since they have had a child. But just before the birth of this child an older woman arrived accompanied by three children. She sought all of his whereabouts proceeded to his residence and there continued to reside. The neighbors learning that this woman and odes comported themselves as man and wife grew indignant and laid criminal complaint against them both for open and notorious cohabitation and adultery. But when brought to trial produced DISA tific of marriage and proved by it and other documents that the woman was his wife who had married him

twenty years before. In New Zealand the accused were there upon acquitted and returned home where odes continued to live with two women. Thereupon another complaint charging the same offense against odes and wife number two was laid before the same justice upon trial. Prove that eight years before he had left his homestead in New Zealand temporarily in the hands of his wife and that on his return he had found the homestead burned and his family gone. Upon this state of the facts odes claimed that his marriage to Mrs odes number two was valid under that section of the California code which provides that the marriage of a person having a former husband or wife living is void unless such former husband or wife was absent and not known for the space of five successive years. So the accused were acquitted under the code and returned home where odes continued to live with two women.

A minister who expressed elated with those learned that owed was in principle an agonist and that he himself fully agreed with the reverend gentleman in saying that the Code Commission in allowing bigamy could not be too severely condemned. But it went on to say that he for his part could not pretend to be wiser than the law. The reverend gentleman thereupon left an indignation which was greatly increased the following Sunday at seeing odes who had always been a regular in his attendance at church seated in his pew with two wives. All other means failing. The neighbors of Rhodes called a mass meeting which proposed finally as a solution to petition the state legislature to pass a special act dissolving odes last marriage but odes who was present said that was a no go for by the Constitution of California it was expressly provided that no divorce shall be granted by the legislature. Well it was then proposed to petition the legislature to call a constitutional convention for the purpose of a knowledge one

or the other of two marriages. But it was produced. The tenth article of the United States Constitution which says no state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts and marriage oaths added is a contract so owed was ready to return home where he lived with two wives. But then a citizen of Los Angeles proposed a simple solution that they hang us. As with other forms of American humor American legal humor is much concerned with contrasts between the old and the new. We noticed in our first piece the place of principle in a new settlement. In our second piece the place of a new lawyer in an old profession. And in this last report the place of a bigamist between precedence and new code. It's in the contrast between the old dignities and the new

exuberance is lie the amusements that draw collectors of American legal humor. And it should be noted that the frontier is involved in our examples of legal humor. The first sketch concerned a deep truth about new settlements who want older settlements to pay their way. The second example concerned flush times when Alabama and Mississippi were new settled and lawyers were like train performers destined to delight the crowd. And in the third sketch from two year New Zealand and Frontier California both contributed to the comfort of the legal bigamous Mr. Rhodes irritated California experimenters with the law to the point of their wishing to hang him. In each case frontier conditions in a loose sense of the term served to mark out some amusement with the residing dignity of the law. Our three pieces today were taken from Henry Hiram Riley's puddle papers on the

humors of the West from Joseph Baldwin's flush times of Alabama and Mississippi and from market house readings in American legal history. This latter item was brought to our attention by the national press and was used with the kind permission of Mr. Howell and the Harvard University Press. We hope you have enjoyed them all. Are OK. Yeah I. Think you're right. Today's voices. Henry Lee. Band. Produced by e Scott Bryce technical operation by George Lawrence. We invite you to listen next week to the heritage of American humor a series of

15 dramatized essays written and narrated by Professor Joseph AP's meal of the University of North Dakota Department of English. He offers you a perspective on the relationship between the American humor found in newspapers books are entitled. And the American outlook from Colonial to lease and. The heritage of American humor is produced and recorded by the University of North Dakota broadcasting served. Under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center. And is being distributed by the National Association of educational broadcast. This is the N.A. radio network in. The head. I.