F. Colburn Adams - "Justice in the By Ways"

Thornton W. Burgess - "Old Mother West Wind"

L. Lamprey - "Masters of the Guild"

John Bunyan - "The Pharisee And The Publican"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Law of the Land

E >> Emerson Hough >> The Law of the Land




"So it is you, child," said Colonel Blount; "it is you again! Just as
you went. You're Miss Lady, come back to us again." Impulsively
forgetting everything but the one thought, he sprang to her and flung
his arm about her shoulders. And Miss Lady could not find it in her
heart to shrink from such a welcome.

"Oh, I'm glad to see you--glad to see you," repeated Calvin Blount.
"Mr. Eddring, here, was just saying how good it is to have you back
again."

Mute, she turned her eyes toward Eddring. The short upper lip
trembled; in her eyes there was more than half a suspicion of
moisture.

"Yes, we are very glad," said John Eddring, simply. With no word she
put out her hand to each, and drew them out into the hall.




CHAPTER XVI

THE NEW SHERIFF


As Eddring and Blount sat engaged in conversation after dinner that
same evening, they were interrupted by a sudden disturbance in the
hall. "Stan' aside, you-all," cried a pompous voice. "You wanteh
hindeh a officah o' de law?"

Hurrying footfalls followed, and presently the face of old Bill,
Colonel Blount's faithful bear-hunter, appeared at the door, "Hit's
dat fool new sheriff, Mas' Cunnel," he explained, "Mose Taylor. Why,
he says he got a wah'nt fo' you. I tol' him like enough you was
busy."

"Let him come in, Bill, let him come right along in," said Calvin
Blount, suavely. "Mose Taylor, eh? That's our new sheriff," said he
to Eddring. "He's our joke. Hell of a joke, ain't it?"

Presently there came to the door the form of the new sheriff, large,
portly and pompous. Taylor was a mulatto who long had entertained
political ambitions. The realization of one of his ambitions seemed
for this present moment to give him no especial happiness. On his
face stood beads of sudden perspiration. His office had never before
seemed to him quite so serious as it did at this moment. At his waist
he wore a belt supporting a pair of heavy revolvers with highly
ornamented handles--a present from certain admirers to one who was
looked upon as fit to do much for the elevation of his race. The new
sheriff did not at that moment seem to think of these revolvers. As
Mose Taylor entered the door he cast his glance backward, over his
shoulder. It did not encourage him to see his cowardly posse of black
followers gathered in a huddle at the edge of the overflowed lawn,
beside their boat. They were waiting to see what would happen to
their leader; and their leader now heartily wished that he had
remained with them.

"Come on in, Mose," said Blount, with honey-like sweetness. "Come in
and take a chair." The man sidled in. "Sit down," said Blount,
"_sit down!_ Sit down on it good; that chair ain't hot;" and the
sheriff suddenly obeyed. "I always like to see the sheriff of
Tullahoma County feeling easy-like in my house. Now, tell me, damn
you, what you want around here?"

"Cunnel Blount, sah--well, I got a papah, a wah'nt from co'te, f-fo'
you, sah. I--I--I--didn't think you was quite so well, sah."

"Uh-huh! So that's why you came, eh? I reckon you'd be mighty glad if
I was a heap sicker, wouldn't you?"

"I dunno, sah."

"What's your warrant for, Mose?" said Calvin Blount, still quietly.
"Stealing hogs this time, or killing somebody's cows, maybe? Out with
it. Now, damn you, can't you read your own warrant?"

"Well, sah, you-all know there wuz some killin'--my wah'nt--"

"Yes, we-all _do_ know there was some killing, a little of it, the
_beginning_ of it, a _part_ of it. Now, tell me, have you the
nerve--are you _fool_ enough to come down here and try to arrest any
of us white gentlemen for what we did a few days ago? Now talk. Tell
me!" Blount's face took on its red fighting-hue.

"Wait!" cried Eddring, speaking to Blount, "this is an officer of the
law. This is the law." He rose and stepped between the two, even as
the sheriff fumbled in his pocket for the paper which had lately been
the bolster of his courage, the warrant which in grim jest had been
issued by the court of that county to its duly instituted executive
officer.

