Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885

On the morning of the fated day Mrs. Tarbell could have proceeded to the court-room in state, for not only did the entire Stiles family present itself at her office three-quarters of an hour before the time, but Mr. Mecutchen, the tobacconist, also dropped in, with an air of always being early at trials.

"I couldn't keep ma at home, Mrs. Tarbell," said Miss Stiles briefly, but with some little shame. "She would come. She thought it would take an hour and a half to get here from Pulaski Street; didn't you, ma?"

Mrs. Stiles gave an agitated groan and looked about helplessly for a chair. She was walking with a cane, and had on a miraculous black silk, the seams of which were like the ridges of a ploughed field. Miss Georgiana Stiles, the younger daughter, was almost invisible under a straw hat with feathers waving from its pinnacled crown. Miss Celandine, by no means a bad-looking young lady, wore her best black jersey, buttoned at the throat, over her cambric body, her best pique skirt, trimmed with torchon lace, her white silk mitts, and her blue-and-white bonnet. After settling Mrs. Stiles in a corner with Georgiana, Tecumseh Sherman, and Augustus, Celandine and Mr. Mecutchen disappeared, to go and stand on the door-step. Mrs. Tarbell guessed where they were going, and would have liked to hint that the door-step was not a dignified place for her client, but, if the truth must be told, she was afraid to do so. For Miss Stiles had by this time utterly and completely subjugated her, and Mrs. Tarbell hardly knew which of them was the attorney of record in Stiles vs. The Railway Company. There can be no doubt that Miss Celandine was an admirable young lady. She was paying the expenses of the case out of her own savings,--savings which had been the secret result of secret labors with the pen and type-writer. As soon as the accident happened she quitted the High School, put aside her books, and divided her time between nursing her mother and keeping the books of a successful but illiterate milliner, who offered her a place; and she gave so many other evidences of good sense and determination that Mrs. Tarbell felt it would be hopeless to try to resist her. Her decision did not seem to have altered in the least, nor was she at all discouraged by Mrs. Tarbell's warnings; and Mrs. Tarbell found that in every conversation which took place on the subject Mrs. Tarbell began as a philosopher and ended as a disputant. All that could be done was to give Miss Stiles her own way and try to improve her taste in dress if possible. It was practically understood between them, though Mrs. Tarbell had as yet refused to commit herself, that as soon as the trial was over and the damages had been pocketed, Miss Celandine should be duly installed, enrolled, and accredited as a student in the office of Juddson and Tarbell. In the mean time, Augustus had been made an office-boy through Mr. Juddson's interest.

The Stileses having been sent on before, Mrs. Tarbell, attended by the office-boy bearing a bag full of books and papers, slipped quietly over to court, whither Mr. Juddson said he would follow her in a few moments. The room was crowded. Judge Measy had not yet appeared.

Mrs. Tarbell looked about her. It was the first day of the autumn term, and, for one reason or another, the bar was very fully represented. There was ex-Judge Dingley, with his frills and his snuff-box; Mr. Moddison, with his shaggy eyebrows and square jaw; Mr. Brileson, almost as long and thin as his nose; Mr. Eakins, looking as much like Oily Gammon as ever; and, besides the leaders of the bar, any number of the rank and file, especially of the junior members of the profession; and with some of these young gentlemen's elder brothers Mrs. Tarbell had danced, once on a time. There was a stir as Mrs. Tarbell came in; the lawyers made way for her, and the jurors, witnesses, and spectators craned their necks to get a look at her. Among the spectators, of course, were Mrs. Pegley and the Pegleyites. Mrs. Tarbell knew that they were there, but did not look at them. Mr. Pope rose magnificent and shook hands with her; several persons shook hands with her. Mrs. Tarbell felt that she was going to acquit herself commendably. She had gone over the case three or four times with Alexander, she had rehearsed her speech until she knew it by heart, she had joked about the case with her friends (not her Pegley friends) at Cape May until she was no longer afraid of it, if she ever had been, and she was quite able to feel that Pope was insignificant. She had at first been filled with an apprehension that he would become very intimate with her on the strength of their mutual antagonism; but when several days passed by, and he had done nothing more than bow courteously, she reflected that, after all, it was not a very uncommon occurrence for him to have a jury case; and when he privately came and offered to compromise she wondered what there had ever been to frighten her in the man. She refused the compromise, of course: if her case had been only half as strong she would have refused it.

Rap! rap! Silence, please. His honor appeared, wiping his learned brow, for it was an oppressively hot day, and the clerk proclaimed that all persons might draw near and be heard by the honorable court. The jurors answered to their names. Mr. Juddson, seated by his sister's elbow, pushed the jury-list towards her, with a slight nod of encouragement. Mrs. Tarbell did not need encouragement: she knew the names of the objectionable jurors by heart, and she was quite ready.

