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From Truth to Technique at Trial
OX FOR D S T U DI E S I N L A NGUAGE A N D L AW
Oxford Studies in Language and Law includes scholarly analyses and descriptions
of language evidence in civil and criminal law cases as well as language issues
arising in the area of statutes, statutory interpretation, courtroom discourse,
jury instructions, and historical changes in legal language.

Series Editor:
Roger W. Shuy, Georgetown University

Editorial Board:
Janet Ainsworth, Seattle University School of Law
Janet Cotterill, Cardiff University, UK
Christopher Heffer, Cardiff University, UK
Robert Leonard, Hofstra University
Anne Lise Kjær, University of Copenhagen
Gregory Matoesian, University of Illinois at Chicago
Elizabeth Mertz, University of Wisconsin Law School and American Bar Foundation
Lawrence Solan, Brooklyn Law School

The Legal Language of Scottish Speaking of Language and


Burghs: Standardization and Lexical Law: Conversations on the Work
Bundles (1380–1560) of Peter Tiersma
Joanna Kopaczyk Edited by Lawrence M. Solan,
Janet Ainsworth, and Roger W. Shuy
“I’m Sorry for What I’ve Done”: The
Language of Courtroom Apologies Confronting the Death Penalty:
M. Catherine Gruber How Language Influences Jurors in
Capital Cases
Dueling Discourses: The Construction of
Robin Conley
Reality in Closing Arguments
Laura Felton Rosulek Discursive Constructions of Consent in the
Legal Process
Entextualizing Domestic
Edited by Susan Ehrlich, Diana Eades,
Violence: Language Ideology and Violence
and Janet Ainsworth
against Women in the Anglo-American
Hearsay Principle From Truth to Technique at Trial: A
Jennifer Andrus Discursive History of Advocacy
Advice Texts
Speak English or What?: Codeswitching
Philip Gaines
and Interpreter Use in New York City Small
Claims Court
Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer

Law at Work: Studies in Legal


Ethnomethods
Edited by Baudouin Dupret,
Michael Lynch, and Tim Berard
From Truth to
Technique at Trial
A Discursive History of Advocacy
Advice Texts

Philip Gaines

1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press


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© Oxford University Press 2016

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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form


and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Names: Gaines, Philip, author.
Title: From truth to technique at trial : a discursive history of advocacy
advice texts / Philip Gaines.
Description: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2016] | Series:
Oxford Studies in Language and Law | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015028229 | ISBN 9780199333608 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780199333615 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190466084 (online content)
Subjects: LCSH: Social advocacy—Handbooks, manuals, etc. |
Law—Language—Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Law—Terminology—Handbooks,
manuals, etc. | Legal composition—Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Classification: LCC K213 .G333 2016 | DDC 347/.052—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015028229

9╇8╇7╇6╇5╇ 4╇3╇2╇1
Printed by Sheridan, USA
To Roger W. Shuy
Scholar, Mentor, Friend
CON TEN T S

Acknowledgmentsâ•…â•…ix

1. Introduction: Advocacy in the Modern Anglo-American Trialâ•…â•… 1


2. Pleading for Truth: Fulbeck, Dodderidge, Phillipsâ•…â•… 17
3. Honorable Persuasion: Simpson 1764, ‘Hortensius’ 1789,
Ruggles 1792, Raithby 1798â•…â•… 43
4. Directing Minds: Cox Volume 1 (1852)â•…â•… 82
5. The Invention of Defenses: Cox Volume 2 (1856–59)â•…â•… 129
6. Technique for Success: Harris (1879)â•…â•… 152
7. Metavalues and Practice: The Long Viewâ•…â•… 180

Works Citedâ•…â•… 201


Indexâ•…â•…209
ACKNOW L ED GMEN T S

The Provost’s Committee for Scholarship and Creativity Grants at


Montana State University provided funding for research at the libraries
of the University of Cambridge. This project would not have been manage-
able without that support.
While researching in Cambridge, I experienced the unexpected delight
of having daily, unlimited access to the Frederick Maitland Legal History
Room at the Squire Law Library, thanks to the generosity of the head
librarian, David Wills, and his extremely helpful and welcoming staff—in
particular Peter Zawada and Kathy Wolley. By wandering among the stacks
in the Maitland Room, I knew the serendipity of coming across things
I would never have found through conventional searching mechanisms.
I think this book benefited greatly from that experience.
Also at Cambridge, I enjoyed a notes-on-the-napkin lunch with
Dr. Jan-Melissa Schramm of Trinity Hall, who gave me invaluable pro-
posal and publication insights.
In the last few years, I have made several research trips to the Harvard
Law School Library. I am indebted to the access staff, particularly Brian
Sutton; the reference librarians; and the staff of the Rare Books and
Manuscripts collection for patiently and expertly assisting my research.
During my seasons of uncertainty about the relevance and significance
of this project, I was urged onward by my Montana State University his-
tory department colleague Michael Reidy and—especially—my English
department colleague Kirk Branch. They kept telling me that what I was
doing was interesting and important, and I am grateful they never let up.
Larry Solan from Brooklyn Law School and Janet Ainsworth from
Seattle University School of Law gave me courageous, critical feedback at
a pivotal juncture in the development of the manuscript.
Tiffany Lach has seen me through this work from start to finish, and
her sincere, positive support has been unflagging.
Finally, my deepest appreciation goes to Roger Shuy, Distinguished
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Roger always
believed in my work … and in me … and his advice, concern, and encour-
agement have made all the difference.

[â•›xâ•›]â•…Acknowledgments
From Truth to Technique at Trial
CH A P TER 1

Introduction
Advocacy in the Modern Anglo-American Trial

T he jury trial is the main attraction of the American justice system.


