#Once more chapter 1 code#

During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than anything for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother's education. They persisted in pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for the practice of criminal law. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass.

His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail.

#Once more chapter 1 code#

Atticus's office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch's Landing, was the county seat of Maycomb County. When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his practice.

Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full. Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. The place was self-sufficient: modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile. It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon's homestead, Finch's Landing, and make their living from cotton. Simon lived to an impressive age and died rich. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. So Simon, having forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley 's strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn't? We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.