The
next time you're feeling sorry for yourself, be grateful you never had occasion
to appear for sentencing before Judge Roy Bean.
Judge Bean was both feared and revered for the frontier justice he dispensed
from his saloon in Langtry,Texas in the late 1800s.
Following is the sentence he pronounced one day on an unfortunate soul named
Jose Manuel Miguel Gonzales:
Jose Manuel Miguel Gonzales, in a few short weeks it will be
spring. The snows of winter will flow away, the ice will vanish, the air will
become soft and balmy. The annual miracle of the years will awaken and come to
pass.
But you will not be there.
The rivulet will run its soaring course to the sea. The timid desert
flowers will put forth their tender shoots. The glorious valleys in this
imperial domain will blossom as the rose.
Still you will not be there.
From every treetop, some wildwood songster will carol his mating song. Butterflies will sport in the sunshine.
The gentle breeze will tease the tassels of the wild grasses and all nature will
be glad.
But
you will not be there to enjoy it.
Because I command the sheriff of the county
to lead you away to some remote spot, swing you by the neck from a knotting
bough of some sturdy oak and let you hang until dead.
And then Jose Manuel
Miguel Gonzales, I further command that such officer retire quickly from your
dangling corpse, that vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy
body until nothing is left but the bare, bleached bones of a cold-blooded,
blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, murdering S.O.B.
Ouch.
Judge
Bean's "courthouse" (click to enlarge) ---->
For more on His Honor, follow this link.
(But please come back...)
