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LEO M. FRANE. 289

Now, another thing. We didn’t have to put Frank’s char
acter up. If we hadn’t the judge would have told you Frank
must be presumed to have a good character, and that you did
not have the right to ask that question about him, but we
thought you were, and we put it up and eee what a character
the man has, There’s not a man in the sound of my voice who
could prove @ better character. Of course, I mean from the
eredible evidence, not that stuff of Conley’s and Dalton’s,
But you say, some people, some former employes swore he had
a bad character. You know that when you want to, you can
always get someone to swear against anybody's character.
Put me in his place and let my friend, Arnold, be foolish
enongh to put my character up and there’d be plenty of those
I have maybe hurt or offended aa I have gone through life,
would swear it waa wrong, and I believe I’ve got an ordinarily
good character. Why, you could bring twenty men here in
Foiton county to swear that Judge Roan, there on the bench,
has a bad character, You know that he’s had to judge men
and sometimes to be what they thought was severe on them,
and he’s naturally made men hate him and they'd gladly
come and swear his character away. But if the men and
‘women who live near him, the good and decent men and
‘women, who lived near him and knew, came up and said his
character was good, you'd believe them, wouldn’t you!

‘Well, gentlemen, the older I get the gentler I get and I
wouldn't think or say anything wrong about those mislead-
ing little girls who swore Frank was a bad man. I guess they
thought they were telling the truth. Well, did Miss Maggie
Griffin really think Frank was a vicious man and yet work
there three yeara with him? Don’t you think she heard
things against him after the crime was committed and that
when she got up here and looked through the heated atmos-
phere of this trial, she did not see the real trathf And Misa
Maggie Griffin, che was there two months, I wonder what she
eould know about Frank in that time. There was Mrs. Don-
egan and Miss Johnson and another girl there about two
months, and Nellie Potts, who never worked there at all, and

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