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Show STORIES OF THE BENCH AND BAR. 249 himself to be temporarily dumfounded, made so however not by counsel, but by Court. "It was in 1879, before Judge (now Senator) Bowen. The Colonel was making a vigorous argument against certain instructions requested by the defendant, and which, to his mind, were vicious in the extreme. " He spoke loudly and effectively, and at last struck one clause for the destruction of which he had saved his best arguments and most ponderous weapons. " He thundered against it with logic, authority and with invective, until that poor instructor looked like a felon without benefit of clergy. After dissecting it, riddling it, tearing it to pieces and utterly annihilating it, he raised himself to full height and brought down his last sentence with the sledge force of a trip-hammer, something after this fashion: 'Now, your Honor, after this tremendous array of authority, which I defy the gentleman on the other side to contradict; after all these reasons, founded alike upon logic and precedent; after this exposition of the insidious doctrines which it is designed shall be instilled through the agency of this instruction into this cause; after all these things, I ask, in the name of reason, in the name of equity and fair dealing, by all those sacred principles which underlie and give life to our jurisprudence, by the memory of those great jurists whose lucid expositions of these momentous and all-important rules of law, stand as their greatest monuments, will you not refuse this instruction?' " At this instant Judge Bowen interrupted by saying, ' Bissell, give me a cigar!' Bissell stopped-'stopped with a start' in the midst of his eloquence, mechanically took a cigar from his vest pocket, walked to the bench, handed |