Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/252

 Rh Lord Brougham once, in giving judgment in a case in the Privy Council, made use of the fol lowing language : " As to the witness Jones, I believe him to be a depraved scoundrel, and I am satisfied that he has perjured himself up to his ears. Had he said more, I would give him my opinion of him." "So you were not satisfied to eat a dinner at the man's restaurant without paying for it, but you went off with the caster and the spoons besides?" "That 's so, your Honor; but I took the caster and the spoons from honest motives." "Honest motives?" "Yes, I wanted to pawn them, so I could raise money to pay for the dinner." A Struggle for a Verdict. — A German had got into a row with a quarrelsome Irishman, who had long been a terror in his neighborhood, and the Irishman had been left stone-dead on the field. A young and inexperienced lawyer under took the defence of the German; and just before the case was to be tried he found to his dismay that the jury was composed of eleven combativelooking countrymen of the murdered man, the twelfth being a German. This of course would never do. A " defence fund " was immediately raised, and the German was approached with all due caution, and the promise if he managed to get the accused off with a verdict of man slaughter it would be worth $1,000 to him; all he had to do was to stick to that one word "manslaughter." Well, the verdict came in "manslaughter" in great shape, and the joyful attorney for the defence could n't get the $1,000 into the German's hands too quickly. Shaking hands with him after the money was placed, he slapped him on the back and said : " You did nobly; you must have had an awful time making those Irishmen agree to simple manslaughter." "Veil, I should say so," replied Schmidt, "dey was all for acquittal." — Central Law Journal. At a trial in France the foreman of the jury, placing his hand on his heart, with a voice choked with emotion, gave in the following ver dict: "The accused is guilty, but we have our doubts as to his identity."

227 NOTES.

It is related of a Bangor lawyer that he was made very unhappy, once upon a time, by hearing that two of his clients had gone to law over a debt. The lawyer did not care to appear against either of his clients, nor did he enjoy the thought that he could not get a fee from at least one of them. Finally by an ingenious trick he managed to collect fees from both. He drew up the com plaint for the plaintiff, charged a good round sum for his services, and referred him to another lawyer, who would appear for him. The next day he devoted to the defendant in this case, drawing up the answer. When the case was tried the lawyer sat in court and enjoyed the fight.

At the last annual meeting of the Victoria Institute of London, a paper was read describing the recent discovery of Assyrian archives thirtyfive hundred years old in the palace of Amenophis III. These venerable chronicles, according to Professor Sayce, show that in the fifteenth century before our era — a century before the Exodus — " active literary intercourse was going on throughout the civilized world of western Asia, between Babylon and Egypt, and the smaller States of Palestine, of Syria, of Mesopo tamia, and even of eastern Kappadokia. And this intercourse was carried on by means of the Babylonian language and the complicated Baby lonian script. This implies that all over the civilized East there were libraries and schools where the Babylonian language and literature were taught and learned. "Babylonian appeared to have been as much the language of diplomacy and cultivated society as French has become in modern times, with the difference that whereas it does not take long to learn to read French, the cuneiform syllabary required years of hard labor and attention before it could be acquired. . . . Kirjath-Sepher, or ' Book-town,' must have been the seat of a famous library, consisting mainly, if not altogether, as the Tel el-Amarna tablets inform us, of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters. As the city also bore the name of Debir, or ' Sanctuary,' we may con clude that the tablets were stored in its chief temple, like the libraries of Assyria and Baby lonia. It may be that they are still lying under the soil, awaiting the day when the spade of the