Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/241

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An Attack on the Doctrine of Stare Decisis they start off on their lonely journey (as absolutely without chart or compass as a balloon) by assuming that appellant was "deaf," which is simply a product of the imagination, except when he was knocked "senseless," for he was not only “deaf" but

dead, to all appearances, for the time being. "A change comes over the spirit of the dream," and appellant will now, as Jake Isaac: said, at the Charleston convention, make a "few unnecessary remarks.” The testimony of Eli Adams, brakeman, is such that one is reminded of that passage of scripture which says, "Out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee." The other brakeman, A. McRae, is also

against appellee, his employer. The engineer, F. L. Topia, gives the case away. All these witnesses (of appellee) say that appellant did all in his power to avoid the injury and admit that defendant (appellee) did not. _ They admit that the horses were beyond the control of appellant, after being frightened by appellee, who had notice, and neither stopped nor tried. That there was an obstruction to the view of appellant (woods); that the track was curved and that there was neither sound of bell or whistle, which was required by statute, as is fully set out in the tWenty-two-page brief filed by appellant on the original appeal from the peremptory (empty) instruction of the Cir cuit Judge, as also the other statutes and Supreme Court decisions there cited, which, with the facts, caused the Court to reverse

and remand said cause, to which this "sug gestion of error is made." Pardon a momentary digression for the suggestion-en passant—that it seems strange that this Italian (Topia) should be so regard less of the rights of his kinsman, the African ('tis true one’s avocation in life was but to

engineer a plow and talk business to a mule, while the other engineered an iron horse of great magnitude and power and ploughed over anything that got on the track, Whether

man

or

beast),

for it is

a well-known historic fact that during the palmy days of Rome over a million Africans were imported into Italy, and none deported. They are not there today nor their descendants, except as the Latin race, for they merged, which was no sooner done than the Roman soldier, who, to that time, had

223

been both the terror and conqueror of the world, lost courage, by this inferior mixture, and fled from the yellow-haired barbarians who flocked out of the snow-covered forests of Germany and overran the fertile fields of sunny Italy. In this connection, permit us further to remark that the truth that "history repeats itself" was exemplified during the Franco-Prussian war, when the descendants of these same Germans left their pipes in beer gardens of Berlin and opened the wine presses of France (same Latin race) with the

points of their swords. The conclusion leads us to remark that, as Moses was only per mitted to look at the promised land from Pisgah's height, then doomed by only one sin of commission to descend into the valley of

disappointment,

so,

in

this

instance,

appellee having caught one sight of the “happy land of Canaan" that lies, not beyond the Jordan, but the Pearl, by the misdirected

efforts of his guide in the inferior court, must now descend the bean stalk of his expectation (we will not say erected by a Jack) and wallow in what Milton calls the "Slough of Despond," which the unlettered Afrimn terms with equal aptitude, though less elegance of expression, “The low grounds

of sorrow."

When the aforesaid “suggestion of error" (or, to be more exact, in the nature of a bill of particulars, the error of suggestion) was

filed appellee did but "listen with credulity to the whisperings of fancy and pursue with pleasure the phantoms of hope"—-a hope, however, that died as soon as it left the arms of its wet-nurse, to wit, the Circuit Court of Lowndes County. Although our Constitution says that justice shall be had "without delay," yet an exacting conscience compels us to admit that appellee cannot be else but slow, of which we hereby and herewith make profert of one of its “passenger trains," which to leave and join a funeral procession is but to invite an attack of vertigo. One has to take morphine after traveling on one to restore his normal activity. Its conductors die of old age between stations. Those who are fortunate enough to begin young and “by reason of strength" live beyond the span of man—“three score years and ten"—-are not recognized by their families on return (if any be living) and are the Rip Van Winkles of the twentieth century. It was the misfortune of appellant that he was not traveling in the same direction with