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The Green Bag

lawyers and most eloquent orators of Kentucky, as eccentric as he was gifted. Scarcely one present knew him person ally, but all had heard of his brilliant qualities. BISMARCK ON ELOQUENCE BISMARCK was no orator. His speech was simple and plain. He thought that the gift of eloquence did a great deal of mischief, both in the courts and in Parliament. He used to tell a story to illustrate what he deemed the distracting effect of eloquence. Frederick William I., the despotic king who pub licly whipped his son, subsequently Frederick the Great, once listened to the pleadings of two lawyers. After the first one had finished his speech, the King, greatly moved by the advocate's eloquence, exclaimed: — "This fellow is in the right!" The second lawyer then spoke, and with such effect that the King said, "This mans has the right of it!" Then, recalling that he had contra dicted himself, he fell into a furious passion and sent both orators to jail!

"But," persisted the barrister, "how do you know the man is dead?" "I don't know," was the response. "It's very difficult to prove." "As I suspected," returned the bar rister. "You don't know whether he is dead or not." "I was saying, sir," continued the witness, with the utmost gravity, "that I don't know whether he is dead or not; but I do know this: they buried him about a month ago on suspicion." PREJUDICED NOT exactly the right word, but a most impressive one, was that used by a dilatory witness, brought by the sheriff before a district judge in Pennsylvania. "What reason, madam," said the judge, severely, "have you for not obey ing the summons of the court?" "I ai't gofnone, Mr. Judge, only we have smallpox down at our house, and I thought you might be kinder preju diced against it." The judge was "kinder prejudiced," and the spectators appeared to be even more so, judging by the rapidity with which the court-room was thereupon emptied.

SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES ANY competent lawyer can tell one A LEGAL NAPOLEON that it is a good rule never to tell more than one knows. Not so long THE following, minus the name of ago there was afforded in England an the lawyer and of his town, is a instance wherein a lawyer carried the letterhead put out by an Iowa legal rule to an extreme. light: "Love not sleep, lest thou come One of the agents in a Midland Revi to poverty." — Judge Solomon. sion Court objected to a person whose name was on the register, on the ground Lawyer. that he was dead. The revision attor Office over FIRST NATIONAL BANK ney declined to accept the assurance, Am the red-headed, smooth-faced, frecklehowever, and demanded conclusive testi wounded Legal Napoleon, always in the stirrups. Practice in every court on earth except that of mony on this point. Judge Lynch. Quick as a hippopotamus and The agent on the other side arose gentle as a sunstroke. Refer to my friends and and gave corroborative evidence as to likewise to my enemies. the decease of the man in question. "Fees are the sinews of war."