The day fixed for the trial came. I felt prepared, strong at all points save one, that of my client’s parentage. There was a suspicion about it which would not tell well with the jury. As to the law which governed the case, provided no knowledge of the first marriage were brought home to my client prior to the springing of her mortgage, I was sure of it; and I believe that no one of my brethren at the “Bar” would now dispute the correctness of my opinion. But the fact of knowledge, a jury might infer from very slight evidence, and my client’s seeming bastardy and strange ignorance of her father, and of her mother even, beyond the certainty that she once lived and cared well for her young days, were better fitted to excite suspicion and clothe her in the garb of an adventurer, than to secure pity or be urged as arguments of innocence. This was the assailable point. I had thought much upon it, and had concluded that it was to be best defended by an open avowal, and a bold appeal to the more generous sympathies of our nature. Thus armed, I entered the court-room.

The court was upon the bench, and the opposite party, with his counsel, was there, ready, expecting the battle, and confident of a success which was to take from the widow all that she possessed. Mr. Cornelius was there. Tall and meagre in his person, with cheeks hollowed and hair whitened, by age and long continued labor and great self-denial, ending in extreme penuriousness, his eyes alone retained a show of the vigor of youth. Gray, cold and piercing, they rolled quickly and incessantly from side to side, as if every where and at all times in search of the yellow metal upon which his soul fed, and grew smaller and smaller, even to a pin’s point. His brow was thickly furrowed with the lines of gain; but it was a noble one, and showed a strong intellect bound in chains of its own forging—enslaved to Mammon. Yes, John Cornelius cannot say, on that last day when rich and poor shall stand, equal at the feet and shoulders, before their common God, that he labored according to his light. Success in life, success in any department of the business of life, a success extended over a quarter of a century of years, presupposes intellect, and a great deal of it. A fortune may be won by the turn of a card, and a fortune may be lost as well; but that fortune which is gathered slowly and surely, the result of foresight, of a deep knowledge of the ways of commerce, its growth, fluctuations and changes, of its adaptation to the wants of men and the humors of the times; the result of a providence which sees the coming storm and provides for it, which sees the prosperous breeze and catches it—such a fortune is the result of a strong intellect, equally with any greatness whatever. John Cornelius cannot say that he labored according to his light!

There he sat, and as he clutched, with his long, thin, bony fingers, at the papers which lay spread out upon the table before him, as if they were the stout line which was to draw unto him the gold he coveted, I thought of the story of the Rich Man and the Lamb, told in the olden writ.

My client was also beside me. Still habited in black—she might well mourn the wrong she had suffered, if not the man she had loved—the veil lifted from her face, a little pale with hope and sorrow, and a womanly modesty possessing in quick turn all her features.

She won the favor of the court; and the jury, as each was sworn and took his seat within the box, whispered compassion.

——