Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/600

 The Supreme Court of Maine.

557

efforts made to procure his testimony, con Biographies are pleasant reading, espe firm us in the belief that his testimony is cially those of great judges which are filled not true, and that it is newly invented, not with the incidents of court life, relieving its newly discovered." In the same volume, at monotony and tedium with flashes of wit p. 592, is the opinion in Grotton v. Glidden, and humor which reveal the agreeable side an action of trespass for assault and battery. of the stern judge. It is to be regretted The Saxon words in the following portion that more of such incidents in the life of of the opinion will not be easily matched in Judge Walton have not been preserved, for his life abounds in them. Here is the mon any of the reports : — "In the present case, the evidence shows ograph of a shrewd, observing juryman : — that the plaintiff and the defendant had been "Judge Walton at seventy-four is right in on unfriendly terms for many years. The his prime. His ear is quick, his eye is keen. defendant had fastened upon the plaintiff the He runs the whole show so quietly that no name of ' Hog Back,' and had expressed body seems to know that he is the moving great satisfaction on learning that the latter spirit. He finds time to read the news papers while court is sitting. When he is was about to move out of the neighbor reading the papers he sometimes says to a hood. The plaintiff had called the defend ant a hypocrite in religion, and expressed a witness without looking up, ' You need not long-felt desire to punch his head. They answer.' met in the highway, and the result was, first "He has the dignity that becomes a judge an altercation and then a fight, each one of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, but being as ready and as willing to enter into he sometimes enlivens dull proceedings by the fight as the other. The plaintiff got the sallies of wit and humor. He talks to the worst of it. The defendant testified that he boys in the bar just as a big, good-natured escaped with no other damage than a torn boy would talk to a group of little young shirt-collar. The plaintiff went home with sters. When he says to the lawyers, ' pro two black eyes, a scratched face, a bruised ceed,' or ' stop,' or says ' gentlemen of the head, a lame back, and a kick on the jury,' the tones of his deep voice are musi lower part of his abdomen, which caused cal, and what he says is expressed in the him to pass bloody urine. Surely if the clearest-cut English. The clerk's desk is in defendant escapes with a verdict against front of the judge's seat, and the bar is in him of only fifty dollars, he may think him front of the clerk's desk. The bar is not self lucky. His plea of ' self defence ' makes that kind of a bar that Tom Watson said quite as feeble an impression on the court was in the basement of both ends of the capitol at Washington, but is a pen for the as it seems to have made on the jury." He has never drawn a dissenting opinion. lawyers, where they have their books, writing He generally succeeds in convincing those materials, chairs and table. When two of 'em get to disputing, a word from the judge opposed to him unless he becomes con vinced himself of error. His manuscript is quiets the disputants. The rest all grin and the delight of the reporter and the joy of the proceedings go on." the printer. It is clear and plainly written How " proceedings go on " sometimes as copper-plate, and the rules of the com when attorneys are absent is thus told by posing-room never forgotten. This will be the daily scribe of the press : — better appreciated when it is stated that all "Judge Walton is on the bench of the his opinions are carefully copied by himself Supreme Court here this term, which is the from the original for the use of the reporter same as saying that more good things have and printer. been said from that bench this week than