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The Green Bag

I call decidedly neat. The woman had evi dently passed the springtime of life by some years, but was still making quite a bluff. "'What is your age?' the prosecuting attor ney asked simply. "The witness blushed, hesitated, and stam mered. "'Just remember, madam, each minute that passes makes you that much older,' the attorney suggested casually, as if he had all the time in the world on his hands. "'Thirty-nine!' the witness exclaimed, jumping as though she had been frightened." LAW STUDENTS OF OLDEN DAYS THE young men of today who make up the classes in the law schools seem to think, judging from their remarks, that they have a particularly hard road to travel, and that if their brains were not so surprisingly mas sive, they would be overtaxed by the load put upon them. For their comfort these young gentlemen should read the "Memoirs of Henri de Mesmes," an extract from which will give an idea of a law student's day in the sixteenth century. "We used to rise from bed at four o'clock," he says (four o'clock!), and, having prayed to God, we went at five o'clock to our studies, our big books under our arms, our inkhorns and candles in our hands. We heard all the lectures till ten o'clock rang; then we dined, after having hastily compared, during a half hour, our notes on the lectures. "After dinner we read, as a recreation, Sophocles, or Aristophanes, or Euripides, and sometimes Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, or Horace. At one o'clock to our studies; at five back to our dwelling place, there to go over and verify passages cited in the lectures until six. Then supper, and after supper we read Greek or Latin. "On holy days we went to high mass and vespers; the rest of the days, a little music and walks." THE VERDICT A CASE came to trial in a small Georgia town in which a highly respected and much liked young man was charged with assault and battery, and the evidence showed most unmistakably that upon a certain day he met upon the public street the prosecuting witness, one Jones, and that he had then and

there worn out a buggy whip upon the said prosecuting witness, thereby causing grievous bodily pain to the aforesaid Jones. If ever a man had deserved a thrashing, it had been this same Jones, a fact well known both to the judge and the jury, but the law was explicit, the facts undeniable, and judge and jury did their duty. "Have you found a verdict, gentlemen?" the court asked, when the jury filed into its box from the jury room. "We have, your honor," the foreman re sponded. "Do you find this defendant guilty or not guilty?" The foreman rumpled his hair nervously. "Well, your honor," he replied, "I ain't a lawyer, so can't jest put her in reg'lar law talk, but what I want to say is: we finds the defendant guilty and acquits him!" A PARTITION SUIT TWO typewriter-girls were talking in a tone easily overheard despite the rumble of the car. "Why did you leave that old lawyer?" the black-haired one asked. "You said the work wasn't hard, and you got good pay." "There was a woman in the office one day," the other replied, with an injured intonation, "and they were talking about a 'partition suit,' and I just knew it must be something new, as she said she had just got back from Paris, so when she left I just asked him if it was made anything like a regular divided skirt, and he got just furious!" LIKE SOME OTHER EPITAPHS T WAS called in by a close-fisted old merA chant the other day," a Boston lawyer remarked, smiling. "He wanted me to draw his will, and this I proceeded to do, following his verbal instruction. Presently he said :— "'To each and every clerk who has been in my employ continuously for ten years I give ten thousand dollars.' "This seemed like a considerable sum to me, and I ventured a slight protest, as he had a number of daughters, and his entire fortune was not large. "'Oh, that's all right,' he said, with a little crooked smile. 'You know people have always said that I was close and hard, and I want them to think well of me when I'm gone.'