and in rather an excited manner stepped before him and said : — "If it please your Honor, I would like to argue the motion in the case of those Damn minors!" "Sir! " said his Honor, with great severity of tone and a frown that indicated that he was con sidering only the amount of the fine. "The children of John Damn, deceased," said the attorney, with the corners of his mouth twitch ing suspiciously. Judge V smiled.
The story is told that a certain judge who, during the plea of a rather prosy lawyer, could not refrain from gently nodding his head in sleep, was caught at this by the lawyer, who looked sig nificantly at him. "Perhaps," said the judge, testily and prevaricatingly, " the counsel thinks the court was asleep, but he may be assured that the court was merely cogitating." The lawyer talked on. Presently the judge, again overcome by his somnolency, nodded off and aroused himself with a little sudden snorting snore. "If it please your honor," said the lawyer, " I will suspend my plea until the court shall have ceased to cogitate audibly!"
A good anecdote is told of the two celebrated barristers, Balfour and Erskine. Balfour's style was gorgeously verbose. Erskine's, on the con trary, was crisp and vigorous. Coming into court one day Erskine noticed that Balfour's ankle was bandaged. "Why, what's the matter?" asked Erskine. Instead of replying, " I fell from a gate," Balfour answered, in his usual roundabout man ner : "I was taking a romantic ramble in my broth er's garden," he said, "and on coming to a gate I discovered that I had to climb over it, by which I came into contact with the first bar and grazed the epidermis of my leg, which has caused a slight extravasion of the blood." "You may thank your lucky stars," replied Erskine, "that your brother's gate was not as lofty as your style, or you would have broken your neck."
A Swede came into a lawyer's office one day (says the Cincinnati "Enquirer") and asked: "Is hare ben a lawyer's place? " "Yes; I'm a lawyer." " Well, Maister Lawyer, I tank I shall have a paper made." " What kind of a paper do you want?" "Well, I tank I skall have a mort gage. You see, I buy me a piece of land from Nels Petersen, and I want a mortgage on it." "Oh, no. You don't want a mortgage; what you want is a deed." " No, maister; I tank I want mortgage. You see, I buy me two pieces of land before, and I got deed for dem, and 'nother faller come along with mortgage and take the land; so I tank I better get mortgage this time."
NOTES.
Crude mediaeval methods of robbery began to give place to modern methods in which men's pockets are picked under the specious guise of public policy. Your mediaeval baron would al low no ship or boat to pass his Rhenish castle without paying what he saw fit to extort for the privilege, and at the end of his evil career he was apt to compound with conscience and buy a ticket to Heaven by building a chapel to the Virgin. Your modern manufacturer obtains legis lative aid in fleecing his fellow countrymen, while he seeks popularity by bestowing upon the public a part of his ill-gotten gains in the shape of a new college or a town library. .— From " Old Virginia and Her Neighbours " by John Fiske.
M. Frantz Funck Brentano, in the " Revue Hebdomadaire," devotes a chapter of his "Ar chives de la Bastille " to the sojourn of several men of letters in that fortress. He shows that they were not always treated with great severity. La Beaumelle, incarcerated by desire of Voltaire for having published a counterfeit and libellous edition of the " Siecle de Louis XIV," speaks of his stay there without bitterness, and of the marked attention paid him by the governor. Marmontel, who was most unjustly arrested, had more reason to be severe; he has left in his memoirs an amusing account of his first supper in his cell. Imprisoned with his servant, he had just shared with him a simple though bountiful repast when several keepers appeared, preceded by the governor, and bearing a delicious supper,