Blount's face was an evil thing to see. At a grasp he caught from a
belt which hung at the head board of the bed a well-worn revolver
whitened where long friction on the scabbard had worn away the
bluing. "Out of the way, Eddring," he cried. "Get your head out of
the way, man!" His pistol sight followed steadily here and there,
searching for a clean opening at its victim, now partly protected by
Eddring as the latter sprang between them. Blount sat on the edge of
the bed, his crippled arm fast at his side, his unshaven face aflame,
his red eye burning in an unspeakable rage as it shone down the
pistol-barrel, grimly hunting for a vital spot on the body of the man
beyond him.

"Get out, quick," cried Eddring, and pushed the man through the door.
He sprang to Blount and pushed him in turn back upon the bed.

"It's the law!" he reiterated.

"The law be damned!" cried Calvin Blount. "Let me up! Let me at him!
_Him_--to come around here to arrest _me_-that damned nigger! You,
Bill!" he called out, raising his voice. "Throw him off my place. Kill
him!" He struggled furiously with Eddring in his effort to gain the
door.

The new sheriff of Tullahoma County was ashen in color when he
emerged into the hall; and then it was only to look into the muzzle
of a rifle, held steadily by old Bill. There ambled up to Bill's
side, also, Jack, and between them they laid hold of the sheriff of
the county and pushed him out of the house and across the lawn,
administering meanwhile to his body repeated deliberate and energetic
kicks, and thus enthusiastically propelling him into the very
presence of his waiting posse, who raised never a hand to resent
these indignities to one who had been their chosen representative for
the advancement of their race.

"I'll see 'bout dis yer, I will!" cried the sheriff, as at last he
got clear and took refuge in the boat which lay waiting at the edge
of the lawn. "I'll have you-all up for 'sistin' a officah, dat's whut
I will."

"'Sistin' a officah! Who! _You?"_ said Bill. The scorn in his voice
was infinite. "Say, you low-down scoun'rel, you say very much mo' an'
I'll blow yoh head off. You're on our _lan'_, does you know dat? Now
you git _off_, right soon."

The officer of the law retreated as far as he could into the boat.
"You thought Cunnel Blount was all 'lone in bed, too weak to move,
didn't you?" resumed Bill. "Why, blame you, you couldn't 'rest
Colonel Calvin Blount, not if he was _daid!_ Go 'long dah, now!"

Mose Taylor, the grim jest, the sardonic answer of the whites of
Tullahoma County to those who deal fluently with questions of which
they know but little, was fain to take Bill's sincere advice. Behind
the shelter of the first clump of trees, he folded his arms into a
posture as near resembling that of Napoleon as he could assume. He
frowned heavily. "Huh!" said he savagely, looking from one to another
of the crew who made his "posse." "Huh!" he said again, and yet
again, "Huh!" A cloud sat on his soul. It seemed to him that persons
like himself, earnestly engaged in settling the race problem, ought
not to have such difficulties cast in their way.

Meantime, in the house, Eddring still confronted the rage of Colonel
Blount.

"You," panted Blount. "You! I thought you were one of us."

"I am, I am!" cried Eddring. "I was with you in what you did. I tried
to get to you. It had to be done. But somewhere, Cal, we must stop.
We've got to pull up. We can't fight lawlessness with worse
lawlessness. We must begin with the law."

A bitter smile was his answer. "Is that sort of sheriff the
foundation that you lay?" said Calvin Blount, panting, as at length
he threw his six-shooter upon the bed. "Let me tell you, then, the
law is never going to stand. That's no law for the Delta."

Eddring sunk his face between his hands. "Cal," he said, "we've got
to begin. This country is being ruined, and perhaps it is partly our
own fault. Now, I am guilty as you. are; but I say, we have got to
give ourselves up to the law."

"Give myself up? Why, of _course_ I will. I was going up directly,
soon as I got well, to talk it over with the judge, and arrange for a
trial. All this has got to be squared up legally, of course. But
that's a heap different from sending a nigger sheriff down here to
arrest Cal Blount in his own house. Why, I'm one of the oldest
citizens in these here bottoms. I've carried my end of the log for
fifty years, with black and white. Why, if I should go in with
that fellow, where'd be my reputation? I'd have a heap of show of
living down here after that, wouldn't I? Why, my neighbors'd kill me,
and do me a kindness at that."

"But we must begin," said Eddring, insistently, once more. "There
must be some law. We'll go in and surrender. I'll take your case."

"You mean you'll be my lawyer at the trial?"

"Yes, I'll defend you. But as for you and me, we're for the state,
after all. We've got to prosecute this entire system which prevails
down here to-day. We're growing more and more lawless all over the
South, all over America. Now, we don't want that. We don't believe in
it. Then what can we do? How can we get to the bottom of this thing?
Cal, I reckon you and I are brave enough to begin."

