NOTES.
THE following lines have been carved on the tombstone of a North Carolina moonshiner : "Killed by the government for making whisky out of corn grown from seed furnished by a con gressman." IN tearing down the Tombs, New York's fa mous prison, to make room for a more modern structure, a sealed room was discovered in the garret of the old Franklin Street wing. There was no door or window to it, and a workman dis covered it by driving his pick through the laths and plaster. In the room were found two small pine coffins, such as were used for the burial of children who died in the days of the cholera plague. The coffins were empty. In the room were also several old documents, among them a police court complaint, with the examination pa pers of a man who had been arrested before the Tombs was built, eighty-two years ago.
Ax old lady whose home was in Concord, Mass., relates that she was once on her tardy way to school, crying in anticipation of disgrace and possible punishment, when a deep voice by her side said: "What is troubling you, my child?" Between her sobs Annie explained. " I will write a note to your teacher, asking her to excuse you," said the stranger, kindly. The little girl protested. He did not know her teacher. It would be of no use. But the big, black-haired man had writ ten a few words on a page of his notebook and, tearing out the leaf, handed it to the child. " If you give your teacher that, I think she will ex cuse you," he said, smilingly. Still unbelieving, the little girl handed the scrap of paper to her teacher, who read its contents and promptly ex cused the delinquent. The note read : " Will Miss excuse Annie for being late, and oblige her most obedient servant, DANIEL WEBSTER." PRESIDENT LINCOLN, when he was a young law yer practicing in the courts of Illinois, was once engaged in a case in which the lawyer on the other side made a very voluble speech, full of wild statements to the jury. Lincoln opened his re ply by saying : " My friend who has just spoken to you would be all right if it were not for one
thing, and I don't know that you ought to blame him for that, for he can't help it. What I refer to is his reckless statements without any ground of truth. You have seen instances of this in his speech to you. Now, the reason of this lies in the constitution of his mind. The moment he begins to talk, all his mental operations cease, and he is not responsible. He is, in fact, much like a little steamboat that I saw on the Sangamon River, when I was engaged in boating there. This little steamer had a five-foot boiler and a sevenfoot whistle, and every time it whistled the en gine stopped." J. A. MURPHY of the West Superior (Wis.) bar recently delivered an address on " Contingent Fees," in the course of which he told of a brakeman who was strongly impressed with the fact that his lawyer was the sole repository of his mental and moral being. The man had made a contin gent contract with an attorney to develop an ordinary spine into a railway spine and institute a resulting damage suit. During the period of the spinal incubation and the pendency of the suit, the railway superintendent met the brakeman on the street and said : "Good morning, James; it's a fine morning." James, a trifle overtrained, re plied : " I neither deny it nor affirm it, sir." THE owner of a valuable Newfoundland dog in New Orleans sought damages from a railroad com pany for killing it. The case turned on the va lidity of an act of the Louisiana legislature, recog nizing dogs as personal property only when placed on the assessment rolls. The United States Su preme Court sustains the law and refuses dam ages, since the dog was not assessed, defining the law in regard to dogs as follows : " The very fact that they are without protection of the criminal laws shows that property in dogs is of an imper fect or qualified nature, and that they stand, as it were, between animals /ene naiune, in which, un til subdued, there is no property, and domestic animals, in which the right of property is com plete. They are not considered as being upon the same plane with horses, cattle, sheep, and other domestic animals, but rather in the category of cats, monkeys, parrots, singing-birds, and sim ilar animals kept for pleasure, curiosity, or caprice. Unlike domestic animals, they are useful neither as beasts of burden, for draft, nor for food."
