The prisoner at the bar was doing his best to make out his case. " I did n't know," he said, "that there was any —" "I beg your pardon," interrupted the pro secutor. " Ignorance of the law excuses no man." "Oh, does n't it? " responded the prisoner, with fine sarcasm; " then what are you asking me to excuse you for?" In a case against a respondent charged with the crime of arson, one witness was asked by the court : " When you looked in the fireplace that evening, was there anything combustible there?" To which the witness replied, after deliberating : "I sware, Jedge, I did n't see nothing a-bustin there." At an examination of candidates for admission to the Maryland Bar, one of the aspirants, now a prominent criminal lawyer, was asked, — "In case a life tenant holds over, what is the proper form of action?" The answer came promptly : " Ejectment." On being sent to the law library to make a search for authorities, the candidate prepared a very readable brief on the subject. Scene, a Court-Room. Time, 1890. Judge. Your age? Lady Witness. Thirty years. Judge (incredulously). You will have some diffi culty in proving that. Lady WrrNESs (excitedly). You 'll find it hard to prove the contrary, as the church register which contaified the entry of my birth was burned in the year 1845. Judge. You say your father died from a sudden shock to his system. Was he an electrician? Prisoner. No. He fell from a scaffold. Judge. Oh, a bricklayer, was he? Was it his own fault? Prisoner. I think it was the sheriff's fault, your honor.
NOTES. "The sparks of all the sciences in the world," said Sir Henry Finch, " are raked up in the ashes of the law."
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A Maryland judge recently held Bavaria to be a province of Austria; and a Baltimore attorney cited "that eminent English barrister Justinian, one of the early authorities on the law of bailments." At Stafford, England, a judge sentencing a pris oner convicted of uttering a forged one-pound note, after pointing out to him the enormity of the crime, and exhorting him to prepare for another world, continued as follows : " And I trust that through the merits and mediation of our Bles sed Redeemer you may there experience that mercy which a due regard to the credit of the paper currency of the country forbids you to hope for here." When King Frotho the Third, in the misty age of Denmark, sanctioned the settlement of con troversies by the sword, he said he deemed it much fitter to contend with weapons than with words.
An extraordinary superstition was brought to light in Scotland, a short time ago, during the course of the trial of a man named Laurie for the murder of an English tourist, a Mr. Rose. The police were requested by the counsel in the case to explain the mysterious disappearance of the dead man's boots at the time of the inquest held on his body. With manifest reluctance the inspector in command of the local constabulary informed the court that he had directed a policeman to take the boots down to the seashore and bury them in the sand below high-water mark. The purpose of this extraordinary measure was to " lay " the murdered man's ghost, — an object which, according to an cient Scotch tradition, may be obtained by bury ing his boots under water. For ghosts are popu larly credited with as deep-rooted an aversion to water as they have to walking barefooted; and Mr. Rose's ghost, being shoeless, would therefore abstain from disturbing people in the neighborhood of the spot where the murder was committed. The sentiment with regard to " dead men's shoes " and to the dislike of ghosts to run about barefooted prevails not only among the masses, but also among the classes in Scotland, and is based on an ancient superstition that the dead must pass through a kind of purgatory. A curi ous old manuscript in the Cotton Library, dating
