VERY recently an eminent counsel enlightened the Supreme Court of North Carolina with the following Scriptural quotation : " This law, your honors, is so plain that a wayfaring man, though fool, may read it a-running."
IT was at the same court, but at another term, that counsel made the following quotation : " Gen tlemen of the jury, in the language of the inspired poet, ' Who steals my pocket-book steals my trash, but he who robs me of my carak-ter takes all I have got.'" THE tariff question has crept into the North Carolina courts. A recent case there is catchlined "Married women — free traders."
IN Illinois there is an old law on the statutebooks to the effect that in criminal cases the jury is "judge of the law as well as the facts." Though not often quoted, once in a while a lawyer with a desperate case makes use of it. In this case the judge instructed the jury that it was to judge of the law as well as the facts, but added that it was not to judge of the law unless it was fully satisfied that it knew more law than the judge. An outrageous verdict was brought in, contrary to all instructions of the court, who felt called upon to rebuke the jury. At last one old farmer arose, — "Jedge," said he, "were n't -we to jedge the law as well as the facts?" "Certainly," was the response; " but I told you not to judge the law unless you were clearly satisfied that you knew the law better than I did." "Well, Jedge," answered the farmer, as he shifted his quid, " we considered that p'int."
IN Hazlitt's "Studies in Jocular Literature" it is said of the " Hundred Merry Tales " : " We are confronted with the admirable apologue ' Of the friar that told the three children's fortunes.' where, after declaring to the horrified mother that of her family one should be a beggar, a second a thief, and the third an assassin, he consoles her by say ing that she might make the one who was to be a beggar a friar, the one who was to be a thief a lawyer, and him who was destined to be a mur derer a physician."
A TEXAS justice started to try a divorce case, when a lawyer stopped him and told him that he had no jurisdiction. " Well, I guess I can bind the fellow over," was the reply, which he pro ceeded to do. How is this for a " finding " of" quest "? This is the latest from one of the inte rior towns of Michigan : — "The deceased, John —»—, we find, came to his death by violentlv and feloniously taking a certain drug with the intent of ending his life, and so the jurors aforesaid say, that the said John then and there violently, feloniously, and with malice afonthought, himself killed and murdered, against the peace and dignity of the people of the State of Michigan THERE is one lawyer in the city, says the "Buffalo Express," who will never again make use of Latin phrases in writing business letters. A short time ago he had to write a letter to a client of his in a neighboring city regarding an important lawsuit that was to come up before the court in the course of a few days. The information he solicited was highly essential to his case. In writing this epistle he made use of a letter-head with his printed ad dress at the top. In closing his letter he signed himself thus : " John Langdon. Address ut supra." After waiting several days for the reply, which did not come, he again wrote his procrastinating client, and asked why he had not sooner answered his first letter. The next day he received a reply in which the client said that he had answered the letter, and addressed it to " John Langdon, Ut Supra, N. Y." IT was in Kansas. The young man up for ex amination was the son of an old practitioner, — a legal Nestor whose opinion had long been followed in the courts of his State. But the young man could not answer the questions they put to him. He hesitated and stammered, and said he did not know; and then the chief examiner, a friend of his father, wishing to let him through, asked him the rule in Shelley's Case. The young man confessed ignorance, and then his father got up. "Sirs," he thundered. '• this is an outrage, this is a travesty on justice. There have been a hundred thousand cases decided in this country in the last twenty years, and now you select one from the entire number, and ask him the rule in Shelley's Case.
