Explore "George A. Knight" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Attorney Knight, it happens so sometimes / That lawyers, justifying cut-throats' crimes / For hire -- calumniating, too, for gold, / The dead, dumb victims cruelly unsouled -- / Speak, through the press, to a tribunal far / More honorable than their Honors are, -- / A court that sits not with assenting smile / While living rogues dead gentleman revile, -- / A court where scoundrel ethics of your trade / Confuse no judgment and no cheating aid, -- / The Court of Honest Souls, where you in vain / May plead your right to falsify for gain, / Sternly reminded if a man engage / To serve assassins for the liar's wage, / His mouth with vilifying falsehoods crammed, / He's twice detestable and doubly damned!
Attorney Knight, defending Powell, you, / To earn your fee, so energetic grew / (So like a hound, the pride of all the pack, / Clapping your nose upon the dead man's track / To run his faults to earth -- at least proclaim / At vacant holes the overtaken game) / That men who marked you nourishing the tongue, / And saw your arms so vigorously swung, / All marveled how so light a breeze could stir / So great a windmill to so great a whirr! / Little they knew, or surely they had grinned, / The mill was laboring to raise the wind.