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“ What answer have you to make to this, Mr. District Attorney?”
said the judge.
He hadn't any, and my client was acquitted.
“Have you anything further against Record, Mr. District Attorney?”
continued the judge.
“If not, let him be discharged.”
“ Will your Honor please stop a moment,” said I.
“I don't want Record discharged.
I have not got all my fees yet.”
“ I thought,” the judge laughingly said, “that you were too well instructed a lawyer not to know that it is best to get your fees before you try such cases?”
“I usually do, your honor,” said I; “but in this case, I was promised by the city marshal who sits there that if I got Record clear he would throw up his commission.
If he declines to do it, I move your Honor to enforce his promise.”
“Well,” said the judge laughing, “if I attend to that, I cannot at this time, Mr. Butler.”
“I hardly supposed you could,” I said, “and Record may go.”
The legislature at its next session passed an act which made severing portions of real estate for a felonious intent larceny,--so that now one may be indicted for stealing apples from trees, which before could not be done.
I do not mean it should be understood that I won in all the sharp points I took; far from it, but I took them all the same and not infrequently won.
On the 19th of August, 1841, Congress passed an act establishing a system of bankruptcy.
There had been no bankrupt law since that of 1800, and I saw that I should, by studying it, know as much about the new law as anybody, and more, if I examined the decisions under the old system and under the English bankrupt laws with more diligence than anybody else.
I also reasoned that there would be a large number of private cases arising under that law. I therefore gave it most painstaking and exhaustive study, devoting to it all the time I had and what I could rob from sleep, in order to prepare myself in this branch of professional work.
This was noised about in the profession, and I was applied to at once by some of my seniors at the bar, and I also had some cases of my own under that law. Thus it came about that in 1842 I tried the first two bankrupt cases to a jury.
One was before Judge Story in the Circuit Court in the District of Massachusetts, and the other before Judge Harvey in the Circuit
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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