Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/528

 téreen 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, 344 Tremont Building, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of in terest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetiœ, anecdotes, etc. FACETIÆ. •

A WITNESS giving evidence in a case tried at the Limerick Assizes used the expression very common in Ireland, " I said to myself," so fre quently, that the judge interposed with the re mark, " You must not tell us what you said to yourself, unless the prisoner was present. It is not evidence." COUNSEL (to witness whose answer appears to be somewhat evasive). " Now, sir, remem ber you have sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." WITNESS. " I always aim at telling the truth." COUNSEL. "Yes, but I fear you are an un commonly bad shot."

she added, blandly : '• I think—I think he must have had his face washed." Recently, in one of the Dublin police courts, a policeman, in giv ing a description of the arrest of a prisoner who had offered a stout resistance, said : " He threw himself down on his back, yir honor, an' he kicked out with his hind legs." The constable's imagination was more active than his anatom ical accuracy. JUDGE. " Prisoner, do you desire to say any thing in your defence?" "Well, your honor, it was this way. The governor said it was time to take stock, and I took all I could. Then he went back on me and had me arrested for stealing." NOTES. BROUGHAM once contrived to make a holiday pay for itself by the exercise of a little shrewd ness. It was in his college days that, by the way of seeing life, he went one autumn to Dum fries in order to be at the Caledonian hunt meet ing. According to the then custom everybody dined at a table d' hote, and after dinner betting set in. Brougham offered to bet the whole com pany that none of them would write down the manner in which he meant to go to the races next day. Those who accepted his challenge wrote down their conjectures, and Brougham wrote down his intention of travelling in a Sedan chair, a mode of conveyance no one had hit upon. To the races he went, an immense crowd seeing him safely chaired to the course. The bet was then renewed as to the manner of his return to Dumfries, the acceptors taxing their wits to imagine the most improbable method of travelling. Brougham had calculated upon this, and won the double event by returning in a post chaise and pair.

HUMOR, conscious and unconscious, has not quite died out in Irish courts of justice. At the hearing of an action in Cork for the price of a horse, the defendant, who resisted the claim on the ground of breach of warranty, described the animal's condition on the morning after he had bought him, in the following picturesque lan guage: "The horse was like a drunken man. Instead of walking like an ordinary horse he staggered along. The hind legs, instead of having a corresponding action with the fore legs, had a contrary action altogether." In another of the Munster assize courts, an old lady, one of the witnesses, was asked if she saw the pris oner in court. The latter by the way, was being tried for the larceny of certain moneys alleged to belong to the old lady. She took a long and anxious look round the court, and at last said : "I don't see him at present." Then, as her eye WHEN Judge Martin, of Missouri, was a mem lighted doubtfully for a moment on the prisoner, ber of the Supreme Court Commission, there