A Century of English Judicature. The principal Vice Chancellors during the latter period of the Court were Malins (1866- '81), and Bacon (i87O-'86). Giffard (i868-'6g) and James (1869-'70) spent a brief period in this court on their way to the Court of Appeal, and Hall (i873-'82) was not particularly distinguished. Malins, in spite of judicial peculiarities, was a compe
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tent equity lawyer, and the reports contain some excellent expositions by him of various branches of real property law. Bacon, the last of the Vice Chancellors, was a man of varied accomplishments, not the least of which was the literary skill which makes his opinions such entertaining reading.
CLIENT.
BY JOHN B. MORGAN. JAMES BELDEX was an old lawyer who had practiced for nearly half a cen tury in a county seat town in the Western Reserve. He had never risen to the dignity of a judge but, in his day, had enjoyed a large and fairly lucrative practice. It had brought him a competence and the respect of his neigh bors. and now, relieved of active duties, he had reached that age and place in life where he loved to talk of incidents in his career. Exclusive devotion to his profession had ria-le him narrow. His stories were all of the law, and most of them were of his own triumphs. And ordinarily he found more pleasure in the relating of them than did his auditors in the hearing thereof. But he had one good story and he had told it so often that he could tell it fairly well. This story was his pet. But he never could be induced to tell it till he had almost distracted his hearers with a recital of his dullest and many more than "twice-told" tales. However, if they had listened attentively and with ap parent interest, he would tell them of his client, John Fleming. "One morning, about ten years after I had located here, in casually glancing over the half dozen letters of my morning mail. I observed one directed to me in red ink. I <~.pened it first, and found a short, well writ ten business letter, enclosing me for collec
tion a claim against a party then residing here—all written in carmine ink. 1 ac knowledged receipt of the letter, inquired about some matters necessary to know before proceeding, and the reply came promptly in the same fiery color. The correspondence thus far had informed me that the writer, John Fleming, was a storekeeper in a small town in the northern part of the county. After some further correspondence each way, this mat ter was closed, and nothing of the transac tion remained to impress me but this one unusual departure from the approved style of ordinary business correspondence. "Several years after this, when I had almost forgotten the incident, a deed was handed me by a client for examination. One of the subscribing witnesses had signed in red ink, and the signature read John Fleming. And on several subse quent occasions, various papers, bearing this signature and always in the same careful handwriting and the brightest of red ink, passed through my hands. I could not help wondering what strange whim prompted him to it. I had noted this pe culiarity of the man till I was more likely to be impressed with its absence than its pres ence. "One day I received a note requesting me to come to the county jail at once. It was
