Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/448

 The Green Bag

424

HOW TO DISCHARGE AN OBLIGA TION O the amusing deﬁnition of man slaughter we add a second gem,

from another examination paper, sent us by the dean of the Suffolk School of Law, Boston. It was a young Hebrew who deﬁned manslaughter as “murder committed without malice aforethought. ” Another young man of the same race

A.

T.

Howard,

Esq.,

an

Assistant

United States Attorney in Albama:— April 6, 1910. Mr. Elick Howard :— Dear Lawyer: Can't you fend [.7] in my case like you persikute in the govment court. My case is before Judge Alford. I has 10 dollars which I can give you if you put me on the ground. Pleas come thursday to see me bout this at 11 o’clock. Respectively, JOE JOHNSON.

wrote in his examination book :— "Any tampering with a written instrument except crossing the ‘t's’ and dotting ‘i's’ will discharge the obligation if it in any way puts a diﬂerent meaning into the instrument, e. g., cutting oﬂ from the bottom of an instrument certain words is a good alteration and will dis charge the obligation upon which it is based."

A QUESTION OF COLOR OUR readers may be interested in the novel question raised by a Tennessee correspondent :— Green Bag Publishing Co.— Dear Sirs: Please give me full information on this question. If a. Colored purson is on trial for any thing and their is not a Colored man on the grand or petty juror, and the lawy. motion for a Colored man to be put on the juror, if this is not don can the Colored man be tryed a convicted by law, in any state. Pleas give me full information on this.

It all depends on the presiding judge; if he can be persuaded to take a colored view of the law, the colored man will have the right to demand a colored juror.

A PERSIKUTE-ING ATTORNEY IN DEMAND EMARKING that some readers of

the Green Bag may be interested in learning “how a negro who is up in the air oﬁ’ers ten dollars to the ‘persikute’ ing attorney to put him on the ground," United States Attorney Armbrecht sends us the following letter recently sent to

LORD COKE AND LITERATURE

IN

his

address delivered

at

the

last

annual meeting of the North Carolina Bar Association, T. T. Hicks, Esq., took the interesting career of Sir Edward Coke as his subject. We quote one of many good pas sages of a readable paper: “Lord Coke had no taste for the poetry of life, was seldom enthusiastic and never too full of feeling. Bacon said of him: ‘He hath not in his nature one part of those things which are popular in men, being neither civil nor affable.’ His writings contain no refer ence to or quotations from Shakspere, who was born when Coke was twelve years of age and died seventeen years before Coke; nor Ben Johnson or Edmund Spenser, all of whom were his contemporaries. He was never known to be in a theatre and had a great con tempt for players and poets, except Chaucer, whom he quoted occasionally. He was aware that his productions were dry and ‘in the lawyer's dialect,’ though ‘plainly delivered.’ He wrote that he ‘did in some sort envy the state of the honest ploughman and other mechanics; for at their work they merrily sing or whistle some self-pleasing tune, and yet their work proceeded and succeeded; but he that takes upon himself to write (the law) doth captivate all the faculties and powers both of his mind and body, and must be only attentive to that which he oollecteth, without any expression of joy or cheerfulness while he is at his work.’ He took no pleasure in festivities, studied unceasingly, went to bed with the sun and rose at three in the morn ing. It seems the Court in his day sat from eight to eleven a. m. On one occasion a messenger from the King on urgent business arrived at Lord Coke's house at one a. m. and requested an immediate audience. Sir Ed