Even as they were speaking, they heard a knock at the door, and Miss
Lady once more stood looking in hesitatingly upon these stern-faced
men. Upon her own face there was horror, terror.

"I don't know what to do!" she cried, her hands at her temples. "I
don't know where to go. You tell me this is my home, and I have
nowhere else to go, but this is a _terrible_ place. Why, I have
just heard about what happened--about Delphine and those others. Why,
sir,"--this to Eddring,--"you knew it all the time. You saw. You
knew!"

"Yes," said Eddring, "that is why I would not let you walk down that
little path on the island. I didn't want you to know--we didn't want
you ever to know."

"Yes, Miss Lady," affirmed Blount, "we knew. We didn't want you to
know."

"But is there no law?" she cried. "Why do you do these things? The
punishment is for the officers, for the courts, and not for you. Why,
how can I _look_ at you without shivering?"

"What shall we do, Miss Lady?" asked Blount, coldly. "What's the
right thing to do? Listen. We've done this thing for _you_. You're a
white girl. The white women of this country--if we _didn't_ do these
things, what chance would you and your like have in this country? Now,
we've done it for you, and we'll finish the way you say. You're to
decide. Shall we go in and surrender? Shall we be tried? Remember, it
is our own lives at stake, then."

"We will go in, and we will meet our trial," said John Eddring,
rising and interrupting, even as Miss Lady buried her face in her
hands. "We will begin, right here."





CHAPTER XVII

THE LAW OF THE LAND


One morning in the early fall, the little town of Clarksville,
county-seat of Tullahoma County, was thronged with people from all
the country round about. There was in progress the trial of certain
white citizens under indictment for murder, among these some of the
most respected men of that region. The case of Colonel Calvin Blount
had been chosen as the first of many.

The court-room in the square brick court house was packed with masses
of silent men. The halls were crowded. The yard of the court house
was full, and the streets were alive with grim-faced men. The
hitching racks were lined with saddle horses, and other horses and
countless mules were hitched to fences and trees even beyond the
outskirts of the town. The hotels had long since abandoned system,
and every dwelling house was open and full to overflowing.

Outside of the town, or mingling in the fringes of the crowd at its
edges, there huddled even greater numbers of those of the colored
race. Some of these were armed. The white men in the streets were
armed. None showed hurry or agitation; none shouted or gesticulated;
yet the clerk of the court had a pistol in his pocket; each juryman
was likewise equipped; the judge on the bench knew there was a pistol
in the drawer of the desk before him. This gathering of the people
was thoughtfully prepared. It was a crisis, and was so recognized.

The silent audience was packed close up to the rail back of which was
stationed the judge's stand and jury-box. Within the railing there
was scanty room; every member of the local bar was there, and many
lawyers from counties round about.

Erect in the grave-faced assemblage, there stood one man, pale of
face but with burning eyes. It was John Eddring, attorney for the
defense in the case of the state against Calvin Blount, charged with
murder. His voice, clean-cut, eager, incisive, reached every corner
of the room. His gestures were few and downright. He was swept
forward by his own convictions of the truth.

Eddring was approaching the conclusion of the argument which he had
begun the previous day. The testimony in these cases, known generally
as the "lynching cases," had long been in and had passed through
examination, cross-examination, rebuttal and surrebuttal.

Eddring knew that he would be followed by an able man, a district
attorney conscientious in the discharge of his duty, however
unpleasant it might be. He had therefore with the greatest care
analyzed the evidence of the state as offered, and had demonstrated
the technical impossibility of a conviction. Yet this, he knew, would
not upon this occasion suffice. He went on toward the heart of the
real case which he felt was then on trial before this jury of the
people.

"Your Honor and gentlemen of the jury," he continued, "we all know
that we are, in effect, trying today not one man, not one district,
not one state, but an entire system. We are trying the South. The
life and the liberty of the South are at stake. To prove this, these
men have come in and given themselves up as an atonement, as a blood
offering like to that of old; seeking to prove that what they
continually have coveted is not lawlessness, but the law.

