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THE GREEN BAG
THE LIGHTER SIDE THE GENESIS OF THE GREEN BAG
BY STANLEY E. BOWDLE VOLUMES have been written to tell how the copper pigeon developed his crop, and when the fantail acquired his fan, and why, in the evolutionary process, Nature saw fit to equip the Orinoco monkey with Kansas leg islative whiskers. Whole chapters in books on the development of manners and customs have been devoted to the origin of the gown and mortar board, and the growth and subsidence of hoop and skirts and the like; but I have been unable to turn up a volume or find a paragraph telling the when, how, or why the lawyer adopted the green bag. Be it, therefore, known that I am the first in this field of legal antiquities, searching among the debris of wigs and gowns and parchments for the history of this venerable institution, the bag. My sub-consciousness has been charged with this inquiry for several years, and now and then I strike some data. A few years ago, while wandering through the great archaeo logical department of the Mexican National Museum, at Mexico City, my attention was arrested by an immense Aztec's tablet, exca vated from the ruins of the Temple to the Sun. The scene depicted was evidently an Aztec gabfest of some kind, and the catalogue sus tained the impression. It was a trial, evidently, before the General Term of the Imperial Aztec Court. The miserable litigants were there, and both lawyers, as usual, were trying to speak in concert. One carried in his hand a bag. Vic tory seemed to have crowned his efforts! I had traced the bag to Aztec days! " Ah," said my Mexican legal friend, " not so fast; that bag is more probably the client's purse." Since that incident I have not been able to pick up the clew to the bag. I am bewildered amid the mists of antiquity. But I shall con tinue to watch the reports of the learned ex cavators at Nippur and Karnac, for the bag assuredly has a pompeian history. The explanation of the gown and the mortar board throws some light on the bag. Scien tists explain them in about this way: Priests
were at the start repositories of all learning. But it came to pass in the evolution of things that men of means were taken into the mys teries of learning, just as pork packers. now occasionally become aristocrats or LL.D.'s if they have the price. These men of means, not being priests, nat urally wanted something, other than their conversation, to demonstrate that they were learned — careful thought was too arduous an advertisement. They wanted some badge, some sign. This led to peculiarities of dress. It led to gowns and wigs and caps and robes. These things at once suggest to the vulgar public that the wearer enjoys a kind of " apos tolic succession," as an eminent writer puts it, and that he should be approached with some thing of the manner that Moses approached the burning bush. In short, the gowns and hoods and mortar boards are a cheap and highly effective ad vertisement, and are calculated to produce far more awe-inspiring results than display of the intellectual goods for which they, as an advertisement, stand. At least, '.this is the explanation given by scientists heavily deco rated with titles; and I gratefully accept it and bow my acknowledgments. This explanation, I am sure, will also ac count for the bag. It, without doubt, was regarded as an honorific decoration, telling the lay and vulgar beholder that he who car ried it was in the direct line of that august intellectual succession founded by Moses, Draco, Cicero, and other stars in the firma ment of mind. My own sensations bear out this explana tion, when, at my legal outset, I deliberately adopted the green bag as an aid to my other wise unprofessional tout ensemble. It was with sentiments of deep gratitude that I adorned my person with the bag — grati tude to the fathers of our venerable profes sion for having thoughtfully provided, this dignified help to feeble legal life. Its beneficent effect was instantaneous. Oh, intoxication! In the great pharmacy of thy delights thou hast none like this — to be observed; to be looked at. No practice, yet
