Strange True Stories of Louisiana
Page 28
VI.
CHRISTIAN ROSELIUS.
One morning many years ago, when some business had brought me into acorridor of one of the old court buildings facing the Place d'Armes, aloud voice from within one of the court-rooms arrested my own and thegeneral ear. At once from all directions men came with decorous hastetowards the spot whence it proceeded. I pushed in through a green doorinto a closely crowded room and found the Supreme Court of the State insession. A short, broad, big-browed man of an iron sort, with silver hairclose shorn from a Roman head, had just begun his argument in the finaltrial of a great case that had been before the court for many years, andthe privileged seats were filled with the highest legal talent, sitting tohear him. It was a famous will case[26], and I remember that he was quotingfrom "King Lear" as I entered.
"Who is that?" I asked of a man packed against me in the press.
"Roselius," he whispered; and the name confirmed my conjecture: thespeaker looked like all I had once heard about him. Christian Roseliuscame from Brunswick, Germany, a youth of seventeen, something more thantwo years later than Salome Mueller and her friends. Like them he came anemigrant under the Dutch flag, and like them his passage was paid in NewOrleans by his sale as a redemptioner. A printer bought his services fortwo years and a half. His story is the good old one of courage,self-imposed privations, and rapid development of talents. From printinghe rose to journalism, and from journalism passed to the bar. By 1836, atthirty-three years of age, he stood in the front rank of that brilliantgroup where Grymes was still at his best. Before he was forty he had beenmade attorney-general of the State. Punctuality, application, energy,temperance, probity, bounty, were the strong features of his character. Itwas a common thing for him to give his best services free in the cause ofthe weak against the strong. As an adversary he was decorous and amiable,but thunderous, heavy-handed, derisive if need be, and inexorable. A timecame for these weapons to be drawn in defense of Salome Mueller.
FOOTNOTES:[26] The will of R.D. Shepherd.