Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/499

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The Green Bag.

We may properly continue to shudder at the cruelty of Turks and Japanese and Spaniards, to deplore the brutality of the black savages of Africa and the red savages of America, but until we tame and civilize our own white savages, until we treat all illegal killing as really murder, and until we drive from the bench such judges as the man who has recently disgraced the State of Kentucky, iqt would best make up our minds that the tasks we have at hand are so exacting that we have no time for interference in foreign countries or with strange populations, either through advice or annexation. — Harpers Weekly.

Halverson requested the minister to name the child Oscar, but Mrs. Halverson had already talked the reverend gentleman over, and to Mr. Halverson's surprise and indignation the boy was christened not Oscar, but something else, where by Mr. Halverson suffered serious disappointment, loss of authority in his household, laceration of feelings, etc., for which he prays damages. The clergyman's defense is that he christened the child in accordance with the wishes of its mother, whose premises he considered paramount. The case brings up a novel question in jurisprudence, the decision of which will be regarded with interest in thousands of families throughout the land.

CHRISTIAN K. Ross, the father of Charlie Ross, whose abduction on July i, 1874, from his parents' home in Germantown, was one of the most sensa tional crimes ever committed in this country, died in Philadelphia a short time since. He was a well-to-do man twenty-three years ago, when his youngest child was kidnapped, but he was reduced to poverty by his constant search for his stolen son. Acting on the advice of the police, he did not pay the twenty-thousand-dollar ransom first demanded by the abductors, but the search cost him more than sixty thousand dollars, and the child was never found. One of the two men sup posed to have committed the crime was shot dead in a burglary a few years later, and the only other man who seemed to have any knowledge of the affair maintained a stolid silence through a long period of imprisonment and has not spoken to this day.

SWITZERLAND'S National Council has voted unan imously to make insurance against accident and sickness compulsory -on all citizens.

THE question as to whether the naming of the baby belongs, as a matter of right, to the baby's father or the baby's mother, is raised in a queer lawsuit originating in Kastkill, in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. The plaintiff is Ole Halverson, a Swede, who has sued for damages the Rev. J. G. Remerton, a German Lutheran minister of the same place, and the pleadings set forth the following state of facts : Mr. and Mrs. Halverson have a son of tender years. The former desired that the boy should be called Oscar, after the present monarch of Mr. Halverson's fatherland. Mrs. Halverson dislikes the name of Oscar, and was determined that the baby should not be bur dened therewith. Mr. and Mrs. Halverson took the baby to the clergyman to be christened. Mr.

MRS. CAREW, the woman who murdered her husband in Yokohama some months ago, and whose sentence of death had been commuted to imprisonment for life, had an unpleasant experi ence learning the severities of convict life. When she was admitted to Victoria jail, the head jailer lined her up in the yard with the other prisoners and told her to take off her hat. She stared in surprise at the man who dared so to address a lady, but did not move. "Take off your hat, I say," the jailer commanded in angry tones, and off it came. His command that she take on her shoes was obeyed with more alacrity. She was then taken to another room, had her luxuriant hair cut off, and put on the coarse prison garb. Her idea of " imprisonment for life " must have been curious, for she took with her to Hongkong a pet parrot and several trunks.

MARK TWAIN proposed some time ago to start a crusade against the insolence of menials and the encroachments upon individual rights by cor porations or servants. He must have mourned the death in England the other day of Rev. Wil liam Jenkins, rector of Fillingham, Lincolnshire. Jenkins was a man after Mark's own heart. He had during his whole life carried out the principles which the novelist advocated. He was known in London by every cabman and tramway conductor, for he was a terror to all who tried to extort from him more than the law allowed. He never went