Although only a small percentage of criminal indictments end up
in court, instead being resolved through plea bargaining, and the vast
majority of civil cases are heard by a judge, the jury trial is still, as
Marvin Frankel quaintly put it, “a precious ornament, displayed on
a small fraction of its possible occasions.” (Frankel 1977:11) Frankel
noted further that “[o]â•„ur ideals about the criminal justice system have
the jury trial as the centerpiece.” Trial theorist Robert Burns notes that
such ideals as “political purpose, legal structure, and moral sensibility
come together” (Burns 3) to produce—citing James Boyd White—“the
central institution of law as we know it.’â•›”
There is no question that the trial is in decline. For decades, much has
been made of the “vanishing trial” phenomenon—and for good reason:
The number of jury trials—both civil and criminal—has been dropping
precipitously for decades, which raises the question: Are academic studies
of the trial still relevant? The answer is yes, for two reasons. In absolute
terms, the jury trial is still a major player in the justice system. According
to data presented in 2009 by eJournal USA (Graham 6), moderated by the
United States Department of State, the average number of jury trials in
the United States from 2007 to 2009 was 154,000—with the vast major-
ity (149,000) taking place in state courts and a small minority (5,000)
in federal jurisdictions. Sixty-six percent of the total were criminal tri-
als—both felony and misdemeanor—and 31 percent civil. In summary,
as of five years ago, in the United States, there were an average of 421
jury trials per day; the jury trial is still a regular, ongoing part of American
sociolegal life.
More important, the trial has always been and continues to be the
focal point of Anglo-American society’s conception of how justice is
enacted. It is at trial that the truth is supposed to come out and that
just verdicts and fair judgments are to be rendered. It is the place where
some of society’s most consequential decisions are made. The stakes in
the courtroom contest may be extraordinarily high: in civil disputes,
the loss or gain of huge sums of money may be in the balance; in crimi-
nal cases, the freedom or, for capital crimes, the very life of the defen-
dant may be on the line. Such consequentiality is socially understood
to demand the system’s best efforts at discovering the truth in order to
administer justice.
In the Anglo-American adversarial tradition, this system is charac-
terized by a public discursive contest between opposing lawyers, each
presenting a case that directly competes with that of the opponent(s),
each case being presented zealously from a manifestly partisan per-
spective, and each strategically designed and conducted to persuade
the jury to accept it as the more plausible and thus worthy of winning
the verdict. In this model of the trial, opposing lawyers are overwhelm-
ingly the dominant presence in the courtroom. The judge, who moni-
tors and supervises the conduct of the trial, generally only speaks in
order to guide the proceedings and make rulings; parties or defendants
usually remain silent unless they are testifying; the jury, although not
technically forbidden to ask questions, rarely does so; and witnesses
are only allowed to speak when spoken to—and then, only in tightly
constrained ways.
Lawyers play the dominant role in the courtroom because they serve
professionally as essential, expert advocates for those they represent.
A word used since at least the thirteenth century, “advocate” refers to a
“lawyer who pleads a case in a court of law on behalf of another” (OED
Online). In civil trials, each of the litigants—plaintiff (“claimant” in
the UK) and defendant—are represented by one or more advocates; in
the criminal trial, the defendant has an advocate, of course, and even the
prosecutor can be understood as an advocate for the state or government
(Civiletti 1). Preparing and pleading a case in the modern legal world is a
time-consuming, complicated process requiring extensive knowledge of
the law and the rules of the legal system. Parties generally have no hope
of competently managing a case on their own (proceeding “pro se”). Trial
cases are the bailiwick of lawyer-advocates.

[â•›2â•›]â•… From Truth to Technique at Trial


TR AINING FOR ADVOCACY AND THE PL ACE
OF ADVICE MANUALS

Because the role of the lawyer is so dominant and influential in the adver-
sarial system, effectiveness in advocacy is paramount. While preparing for
advocacy in the UK is generally limited to a minimal training regimen at
the Inns of Court, American law students and advocates have a bit more
at their disposal. Virtually all American law schools include in their cur-
riculum for prospective juris doctors coursework—often required—in trial
advocacy. In addition, organizations such as the National Institute for Trial
Advocacy maintain programs of continuing education in trial work. Perhaps
most notable, however, is a burgeoning literature—trial manuals written
by lawyers for lawyers—offering guidance and advice on every conceivable
aspect of trial practice: client interview, discovery procedure, jury selection,
case planning, preparation of witnesses, use of exhibits, management of
expert testimony, witness examination, argument, and so forth. Moreover,
many of these books tend to sell well, and some are required reading in law
school advocacy courses. The most popular advice manual, Trial Techniques
by Thomas Mauet, is currently in its ninth edition (2013).
The growth of trial advocacy training in the United States and its
accompanying literature is a recent development, beginning in earnest
in the 1970s. Advocacy trainer Steven Lubet noted in 1987 that “[o]â•„ver
the last fifteen years, trial advocacy has matured from a sideline into a
discipline” (“What We Should Teach” 123–24). Edward J. Imwinkelried,
professor of law at the University of California at Irvine and himself a
prolific author of trial advice materials, reported in 1992 that, following a
post-WWII lull, there was a “renaissance in American advocacy literature”
(175). Imwinkelried attributed this development to complaints by promi-
nent members of the federal judiciary about the quality of American trial
advocacy (180)—complaints representing a “widespread judicial belief
that a significant percentage of trial attorneys were incompetent” (181).
This perception, along with the loosening of pervasive rules that limited
the number of trials by excluding certain types of prosecutorial evidence,
has paved the way for a cottage industry in guides, manuals, and hand-
books that provide both technical information and lawyerly advice for
conducting trial work.
Advice texts are, of course, quintessentially intraprofessional. They
are certainly not secret books, only available to insiders, but their audi-
ence is a very specific one: aspiring and practicing lawyers interested
in learning how to be effective trial advocates. Today, the Harvard Law

I n t r o d u c t i o n â•… [â•›3â•›]
Library’s holdings in advocacy-advice texts comprises more than 200
titles (in their latest editions) with publication dates of 1980 or later—a
span covering a period in which such books could be considered cur-
rent. The words “advocate” or “advocacy” appear in the titles of many,
and a number of other title keywords give a flavor of their content and
purpose. There are emphases on winning, strategy, tactics, techniques, per-
suasion, and effectiveness. Advocates are told how to achieve success, excel-
lence, impact, and power and how to gain an edge. Advocacy is presented
as being both an art and a science. Lawyers are helped to develop skills
and even to understand the application of acting, performance, theater,
and drama. They are encouraged to utilize the findings of psychology and
other fields of social science—including the particular advantages for
women trial lawyers—in order to address the human factors in the court-
room and thus have maximum influence on the jury. Advocates are to pay
close attention to language—including body language—and communica-
tion. They are even told how to learn lessons from card games—especially
poker (!).
The texts tend to be conversational in tone, often using the first per-
son and not infrequently containing humorous or telling anecdotes. Those
serving as general or complete guides, as opposed to focusing on particu-
lar elements of practice such as cross-examination or on specific types
of cases such as bodily injury claims or criminal defense, have a similar
structure, sequentially covering the various aspects of advocacy from case
preparation to closing argument. Through advice texts, experienced and
knowledgeable advocates essentially mentor their current and future col-
leagues in the techniques of practice that have proven to be effective in
persuading juries and judges and winning cases.

