MEN OF PEACE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 39, 14 February 1880, Page 1

MEN OF PEACE

Au amusing story has just been published by an American 'contemporary concerning an incident which occurred not long ago in one of the mountain counties of Northern Georgia. It should be premised that the State of G-eorgia has a very stringent law forbidding: its citizens to carry pistols upon pain of forfeiting the weapon, and paying a fine of fifty dollars, or being imprisoned for thirty days. Shortly after the passage of this enactment Judge Lester was holding court m a little town, when suddenly lie suspended the trial of a cause by ordering the sheriff to, lock ths doors of the court-house, so that no one could ;make his egress from it. •' Gentlemen. " said the judge, when thedpors were closed, " I have justseen a pistol on a man in this room, and I cannot reconcile ifc to my sense of duty as a peace officer to let such a violation of the law pass unnoticed. I oue[hb, perhaps, to go before the grand jury and indict him ; but if that man will walk up to this stand and lay his pistol and a fine of one dollar down here, I will let him off this time." The judge paused,and an attorney, sitting just be ibre him, got up, slipped his hand into a hip pocket, drew out a neat ivory-han-die sixshopfcer and laid it.and one dollar down upon the stand. "This isall right," said tHe judge, " but you are not the man that I saw with the pistol. " Upon this another attorney rose and laid down a Colt's rerolver and a dollar bill before the judge, who again repeated his former observation. The process went on, until nineteen pistols of all kinds of size and shape lay upon the stand, together with nineteen dollars by their side. The judge laughed as he complimented the nineteen delinquents upon being men of business, but the man whom he had seen with the pistol had not yet come up, and glancing to the far side of the court, he continued, "I will give him one minute to accept my proposition, and if he fails I will hand him over to the sheriff. " Immediately two men from the back of the court rose and began to move towards the judge's stand;: Once they stopped and looked at each other, and then, coming slovviy forward, laid down their pistols and their dollars. As they turned their backa the judge said, :" This man with the black whiskers is the one that I originally saw." The story, for the accuracy of which our contemporary vouches, is a confirmation. of the charge lately brought in the North American JReview against Southern men, twitting them with the almost universal custom of carrying concealed weapons about their persons.