Rditorial Department. peerage : " In the midst of all these distinctions, one object for which Lord Eldon struggled he could not yet obtain. To please Lady Eldon, who had a just horror of the wigs with which judges were then disfigured in society, he prayed the king that when he was not sitting in court he might be allowed to appear with his own hair, observing that so lately as the reigns of James I and Charles I judicial wigs were unknown. ' True,' replied the king, ' I admit the correctness of your statement, and am will ing, if you like it, that you should do as they did; for though they certainly had no wigs, yet they wore long beards.'" — {Law Times.) This other anecdote, concerning the Kent Club — that famous club which flourished for three years in New York about seventy years ago, having about forty members, the most prominent of the bar — seems to show that Lord Eldon himself may well have preferred " to appear in his own hair " : Among the " archives," as they were called, of the club was the original old horse-hair wig of Lord Eldon. It was generally present at the meetings, and graced the head of some one of the learned pundits, its use being provocative of mock reverence and real merri ment. It was very coarse and ugly, dreadfully heavy, and my lord must have had a strong cranium to have stood its pressure. — (Letter of James W. Gerard, in Sketch 'of the Law Insti tute) IT is said that Congressman Littlefield, of Maine, tells this story, in which he himself was counsel for the plaintiff. A middle-aged gentle man, unmindful of his engagement to a woman of about his own age, married another, and younger girl; whereupon he was sued for breach of prommise. The defendant left the court room when the jury retired, and when the jury returned the defendant was not present. The jury found for the plaintiff in eight hundred dollars' dam ages. The counsel for the plaintiff met the de fendant in the lobby of a near-by hotel. "Squire," asked the latter, "how did the jury decide?" "Against you," was the reply. "I didn't think they would do that," said the middle-aged gentleman musingly. "What are the damages?" "That ain 't so bad!" he exclaimed on being
49
told. " Why, squire, there 's that much differ ence between the two women I" IN Massachusetts, in 1781, and for some years later, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court was paid an annual salary of three hundred and twenty pounds, and each of the four other justices a salary of three hundred pounds, " computed in silver at six shillings and eight pence per ounce, and payable either in silver or bills of publick credit equivalent there to." The governor's salary at the same time was one thousand one hundred pounds. An act of 1787 fixed the justices' fees in that court at sums running from six shillings, for entering a petition and making an order thereon, for the sale or partition of real estates, down to one shilling, for proving a deed or taxing a bill of costs; but it carefully provided that the clerk of the court should " sometime in the month of December, annually, certify to the governor and council the sums by him so taken and received, and paid over to the said justices, that the same may be deducted from the last quarter of the said justices' yearly salary." WHEN George M. Stearns was one of the leaders of the bar in western Massachusetts, one of the judges expressed to him the hope that sometime he should see Mr. Stearns himself on the bench. "I wouldn't be on the bench," answered the latter, " and have to be so good as you are, for all your damned salary." THE best definition of a trust is that given by Thomas B. Reed, who says that "A trust is a large body of capitalists, wholly surrounded by water." THE severest penalty for bigamy is said to be two mothers-in-law. THE excellent portrait of John Jay which is this month's frontispiece is reproduced under arrangement with Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, from their illustrated edition of Irving's " Life of Washington "; and we take pleasure in ac knowledging also their courtesy, as publishers of The Critic, in granting permission to print Mr. Andrew Lang's article.