THE STUDY OF ADVOCACY AND ADVOCACY-ADVICE LITERATURE

As an activity that is so central to the process that is itself so central to


the Anglo-American adversarial system, it is surprising that advocacy and
its history have—as lawyer and scholar of the history of advocacy David
Cairns notes—“eluded theory, abstraction and speculation more than per-
haps any other element of the common law” (6). Fortunately, this schol-
arly lacuna is beginning to be filled in. Majors works include J. M. Beattie’s
lengthy foundational 1991 article “Scales of Justice: Defense Counsel and
the English Criminal Trial in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,”
Cairns’s 1998 Advocacy and the Making of the Adversarial Trial 1800–1865,
John Langbein’s 2003 The Origins of Adversarial Criminal Trial (which

[â•›4â•›]â•… From Truth to Technique at Trial


brought together findings from important earlier work, e.g., Langbein
1978, 1983), and Allyson May’s 2003 The Bar and the Old Bailey 1750–1850.
Although these contributions have brought us light years closer to a
much clearer picture of the historical development of advocacy in the
adversarial tradition, they have not included in their scope advocacy-
advice texts. In fact, other than Imwinkelreid’s 1992 “The Renaissance in
American Trial Advocacy Literature: The Next Step,” Robert Mead’s 2003
“ ‘Suggestions of Substantial Value’: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography
of American Trial Practice Guides,” and an intriguing 2005 end-of-term
research paper by Yale Law student April Anderson, “Trial Practice Guide
Authors,” advocacy-advice texts have not been a subject of academic
inquiry.
Cairns does include such texts in the list of topics needing scholarly
attention, noting that there is a “considerable literature on various aspects
of trial practice” (6), but quickly adds that these works are exclusively for
instructional use:

Advocacy manuals command the field, a genre aimed at junior practitioners


and largely composed of basic precepts, practical advice, and illustrations
from the cases and careers of great advocates. They are usually for digestion by
rote … The common law still awaits a scholarly and comprehensive explana-
tion of its advocacy. Its Aristotle or Quintilian is long overdue. (6)

Cairns cites William Twining in his view that, in the latter’s 1984 article
on developing the lawyerly skill of fact management, “manuals on cross-
examination and some other aspects of trial practice have not evolved
much beyond the cookbook stage” (38). If anything, in the thirty years since
Twining made this observation, the recipes or “directions” (Rutter 314)
for success in the courtroom found in these books have become even more
uniformly prescriptive. On the other hand, advocacy manuals represent
a genre of discourse that presents what could be called the conventional
wisdom or perhaps the state of the art on effective advocacy. In this sense,
they reveal what the profession thinks about the best way to do trial work;
this alone is of some interest.
Cairns is right, however, in suggesting that instructional manuals
would not be the most likely place to look for theoretical or even reflec-
tive discussions of advocacy—its nature, its ethics, or its relation to
Anglo-American jurisprudence. This intraprofessional literature is only
intended to advise lawyers on how to most effectively do the work that
trial advocates are paid to do, that is, win cases for clients. What I want to
suggest in this book, however, is that what they are intended to do—that

Introduc tion [5]


is, what happens to be their stated purpose—is not the only discursive
weight they carry. For reasons unique to advocacy advice—as opposed to
instructional materials for a range of professional activities (i.e., sales,
leadership, management, fundraising, coaching, diversity training,
etc.)—these texts have more to reveal about advocates and advocacy than
their superficial “cookbook” nature would seem to allow for.
In civil disputes, winning the case generally means getting a judgment
in favor of one’s client. In the prosecution of criminal cases, it means get-
ting a conviction; for the defense advocate, an acquittal. With winning
as the goal, the trial has commonly been likened, among other things,
to a sport. The metaphor is apt, of course, with both activities involving
opposing “teams,” strategy and tactics, strenuous effort, skill, and ulti-
mately victory for one side and defeat for the other. In the trial, however,
the work of the advocate is situated in a context that involves more than
simply the systematic marshaling of effective techniques for achieving a
win. Instead, the mechanics of trial advocacy are embedded in conditions
of the highest consequentiality with sweeping implications for some of
society’s most important philosophical and moral values.

THE TRIAL’S METAVALUES: TRUTH AND JUSTICE

The trial presupposes the validity and importance of two fundamental


values: justice and truth—what Rawls calls the “first virtues of human
activities” (4). From here on, I will tend to refer to these governing or mas-
ter discourses as metavalues—not in the traditional sense of values about
values, but rather in the more relaxed sense, popularized by Douglas
Hofstadter in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach, of higher-level values.

Justice

As mentioned, the result of a jury’s determination can be consequential


in the extreme. In civil cases, vast sums of money may be in the balance,
with the specter of financial ruin lurking in the shadows or the prospect of
an opportunistic and undeserved windfall being awarded. The common-
place presupposition is that in a civil case, there is a “fair” resolution of
the dispute, and it is the job of the system to figure it out. This is justice in
the civil trial. A judgment might be determined to be a procedurally “just”
judgment. The metavalue of justice, however, is the notion of justice in its
overarching character—the value held by society that demands that both

[â•›6â•›]â•… From Truth to Technique at Trial


procedurally and substantively fair outcomes be determined for claims
and charges.
In criminal cases, the accused’s freedom from forced incarceration is at
risk, and in capital cases, the defendant’s very life hangs in the balance.
Also at stake is the confidence of the community that criminal behavior
has been appropriately dealt with as well as the mental and emotional
relief and healing for victims and their families and friends that comes
from knowing that the perpetrator has received appropriate recompense
for causing their suffering. Commonplace notions of criminal justice
insist that for an innocent person to go to jail—or, in the extreme case, be
executed—is unacceptable in a society that values justice. Likewise, a trial
outcome that sets free a person who has committed a heinous or destruc-
tive crime is also perceived as unjust and is an offense to a community and
a society whose security and sense of well-being depend in large part on
their trust in the system to make right determinations. These are some of
the concerns of justice in the criminal trial.

