NOTES.
In a patent case in the Northwest involving the Hartshorne Shade Roller patent, a poetically inclined attorney for the defence set up, as an anticipation of the patent, the fact that years be fore it was applied for, "Night drew her sable curtain down And pinned it with a star." The fact that she had to draw it down and was obliged to pin it to make it stay down, clearly in dicating that there was a spring at the top tend ing to roll it up. But the court disposed of the matter in short order, saying that he didn't want any " high rollers" in his court. The income of Athens from fines appears to have been considerable, and to have constituted a singular and permanent feature of the fiscal policy of the state. Its method of assessment may be best illustrated by examples. Thus, if duly authorized officials did not hold certain as semblages, according to rule, or properly con duct the appointed business, they had each to pay a thousand drachmas (S200). If an orator conducted himself indecorously in a public as sembly, he could be fined fifty drachmas ($10) for each offense, which might be raised to a higher sum at the pleasure of the people. A woman conducting herself improperly in the streets paid a similar penalty. If a woman went to Eleusis in a carriage, she subjected herself to a fine of a talent ($1,180). In the case of wealthy or notable persons, fines for omissions or commissions in respect to conduct were made much greater, and so more productive of rev enue; and there were very few notable or wealthy citizens of Athens who under the rule of dema gogues, and through specious accusations of of fenses against the state or the gods, escaped the payment of heavy fines; the experiences of Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Demosthenes, Pericles, Cleon, and Timotheus being cases in point. Every person who failed to pay a fine ow ing to the state was reckoned as a public debtor, and was subject to imprisonment and a practical denial of citizenship; Miltiades, the victor at Marathon, for example, having been cast into prison (where he afterward died) through an in ability to pay a fine assessed against him of fifty
talents. — From Taxation in Literature and His tory, by David A. Wells, in Apple tons' Popular Science Monthly for Mareh, 18q6.
Lawyers who read New York newspapers may have been impressed with the levity with which its courts treat the examination of jurors on challenges. Edward Hall, a clerk of the Re corder's court of that city, narrates that many busi ness men, finding that the formation of an opinion will incapacitate service and save a fine, are espe cially ready to form an opinion on the merits of a notable case so as to escape the panel and de tention from business. In a recent murder case that would be likely to last many days, he says that a juror, being challenged by the defence, glibly an swered, " Yes, I have formed an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused." "And when did you form it?" asked the cross-examining pros ecutor. "This morning, and since I came into the court-room." But Congressman Daniels, who previously served during a quarter century as a Supreme Court Judge in New York, caps that incident by narrat ing that a juror challenged once before him, after stating that he had formed an opinion, was asked by himself on the bench, " upon what did you base that opinion? " When the juror answered, "When I saw the counsel for the prisoner quar relling so about the kind of men they wanted on the jury, I formed the opinion he must be guilty to their own knowledge, or they would not have cared what kind of men were sworn to try him."
We played at love — A maid and I — Beneath the azure summer sky. To win her heart I thought I'd try — We played at love. We played at love — A maid and I— She took me up, I passed it by : A lawsuit now I fear is nigh — We played at love. — Exchange.
"It is wonderful how slowly the most obvious truths are perceived and admitted. The plain and simple morality of the Gospel required a revelation. Even in my day at the bar, it was the constant practice of the Orphans' Courts to allow
