SENATOR GEORGE F. HOAR, in an extremely interesting article in the September Scribtier's, tells the following stories, among others, of "Some Famous Judges": Chief Justice Shaw, though very rough in his manner, was exceedingly considerate of the rights of poor and friendless persons. Sometimes persons unacquainted with the ways of the world would desire to make their own arguments, or would in some way in terrupt the business of the court. The Chief Justice commonly treated them with great consideration. One amusing incident hap pened quite late in his life. A rather dissi pated lawyer who had a case approaching on the docket, one day told his office-boy to "Go over the Supreme Court and see what in hell they are doing." The Court were hearing a very important case in which Mr. Choate was on one side and Mr. Curtis on the other. The bar and the court-room were crowded with listeners. As Mr. Curtis was in the widst of his argument, the eye of the Chief Justice caught sight of a young urchin, ten or eleven years old, with yellow trousers stuffed into his boots, and with his cap on one side of his head, gazing intently up at him. He said, "Stop a moment, Mr. Curtis." Mr. Curtis stopped and there was a profound silence as the audience saw the audacious little fellow standing entirely un concerned. "What do you want, my boy?" said the Chief Justice. "Mr. P. told me to come over here and see what in hell you was up to," was the reply. There was a dive at the unhappy youth by three or four of tb" deputies in attendance, and a roar of laughter from the audience. The boy was ejected. But the gravity of the old Chief Justice was not disturbed. In the old days, when the lawyers and judges spent the evenings of court week at the taverns on the circuit, the Chief Justice liked to get a company of lawyers about him and discourse to them. He was very well informed, indeed, on a great variety of mat ters, and his talk was very interesting and full of instruction. But there was no fun in it. One evening he was discoursing in his ponderous way about the vitality of seed.
He said: "I understand that they found some seed of wheat in one of the pyramids of Egypt, wrapped up in a mummy-case, where it had been probably some four thou sand years at least, carried it over to Eng land last year and planted it, and it came up and they had a very good crop." "Of mummies, sir?" inquired old Josiah Adams, a waggish member of the bar. "No, Mr. Adams," replied the Chief Jus tice, with a tone of reproof, and with great seriousness. "No, Mr. Adams, not mum mies—wheat." Adams retired from the circle in great discomfiture. He inquired of one of the other lawyers, afterward, if he supposed that the Chief Justice really believed that he thought the seed had produced mummies, and was told by his friend that he did not think there was the slightest doubt of it. Judge Shaw, in his latter days, was rever enced by the people of Massachusetts as if he were a demi-god. But in his native county of Barnstable he was reverenced as a god. One winter, when the Supreme Court held a special session at Barnstable for the trial of a capital case, Judge Merrick, who was one of the judges, came out of the court-house just at nightfall, when the whole surface of the earth was covered with ice and slush, slipped and fell heavily, breaking three of his ribs. He was taken up and carried to his room at the hotel, and lay on the sofa waiting for the doctor to come. While the judge lay, groaning and in agony, the old janitor of the court-house, who had helped pick him up, wiped off the wet from his clothes and said to him, "Judge Merrick, how thankful you must be it was not the Chief Justice!" Poor Merrick could not help laughing, though his broken ribs were lacerating his flesh. Chief Justice Shaw is said to have been a very dull child. The earliest indication of his gift of the masterly and unerring judg ment which discerned the truth and reason of things was, however, noticed when he was a very small boy. His mother one day had a company at tea. Some hot buttered toast was on the table. When it was passed