Truth

In a given case, it might be made clear that a certain event actually hap-
pened and that its occurrence was a fact—that it was true. In this situa-
tion, the assertion that the event happened has a positive, that is, “true,”
truth value. The metavalue of truth, however, is the notion of truth in its
overarching character—the value society holds that demands, for exam-
ple, that truth values be determined for claims and charges. This notion
of the metavalue of truth in the trial setting is roughly consistent with
Peirce’s conception of pragmatic truth—“that concordance of an abstract
statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would
tend to bring scientific belief” (718).
In contrast to medieval approaches to dispute resolution—for exam-
ple, trial by battle, in which the stronger fighter is determined to be
right; or trial by compurgation, where the sworn belief in the innocence
of the accused is offered, often by friends; or trial by ordeal, which fea-
tured subjecting the accused to some form of physical torment or dan-
ger, wherein survival or some other intervention of God would prove
innocence—modern society insists on an objective, unbiased examina-
tion of the facts of the case in the hope of discovering the truth.
In a civil trial, the burden of proof of the claim is upon the plaintiff. If it
is a jury trial, in order for the jury to determine that a claim is valid, they
must decide that a “preponderance of the evidence” supports the claim; in

I n t r o d u c t i o n â•… [â•›7â•›]
the UK, it is “the balance of probabilities” that must support the claim. The
jurors’ task is to figure out, on the basis of the evidence offered, the truth
of what happened or of what the situation was.
In a criminal trial, the jury must determine, beyond a reasonable
doubt, whether the defendant is guilty of the crime for which he or she
has been charged. This determination and the verdict that emerges from it
are understood to be the closest approximation the jury can manage as to
what is the truth with respect to the charge. Jurors are called fact-finders,
and when they reach a verdict (from Latin virus “true” + dictum “saying”),
they announce it by declaring: “We find the defendant” either guilty or not
guilty. To “find” is a legal notion meaning to “determine a fact in dispute”
(Black’s 664) and is conceptually akin to the notion of a scientific finding.
Other concepts in discursive play in the trial, such as evidence, proof, and
showing (as in “The evidence will show … ”) profile the character of the
trial as an empirical pursuit, aimed—as much as possible—at discovering
the truth of what was said, of who acted, of what happened, and so forth.

METAVALUES AND ADVOCACY-ADVICE TEX TS

With such critical metavalues informing the commonplace of the pur-


pose of the jury trial, it would seem natural for the legal profession to
grapple with them in its understanding of its practice—and indeed the
profession has done so. The foundational values of justice and truth have
long been understood as being in tension, if not conflict, with the advo-
cate’s prime directive of winning the case for the client. As long as there
have been adversarial advocates, there has been a conversation—at times
heated—about reconciling advocacy practices with the values they appear
to subvert. Since medieval times, common lawyers have been excoriated
in tracts, treatises, and the popular press for abandoning justice, truth,
and human decency in deference to winning cases and making money.
There has also been an equally long history of professional response and
discussion of the relation of advocacy practice to fundamental social val-
ues. Examples include denials that the profession is really that bad (or
that only a small percentage of lawyers are), apologias that seek to justify
practices that appear to run afoul of fundamental morals due to a pro-
fessional obligation to a separate role morality that trumps all others, or
simply discussions of and often complaints about the dilemma without
satisfying proposals for resolution.
Such professional discourses can certainly be revealing. As Raymond
Cocks has pointed out in his study of the development of the Victorian bar

[â•›8â•›]â•… From Truth to Technique at Trial


as a key to understanding the modern bar, “it is impossible to understand
a profession without understanding the ideas which it has about itself”
(34). Whether denial, apologia, or simply dialogue, the perspectives on the
conflict between practice and morality, offered over a span of centuries,
can serve as windows to the legal profession’s views on the relation of the
metavalues to practice.
However, there are limitations to the value of these discourses. As
Cocks notes, “Any analysis of lawyers which confines itself to a study of
their social origins, their professional structure, their earnings, and their
public pronouncements [emphasis added] is likely to be of limited value”
(34). The reason for this, of course, is that public pronouncements—which
would include intraprofessional discussions that a broader audience might
very well “listen in” on—will tend to represent the profession in a rhetori-
cally strategic way. This does not mean that lawyers will necessarily deny
responsibility for engaging matters of justice and truth—in fact, quite the
opposite: professional discourse about the difficulty of squaring practice
with the metavalues are common and often appear open and nondefensive.
Such attempts at “full disclosure” seem to present the profession as willing
to honestly face and talk about its difficult contradictions. Moreover, apo-
logias for a higher-role morality guiding practice are intended to situate
that practice in a reasonably satisfying moral framework. However, public
pronouncements should be heard with some reserve: Representations of
the legal profession—by members of that profession—that are meant for
public consumption might be expected to be constructed within a rhetori-
cal frame that would tend to skew the profile of the lawyer from an inter-
ested point of view. As folklorist Sam Schrager points out in his study of
trial advocacy as performance art:

When trial lawyers speak in their public role as agents of the court system,
they espouse official rhetoric about truth and justice. But when they talk shop,
they often talk craft. (6)

One is not likely to gain critical insights into how advocates think about
and grapple with the implications of the metavalues in the actual per-
formance of courtroom practice from such “official” rhetoric. Finding
out what lawyers’ conceptions about their advocacy practices are, par-
ticularly with respect to a profession that has been the subject of intense
criticism and disdain for centuries, will not tend to be usefully informed
by how its practitioners represent themselves and their work to a gen-
eral audience—or to any audience, for that matter, not among the legal
cognoscenti.

