Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/306

 Humor of the Bench. the Attorney-General, addressing Mr. Thacher, said, " You are no gentleman." Thacher arose and said, " Well, now, Mr. Attorney-General, I admit that I am no gen tleman, — I am no gentleman." Judge Strong interposed, with a peculiar arch manner, and said, " Well, gentlemen, I think you need not go to the jury on that question." Judge Paine, of Maine, was trying a cause where Daniel Davis, one of the ablest lawyers of Maine in Revolutionary times, represented a mother who prosecuted a school-teacher for flogging her son, and Mr. Mellen, afterwards upon the bench, the defendant. Bradbury, one of the judges, suggested "that there should be more proof of the of fence on the part of the boy." Mellen said : " If a schoolmaster was obliged to hunt up evidence among his pupils to justify his manner of governing a school, he would be placed in a more difficult position than any officer of the gov ernment." Davis answered : " Brother Mellen was probably educated in the school of one Tyrannus." "Well," says Judge Paine, " he was a good master, was n't he? " (Willis's " Law Courts and Lawyers of Maine.") Daniel Davis and Judge Thacher were boys together at Barnstable, when the battle of Bunker Hill was fought. They joined the militia company as escort that marched next day towards Boston. The company was or dered back. The boys, foot-weary and tired, mounted an old horse they found in the road without bridle, and rode him several miles on the retreat, and then abandoned him in the highway. Years after, Davis as SolicitorGeneral was prosecuting a horse-thief before Judge Thacher in Kennebec County. In the course of the trial Thacher leaned over and said to Davis, in an undertone, " Davis, this reminds me of the horse you and I stole to gether in Barnstable." (Ibid.) 36

Perhaps one of the most eloquent and dis tinguished lawyers of Maine at the close of the Revolutionary War was William Symmes of Portland. He was arguing a motion one day before Judge Thacher, and persisted, though con stantly interrupted by the court. Thacher grew impatient, and said, "Mr. Symmes, you need not persist in arguing the point; for I am not a court of errors, and cannot give a final judgment." "I know," answered Symmes, " that you can't give a final judgment, but as to your not being a court of errors I will not say." Judge Dana quieted the fears of the ser vant-girl at the tavern where two lawyers who had a very sharp conflict during the day on a trial, had been lighted by her to the same chamber to pass the night. She ex pressed her fears that it would not be safe. The judge said to her, " Lawyers are like two sides of a pair of shears; they do not cut one another, but only what was between." An eminent judge, who was trying a rightof-way case in England, had before him a witness — an old farmer — who was proceed ing to tell the jury that he had " knowed the path for sixty year, and my feyther tould I as he heered my grandfeyther say —" "Stop! " said the judge; " we can't have any hearsay evidence here." "Not? " exclaimed Father Giles. " Then how dost knaw who thy feyther was 'cept by hearsay?" After the laughter the judge said : " In counts of law we can only be guided by what you have seen with your own eyes, nothing more or less." "Oh, that be blowed for a tale," replied the farmer. " I ha' a bile on the back of my neck, and I never seed un; but I be ready to swear that he 's there, I do." The author of the biographical sketch of Lord Selborne, in the September " Green Bag" of 1891, gives an anecdote of Lord