On one occasion Judge Porter, a popular Irish magistrate, in pronouncing the sentence of the court, said to a notorious drunkard : " You will be confined in jail for the longest period the law will allow, and I sincerely hope you will devote some portion of the time to cursing whiskey —" "By the powers, I will! " was the answer; "and Porter, too!"
NOTES. Fact is quite as funny as fiction. That is de monstrated by the performance of Judge Laidlaw, of Oakland, Cal., who imposed a fifty-dollar fine on himself for having been drunk. Douglas Jerrold told the same story about a Scotch mag istrate long ago, and it has since been laughed at as a delicious bit of absurdity. The California occurrence only shows how fast we are approach ing the humorist's ideal.
According to Rabelais, Judge Bridlegoose (sup posed to mean a French Chancellor) admitted, when taxed with an outrageous judgment, that since he had become old he could not so easily distinguish the points on the dice as he used to do. And when pressed to explain how he came to resort to dice, he said he always, like their other worships, decided his cases by the throw of the dice, because chance and fortune were good, hon est, profitable, and necessary to put a final stop to lawsuits. When pressed to explain why, if he used dice, he received so many pleadings and papers from the parties, he said he used to heap these heavy papers at opposite ends of the table, and when they were pretty evenly balanced he used his small dice; but when the papers of one party were larger than the others, he used his large dice. Being again pressed to say why he kept the papers so long, seeing that he never read them, but de cided his cases by the dice, he gave three reasons, first, because it was decorous and seemly to keep them; secondly, he used to turn them over and bang and toss them about as a healthy bodily ex ercise; and thirdly, he kept them so long in order that the issue might ripen, and the parties might be more reconciled to bear their misfortune when it came to them. These lucid reasons convinced his censors that
he was about as efficient as his neighbors in his day and generation, which was about the year 1545. The elegant sufficiency of legal language, to put it mildly, has long been the subject of ridi cule on the part of those wanting in respect for the usages of the gentlemen of the law. It is doubtful if a small though highly useful idea was ever swathed in more words than the indictment presented by the Grand Jury recently in the case of the electric light homicide. It bears evidence of having been prepared by a lawyer of a great many years' standing. We cannot refrain from reprinting part of it. After various verbal gymnastics, it goes on like this : — "And a current of electricity, of great and deadly power and intensity, through and into the body of the said Henry Harris, did put, place, and pass, and cause and procure to be put, placed, and to pass, and the said current of electricity through and into the body of him, the said Henry Harris, did wilfully and feloniously keep and continue and cause and procure to be kept and continued for a space of time, to wit : for the space of five seconds; thereby giving unto him, the said Henry Harris, with the electric current aforesaid, a mortal electric shock, of which mortal electric shock he, the said HenryHarris, then and there died." That is, we suppose, Henry Harris was killed by electricity. It would seem to the casual reader that the man who wrote the indictment did put, place, insert, and pass, and cause and procure to be put, placed, inserted, and passed into or within said indictment, charge, arraign ment, accusation, or other instrument or writing, and did keep and continue, and cause and pro cure to keep and continue and remain and stay, in and within and on the inside of, said indict ment, charge, arraignment, accusation, or other instrument or writing, several, to wit : one or more superfluous, unnecessary, and useless words. And thus and thereby is attention once more called and directed to the pleasing little way or custom which lawyers have of raising or causing to be raised a great cloud of words around a small matter, and fostering the public in the belief that a mighty mystery hedges in the drawing up or preparing of even the simplest legal paper; whereas it should be. even if it is not, a thing possible to any one hav ing a fair command of English. — N. Y. Tribune.
