Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/26

 In an EnglisJi Court of Law.

IN AN ENGLISH COURT OF LAW. BY AN AMERICAN WOMAN. IT is a distinct experience, the first time you go to an English court of law. In the first place, you have the feeling that you should have prepared for the visit by going to a costumer's and hiring a fancy dress — something not too dazzling, but unique, and as far as possible from what you ordinarily wear. This seems to be the principle on which every one — that is, every man — who has anything to do with the court is dressed, with the result that you sec them arrayed in a choice assortment of black silk tea-gowns and black alpaca Mother Hubbards. They do not call them that, but in the dressmaking department of your intel lect you know that is what they really are, and resolve to borrow one for a pattern. Not content with tea-gowns only, the court shows a distinctly feminine inclination in its style of hair-dressing. They are frankly and obviously wigs that you see — wigs dressed after a most ladylike fashion, with nice little side puffs, such as our grandmothers used to put combs in to keep in place. The " back hair," too, is a distinct feature. What with their tea-gowns and their hair, and their smooth faces, and their brilliant and endur ing capacity for talk, an assemblage of Eng lish lawyers is, at first view, not unlike a ses sion of a woman's club, or a Dorcas society that has forgotten to bring its work along. It occurs to you what an unintentional, and therefore sincere, compliment is paid to us women when lav, the most intellectual of the professions, chooses as its established and authorized costume one that comes nearer to a woman's dress than any other that men wear. It has the outward appearance, at least, of an acknowledgment that they do their best thinking when they make them selves as much like us as they can.

It is almost time for court to open, but you are not to suppose that it begins with out any ado, as is the case at home. In an American court the judge walks in clad in ordinary clothes, hangs up his hat, sits down, mostly on his shoulder-blades, the lawyers present stop smoking for a moment and crowd inside the rail to catch his Honor's eye, and the successful one, one hand in his pocket and the other ready to pound the table with, proceeds to instruct the judge as to what is and is not law, and the lawyer on the other side as to what is and is not ad missible evidence. All of which is not the English mode. Etiquette, if not law, directs in which particu lar little pew the barrister for each side must sit, backed up by his solicitors, and these parties of the first and second parts arrive with leather valises of a set and established pattern which, under certain circumstances, they may carry themselves; under certain or other circumstances they must have carried for them. Sub-officials of the court lay cold sliced law, in the shape of documents and books, ready to hand. Solicitors, who are a brand of lawyers that know law but don't practise it, apparently because they haven't any tea-gowns yet, make haste to tell their counsel — who are lawyers that practise law but don't know it until they are told it — what has been found out about this particu lar case since the last conference. Clerks — you must pronounce it with a broad " a," or people will think you are so ignorant that you don't know how to spell it — well, clerks come in with bags, called green bags, for the reason that they are invariably either blue or red. They look so like laundry bags that you send soiled linen in to the wash that when you find that this is a divorce court,