Introduc tion [9]


For Cocks, “understanding the ideas which a profession has about
itself” (34) is best accomplished by “com[ing] to terms with the ideas
about technical expertise which are of central interest” to professionals.
These ideas crucially include “the idea of practice, the theory of practice,
the thought about the techniques of practice”—elements that Cocks is
convinced “demand more attention than anything else.” Notably, virtu-
ally no attention has been paid to the intraprofessional discourse that
arguably provides unique and revealing insights into the profession’s
“thought about the techniques of practice”: trial advocacy-advice texts.
The intra- and extra-professional discourse of both critical discussion
and apologia treats the elements of practice as abstractions to be dis-
cussed and evaluated from an observational distance Advocacy advice,
on the other hand, articulates guidance for the enactment of techniques
of practice. Of course, if the task of understanding the profession’s
“ideas about technical expertise” is limited to what lawyers have decided
is the most effective way of selecting jurors, questioning witnesses, and
arguing cases, then the task is fairly simple and not likely to produce
especially interesting findings. However, the descriptions of and recom-
mendations for the implementation of discrete courtroom processes in
trial advocacy manuals are realized in a metavalue-laden context and
should be understood as inevitably and always in interaction with the
metavalues. Advocacy advice thus operates at a discursive site that sug-
gests the possibility of understanding the extent to which practitioner-
trainers see justice and truth as embedded in the details of practice.
These texts arguably offer the most rhetorically neutral exposition of
advocates’ understanding of their trial practices; this is an intraprofes-
sional discourse not intended for popular consumption, thus providing
a unity for insight into how metavalues are related to “craft.” It is worth
noting that such a relation need not be intentionally or even consciously
articulated. As we will see, sometimes the relation is explicitly framed,
especially in advice texts from the earliest periods—although here such
discussion is offered more as commentary developing a moral and ethi-
cal context for practice. However, in later works, assumptions about the
metavalues of truth and justice are embedded in the details of technical
advice and can only be teased out by probing the presuppositions about
the nature and value of truth and justice that are contained in the tech-
nical advice itself.
Advocacy-advice texts are more than simply the legal profession’s “how-
to” manuals for effective trial practice. Inasmuch as they emerge from a
context in which some of the most important social and philosophical

[â•›10â•›]â•… From Truth to Technique at Trial


values are in play, they inevitably reflect what is taken for granted by their
authors with respect to the values underlying practice.
This, then, is the notion that most clearly justifies a close reading of advo-
cacy-advice texts, for it is in this discourse that we might profitably look for
the co-enactment of values with the details of practice. As mentioned such
integration is not necessarily being posited as an overt act—although, as
we will see, in some cases it is. It is not that the author has purposefully
constructed her or his advice in keeping with a well-formed ethical or moral
code. As Cairns points out, advocates often perform their work intuitively,
if not instinctually, without conscious reflection on its processes:

A skill [such as tact in the management of a cause] so important yet so illusive


poses great problems for the historian of advocacy. It often leaves no trace in
the records of the trial, and its intuitive nature means that even the advocate
himself may be unaware of its exercise. (9)

The question is not necessarily what advocacy-advice materials can show


us only about what advocates think about how metavalues are or should be
embedded in the specifics of their practice, but rather how the discourse of
the specifics of practice is mapped to ideas about technique, irrespective
of any intentionality.

THE DIACHRONIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE “THOUGHT ABOUT


THE TECHNIQUES OF PR ACTICE”

A synchronic study of contemporary advocacy manuals would itself be an


interesting and revealing exercise, particularly in the light of recent pas-
sionate discussions about lawyers’ ethics—and is an exercise that will be
undertaken later. However, the discussion so far has really only served as
an introduction to the major theme of the book: the diachronic study of
the development of advocacy-advice texts and an analysis of how advice
authors’ “idea of practice, the theory of practice, the thought about the
techniques of practice” have changed over time and how those changes
reflect developing perspectives on the relation of advocacy practices to
the metavalues of truth and justice. While what Imwinkelreid has called a
“renaissance” of advocacy-advice texts has continued for the last thirty to
forty years, this is only the very recent history of the genre. The first pub-
lished advocacy advice offered by barristers appeared in the first half of
the seventeenth century in the law study books of William Fulbeck, John

I n t r o d u c t i o n â•… [â•›11â•›]
Dodderidge, and William Phillips. The development of English advocacy-
advice texts was decidedly not continuous, however, being instead clus-
tered in three periods: 1600–1660, 1789–1792, and 1852–1879. Such
a spotty history creates problems, of course, for conducting a satisfy-
ing account of the diachronic development of a professional discourse.
However, during the nearly 300-year timespan, the legal system in England
underwent massive transformation, and changes were punctuated by
key acts of parliament that swept away centuries of legal tradition and
opened the door for novel advocacy practices. Notably, each of the three
periods of advocacy-advice texts are mapped to periods following impor-
tant and consequential events. This book will analyze Anglo-American
advocacy-advice texts from their first appearance at the beginning of the
seventeenth century to the period in which they assumed their current
shape—the mid- to late nineteenth century—from the perspective of how
the metavalues of justice and truth are represented in them.
The texts of the first period can be characterized as the beginning of
published advocacy advice in the common law tradition, and those of
the last period as the prototypes of the modern advocacy-advice manu-
als. The analysis thus provides a comprehensive discursive history of
intraprofessional ideas about advocacy advice in the Anglo-American
tradition. Each of the texts treated stands on its own as a distinctive
representation of perspectives on what constituted appropriate and
effective trial advocacy at the time. Additionally, however, each of the
three periods will be shown to highlight certain approaches to and com-
mon themes about advocacy advice. The book considers the broad sweep
of these texts from the standpoint of how the profession’s ideas about
advocacy and its relation to metavalues have evolved over the period of
nearly 300 years since its first appearance to its prototypical modern
form.

OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS

Chapter 2 looks at the first intraprofessional advocacy-advice materials of


the modern era. The texts of interest are those of William Fulbeck (1600),
Direction or Preparative to the Study of the Law, John Dodderidge (1634),
The English Lawyer, and William Phillips (1660), Studii Legalis Ratio or
Directions for the Study of the Law. These three works were early exemplars
of a budding new genre, the law study book—a treatise, usually written
for the law student, that discussed the various aspects of the study of law
and preparation for the legal profession. Although Fulbeck, Dodderidge,

[â•›12â•›]â•… From Truth to Technique at Trial


and Phillips were not the only intraprofessional law study books of the
early modern period, they were the only ones to offer advice for effective-
ness in court pleading.
Formal common law litigation had been going on since early in the medi-
eval period, but it was not until the appearance of these texts that aspir-
ing lawyers had access to commercially published works by professional
mentors that dealt with the practice of advocacy. Also available were rhet-
oric manuals, most notably Wilson’s (1553) The Arte of Rhetorique, whose
pages contained examples of the use of rhetoric in legal argumentation.
However, neither Wilson nor any other authors of rhetoric manuals were
common law practitioners; law students needed advice from seasoned bar-
risters, specific to the demands and details of the English legal system.
The fact that the works of Fulbeck, Dodderidge, and Phillips were not
advocacy-advice treatises per se and that such advice is a small part of
their books make for an inherent limitation, of course, on their value as
examples of the embodiment of values in the specifics of practice. In fact,
their discourses on truth and justice as they relate to law practice, includ-
ing courtroom speech, contain principled reflections on those values.
These texts are also limited to guidance in pleading causes in civil dis-
putes since advocacy in criminal trials was virtually nonexistent during
this period. However, they do offer revealing insights into what eminent
lawyers thought about the place of overarching values in common law
jurisprudence and its implementation in the English courtroom.
The texts discussed in Chapter 3 are Joseph Simpson’s 1764 Reflections
on the Natural and Acquired Endowments Requisite for the Study of the Law;
pseudo-Hortensius’s 1789 Deinology or the Union of Reason and Elegance;
Thomas Ruggles’s 1792 The Barrister: Or, Strictures on the Education Proper
for the Bar; and John Raithby’s 1798 The Study and Practice of the Law.
Simpson, Ruggles, and Raithby are, again, law study books, but their pages
contain significantly more advocacy advice than that found in the trea-
tises of the early period. Pseudo-Hortensius, however, is unique in that
it was the first published text of the modern era dedicated exclusively
to advice for effectiveness in advocacy; it also offers the first systematic
advice on cross-examination.
During the more than 100-year hiatus between the publication of the
earliest advice texts and this group, two developments of great import
for advocacy and advocacy advice took place. The first was the passage by
Parliament, in 1696, of the Treason Trials Act, which allowed for the first
time the appearance of defense counsel in felony cases—albeit treason
cases only. The second development emerged directly from the first: in
the 1730s, judges began to allow advocates for criminal defendants to

Introduc tion [ 13 ]
examine and cross-examine witnesses. Although rarely done at first and
then only at individual judges’ discretion, the practice increased steadily
until, by the last quarter of the seventeenth century, defense advocates
were regularly appearing in felony cases. Because defense lawyers contin-
ued to be prohibited from addressing the jury directly, cross-examination
became their strategy for doing so indirectly; it was during this period
that cross-examination developed into a virtual performance art form
and became—in the hands of such luminaries as William Garrow—a pow-
erful method for influencing juries and winning verdicts. Of course, civil
litigation continued apace in England, and these four treatises put most of
their advocacy-advice attention on effective courtroom speeches.
Chapters 4 and 5 examine the two-volume work The Advocate: His
Training, Practice, Rights, and Duties by Edward William Cox. Volume 1
was first serialized over a five-year period (1847–1852) in the Law Times,
a journal for the legal profession edited by Cox, and came into print as
a monograph in 1852. Volume 2 never appeared in book form but was
also serialized in the Law Times from 1856–1859. The first volume of
The Advocate was somewhat of a hybrid. Although the first nearly three-
quarters of the treatise conform to the genre of the law study book—albeit
specifically for advocates—the last 140 pages constitute the first com-
prehensive, systematic advice for effectiveness in all the essential com-
ponents of the trial: opening statement to the jury; direct, cross, and
re-examination of witness; and closing argument.
The fifty-plus years separating the work of Ruggles and Cox was again a
time of momentous change in the practice of advocacy. In 1836, Parliament
passed the Prisoners’ Counsel Bill, an act that removed the last hindrance
to full defense in felony cases: the prohibition on addresses to the jury.
Advocates were now free not only to examine their own witnesses and
cross-examine those of the opposition but also to speak directly to the
jury. In keeping with this freedom and responsibility, Cox took it upon
himself, in the second volume of The Advocate, to present a complete tax-
onomy of the possible defenses that could be marshaled in the most com-
mon types of felony cases: larceny, fraud, murder, manslaughter, assault,
concealment of birth, rape, arson, and perjury. Remarkable in their thor-
oughness and detail, these chapters specify for the first time the rhetori-
cal structures for criminal defenses whose broad strokes continue to form
the basis of today’s trial practice manuals.
Chapter 6 looks at Richard Harris’s 1879 Hints on Advocacy. Although
Harris systematically covers the same ground as Cox does in the first vol-
ume of The Advocate, Harris’s text is notable in that it focuses exclusively
on advocacy advice, making it the first advocacy manual proper. Because

[â•›14â•›]â•… From Truth to Technique at Trial


Hints was both complete and advocacy-specific, it gained immediate and
continuing popularity with practicing lawyers: The latest edition, the
eighteenth, appeared in 1943! In addition to offering its own distinctive
contributions to advocacy advice, Harris’s Hints also served as the proto-
type for advice texts to come, effectively ushering in the era of the modern
advocacy-advice manual.
The final chapter of the book summarizes the findings of the diachronic
study of advocacy-advice texts as co-enactments of the techniques of
practice and the metavalues of truth and justice from the first appearance
of advocacy advice to its current form in modern advocacy-advice manu-
als and discusses the implications of those findings for insight into how
advice authors have come to represent their presuppositions about the
place of truth and justice in the details of actual courtroom practice. It is
my hope that the conclusion will invite new considerations in the ongoing
conversation about the Anglo-American trial and its advocacy practices.

