Pat Flanigan's Logic

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1882

Pat Flanigan's Logic.

"Patrick Flanigan," said the district attorney, one day in court, "stand up and plead guilty or not guilty to the charge the commonwealth has preferred against you."

When Pat had complied with the polite request thus made by the officer of the law, the attorney proceeded to read from a paper in his hand a very graphic description of a certain transaction in which Pat had been engaged a few days before.

"What say you? Are you guilty or not guilty?" asked the attorney.

"I'm not guilty of half thim things you've read to me," said Pat looking at the Court; "but I did have a bit of a row last Saturday was a week. An' I dunno just what I did; for ye see I was stavin' dhrunk on the manest corn whisky yer honor iver tasted."

"But, Patrick, we never tasted it," said the judge, while a smile lurked in ambush behind the grave, judicial countenance.

"Sure, now, don't ye, though?" said Pat, with a look of mingled surprise and incredulity. "Well, thin, ye ought, jist once, to know how it acts, an' to know how to pity a poor fellow that does. Sure, yer honor grants license; an' how do ye know the mischief yer doin' to honest men like meself unless ye take a dhrink now and thin, jist to see how it makes a man behave hisself?"

"Who gave you the liquor, Patrick?" asked the Court, on a voyage of discovery.

"Well, I dunno wat's his name," said Pat, too honest to turn informer, while a gleam of true native humor twinkled in his eye. "But I know I seed a license hangin' behind the bar. Ye see, judge, I was wroughtin' for the city, in the streets, jist close by, an' I was droughty; an' it was so handy I wint in an' took a dhrink that ortent to have hurt a baby, an' in tin seconds I was crazy dhrunk, an' that's all I remember till nixt mornin' whin I was boardin' at Sheriff Ryan's hotel."

"But," said the Court, "you are charged with perpetrating an aggravated assault and battery on Mr. S., the hotel-keeper."

"Well, your honor," said Pat, "if I did, I only gin him back jist wat's in his own whisky. An' if yer honor hadn't give a license I wouldn't 've bin dhrunk; an' if I hadn't been dhrunk I wouldn't 've got into the fight; an' if I hadn't got into the fight I wouldn't 've bin here this mornin', onyhow."

This was a process of reasoning new to the Court. It was a self-evident truth dressed in plain clothes; and while the law was with the Court, Pat evidently had all the logic, and here summed up the mischief of the license system in a few sentences.—Sel.