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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When I returned to Castelmezzano, many people (among whom my first teacher, Mastro Igazio) came to meet me about half a mile from the town, more groups joined on our way and, in front of our house, a crowd surrounded my mother, sister and brothers who greeted me with joy, smothered by tears. Although it was a week-day and harvest time, our house was filled to capacity. The guests were treated to cakes and cordials. Our boat had come into port, but the captain was missing.
A saintly man, Rev. Giuseppe Campagna, not related to us but a friend of all, an able preacher and a wholesome clergyman – who tilled the soil when not attending to his ministry – read with deep feeling a touching little poem he had composed for the occasion, reviewing our trials and sorrows and declaring this day “the day of our resurrection.” Was it a divine message, being conveyed through that humble servant of God?
After a few days of reception and two weeks’ rest in the country, I began to wind up the odds and ends of business. Meanwhile, clients started to come in, mainly on questions of property boundaries, easement rights, inheritance contentions and old claims, on one of which either side really sought legal action. I managed to call in both parties, listened sympathetically to the respective stories and, in most cases, succeeded in settling the disputes to mutual satisfaction. A noted Italian writer of the nineteenth century made famous the sketch of a country lawyer, who represented both parties to a contention. The counselor had told the plaintiff that he was right, later told the defendant that he was right and, when his listening son asked how they could both be right, the father turned around and said: “And you too, my boy, are right.”
However, there came a case where action could not be avoided. A thirteen year old girl had entered a neighbor’s house several times, climbing though a window abutting on an adjacent roof, and had stolen some…
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…money and several pots and pans. The theft had been reported to the police and the charge could not be withdrawn.
The girl’s mother and the complainant were both widows. I represented the plaintiff, who was only interested in the recovery of the stolen goods. The girl pleaded guilt of entering the neighbor’s house, but not of stealing. Her mother denied all knowledge and, although some of the articles had been found in her house, she denied having seen them, as she was in the country and only came home at night.
If the girl were found guilty, she would be sent to a reformatory, but her mother could not be held liable for damages, unless proven that she was an accessory to the fact and had concealed the stolen goods.
This is my first trial, to take place in a Magistrate’s Court which was in another town, the center of our district. The lawyer for the defendant resided in that town. He was Francesco Brindisi, able, resourceful and a man of high standing. He had represented my father in many matters and was a good friend of our family. Nevertheless, I did not expect leniency or cooperation on his part. We had to battle it out, according to the rules of the game. Of course, I was only twenty-one and, for his own reputation, Brindisi had to try to win the base. On the other hand, this was my first test and it meant a great deal to me.
I studied the law from all angles, reviewed a book on the new school of thought, relative to children’s delinquency, made extracts, prepared and rehearsed my oration. I left for the trial one early morning, escorted by several friends and relatives who wanted to be present at my debut.
The magistrate was a young man, not quite thirty, and he must have been acquainted with the new social and legal philosophy.
After the plaintiff’s two witnesses were heard, the cross examination by my shrewd opponent made their story seem shaky and unreliable. I didn’t know how to counter, but remained firm in my own convictions.
When I got up to address the court, the Sunday recitals in Potenza’s courtroom of earlier years were present in my memory. I delivered a formal prologue on this first timid step of my legal career, I begged tolerance from the judge and my opponent, paying the latter a sincere tribute, and then I launched into a scholarly dissertation on the parents’ responsibility for their children’s conduct. I touched lightly on the…
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…evidence which, I stated, was sufficient to indicate the mother’s knowledge and her unquestionable abetment of the crime. I stressed the mother’s continuous neglect of her only daughter and pleaded not to prejudice the future of a forsaken, fatherless girl, by sending her to a reformatory – a disgrace unknown in our ancient little towns – but to set an example, by punishing the mother and letting the child go free.
My victory was complete. The girl was acquitted and her mother sentenced to thirty days imprisonment, with liability for all damages and costs.
There was a vigorous acclamation in the little courtroom, while my opponent hugged and kissed me as if he were my own father. He had performed his duty, but his happiness at my success couldn’t have been more enthusiastic.
That new assertion of parents’ responsibility remained buried within the walls of that recondite magistrate’s court. That is has not made headway, even in this progressive country, is attested by the fact that, in a recent broadcast on juvenile delinquency, Mayor La Guardia expounded the same concept by stating: “Parents must be held to stricter account for the misconduct of their children and be liable for damages.”
I tried three more cases in magistrate courts of other districts, dealing with civil actions, two of which were won and the other – lost.
With the lean compensation received in all four instances, I felt that, though it was good training, my effort was being dissipated. To obtain a license to practice in higher courts, it was necessary to serve in some lawyer’s office from six months to a year, followed by a test of competence. After putting all my family affairs in final order, I arranged to go to Naples again for the required clerkship, in the office of one of my practicing professors, also from the Province.
In the interim, I went to Potenza to give a short course in stenography, receiving a fair return and, above all, the honor of instructing about fifty students in one of the classrooms where, a few years before, I had been one of the anxious pupils. Knowing that I had profited more from teachers who had romanced about their subjects than from drill masters, I proved to myself the psychology of teaching. I told the boys of my self-tutoring in shorthand, of the use I had made of it from one of those very benches where they were sitting, of the thrilling experience…
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…at the University of Rome, at my recording the famous trial for which the Hon. Ferri had come to Potenza, etc. and gradually led them into the mysterious symbols of phonetic recording of speech. From stenographic sheets, I even read to them portions of Dante’s Divina Comedia. I concluded the course by telling my friends that my main object had been to plant the seed and it was up to them to cultivate it. I had reason to believe that most of the boys benefited from those preliminary instructions.
Next: Chapter 27