A WORD ON METHOD, ST YLE, AND SCOPE

In this book, I undertake a diachronic thematic discourse analysis of


advocacy-advice texts. It is diachronic because it moves across a 300-year
time period. It is thematic because it identifies and tracks themes, namely,
the metavalues of truth and justice. It is discourse analytic because it traces
and organizes discursive realizations and developments across texts and
identifies lexical, phrasal, semantic, and pragmatic components of utter-
ances embodying the themes.
In the close reading and focused analysis of advocacy advice, I regularly
embed extracts from the texts in my analytical discourse. This is inten-
tional and strategic. To paraphrase the content of the discourse for the
sake of stylistic fluidity would often obscure fine nuances of meaning and
implication contained in the authors’ exact words. What I am interested in
in these texts is not simply the abstracted ideas and themes discovered in
the materials but also—and even more importantly, in some cases—the
lexical and phrasal choices made by the authors for their representation of
the themes and ideas under consideration. This is especially critical with
respect to texts from the earlier periods, where the meaning and upshot
of language of the day would not be adequately captured even by a careful
paraphrase. I have tried to perform this embedding as inconspicuously
and elegantly as possible; I hope I have succeeded.
In tracing the themes of truth and justice as embedded in advocacy-
advice texts, I have intentionally cast a wide net over the elements of

I n t r o d u c t i o n â•… [â•›15â•›]
advocacy advice that are relevant—even tangentially—to these metaval-
ues. For example, in the chapter on the advocacy-advice texts of the late
eighteenth century, I devote a significant amount of space to a discussion
of the place of rhetoric in these texts. Although the authors rarely refer to
the metavalues in their discussions of rhetoric, the association—which
I do not often make—will be obvious to the informed reader. The purpose
of this scheme of what might be called discursive “over-representation” is
to exhibit elements of the rich, thick context in which the metavalues are,
of course, inextricably embedded.
Finally, there were a number of texts written during the three periods
under examination that had much to say about advocacy from perspectives
such as the historical, cultural, and jurisprudential. They were, however,
not advocacy-advice texts. Thus, my choice to exclude them from analysis
is not arbitrary but intentional—not because they would not have much to
reveal about historical or even contemporaneous conceptions of advocacy
but because their purpose and thus their focus is different from advocacy-
advice materials, which are oriented to a very specific audience—aspiring
and practicing advocates—and have as their goal the impartation of
advice and guidance for the practice of trial advocacy. For the obvious rea-
son, I also exclude from consideration the significant number of law study
books that do not contain advocacy advice. Finally, I also do not take into
account books on rhetoric, some of which contain significant advice appli-
cable to—and, in some cases, specific to—trial advocacy. In this book, my
attention is focused exclusively on those intraprofessional texts—written
by lawyers for lawyers (and those who aspire to be)—which set as their
task advising about how to be an effective advocate.

[â•›16â•›]â•… From Truth to Technique at Trial


Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nobody's
Rose
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Nobody's Rose


or, The girlhood of Rose Shannon

Author: Adele E. Thompson

Illustrator: A. G. Learned

Release date: November 2, 2023 [eBook #72011]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co, 1912

Credits: Bob Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading


Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOBODY'S


ROSE ***
NOBODY’S ROSE
A STORY FOR GIRLS
BOOKS BY ADELE E.
THOMPSON.

The Brave Heart Series.


Five Volumes. Illustrated. Each
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BETTY SELDON, PATRIOT,
A Girl’s Part in the
Revolution.

BRAVE HEART ELIZABETH,


A Story of the Ohio Frontier.

A LASSIE OF THE ISLES,


A Story of the Old and New
Worlds.

POLLY OF THE PINES,


A Patriot Girl of the
Carolinas.

AMERICAN PATTY,
A Story of 1812.

BECK’S FORTUNE,
A Story of School and
Seminary Life.
Illustrated by Louis Meynell.
$1.25.
NOBODY’S ROSE,
Or The Girlhood of Rose
Shannon.
Illustrated by A. G. Learned. Price, Net
$1.00. Postpaid $1.12.

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.,


BOSTON.
“Now I’m Rose, I’m nobody’s Rose!”—Page 270.
NOBODY’S ROSE
OR

The Girlhood of Rose Shannon

BY
ADELE E. THOMPSON

ILLUSTRATED BY A. G. LEARNED

BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Copyright, 1912, by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
Published, August, 1912

All Rights Reserved

Nobody’s Rose

NORWOOD PRESS
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
NORWOOD, MASS.
U. S. A.
CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE

How Posey Came Adrift 11


CHAPTER II
An Exposure 30
CHAPTER III
The New Home 42
CHAPTER IV
The New Life 54
CHAPTER V
The Picnic 71
CHAPTER VI
The Storm Breaks 85
CHAPTER VII
A Desperate Resolve 93
CHAPTER VIII
A New Acquaintance 108
CHAPTER IX
Two Happy Travelers 123
CHAPTER X
Ben’s Story
135
CHAPTER XI
A Storm, and a Shelter 147
CHAPTER XII
A Parting of Ways 162
CHAPTER XIII
A Door Opens 173
CHAPTER XIV
Posey Becomes Rose 185
CHAPTER XV
At the Fifields’ 195
CHAPTER XVI
Under a Cloud 206
CHAPTER XVII
Sunshine Again 219
CHAPTER XVIII
Great-Uncle Samuel 236
CHAPTER XIX
Rose Finds a Resting-Place 247
CHAPTER XX
Paying Debts 257
CHAPTER XXI
The Box from Great-Aunt Sarah 266
CHAPTER XXII
Quiet Days 275
CHAPTER XXIII
A Visit from an Old Friend 284
CHAPTER XXIV
And College Next 294
ILLUSTRATIONS

“Now I’m Rose, I’m nobody’s Rose!” (Page 270) Frontispiece


FACING PAGE

Out of the door of the cabinet a white, shadowy little


32
figure had lightly floated
It was an hour that Posey never forgot 76
“When I get a farm I shall need somebody to keep the
144
house”
“Here is a clue to Rose’s family” 216
“Clear Jarvis and no mistake” 238
NOBODY’S ROSE
CHAPTER I
HOW POSEY CAME ADRIFT

