Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/27

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The Green Bag.

and that these bags contain the documents relating to the cases, you at once realize both the origin and the force of the saying about washing dirty linen in public. Someone — a ¿>¿asé-ook g man in a dress like a stunted polonaise — says something unintelligible to the audience, but they evi dently know what he intends to say, and every one immediately gets up; all but you, who are so busy with your eyes that you forget your feet. Someone nudges you, and you rise, thereby not only showing respect to the representative of the Queen — if you did not you could be fined — but getting a very good view of the personages of the small but im posing procession emerging from the curtains behind the judge's chair. Enter, first, a sort of human preface in the shape of a macebearer. Generally speaking, judges even in England the Elaborate do not have macebearers, but this particular one has set up one pretty much as another man would set up a coach or a new doctrine in religion — by way of being a swell and different from his fellows. And the mace, too, is different from its fellows; others that you have seen arc like bludgeons, this one is shaped like a stunted oar. And now enter the judge, evidently a picturesque-minded person, for his tea-gown is red, with a sash around the place where his waist would be if he had one. His sleeves are turned back with grey, and you imagine that it is to keep them clean, but it is not. In law, the obvious reason is never the actual reason. Those grey sleeve-protectors are mourning; they were put on when some body royal died — George the Third, as likely as not — and as the powers that be have not said that they were to be taken off, the judge keeps on being sorry, from his el bows down. His lordship comes in; every one bows profoundly, and he returns it by a compli cated movement made up of one part bow, one part a sidling walk, for he is ushering in, not the Prince of Wales, nor Li Hung Chang,

as you might expect from his manner, but American Law in the person of Morton of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. Your pride rises within you, for it is written all over Morton's face and figure and clothes that he is an American and a gentleman and a scholar. You wish that they would find many more just like him, and induce them all to come over here as an offset to the common or garden American, that is as a plague of thistles at about this time of year. There he sits on the bench beside the judge, guiltless of slouch, his clothes well brushed, his mouth well shut, showing more intelligence by the way he listens than most people do by the way they talk. So marked is his personality and also the distinction which is being accorded him by his lordship, that every one asks who he is, and it delights your very soul to know that this credit to his country and himself is an American. Meantime the case has begun, and a mixed affair it is. An American barrister, representing an official in China, is petition ing an English judge for a divorce in which an East Indian is involved, with the result that besides the law of divorce there enter questions of geography, domicile, juris diction, free ports of entry, and sundry mi nor entangling considerations. As soon as you find it is a divorce case you retire, not having provided yourself with a mental disinfectant. Candidly you do so reluctantly, for he of the red gown is the famous Sir Francis Jeune, and the Ameri can barrister is Newton Crane, who had his first case at the English bar before this same Sir Francis. You would like to see how the two nationalities hit it off to gether; but friendship///« patriotism, even of the Star-Spangled Banner sort, is inade quate to carry you through the hearing of a divorce case in an English court. So you go to the next room and there learn some disconnected but interesting facts. One is that the judge is wearing a red gown because