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Custom House Officer : " Open your trunk. Have you anything but personal property?" Distinguished Lawyer : " What do you call personal property?" "Don't you know what personal property is?" "Well, there's no real estate in it."
An Iowa judge relates an amusing incident that occurred in his court when a colored man was brought up for some petty offense. The charge was read, and as the statement " The State of Iowa against John Jones" was made in a loud voice, the colored man's eyes bulged out of their sockets, and he seemed perfectly over come with terror and astonishment. When he was asked if he had anything to say, or pleaded guilty or not guilty, he gasped out : " Well, yo' honah, ef de whole State o' Iowa is agin this one pore nigger, Fse gwine to give up right now!"
That canny Scot had a very keen sense of the fitness of things, who, when asked if he had ever been in a court of justice, replied, " No, but I've been before the judge."
A farmer forwarded a letter to a town, in scribed, " To any respectable attorney." The postmaster returned it, indorsed, " None here."
Young Lawyer : " I spent nearly an hour yes terday trying to convince that client of mine he was innocent." Old Lawyer : " Oh, well, never mind; you'll probably be able to convince the judge he's guilty in half the time." NOTES.
The following is the syllabus of a case recently reported in the Pennsylvania District Court Re ports : — "When a cow, city-bred and country-sold, dissenting from her changed environment, and disregarding the right of her purchaser, returns to the city and conducts herself upon the high way in a manner prejudicial to little children, and repugnant to municipal ordinances, a constable who recognizes her as an old acquaintance, and extends the friendly shelter of his barn, being
assisted therein by a policeman, is not guilty of obstructing the latter in performance of duty by subsequent refusal to surrender possession with out evidence upon the record showing special authority in the policeman from the mayor under the ordinance involved, because, in the absence thereof, neither officer had the exclusive right, and hence the constable being prior in tempore was potior in jure. Semble, a case which involves, upon certiorari, the juridical relation of a cow to a constable, and of both to a policeman, demands more elaborate consideration than courts usually bestow upon litigation originating before justices of the peace.
The most interesting fact about the building of Wormwood Scrubbs prison, in England, is that the plans for its construction were drawn by a convict in his cell, while undergoing the proba tionary nine months to a long term of imprisonment, says " Tit-Bits". The man had been originally an architect, and among the foremost in his pro fession. He was a gentleman both by birth and education, but in early life began to abuse his natural gifts, and at the time was undergoing his second term of imprisonment for forgery. The completion of the work occupied nearly six months, and was effected under great disadvan tages. In place of a table he had to pin his paper to the wall of his cell, moving it around with the sun in order to obtain the best light. The prison authorities consider this marvelous specimen of architectural drawing the finest piece of work ever done by an English convict. It measures five feet three inches by five feet six inches, being drawn to the scale of a hundredth part of an inch. The convict displayed the greatest interest and pride in the erection and completion of the prison, which was built entirely by convict labor. The bricks were made on the premises, or at some adjoining land leased for the purpose. The iron castings came from Portland prison, the granite from Dartmoor, and the Portland stone from Portland. The laws of Prussia provide that if an article is lost, the finder can claim one tenth of its value when he returns it to the owner. The German empress recently lost her insignia of the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, which includes me
