Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/204

 €tje #reen 38ag. Published Monthly, at $4.00 per Annum.

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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. LEGAL ANTIQUITIES. Courts of Trailbaston (quick as your stick) were instituted by Edward I, in order that justice might follow complaint as swiftly as you could trail a club, but owing to numerous errors and repeated appeals, these courts came to end, by general consent, in the reign of Richard II.

FACETIÆ. A lawyer had been questioning the witness for some time, and at last got him down to person alities. . "Did I understand you to say, sir, that the defendant made certain remarks about me?" "I said so, sir." "Ah! Well now, sir, from what you know of me, do you believe those remarks to be true?" "No, sir, I do not." "Very well. Now, will you be good enough to state to the Court what he did say?" "Yes, sir. He said he thought you were a truthful and honest man, and -" "You may step down, sir. That's enough."

A young lawyer named Hovey was at one time located at Independence, Mo. He went to the house of a friend one day to make a call. An old colored woman appeared at the door, of whom he asked if her master and mistress were at home. On being told they were absent, he said : " Tell your master and mistress that J. Hovey, attorneyat-law, called to see them." The old sen.ant looked at him with amazement, as if unable to believe her own eyes. That evening she ex claimed : " Missus, what do you think! Jehovah the Eternal Lord, was here to see you to-day."

NOTES.

Lord Brougham said he remembered a case wherein Lord Eldon referred it in succession to three courts to decide what a particular document was. The Court of King's Bench decided it was a lease in fee; the Common Pleas, that it was a lease in tail : the Exchequer, that it was a lease for years. Whereupon Ixird Eldon, when it came back to him, decided for himself that it was no lease at all. Seventy years ago, no lawyer was better known to all the courts of the Eastern States than Elisha Williams. He was given to uttering startling periods. For instance, in arguing against a will made by a nonogenarian, he exclaimed : " Man's bounds of life are fixed to three score and ten, which superior strength may lengthen to fourscore. But shall a will be made by a man who has out lived God's Statute of Limitations?"

The London correspondent of the Scottish Law Review says : — "It seems that two of the members of the com mission which the American government is appoint ing to inquire into the case in order to help Lord Salisbury out of his Venezuelan difficulties are two lawyers fairly well known here, Mr. Phelps and Mr. Justice Harlan of the United States Supreme Court. The former I first saw seated by Sir Frederick Pol lock, who was lecturing to the students of the Inns of Court, and he spoke to them with that air of easy but accentuated sangfroid which is perhaps a mark of the higher more than of the lower classes, judging from the ebullitions of excitement we have been recently witnessing. I can hardly tell why, but he left on me a decided impression of the figure of Lord Dundreary in pictures of Sothern I have seen. It will be remembered that he was one of the coun sel for the States in the Bchring Sea arbitration, and very ably represented their case on that side of it which consisted of ' the law of nature and right reason ' — a point of view so congenial to the Ameri can's expansive temperament. 181