Even Judge Bassett sent for me to his room and practically told me I had nothing to fear, so I returned at two o'clock, resolved to do my best and at all costs to keep smiling. The examination continued in a crowded court till four o'clock and then Judge Stephens sat down.
I had done better in this session, but my examiner had caught me in a trap on a moot point in the law of evidence, and I could have kicked myself. But Hutchings rose as the senior of my two examiners who had been appointed by the court, and said simply that now he repeated the opinion he had already had the honor to convey to Judge Bassett, that I was a fit and proper person to practice law in the state of Kansas.
«Judge Stephens,» he added, «has shown us how widely read he is in English common law, but some of us knew that before, and in any case his erudition should not be made a purgatory to candidates. It looks,» he went on, «as if he wished to punish Mr. Harris for his superiority to all his classmates. «Impartial persons in this audience will admit,» he concluded, «that Mr. Harris has come brilliantly out of an exceedingly severe test; and I have the pleasant task of proposing, your Honor, that he now be admitted within the bar, though he may not be able to practice till he becomes a full citizen two years hence.» Everyone expected that Barker would second this proposal, but while he was rising, Judge Stephens began to speak.
«I desire,» he said, «to second that proposal, and I think I ought to explain why I subjected Mr. Harris to a severe examination in open court. Since I came to Kansas from the state of New York twenty-five years ago, I have been asked a score of times to examine one candidate or another. I always refused. I did not wish to punish western candidates by putting them against our eastern standards. But here at long last appears a candidate who has won honor in the university, to whom, therefore, a stiff examination in open court can only be a vindication; and accordingly I examined Mr. Harris as if he had been in the state of New York; for surely Kansas too has come of age and its inhabitants cannot wish to be humored as inferiors.
«This whole affair,» he went on, «reminds me of a story told in the east of a dog fancier. The father lived by breeding and training bull dogs. One day he got an extraordinary promising pup and the father and son used to hunker down, shake their arms at the pup and thus encourage him to seize hold of their coat sleeves and hang on.
While engaged in this game once, the bull-pup, grown bold by constant praise, sprang up and seized the father by the nose. Instinctively, the old man began to choke him off, but the son exclaimed, 'Don't, father, don't for God's sake! It may be hard on you, but it'll be the making of the pup.' So my examination, I thought, might be hard on Mr.
Harris, but it would be the making of him.» The court roared and I applauded merrily. Judge Stephens continued. «I desire, however, to show myself not an enemy but a friend of Mr. Harris, whom I have known for some years. Mr. Hutchings evidently thinks that Mr. Harris must wait two years in order to become a citizen of the United States. I am glad from my reading of the statute laws of my country to be able to assure him that Mr. Harris need not wait a day. The law says that if a minor has lived three years in any state, he may on coming of age choose to become a citizen of the United States; and if Mr. Harris chooses to be one of us, he can be admitted at once as a citizen; and if your Honor approve, be allowed also to practice law tomorrow.»
He sat down amid great applause, in which I joined most heartily.
So on that day I was admitted to practice law as a full fledged citizen. Unluckily for me, when I asked the clerk of the court for my full papers, he gave me the certificate of my admission to practice law in Lawrence, saying that as this could only be given a citizen, it in itself was sufficient. Forty odd years later the government of Woodrow Wilson refused to accept this plain proof of my citizenship and thus put me to much trouble by forcing me to get naturalized again! But at the moment in Lawrence I was all cock-a-hoop and forthwith took a room on the same first floor where Barker amp; Sommerfeld had their offices and put out my shingle. I have told this story of my examination at great length because I think it shows as in a glass the amenities and deep kindness of the American character. A couple of days later I was again in Philadelphia.
Towards the end of this year, 1875,1 believe, or the beginning of 1876, Smith drew my attention to an announcement that Walt Whitman, the poet, was going to speak in Philadelphia on Thomas Paine, the notorious infidel, who, according to Washington, had done more to secure the independence of the United States than any other man. Smith determined to go to the meeting, and if Whitman could rehabilitate Paine against the venomous attacks of Christian clergymen who asserted without contradiction that Paine was a notorious drunkard and of the loosest character, he would induce Forney to let him write an exhaustive and forceful defence of Paine in the Press. I felt pretty sure that such an article would never appear, but I would not pour cold water on Smith's enthusiasm. The day came, one of those villainous days common enough in Philadelphia in every winter: the temperature was about zero with snow falling whenever the driving wind permitted. In the afternoon Smith finally determined that he must not risk it and asked me to go in his stead. I consented willingly, and he spent some hours in reading to me the best of Whitman's poetry, laying especial stress, I remember, on When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. He assured me again and again that Whitman and Poe were the two greatest poets these States had ever produced, and he hoped I would be very nice to the great man. Nothing could be more depressing than the aspect of the hall that night: ill-lit and half-heated, with perhaps thirty persons scattered about in a space that would have accommodated a thousand. Such was the reception America accorded to one of its greatest spirits, though that view of the matter did not strike me for many a year. I took my seat in the middle of the first row, pulled out my notebook and made ready. In a few minutes Whitman came on the platform from the to say just what he had to say, neither more nor. He walked slowly, stiffly, which made me grin, for I did not then know that he had had a stroke of paralysis, and I thought his peculiar walk a mere pose. Besides, his clothes were astonishingly ill fitting and ill suited to his figure.
He must have been nearly six feet in height and strongly made; yet he wore a short jacket which cocked up behind in the perkiest way. Looked at from the front, his white collar was wide open and discovered a tuft of grey hairs, while his trousers that corkscrewed about his legs had parted company with his vest and disclosed a margin of dingy white shirt. His appearance filled me-poor little English snob that I was-with contempt: he recalled to my memory irresistibly an old Cochin-China rooster I had seen when a boy; it stalked across the farmyard with the same slow, stiff gait and carried a stubby tail cocked up behind. Yet a second look showed me Whitman as a fine figure of a man with something arresting in the perfect simplicity and sincerity of voice and manner. He arranged his notes in complete silence and began to speak very slowly, often pausing for a better word or to consult his papers. Sometimes hesitating and repeating himself-clearly an unpracticed speaker who disdained any semblance of oratory. He told us simply that in his youth he had met and got to know very well a certain colonel in the army who had known Thomas Paine intimately. This colonel had assured him more than once that all the accusations against Paine's habits and character were false-a mere outcome of Christian bigotry. Paine would drink a glass or two of wine at dinner like all well-bred men of that day; but he was very moderate and in the last ten years of his life, the colonel asserted, Paine never once drank to excess. The colonel cleared Paine, too, of looseness of morals in much the same decisive way, and finally spoke of him as invariably well conducted, of witty speech and a vast fund of information, a most interesting and agreeable companion. And the colonel was an unimpeachable witness, Whitman assured us, a man of the highest honor and most scrupulous veracity. Whitman spoke with such uncommon slowness that I was easily able to take down the chief sentences in longhand: he was manifestly determined to say just what he had to say, neither more nor less, which made an impression of singular sincerity and truthfulness. When he had finished, I went up on the platform to see him near at hand and draw him out if possible. I showed him my card of the Press and asked him if he would kindly sign and thus authenticate the sentences on Paine he had used in his address. «Aye, aye!» was all he said; but he read the half dozen sentences carefully, here and there correcting a word. I thanked him and said Professor Smith, an editor of the Press, had sent me to get a word-for-word report of his speech, for he purposed writing an article in the Press on Paine, whom he greatly admired.