it is damnable to make such statements
to these people, Colonel Woolford!"

The Colonel thereupon, with a deeply injured air, said:

"General Fry, you and I have been friends a life-time. We
hooked watermelons, hunted coons, and attended all the frolics
together when we were boys. We slept under the same blanket,
belonged to the same mess, and fought side by side at Palo Alto
and Cerro Gordo; we shed our blood on the same battlefields when
fighting to save this glorious Union. I have loved you, General
Fry, like a brother, but this is too much, it is putting friendship
to a turrible test; it is a little more than flesh and blood can
stand."

Pausing for a moment, he apparently recovered himself from the deep
emotion he had just shown, then quietly resuming, he said, "What
I have said about the way they treated old Jeff is true, and here is
my witness." He called out, "Bill, tell the General what you
saw them do with old Jeff."

Bill, a tall, lank, one-gallowsed mountaineer, leaning against a
sapling near by, promptly deposed that he was present at the time,
saw old Jeff led out, tied to a stake and finally disappear in a
puff of smoke. At this, General Fry, without the formality of a
farewell, immediately shook the mountain dust from his feet, mounted
his horse, and, looking neither to the right nor to the left,
retraced his steps to Danville, and without delay informed the
State Committee that if they wanted _any further joint debates with
old Frank Woolford,_ they would have to send some one else.

Years after, seated at my desk in the Postoffice Department in
Washington, after I had appointed a few cross-road postmasters for
Congressman Woolford, I ventured to inquire of him whether he
had ever had a joint debate with General Fry. With a suppressed
chuckle, and a quaint gleam of his remaining eye, he significantly
replied, _"It won't do, Colonel, to believe everything you hear!"_

XXII
THE SAGE OF THE BAR

WITTY SAYINGS OF MR. EVARTS--HE DEFENDS PRESIDENT JOHNSON BEFORE
THE COURT OF IMPEACHMENT--DIFFERENT OPINIONS AS TO THE REAL CHARACTER
OF THAT TRIBUNAL--MR. BOUTWELL'S ATTEMPT TO INDICATE THE PUNISHMENT
MERITED BY THE PRESIDENT--MR. EVARTS'S REPLY--EXCHANGE OF COURTESIES
BY MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE.

The late William M. Evarts, at one time the head of the American
bar, said many things in his lighter moments worthy of remembrance.

Upon his retirement from the bar to accept the position of Secret