The court-room settled down into a hush of subdued expectation, and Stiles vs. The Railway Company was called. Mr. Pope and Mrs. Tarbell rose, bowed to each other and to the court: they were ready to go on.

Mr. Pope drew first blood. Eight jurors were already in the box, and the clerk called out, "John Ewing." John Ewing took his seat; there was no cross against his name, and Mrs. Tarbell had no challenge to make, when, before another name could be called, he leaned forward and called out, in an easy voice, "Mrs. Tarbell, ef I have to swear in this case I mout as well tell you that I used to work for the railway company."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Tarbell calmly, after a moment's hesitation. "Take your seat, Mr. Ewing. I have entire confidence in your impartiality." She waved her hand as if to include the whole of the jury, so far as completed,--nay, the whole of the panel,--in the compliment, and the jurors appeared to be suitably impressed.

But Mr. Pope rose. "Wait one minute, Mr. Ewing," he said, in a voice which breathed rugged honesty and uncompromising determination. "I shall have to ask you to withdraw." He shook his head sternly. "I cannot, whatever may be the generous toleration of my learned opponent, I cannot knowingly allow anybody who has any connection with my client to go on the jury."

"That makes four challenges for him," whispered Mr. Juddson. Mrs. Tarbell shook her head impatiently, and as Mr. Ewing left the box he smiled a faint yet unmistakable smile at somebody in the crowd, and Mrs. Tarbell became instantly convinced that the whole affair, even to the drawing of Mr. Ewing's name by the court clerk, was a neatly-arranged plot of Mr. Pope's, and, in her resentment, she challenged the next juror out of hand, though he had an eye so humid and sympathetic that he looked good for not only sentimental damages, but punitive damages of the most revengeful description.

But she opened her case admirably. There was a slight hum as she rose; her attitude was dignified, and she might have been called handsome. Though every one else was stifling with the heat, she looked cool and self-possessed, and her first sentences won her the respect of the bar; for she made the matter-of-course explanation in a fairly novel manner.

"Gentlemen of the jury," said she, "you know without my telling you that when my client, the plaintiff, Mrs. Stiles, comes here and says that she has suffered at the hands of the railway company damages to the amount of ten thousand dollars, she is not exaggerating her sufferings for the sake of enlisting your sympathy. It is not that she comes to you with feminine weakness, displaying her injuries, and, with feminine resentment, overstating them and their effects, to rouse your pity. You know, and I only remind you of it, that the rule of law forbids you to give her more than she asks for: so I, on her behalf, take care that she shall not ask for less than you might give her."

This was very well, and the jury probably understood as much.

Mrs. Tarbell paused a moment, and then proceeded in an impressive voice: "But Mrs. Stiles's injuries, gentlemen, are not slight; she does not ask you for a mere nominal sum in compensation of them, nor, in view of the facts, will any sum that you do give her seem excessive. I shall show you, gentlemen, that Mrs. Stiles, a widow, left almost penniless by her husband, who has by her own efforts brought up and educated four children, two of whom are still entirely dependent upon her, was, on the ninth day of April last, through the negligence of the defendant, injured in such a way as to give her seven weeks of the most painful suffering and to render her unable for the rest of her life to do the work upon which she has hitherto mainly depended for the support of herself and her family. I shall show you that Mrs. Stiles attempted to get on one of the defendant's cars; that while she was so doing the car was started and she thrown off; that she sustained a sprain of the right ankle and a fracture of the fibula; that the accident has resulted in laming her for life and incapacitating her for the use of a sewing-machine; and that it was by her sewing-machine that she supported herself. Mrs. Stiles will now tell you her own story."

With this Mrs. Tarbell sat down. She had not the keen penetration which years of practice give to a finished advocate, but she had feminine instinct, which served her in quite as good stead; and, short as was the time she had been addressing that jury, she felt that she could answer for it as certainly as fifteen years before she could have answered for one of her admirers. If Mr. Juddson had only been another woman she could have told him this, but a glance would have been wasted on him: so she kept her triumph to herself. She looked at the bullet-headed young juror, at the benignant old juror, at the fat-faced and dropsical juror, at the preternaturally-solemn negro juror, at the lantern-jawed foreman with the black moustache; she was on a perfectly good understanding with them, and knew what to say to each one of them. She felt that she could have afforded to be a little less brief. However, Mrs. Stiles would not-- By the way, where was Mrs. Stiles?

"Mrs. Stiles!" cried Mrs. Tarbell, half rising. "Mrs. Stiles, will you please take the stand?"

Mrs. Stiles rose from her seat against the railing, and, after confiding her second daughter to the care of Miss Celandine,--a ceremony which was performed by her with evident anxiety,--hobbled to the witness-stand on the arm of Mr. Mecutchen, who had been sitting beside her.