Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/474

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Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Horace W. Fuller, 15^ Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of inter est to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetia>, anec dotes, etc. THE GREEN BAG. The Green Bag finds the following in a letter to it from a New York lawyer : " Recently I had as a guest, under introductory letters, a London solicitor whom I was escorting around the courts. Upon first starting on our tour something occurred causing him to ask, ' Is there really a forgetfulness of civil war times and a fraternization of Northern and Southern men? ' Following up the remark, I led him into a room of the Common Pleas, and pointing out a swarthy judge with a Roman face and picturesque black locks of hair, I said, ' That is Judge Roger A. Pryor, who on the night before the firing on Fort Sumter, made in Charleston a most fiery speech against the North, and who, as an aide on the staff of Confederate General Beau regard, made afterwards the demand for the Fort's surrender. He is now one of our most admired jurists, by popular election. At the Clerk's desk, before him, sits William S. Keily, keeping the minutes, who was at one time in the Confederate army of Northern Virginia. The lawyer address ing Judge Pryor is Counselor Swayne, son of a Lincoln justice of the Supreme Court, and the crutch on the chair beside him is needed to sup port him because of a wound he received as a Union officer. But come now into the Court of Oyer and Terminer.' And there I showed him District Attorney Fellows, familiarly styled Colonel because he held that rank in an Arkansas Con federate army. ' The prisoner he is trying is an ex-Union soldier, and the gentleman he is convers ing with is J. Fairfax McLaughlin, another Con federate soldier who is now Clerk of the Surrogate's Court.' In the portion where lawyers have seats, I pointed out Major J. D. McClelland, a now onearmed ex-Northern soldier; Burton S. Harrison,

now a leading member of the Bar, who was private secretary to Jefferson Davis; and not far from him, leaning on his crutch, General Sickles who, since his recent retirement from Congress, has rejoined the Bar of the city at which he was once corporation counsel. ' Say no more,' said the solicitor, ' I fully recognize the fraternization.'" LEGAL ANTIQUITIES. In the Jewish Commonwealth, judgment seats were placed on the gates of the cities (Ruth iv. 2), intimating quick despatch, that causes should not spend so long as to become aged and gray-headed in courts, lest they force the client to say to his lawyer, as Balaam's ass said to his master, " Am I not thine ass, which thou hast ridden upon, since the first time till the present day " (Num. xxii.

FACETIÆ. Several years ago in one of the southern coun ties of Ohio, a case was being tried before a Court and Jury wherein a poor widow named Coine was plaintiff, and a railroad company defendant. The widow was seeking damages for the death of her husband, and plaintiff's counsel, in arguing before the jury, was dwelling upon the poverty of his client and her nine helpless children, one at the breast (the case had not then been as long drawn out as that of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce), and had drawn himself up for a final pitiful appeal to the sympathies of the court and jury, when opposing counsel desired to ask him a question, and was courteously requested to proceed with his question. "Your Honor, I desire to ask Judge R. how there can possibly be so great poverty where there's so much Coin? " This spoiled the finale of counsel's argument, and he soon subsided. Some months ago a young lawyer of Milwaukee, not over bright, faced Judge J. at the opening of 437