Estate of Physic, 2 Phill. Pa. 278. (Evidently needed administering.)
Matter of Pie, Abb. Pr. R. 409. (This estate must have cut up well.)
Happy's Will, 4 Bibb. 553. (We have heard that he "died happy," but never before that he left a will.)
Pancake v. Harris, 10 S. & R. 109. (There was probably nothing left of plaintiff at the end of this trial.)
It may not be generally known that the late Gen. William T. Sherman was once a legal practitioner. The New York "Mail" gives the following account of his brief career as a lawyer.
After his graduation from West Point, cadets not being in immediate demand, William T. Sherman took up the study of law, and after being admitted to practice was taken into partnership by his cousin, Gen. Thomas Ewing, the first Chief-Justice of Kansas, who is now practising law in this city. This was at Leavenworth, Kansas. Soon after the formation of the new law firm, a little case in a justice's court came into the office, and Sherman was sent out to try it.
The trial was before a Justice of the Peace. Sherman's opponent was a pettifogger of the lowest type, with little knowledge of law or justice, but with a ready tongue, and an adept in the quips and technicalities of police-court practice. The result was that Sherman was badly beaten, when the facts and the law were all in his favor. Unspeakable disgust took possession of the young counsellor, and returning to the law office he left the following note on his partner's desk:—
Thomas Ewing:
Dear Sir,—The law firm of Ewing & Sherman is this day dissolved. I am going into some other business.
The Viestnik of Vilna reports that in one of the cities where Jews are permitted to live, a son of Israel, meeting the wife of the Governor, would not move out of her way. He was arrested on the spot, taken to the Governor's stables, and knouted so that he hardly reached his home alive. The next day his attorney, also a Jew, appeared before the Governor, asking for a copy of the judiciary "act" upon which his client had been condemned to personal chastisement.
"You desire a correct copy?" asked the Governor.
"Just so, your Excellency," answered the attorney.
"You will please address yourself to the Chief of Police," said the Governor. "I will order him to let you have it."
The lawyer went to the Chief of Police the next day, but instead of the papers he received the same number of blows which his client had received.
"The Jones County Calf Case" is the title of a legal action which will pass into the history of Iowa jurisprudence as one of its most celebrated causes. The calves involved were not more than ordinary calves, born in a very common manger, nourished with the usual lacteal fluid, and turned out to grass as soon as they were able to work their grinders successfully. The calves that were, if alive, must be gray and decrepit cows. Twenty years ago the action was begun. It has been in the lower courts several times, and has graced the Supreme Court with its presence on more than one occasion. The attorneys have waxed fat and rich over it. The original parties to the suit have spent all their money prosecuting it. The young bovines may have been worth $45 when the fun began. The total cost of the case amounts to about $20,000.
In the Farmington, Maine, Municipal Court, Judge Chandler recently rendered an interesting decision on the unique question of whether "baby-carriages" can be classed, within the meaning of the Maine Statutes, as "necessaries."
The action was brought against a trustee to recover the amount in their hands to the credit of a defendant against whom judgment had been given in a suit brought for $13.26 for a baby-carriage which he had purchased of plaintiff. The disclosure of the trustee showed that the amount due the defendant was for his personal services rendered within thirty days last before the service of the writ, and did not exceed twenty dollars, and consequently would be exempt from attachment unless the amount sued were for necessaries, "which was the issue tried." Is a baby-carriage a necessity, was the point decided.
Judge Chandler's decision was as follows: "The laws of necessity, early given and never repealed, en-