Out in the open country the day was dull and grey, with low-
hanging clouds and occasional drops of slow-falling rain, but in the
city the clouds of smoke hung still lower than those of the sky, and
the dropping soot-flakes made black the moisture gathered on the
roofs of the houses, the leaves of the trees, and the sidewalks
trodden by many feet.
It was on a city street, one where the smoke-clouds from the tall
chimneys trailed low and the soot fell in its largest flakes, that ever
and again a sound asserted itself above the beat of hurrying feet.
The sound was not loud, only a little girl sobbing softly to herself as
she shrank with her head on her arm at one side of an open
stairway; and the words that she repeated over and over to herself,
“What shall I do? Where shall I go?” were less in the nature of
questions than a lamentation. But children tearful, loudly, even
vociferously tearful, were in that vicinity so frequent that people
passed and repassed the child without giving to her thought or heed.
For the street was one more populous than select, and while the
tall red brick houses that bordered it had once aspired to something
of the aristocratic, they were now hopelessly sunken to the tenement
stage; while the neighboring region leading through the sandy open
square of the Haymarket, where loads of hay always stood awaiting
purchasers, down the long steep hill to the river, with its crowded
shipping and its border of great lumber yards, shops, and factories,
had never made pretense to anything except poverty of the most
open and unattractive kind. In summer the whole region fairly
swarmed with the overflowing inmates of the overcrowded houses.
Children were everywhere, in large part barefooted, ragged, and so
dirty that they might easily have been taken for an outgrowth of the
sandheaps in which they burrowed and buried themselves when
tired of the delights of the street. To see them there, in utter
indifference to the constant passing of heavily loaded teams
sometimes prompted the inquiry as to how many were daily killed?
But though, on occasion, they were dragged from under the very
horses’ hoofs by the untidy women whose shrill voices were so often
heard sounding from open doors and windows, few were the
accidents to either life or limb.
The not distant city market house increased the crowds, especially
at certain hours of the day, as also the street venders and itinerants
who contributed their full share to the noise and confusion. Hook-
nosed old men, with bags over their shoulders, and shrill cries of “P-
a-p-e-r r-a-g-s” abounded; the organ-grinder with his monkey was a
frequent figure, with the invariable crowd of youngsters at his heels;
the maimed and the blind, wearing placards appealing to the public
sympathy and extending tin cups for contributions, were to be found
on the corners; the scissors-grinder’s bell was a common sound, as
were the sonorous offers of “Glassputin.” Here was a man loudly and
monotonously appealing to the credulity of the public, and soliciting
patronage for his wonderful fortune-telling birds, a little company of
dingy and forlorn-looking canaries, who by the selection of sundry
envelopes were supposed to reveal the past, present, and future.
There, another man exhibited a row of plates with heavy weights
attached, and extolled the wonderful merits of his cement for
mending crockery, while the sellers of small wares, combs,
pocketbooks, letter-paper, cheap jewelry, and the like, added their
calls to the rest.
A few of the houses still retained a dingy scrap of yard, where thin
and trampled grass blades made an effort to grow, but the most part
had been built out to the street and converted into cheap
restaurants, cheap clothing shops, cheap furniture shops, and the
class of establishments that are cheap indeed, especially as regards
the character of their wares.
In such a confusion of people and sounds it is not strange that a
small girl crying to herself would attract so little attention that even
the big, fat policeman on that beat passed her a number of times
before he noticed her, and then did not stop, as he saw that she was
well dressed. At last, as she still remained crouched down in a
dejected little heap, he stopped, moved as much by the thought of a
little girl in his own home as from a sense of duty, with the inquiry,
“Here, Sis, what’s the matter with you?”
She started up at the brusque but not unkindly tone, and lifting
from her sheltering arm a round and dimpled face, with wide grey
eyes, now swollen and disfigured with tears, answered brokenly and
in a half-frightened voice, for the policeman stood to her as the terror
rather than the guardian of the law, “Oh, I don’t know what to do! I
don’t know where to go!”
“You don’t, eh? Well, it seems to me you are a pretty big girl to get
lost; where do you live?”
“I don’t live anywhere,” with a fresh sob.
“That’s rather queer, not to live anywhere,” and he looked at her a
trifle more sternly. “What’s your name, if you have any?”
“Posey Sharpe.”
“Oh, indeed,” and he glanced at the stairway before him, where a
small black sign with gilt lettering on the step just above her head
read,

“Madam Atheldena Sharpe,


“CLAIRVOYANT.”

“So that was your mother, was it, who raised all that row here last
night?”
“No, she wasn’t my mother, but I lived with her.”
“If she wasn’t, how comes it your name is the same?”
“It isn’t, really, only I’ve lived with her so long that people called me
that. She said I was her niece, but I wasn’t any relation at all.”
He looked at the sign again, “Madam Sharpe. Well,” with a chuckle
at his own witticism, “she wasn’t sharp enough to keep from being
exposed. And you were the spirit child, I suppose?”
Posey nodded, a very dejected-looking spirit she seemed at that
moment.
“Well, when she took herself off so suddenly why didn’t you go
with her?”
“I ran up under the roof and hid, and I didn’t know till this morning
that she had gone.”
“I see; and was she so good to you, and did you think so much of
her that you are taking on this way?”
Posey hesitated a moment. “She might have been better, and she
might have been worse,” she answered with a candor of simplicity.
“But I haven’t anybody else to live with, and I didn’t think she’d use
me so.”
“I see; it was rather rough.” There was sympathy in his tone, and
even in the way he tapped his knee with his polished club.
“And,” continued Posey, “this morning the man who owns the
place came and he was awfully mad and cross. He said Madam
Sharpe owed him for rent, and that she had hurt the reputation of the
building, and he told me to put my things in my trunk, and he shoved
it out into the hall and told me to clear out, and he locked the door so
I couldn’t go in again. And I haven’t had any dinner, nor I haven’t a
cent of money, nor anywhere to go, and I don’t know what’ll become
of me,” and she wrung her hands with another burst of tears.
Here was the cause of her misery—the semblance of home, care,
and protection, poor though it was, had been suddenly stricken
away, leaving her a helpless, solitary estray, a bit of flotsam at the
mercy of the world’s buffeting currents. Nor was her misery softened
by even the dubious bliss of ignorance that most children enjoy as to
the sterner realities of life, for already in her eleven years she had
learned only too well what poverty implies, and how sad a thing it is
to be friendless and homeless.
Poor little Posey, with her soft eyes, dimpled mouth, and rosy face,
she seemed made for sunshine and caresses. Scant indeed,
however, had been her measure of either. Her earliest remembrance
had been of a home of two rooms in a tenement, a poor place, from

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