Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/182

 Rh The following poetic deed is recorded with Cass County, Illinois, Deeds, volume 40, page 251 : I, J. Henry Shaw, the grantor herein, Who live at Beardstown, Cass county, within, For seven hundred dollars, to me paid to-day To Charles E. Wyman do sell and convey, Lot two (2), in block forty (40), said county and town, Where Illinois river flows placidly down. And warrant the title for ever and aye, Waiving homestead and mansion, to both good-by, And pledging this deed is valid in law, I add (Seal.) here my signature, J.Dated HenryJuly Shaw. 25, 1881.

I, Sylvester Emmons, who live at Beardstown, A justice of peace of fame and renown, Of the county of Cass and Illinois state, Do certify here that on this same date, One J. Henry Shaw to me did make known, That the deed above and name were his own. And he stated he sealed and delivered the same, Voluntarily, freely, and never would claim, His homestead therein; but left all alone, Turned his face to the street and his back to his home. (Seal.) S. Emmons, J. P. Dated August 1, 1881. A curious old labor law exists in the Isle of Man. A farm laborer was. . . charged, under the provision of a Manx statute of 1665, with refusing to complete the year of service for which he engaged with, his master. The pen alty provided by the statute is that the servant is to be kept in prison and allowed one cake and one cup of water per day until he returns to the service. In this case the laborer disputed the allegation that he had engaged to work for a year, and the Deemster, saying that he was not satisfied that the laborer had so engaged, dis charged him. — The Law Journal. What is a mummy? As judges do not seem to be quite clear on the point, it is not, perhaps, reasonable to expect that coroners should be better informed. Yet the story that has just been told in the King's Bench division, of a coroner's inquest solemnly held in the city of London in the year of grace 1899, on a Peruvian

mummy in transit from Peru to its final restingplace in a Belgian cemetery, certainly does seem to show that " crowner's quest " law and practice can be as silly now as, according to the gravedigger, it was in the days of Hamlet. Mrs. Aitken, the plaintiff in the recent action, ob tained a mummy in Peru, reputed to be the mummy of a lady Inca, and brought it to Europe for presentation to the fathers of the Maison de Melle in Belgium. Now Peruvian mummies differ widely from the well-known Egyptian variety. They are not embalmed, nor are they enclosed in cases. They appear to be merely sun-dried and then wrapped in cerements of a peculiar fabric with the knees drawn up to the body and the head bowed down to the knees. They are said to be rare, though it is hard to see why anyone should care to possess an object so unsightly and so little edifying, but their market value is not high, according to the ex perts, perhaps because their physical condition is not, let us say, quite so stable as that of an Egyptian mummy. Not to put too fine a point on it, it appears to be quite possible for a Peruvian mummy to be shipped in Peru as a highly sundried specimen and to be landed in Europe in a condition to which the word high can only be applied in a very different sense. Be this as it may, Mrs. Aitken brought her mummy to Eng land apparently in good condition. She ex amined it on the voyage and found it quite innocuous. It was landed in Liverpool and there ern Railway consigned for to transmission the Londontoand theNorth-WestMaison de Melle. Here its amazing adventures began. "One case, mummy " is the bold and curt description under which the hallowed remains of a lady Inca, now " unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd," were consigned to the railway com pany or its agents. They accepted it as such, though when, having lost or mislaid the invoice, they opened and examined the case, they at tempted to charge for it as a " corpse," but afterwards dropped the claim. Whether mummy or corpse, the unhappy remains duly arrived at Broad street on their last long journey. There a strange thing happened. Having lost the in voice, the railway company found it necessary to open the case to ascertain its contents. There was said to be a " stuffy odor " about the box, as might easily be the case when even less