The Lawyer's Rasy Chair. animal, which he called a pony, given to taking his time upon the road, and evincing, every now and then, a strong inclination to lie down, but kept up pretty well by jerking the reins and plying the whip, and kicks by the elder Master Crummier when he refused to go. A good pony at bottom, but certainly not at top, for his coat was of the roughest and ill-favored kind. •• He is quite one of us," said Mr. C.; " his mother was on the stage. She ate apple pie at a cir cus for upwards of fourteen years, fired pistols, and went to bed in a night-cap, and in short, took the low comedy entirely. His father was a dancer, not very distinguished. He was rather a low sort of pony. The fact is, he had originally been jobbed out by the day, and he never quite got over his old habits. He was clever in melodrama, but too broad, too broad. When the mother died, he took the port-wine busi ness — drinking port wine with the clown — but he was greedy, and one night bit off the bowl of the glass and choked himself, so his vulgarity was the death of him at last." The pony was a dernier ressort in the lack of all other novelties — " we never come to the pony till everything else has failed," — but Nicholas declined to sing a comic song on the pony's back, although it had been known to draw money.
CURIOSITIES OF THE REPORTS. —There is a good deal of the curious and the humorous to be found in the " City Hall Recorder," by Daniel Rogers. Some reference to these reports was made in the recent sketch of William Sampson in this magazine. Turning over the pages casually, we ran across "George Frederick Cooke's Case." This was rather startling, for it was the name of the great English tragic actor, who visited New York about that time. But very curiously it turns out to be the report of a trial for grand larceny in stealing a portrait of Thomas A. Cooper, a famous tragic actor, of New York, whom Halleck, in "The Croakers," refers to. John A. Graham defended the prisoner, on the novel ground that he looked and acted like an idiot : "every glance of that vacant, staring eye," said he, ••every movement of that head — nay, his whole exterior, indicates downright madness." He also argued madness from the fact that the prisoner had offered to sell, for two dollars, a superb, inimitable and valuable likeness, a "monument of genius" which "some hundred years hence might sell for several hundred dollars." But as the jury could not see how that would benefit the prisoner, they found him guilty, and he went to prison for three years and a day. Christian Smith's Case is prefaced by the reporter with a quotation from Virgil's Georgics, in the original and translated, and a very flowery and j
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hifalutin exordium, warning his countrymen against "the awful consequence of harbouring, for a long period, a settled malignity against a neighbor." The trial was for murder, and although the jury acquitted the prisoner, Judge Van Ness informed him that he considered him "a very guilty man," and to "beware — you have not escaped. Believe me, your most awful trial is yet to come," namely, at the bar of God, and predicted that unless he repented and atoned, his " condemnation there is certain — what ever may be considered the law of Staten Island, your conduct is unjustifiable in the sight of God and man." This seems pretty hard measure, and rather extra-judicial. In Jemsen's Case, the reporter excuses himself for the use of "circumlocution and indirect demonstra tion " on account of the indecent character of the evidence, observing: "If not in the former, yet in the latter mode of reasoning, we are fully justified, even by the authority of Euclid. (Simp. Euclid, lib. i, Prop, vii and xxvi.)" We must say that his pains taking rather enhances than hides the indecency in question. In John Balls' Case (arson), the reporter concludes the report with the remark that " the character and situation of the defendant, as disclosed on the trial," reminded him of Arbuthnots epitaph on Colonel Charteris (which he quotes in full), to the effect that God shows his contempt of wealth "by bestowing it on the most unworthy of all the descendants of Adam." Some of the headnotes are very funny. For example : " Where either a married or a single man is robbed of his property at a house of ill-fame, the least he can say is the better." "Honest, prudent people need not fear highway robbery in the City of New York." "Vigilance in clerks is highly commendable." " The more respect able the friends of a thief may be, the more enormous his crime." NOTES OF CASES.
BOARDI.NG MOVING TRAIN. — A late decision in the New York Court of Appeals in Distler г/. L. I. R. Co. on this point is important, and shows some contrariety of opinion. The decision here is that it is not negligence, as a matter of law, for a passenger to attempt to get on to a train, in pursuance of the direction of the conductor, while it is moving at the rate of two or three miles an hour, when there is nothing to indicate any unusual danger. Three judges dissent. The case is distinguished from Hunter v. C. & S. V. R. Co., 126 N. Y. 18, where, as the train approached a platform at the rate of one or two miles an hour, the conductor said to the plaintiff, " If you are going, jump on," and he was injured in trying to do so. This was held contributory negligence as
