My word for half a century had everywhere been as good as my bond, and my bond as good as gold.  I had never before had a lawsuit or any trouble with any one, and so in my inexperience I employed a lawyer friend, who was no match for my enemies’ human tiger.  They testified unfairly in court, and after many crushing annoyances from the law’s delays, my lawyer, putting in no defense, in order, as he said, to save his ammunition for use in the Superior Court, to which he appealed, they secured judgment.

All these slanders broke my never firm health; I was soon on the verge of nervous prostration, and was ordered by my physician to at once secure a change of climate to save my life.  My innocent lawyer supposed that a court of justice would postpone my trial until my return; but we have now some “courts of injustice.”

Some lawyers are worse than highway robbers; they make the laws as legislators to suit their own iniquitous, selfish purposes, so worded that they are susceptible of almost any interpretation, thus leading to endless litigations by which these cannibal devourers of reputations are robbing the public of their possessions.  They employ spies to stir up strife, and some lawyers and judges seem to be banded together to fleece the confiding lambs of the public.  The judge not only refused to postpone the trial until I was able to attend, but refused to have the jury informed that I was absent on account of serious sickness.

We are bound hand and foot, the slaves of these law-sharks, and it seems as if nothing but revolution and the banishing of these tyrants, will ever deliver the public from the worse than African slavery to which some lawyers subject us.  We have seen innocent, modest lady witnesses subjected to bull-dozing and abuse by barbarous lawyers, until they suffered tortures to which those of the Spanish Inquisition were merciful.

As I was obliged to go or die, I accepted the offer of my wife’s brother, a member of the publishing firm of Webster’s Dictionaries, and went to California to fight their battles against the new Standard Dictionary which was rapidly driving the Webster books out of the markets of the entire Pacific slope.

The trial took place during my enforced absence; my enemies’ crafty attorney told the jury that my failure to appear was a sure evidence of guilt; my doctor’s affidavit that he sent me away to save my life was not allowed to be presented in court; each plaintiff claimed to have heard the statements imputed to have been made by me to the others, one of them making love to, and afterwards marrying one of my most important witnesses, and so the verdict was against me.

But curses often “come home to roost,” and my enemies were ultimately not benefited at all, as the lawyer-sharks devoured all they received from me.

In the meanwhile, during their worrying and falsifying, I was speeding away in a palace-car, confident that my spirit brother’s declaration would prove true that truth is mighty and will prevail, if not in the brief here, yet surely in the eternal hereafter.  It is very saddening to see how many, who claim to be your friends while you are prosperous, are the first to assail with poisoned arrows when you are attacked in the courts or in the public prints; but my conscience is clear, and