"Now I say this, and I say, also, let each of us have a care lest he
lose touch with the eternal pillar of the truth. There it is. It
rises before you, gentlemen, that silent, somber shaft. It finds its
summit in the sky. I pray God to keep my own hand in touch thereto,
and my eyes turned not aside. And my life, with that of these others,
is offered freely in proof that we covet not lawlessness, but the
law! We are white men, and where the white man has gone, there has he
builded ever, first of all, his temple of the law. Upon whatever land
the Anglo-Saxon sets his foot, of that land he is the master, or
there he finds his grave. First he lays his hearthstone, and upon
that foundation he builds his temple of the law. A race which has no
hearthstone knows no law.

"Inasmuch as God has made all manner of things diverse, setting no
fence even between species and species, creating all blades of grass
alike, yet not one the duplicate of another; then neither should we,
being human, essay a wisdom greater than that of the eternal
compromise of life. No human document, no sum of human wisdom, not
even the Deity of all life can or does guarantee a success which
means individual equality in the result of effort. The chance, the
opportunity--that is the law, and that is all the law. Beyond that
did not go the intent of that Divinity which decreed the scheme under
which this earth must endure. To war and conflict each creature is
foreordained, for so runs the decree of life. But never, in the
divine wisdom, was it established that the mouth of the stream should
be its source; that inequality should be equality; that failure
should be success; that unfitness should mean survival.

"In reading the pages of the great and beloved Constitution of
America there have been those who have juggled the import of the word
'success' with the meaning of the _chance to succeed_.

"There was such juggling in those war amendments to that
Constitution, which to-day represent the folly of a part of America--
not of all of America. Those amendments, if they be not of themselves
war measures, were at least consequences of war measures. This
Constitution which we call supreme can, of itself, be amended--can,
indeed, itself be set aside by its own servants, as was proved in
that very war whose memory is still in our minds. The Supreme Court,
in the Legal Tender case, admittedly set aside the Constitution. It
did so of necessity, and as a measure demanded by the times of war.
The supreme letter of the law has not always been respected by this
people, nor by its wisest men, by its most august servants.

"It is not the law, gentlemen, vainly to call two blades of grass
identical, vainly to call the hare and tiger alike and equal; vainly
to call, if you like, black the same as white. The law is that if it
be possible for the hare to approach its neighbor in ways desirable,
it be given its _chance_ to do so. If the black man can grow like to
the white in all human attainments, if he can grow and succeed, then
let him have the _chance_ to do so.

"But that same chance of betterment and advancement, that same
selfish chance to prevail and to survive, that chance to succeed
given under the divine intent, must be accorded also to that creature
known as the white man. If he, the white man, can prevail, can
survive, can succeed, he, too, must have his chance. That is the law!
But the chance of either white or black man is his own and is not
negotiable. That is the law! Not without fitness can there be
ultimate success. Not until the fullness of the years can there be
attainment for any creature of this earth. That is the law! There is
no tree growing in the center of this ordained universe wherefrom the
full fruit of survival and of success may be plucked and eaten
without effort and without earning. No individual has done it. No one
can do it. Bounty and gift do not make success. It must be _won!_

"Is this doctrine difficult? If so, we can not change it. It is the
great law, irrevocable and unamendable, and it is no more kind and no
more cruel than life itself is kind or cruel. It is the law. That is
the law!

"The makers of the Constitution, the amenders of the Constitution--
that document subject to change, subject to being ignored, as has
been the case--could never, under the enduring law, guarantee success
plucked as an apple for each and every man who had not earned it.
Gentlemen, talk not to me of the broad charity of this nation, or of
its general justice to humanity. Call not this piece-work
Constitution of ours, amended and subject to amendment, an approach
to divine charity or wisdom. No; for in some of its effects it has
proved to be the most cruel and unjust measure ever known in all
human laws.

"It was cruel and unjust to whom? To us? To the white man? No, no. It
was cruel in that it presented a title to success, to fitness and to
survival unto eager, ignorant hands, and then by its own limitations
snatched that title away from them again. It sought to do that which
can not be done--to establish growth instead of the chance to grow.
It was cruel. It was unjust. In the wisdom of a later day its
patchwork form must once more be changed. It must be changed as a
protection, no more against the former slaves of the South than
against the future slaves of the North.

"Gentlemen, if that change could be effected to-morrow by the
offering up of this life--of these lives now in your hands--I say
these lives would be laid down gladly. Take them if you will. They
are our pledge that we covet not lawlessness, but the law; our pledge
that, having no law, we have been eager to act lawfully as we might.
The reign of lawlessness and terror must end in this country. We must
contrive some machinery of the law which shall command respect. We
must not continually drag the name of the South--the name of America--
in the mire of lawlessness. To do that is to smirch the flag--the
one flag of America. But we denounce and will always denounce that
false decree which says that black is white; that inequality is
equality; that lack of manhood is manhood itself; that the absence of
a hearthstone can mean a home; that the absence of the home can mean
a permanent society.

