Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/253

 Is This the Law? By JOHN McG. GOODALE OF THE NEW YORK CITY BAR

“

AST month,” said the Nature faker to the Barrister, “I rambled

and reveled for a week over the Tweed Courthouse of the City and County of New York. One must have his whiff

nals. They are postcards. Do they not sell for ﬁve cents apiece, with some re duction if you buy a series as I did? Look here, for mountain views. See this

great mass of glittering crystals- this

of the mountains occasionally in this

matter more or less translucent.

malarial maritime city." “Whiﬁ of the mountains!” retorted the Barrister. "Remember, young man, that I have to practise daily in the fetid air of Tweed’s courthouse.” “The air may be fetid; but why not forget it?" said the Nature-faker. "Does the Swiss mountain lover recall that the sun reeked till he gasped yesterday on the rocky trail? Does he not forget the noisome insects of alp and joch, just as I can forget the sordid faces that

sions,’ the absurd name you give these things, you and the editor of the New York Law Journal '— ‘decisions’ because

swarmed round me in the courthouse?

No, the more just scenic comparison is between the lawyers and the gushing rills of the mountains."

"Lawyers and water are ﬂuent,” said the Barrister complacently, "but call them rivers instead of rills. tremendous torrents, roll!"

"Mountain

rills,

because

Roll on,

upland

waters, like the lawyers, roar magniﬁ

they are so seldom decisive.

‘Deci

There is

better reason to call them picture cards. Look again at this frozen cascade of leaping thought—frozen only because judicial. Look at this dense wreath of fog, and above it just the glimpse a pic ture lover likes of some towering storm

swept

headland

common law.

of

the

immutable

Come, good peasant, this

is not merely scenery, but it is of the ﬁnest in the world.” The Barrister looked at the Nature faker askance; he did not like to be called a peasant; and then he said cynically: “I trust your week on the Tweed moraine yielded more proﬁt than my week did to me. Perhaps you were able to clamber up to the Justice's cham

bers with your bouquet of edel'weiss."

cently along the higher courses, yet are

“Not at all," said the Nature-faker,

smooth and sinuous when they reach

"I go to your courthouse for purely scientiﬁc purposes, for the astonishing

the rich low levels. But my heart is in the highlands and all my week of court house trotting was spent aloft among the juridical glaciers." "juridical glaciers-contempt of court!" said the Barrister. "Not at all. I am talking of cold scenery, not of cold people. And why not scenery? Let me show you some

picture Look!

postcards

of

your

scenery.

You, with your dull mind, call

this a package of the week’s Law Jour

phenomena to be studied there, for

measuring the glacier’s annual advance or recession, for the prosaic work of noting well-holes and the seepage of water.”

“Will you say that again?" said the Barrister. “You agreed with me already about lawyers and rivulets. Well, water, that is argument, permeates the glaciers of Manhattan. Argument oozes upstairs,