Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/243

 The Editor's Bag "But the difﬁculty with my brother is that it is not original. I have taken pains to ﬁnd the original, and I am sorry

to rob my brother of the only glory he has got in the case, but I am going to read the original: —

217

thrymsaa; an archbishop or earl at 15,000;

a bishop or alderman at 8,000; belli imperator or summus prwfectus at 4,000; a priest or thane at 2,000, and a com mon person at 267 thrymsa.

A CARD GAME IN COURT "He killed the noble Mudjokeewis With the skin he made him mittens, Made them with the skin side outside, Made them with the fur side inside. He, to get the cold side outside, Put the warm side fur side inside; He, to get the warm side inside, Put the inside skin side outside. That's why he put the fur side inside; Why he put the skin side outside; Why he turned them inside outside.

“There is the inspiration of the cross

Adolph

Bouchnik, of

Cleveland, 0.,

sued

Abram Auerbach of the same city for recovery of money lost while playing "vingt-et-un" with a marked deck. A. E. Bernstein, attorney for Auerbach, played a game with Bouchnik in court to show that marked cards could be of no advantage in "vingt-et-un." — News Item.

ES, many games

are

played in

court, But here we have a new one.

The Judge and jury had ﬁne sport When Bouchnik played vingt-et-un.

examination in this case." We do not know who lost, who won

SAXON COM PENSATION HE Anglo-Saxon tendency to place

In that peculiar contest. But that game of vingt-et-un Did liven up the inquest

a money value on accidents and injuries, even when the latter are of a

Into the mysteries of luck

wilful nature, is of pure Saxon stock.

And whether rogues could do one

The Saxons had a well-established scale

By marking cards and all such truck

of pecuniary compensation for injuries, the amount being more or less according to the time and place of the crime, and

the part of the body injured. The cutting off of an ear involved a penalty of thirty shillings; if the hearing was lost, sixty shillings. To strike out a front tooth cost eight shillings; a canine tooth, four shillings, and a grinder, six

teen shillings. In the time of King Athelstan the notion of money-compensation reached such a degree that every man's life had a ﬁxed value, called a were, or capitis estimatus. Under the law ﬁxing the

were of every order of person in the

In the game of vingt-et-un. Smws Smmcus.

THE JEST THAT MADE A LAW 0 STATUTE ever enacted in Eng land is of greater importance than the Habeas Corpus Act, yet the passage of this enactment, at least at the particu lar time when it ﬁnally came before the House of Lords, was due entirely to a jest.

Lord Grey and Lord Norris were named as tellers when the vote upon the bill was to be taken. Lord Grey was heartily in favor of the bill, which,

occasion was distinguished only as a

however, seemed doomed to defeat. An immensely fat lord declared for the

superior person, was rated at 30,000

passage of the act, and

kingdom, the King himself, who on this

Lord Grey