Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/420



CURRENT TOPICS. THE SHORT LOBSTERS CASE. (State v. Swctt, 87 Me. 99.) "Look not upon the lobster when 'tis red, Unless ten inches and a half in length "; Tis thus the solemn law of Maine has said, In order to preserve its numerous strength. "Each lobster must be laid upon its back, And accurately measured without fail, From bone of nose unto the tiny crack At end of middle flipper of its tail. "If shorter are in one's possession found, Our sheriff then shall seize him by the collar, And hold him straitly liable and bound Until he pays the State for each a dollar." A totally depraved expressman took Two thousand, packed in barrels, not so long, To carry to their purchasers by Imok, Incited by the devil to this wrong. Although he didn't know the fish were short, Yet in the haste of business did not pause To ascertain; the officers of court Claimed that he fell within the Statute's clause. But said the Court, "The carrier had no power Nor time to measure all those lobsters' backs; He held them but a quarter of an hour; For his small freight 'twould be too great a tax." The State was thus too early or too late : It should have nabbed the fishers at the beach, Or caught consumers with them on the plate; For carriers are beyond the legal reach. The statement in the book does not disclose — (And the omission seems extremely odd) — Another good defense, for I suppose The barrels all were marked "C. O. D.," cod. Bai.zac on Lawyers. — The Easy Chairman is amusing his summer leisure by reading the novels and stories of Balzac — prodigious genius! compar able only to Dickens. He has plenty to say about law and lawyers. Let us commend to our brothers the perusal of " The Commission in Lunacy " and "Colonel Chabert." In the latter the great author says : "There are in modern society three men who can never think well of the world — the priest, the doctor and the man of law! And they wear black

robes, perhaps because they are in mourning with every virtue and every illusion. The most hapless of the three is the lawyer. When a man comes in search of the priest, he is prompted by repentance, by remorse, by beliefs which make him interesting, which elevate him and comfort the soul of the inter cessor whose task will bring him a sort of gladness; he purifies, repairs, and reconciles. But we lawyers, we see the same evil feelings repeated again and again; nothing can correct them; our offices are sewers which can never be cleaned." A Relapse. — The Easy Chairman has for years been preaching the doctrine of recumbency in vaca tion, and early last summer he discovered, to his great delight, some records of the laziest man who ever lived — Thomson, the poet of the "Castle of Indolence." It seems that he was too lazy to lie down when he found himself standing, and he used to stand, with his hands in his pockets, and nibble the peaches trained against the wall of his garden. Just after that discovery, the Easy Chairman's Eve offered him a bicycle. Poor man.! too lazy to resist, he mounted the wheel and rode away, and now no more recumbency for him! He is as much a slave to the vice as the New York Court of Appeals judges used to be to their horses, on which they went can tering in sober procession from Albany to Saratoga to hold their summer court. The Easy Chairman has received professional promotion — he is now Master of the Rolls! Legal Humor in Georgia. — It is evident that there is in Georgia an aspirant to the place hitherto accorded to Chief-Justice Bleckley as a judicial humorist, in the person of Atkinson, J., who has succeeded to his seat. Some of our recent notes of cases from Georgia bear witness to this. So far however Atkinson, J., appears to be a judicial droll rather than a judicial humorist. For example, in Maine v. Conn. F. Ins. Co., 95 Ga. 613, the Court decide that a prohibition in a fire policy against keeping inflammable materials on the premises is of no avail where the materials are necessary to the prosecution of the business there carried on, and this was understood by the insurer. To hold otherwise, 3S5