Bench and Bar Witty Encounters. ber, and the following day it was removed to Ashland, where the funeral was met by 100,000 people. "The great man had missed the presidency, but he had not missed the love of a whole nation." It was said of him, " his last years were his best; he ripened to the very end." "Of our public men of the sixty years preceding the war," said James Parton, "Henry Clay was certainly the most shin ing figure. Was there ever a public man, not at the head of a state, so beloved as he? Who ever heard such cheers, so hearty, distinct and ringing, as those which
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his name evoked? Men shed tears at his defeat, and women went to bed sick from pure sympathy with his disappointment. He could not travel during the last thirty years of his life, but only make progress es. When he left his home the public seized him and bore him along over the land, the committee of one State passing him on to the committee of another, and the hurrahs of one town dying away as those of the next caught his ear. The country seemed to place all its resources at his disposal; all commodities sought his acceptance."
BENCH AND BAR WITTY ENCOUNTERS. WHAT entertaining volumes might have been made for the delectation of the legal profession — and for laymen as well — if from the earliest times of the insti tution of courts and of their officers some record could have been kept of the asides between judges and counsel, or between members of bench or bar themselves (or litigants or witnesses) during argument or trial hours. These asides might have in cluded epigram, sarcasm, wit, and trenchant repartee. One meets with specimens of them in legal biographies and in many pub lished recollections. These, too, abound in anecdotes. But their paucity compared with the estimation of what must have been their frequency only serves to increase curiosity now alive and create longing for more. To the clever things uttered in court-rooms might be added the clever things done — the caricatures and drawings of counsel or judges, for instance, on the margin or in the body of briefs and notes of testimony or ar gument. It is mentioned in recent newspa pers, of Sir Frank Lockwood, O. C, who was lately Solicitor-General of England, that ushers in the courts, after their duties of at
tendance end, find on the floor near where he has sat as acting counsel, slips of blotters and papers that contain humorous or seri ous etchings made by him with lightning like rapidity, and illustrative of passing events in the court-room, or of officials, witnesses and jurors. He has not hesitated even to polish off with deft pen a lordship or two in robes upon several occasions. Few who know of Sir William Jones only through his treatise on Bailments can credit that he was one of the sweetest poets at the close of the last century. He. has been known to often pen verses ad captandum in court; and to an effort on one such occasion is ascribed his couplet reading: "Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven, Ten to the world allot, but all to Heaven." Which reads as a great improvement over another similar couplet ascribed to Coke, a century before Jones : "Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six. Four spend in prayer, the rest on Nature fix." Sir George Rose was a brilliant Chancery Q. C of the era of Lord Eldon, who in the awful presence of the latter wrote on his notes these epigrammatic lines regarding a
