Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/315

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284
The Green Bag.

Heat aggravates crime; cold reduces it. Also, the decrease of crime goes on simultaneously with a period of special distress and poverty. Suicides decline in very cold weather. Drowning is the common method, which explains this. Drunkenness is highest in April and December — lowest in April. — The Law Times.

THE oldest will extant, unearthed by Professor Pétrie at Kahum, Egypt, is at least four thousand years old. In its phraseology, the will is singu larly modern in form, so much so that it might be admitted to probate to-day. THE Oklahoma senate has agreed upon the absolute separate school measure as it passed the house, providing for separate school districts, separate school boards and separate funds for white and colored children. THERE are 52 penitentiaries and over 17,000 jails in the United States. They cost $500,000,000 to build. Over 900,000 persons were incarcerated in the year 1892. The criminal expense to the country is not less than one hundred millions annually. — Current Literature.

PROF. CHRISTOPHER G. TIEDEMAN, LL. D., has resigned his chair in the University Law School, New York, the resignation having been tendered to the Council of the University in the early part of March, to take effect at the close of the cur rent college year. Prof. Tiedeman was appointed in the fall of 1891, when the law school was re organized under the leadership of the late Austin Abbott. IN Kansas a law has been proposed which meets with favor and which promises to employ convicts without displeasing the representatives of organi/.ed labor. This law would divide the con victs into three classes, one of which would be employed in digging irrigating ditches, another in road-building, and another in raising farm prod ucts for the State institutions — the most vicious alone to be kept at the State Prison, where they would be engaged in breaking rock to be used in building State macadamized roads.

THERE is in the strong rooms of one of the oldest private banks in London a large quantity of jewels, plate, and other valuables which were deposited for safe custody by French refugees shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution. Several of the depositors claimed their belongings after the coup d'etat, but the present deposits are still awaiting claimants. THE law class of the Syracuse University has adopted the following college yell : — Agency, contracts, bills and notes, Equity, pleadings, sales and torts, Domestic relations; Raw! Raw! Raw! Syracuse 'Varsity, College of Law! Miss ELISE BROWN, a dressmaker, recently sued Rev. Frederick Hetling, Vicar of Christ Church, Ixmdon, for the recovery of a sovereign which she had put into the collection-box while in a fit of temporary aberration. Occasionally such lapses came over her, she said. For two years she did not go to church, but at length she decided to at tend Mr. Hetling's early communion service, and it was there that the aberration of judgment fell on her and led her to put into the plate a sovereign, which she now wished to recover, as she had changed her views on ecclesiastical polity. The lady told the judge that she did not believe she would have given the sovereign had she been in her right mind. The judge said that what was given for charity or for church purposes could not be recovered, and he accordingly gave judgment for the defendant. A NEGRO had stolen a hog from Mr. Hender son of Tennessee, and as witness Mr. Hender son took the stand, and the justice of the peace began : " Is your name Tom Henderson? " " Of co'se," was the reply. " Didn't reckon I'd bin changin' names, did yo', Squar'? " " Live in this yere town?" " Sartin, I do. That's a power fully foolish question to ask me." " Reside in this yere county and State, I take it?" continued the Squire. " Suck my hide, but of co'se I do!" exclaimed the plaintiff. " I was bo'n right yere and never wanderet! fifty miles away, and yo' know it and the laws knows it." "On the fifth day of this month were yo' in possession of a certain spotted