Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/56

 Rh A certain solicitor-general of England visited Berlin on a vacation, and being mistaken for bearing a military title was invited to a review and mounted on a charger. Being accustomed to following the hounds, he made an excellent equestrian, but when asked opinions as to some of the manoeuvres was obliged to parry the cross-examination. A similar incident befell the late Marshall Bidwell, an eminent New York lawyer, in the fifties, who visited Paris in long vacation. Presenting his card at the gate of the Tuileries, he was politely informed that the emperor was at a review and if he desired a dragoon should be detailed to ac company him on horseback to the Champs de Mars. " But I am not a soldier," said the old lawyer. " Not a soldier and a marshall (examin ing the card), what a droll country is America." The long litigated Mora cause celebre in legal as well as diplomatic courts is referred to as a tedious controversy, but what is it or the fanciful Jarndyce case to the famous Berkeley peerage, one that lasted within a fractional time of two full centuries — beginning with process running in the reign of Henry V (1416), and ending with decree ninning in the name of James I (1609). The suit was often diversified with combats at arms among the excited claimants and respondents.

It is recorded of Andrew Johnson that when, senator or president, he was invited to a dinner party, he was accustomed to ask if any lawyer was to be among the guests. For said he, lawyers always lubricate things. He took a greater fancy to YY'm M. Evarts, his Attorney-General, because of his post-prandial fame, than because of his eminent legal attainments. Americans visiting London are apt to go through, as one of its sights, the Coram Foundling Hospital, between Brunswick and Mecklenburg Squares, where they are struck with the apparent incongruity of finding in its chapel the grave of I^ord Tenterden. The tablet quaintly recites "born in humble station of a father who was prudent and a mother who was pious." It seldom happens that an appellate court rebukes a litigant, but at a term of the Court of Common Pleas in New York City, Judge Roger

39

A. Pryor, delivering the opinion on a mandamus to compel the Police Board to restore a captain, who had, while ill in bed at his home, been dis missed upon evidence taken in his absence, sub stantially remarked, " The law says he was en titled to a hearing. A hearing means trial. The only trial had in this case has been one of stupid ity on the part of the tryers and a trial of our judicial nerves in contemplating such an outrage on law and justice." One of the Police Board — a lawyer — had, however, protested at the time of the dismissal. There is thus an authoritative de cision as to the meaning of the word "hearing" sometimes loosely employed.

The New Year inaugurates a great change of court procedure and jurisdiction in New York City, when, as " the year is dying in the night," perish the Courts of Common Pleas and the Superior Court, after an existence together of three score years and ten, leaving behind them an honorable career for a long line of judges, which include such jurists as Charles P. Daly, John Duer, Aaron Vanderpoel and Edward Pierrepoint. By the new State Constitution, the judges now of those courts are, so to speak, in carnated into the Supreme Court, and to the end of their present terms become Supreme Court judges of the district that the city completes. This action is taken from the precedent set by Lord Campbell's acts in England that amalga mated Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer Courts into one Supreme Court of Judicature with divisions. The New York new procedure also follows the English precedent by providing one standing Appellate division and leaving other Crown judges to assignment at chambers and trial terms.

LITERARY NOTICES. Two very important facts in connection with the new era of magazines are illustrated in the December Cosmopolitan. Its fiction is by Stevenson, the last story written before his death, "Ouida," Sarah Grand, Zangwill, and the beginning of James Lane Allen's new Kentucky realistic story, " Butterflies." Proba bly no stronger array of fiction has ever been pre sented in any magazine. Nor has any magazine ever had a larger number of really distinguished artists engaged upon the illustration of a single number.