t for damages, but an
indictment for criminal libel, found by a complaisant political grand jury
at the other end of the state--intended to cause the greatest amount of
annoyance and to die out slowly. By that means it costs the accused both
time and money while the state pays all expenses for the prosecution.

Judge "Bill" Smith, one of the greatest of Kentucky lawyers on
constitutional points, or rather Judge William Smith of the Jefferson
Circuit Court--because he has passed over now, taking his kindly and
childlike, yet keen and resourceful personality out of life's war for good
and all--Judge Smith told me the story of that case one night after we had
discussed down to the water-marks in the paper, his treasured copy of
Burns. And at my very urgent solicitation he transcribed the salient
features, not in all the intimate details of the spoken words, but with
deep poetic feeling and rare conception of their human aspects. He wrote:

There are three poets in Burns. One is the poet you read; the
second is the poet some mellow old Scot, with an edge on his
tongue, recites to you; the third and most wonderful is the Burns
that somebody with even a thin shred of a high voice sings to you.
Burns is translated to the fourth power by singing him--without
accompaniment--just the whinnying of a tenor or soprano voice,
vibrant with feeling and pathos, at the right time of the evening,
or in some penumbrous atmosphere of seclusion where memory can work
its miracles.

I was defending Allison in that libel case and we started off on
the 200-mile trip together. We had the smoker of the Pullman all to
ourselves, and after I had recited some furlongs of Burns to him,
he began to sing "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss" in a sort of
thin and whimpering quaver of a tenor that cut through the noise of
the train like a violin note through silence. I thought I knew the
poem, but it seemed to me I had never dreamed what was in it, with
the wail of a Highland woman pouring plaintive melody through the
flood gates of her heart. And he knew every one of them and sang
them all with the tailing of the bag-pipes in the sound.

I wasn't going down to practice law, but to practice patience and
politics. I had been on that circuit for years and knew the court
and the bar very well. So I said to Allison "Don't you sing one of
those songs again until I give