"In the future the North, packed and crowded beyond endurance, with
imported and herded white slaves who in time will demand the position
of masters--as the blacks may legally demand that position here to-
day--will pay her price for the right to make this plea. The South
has already paid a thousand times for her right to make it to-day.
With treasure she has paid for it; with roof-tree and hearth-tree she
has paid it dear, and with the sacred tears of women. With the
sacrifice of her own future she has paid for that right. But the
South and the North belong together, not held apart by politics, but
held together in brotherhood. In the name of all justice, let us hope
that the South shall not be asked to pay the bitterest of all prices,
the misunderstanding and the alienation of those whom she loves and
would embrace as her brothers. Let us hope, in the name of mercy, if
not of justice, that the South shall be understood as a region having
a problem, a problem which is national, and not sectional, and _not
political_. Let us in all fairness hope that our northern brothers
will understand that the South is honest in her attempt to deal with
that problem in her time, which is the time of to-day.

"Your Honor, I do not depart from my argument. I am not here for wild
talk regarding the relations of the two races. It is the ages alone
which will decide that problem. But I am here to stand for the law
and not for lawlessness. I am here to say that our flag, the American
flag, is for all men, and for America; not for Africa alone, or for
Europe alone, but for America. It is the flag of progress, not the
flag of anarchy. It is the banner of civilization and not of
savagery. That, and not the banner of Africa or of Europe, must be
our ensign to-day.

"Your Honor, and gentlemen, we are not here today to conclude that
God set the white man over the black. We are to conclude simply that
He set him _apart_ from the black man. The divine right of slavery was
an impiety, and, worst of all, an absurdity. The South made that
mistake, and bitter has been the price of her folly. Yet the South,
having sinned, paid the price of her sinning in all ways exacted of
her. She accepted the ruling of the North, and, as a distinguished
orator once said, surrendered 'bravely and frankly.' But she did not
admit, and please God, never will admit, that those fresh from
savagery should govern the white men, that they should institute the
machinery of the law whereunder the white man must live.

"Gentlemen, you see before you, sardonically done, the fruits of the
Black Justice. Is that the Law? If it be, then send us to our graves;
for as that Black Justice formally exists to-day, Calvin Blount, and
I, and these others, must go back to our fields or to our graves. Do
you wish to send us to the latter? If you do, you send these other
white men just as lawfully back to take up the hoe of labor, to bend
their necks under the black yoke of African ignorance and savagery.
Is that the Law? In my heart, gentlemen, I believe that those who say
this is the law have not read the history of this country, do not
understand the theory of this country, and can not speak for it
unselfishly or honestly.

"Yet, gentlemen, that is the dilemma into which our brothers of the
North would continually thrust us. Suppose that, casting about for
some possible measure to free us from one point or the other of that
dilemma, we should seek some legal compromise which would free us
from the letter of this oppressive law of our national Constitution.
Suppose there should be proposed some general and stern limitation of
the franchise? Such an onerous qualification must needs apply to
black and white alike. Who would be first to object to it? It would
be the politicians of the North, who could not afford to exact even a
prepaid poll-tax as a test for a vote. In time the North will need to
free her white slaves, already turbulent and rebellious. In time she
will have to pay for them, as we of the South have paid. After that
great civil war which is yet to come, the men of the North may
perhaps understand more fully the meaning of that phrase 'the manhood
suffrage' and know that manhood means survival, that good manhood
means the product of a good environment, a survival slowly and fitly
won. By that time, North and South, perhaps, will know that the
franchise should be as the bulwark of the law, not the destroyer of
the law. Until that time, we of the South must continue to pay our
part of the price of the national lawlessness; and we must continue,
each commonwealth for itself as best it may, to enact laws which
shall in part lessen the intolerable weight of that which we have set
up as the idol of our national laws--that Constitution, which is
impossible and not practicable, which is merciless instead of just,
which is cruel instead of being kind, and most cruel to those whom it
is thought to shelter. Meantime the South feels still the intolerable
weight of that Constitution, the intolerable sting of the demand of
her northern brothers, that she shall be asked to endure, in the name
of this incubus, this body of the law, the continuous burglarizing of
her honor and her prosperity--the burglarizing of the house of her
society.