Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[1031] my side. I am certain the three boys voted for me every time, whatever the constable may have done.

So that it will be seen that a lawyer's life is not free from thorns, and that sharp points of law even in favor of the greatest criminals are not to be despised or disregarded.

I think I ought to set out here the facts of a story which has been in circulation in the newspapers for quite fifty years, and about the only one that was always told in my favor that was so circulated. I do this in order to show that there is not one word of truth in it. I

Views at General Butler's home at Lowell. Sleeping Apartment.

have not felt it my duty to expose it before because I thought there were so many lies told against me that I had a sort of proprietary right to the only one told in my favor. Very many of my readers will recognize it when I say it is the story about my attaching the waterwheel of a mill to get a girl's wages. The exact facts are these:--

We had a rule in our mills in Lowell, and a very proper one, among the eight or ten incorporated manufactories, that wages should be paid the last Saturday in every month. This rule was religiously kept until the law interfered, requiring payments weekly.