HUMOR OF THE BENCH. By Clark. Bell, Esq., of the New York Bar. MR. Justice Charles G. Garrison, of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, has more than usual judicial appre ciation of humor, and he has furnished me with an illustration of rustic intelligence recently occurring upon a trial before him. The action was ejectment. A country lad, aged twenty three or four years, a son of the plaintiff, was put on the stand to testify as to a line fence. He gave his testimony in so low a tone of voice that Judge Garri son said to him, " Speak so these gentlemen can hear you," pointing to the jury. " Why," said he, with a beaming smile, " are these men interested in Pop's case?" In another case the terms of the descrip tion in a deed being ambiguous, Judge Garrison left it for the jury to determine what the words used meant. Defendant's counsel deemed his construction plainly right, and said to the jury that he consid ered there was nothing to argue about; whereupon plaintiff's counsel began his closing argument as follows : " Gentlemen of the jury, if, as my learned brother says, the words here used are so plain that the wayfaring man though a fool could not err therein, his honor would not have' found it necessary to leave any question to the jury." Mr. Croake James published a work en titled " Curiosities of the Law and Lawyers," from which we quote an amusing incident. At the Old Bailey it was customary to sen tence all the prisoners convicted at one time. On one occasion Baron Graham, in. the discharge of this duty, omitted to sen tence one John Jones who had been brought up for that purpose. The learned judge was about to conclude, when the court officers informed his lordship of the omission, where upon Baron Graham said with great solem nity, " Oh, I am sure, I beg Mr. Jones's par-
don," and then gravely sentenced him to transportation for life. The " American Law Review " publishes, as a splendid example of judicial rhetoric, a sentence from the decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri in the case of Ames vs. Scudder (14 S. W. Rep. 530), from the con clusion of the opinion of one of the judges, the following : — "In my humble opinion such a theory of the law is only equalled in its world-em bracing comprehensiveness by the Mission ary Hymn; places an administrator in this State on the same pedestal where the ora tion of Phillips places Napoleon the Great, — making him proof against perils, endowed with ubiquity." I do not know Chief-Justice Bleckly of the Supreme Court of Georgia personally, though I have had correspondence with him, and I know how high he stands in public estimation, and with what respect he is held by the Georgia Bar. He contributed a short sketch of his life and career to form a part of the forthcoming work on the "Supreme Court of the North American States and Provinces," which was recently published in the " Medico-Legal Journal." The sketch is replete with rare humor. The concluding sentence is a sample : " In person he is tall, angular, and ungraceful; and though he has a passion for beauty, no trace of that enchanting quality is visible upon his own face. He himself admits to his confidential friends that he is ugly." Those who know him or have seen his portrait will readily appreciate that no other man or woman in Georgia would have made that statement except the Chief-Justice himself. "I saw in El Paso, Texas, a justice who made an affidavit against a man for larceny (it was the justice's property that was al leged to be stolen) before himself. He
