The Green Bag.
Published Monthly, at $3.00 per annum.Single numbers, 35 cents.
Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor,
Horace W. Fuller, 15½ Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
THE GREEN BAG.
THIS is the vacation month, when the weary lawyer shakes off the dust of the court-room and the office, and hies him to the seashore or the mountains. With what a feeling of relief he drinks in the pure life-giving air, and plunges, not into the turbid waters of litigation, but into the cool embrace of old Ocean! No "declarations" to be made for these few weeks, except, perhaps (if he be a bachelor), a tender declaration to some fair young dame, to which an "answer" in some form will be duly filed. No "writs," except, it may be, a writ of attachment. No "demurrers," except to the fact that time flies all too rapidly. No "bills in equity," except perchance a "bill of discovery" of some new beauty in the face of Nature. No "judgments," except those which he may be called upon to pass on the loveliness of the scene before him. Oh, a rare experience is the lawyer's vacation! But even in these golden days come cheerless hours when Nature veils her face, and recreation must be sought within the limits of four gloomy walls. Then our legal friend turns to his "Green Bag," which he has taken good care to carry with him, and in its pages finds entertainment and amusement till the storm has passed. With his August "Outing" and the "Green Bag," the lawyer's "lot" is indeed "a happy one."
The men who join recreation with work are the happiest. Sir Charles Romilly took care that his mind should play every day. He used to travel on the circuit in his own carriage, and carry with him the best books of the day. A friend once riding with him expressed his pleasure at seeing that the busy lawyer found time for such reading. "So soon as I found," he answered, "that I was to be a busy lawyer for life, I strenuously resolved to keep up my habit of reading books outside the law. I had seen so much misery, in the last years of many great lawyers, from their loss of all taste for books, that I made their fate my warning."
A correspondent in Iowa writes:—
"The fact that the title of 'The Green Bag, a Useless but Entertaining Magazine for Lawyers,' has led to so much discussion, is pretty good evidence that the humorous side of the lawyer's character is, on the average, sadly lacking in development; and that the 'Green Bag' has a mission before it, the magnitude and need of which were never so apparent as since you began your excellent magazine."
The Editor of the Albany Law Journal having commented on the Randolph anecdote which appeared in our June number, a correspondent of that periodical gives an interesting account of the facts which gave rise to the story. He writes as follows:—
Editor of the "Albany Law Journal:"
In the last number of the "Journal", July 6, you remark on the "Green Bag" for June: "Mr. Fuller has turned the Randolph anecdote wrong side to. It was Randolph who said, 'I never turn out for a fool;' and the other man who said, 'I do.' This was much more characteristic of Randolph, who was better at attack than repartee."
If Mr. Fuller thinks it of interest, after nearly sixty years, to revive that anecdote, it should be done authentically, to make the illustration and the inferences useful. The story, as it was current in Richmond at the time, is as follows: Mr. Randolph, in a speech in Congress, had spoken of John Hampden Pleasants, editor of the "Richmond Whig," as "a degenerate son of a most respectable governor of Virginia." Mr. Pleasants soon stationed himself at the exit from the Capitol, to meet Mr. Randolph, with a concealed rawhide, intending to bring on a collision, and then flog him. He met Mr. Randolph as he expected, brushed hardly against him in entering the door, saying, "I don't get out of the way for
