Law and Laughter Part 18

A veteran member of the Baltimore Bar tells of an amusing cross-examination in a Court of that city. The witness seemed disposed to dodge the questions of counsel for the defence. "Sir," admonished the counsel sternly, "you need not tell us your impressions. We want facts.

We are quite competent to form our own impressions. Now, sir, answer me categorically." From that time on he got little more than "yes" and "no" from the witness. Presently counsel asked: "You say that you live next door to the defendant."--"Yes."--"To the south of him?"--"No."--"To the north?"--"No."--"Well, to the east then?"--"No."--"Ah," exclaimed the counsel sarcastically, "we are likely now to get down to the one real fact. You live to the west of him, do you not?"--"No."--"How is that, sir?" the astounded counsel asked. "You say you live next door to the defendant, yet he lives neither north, south, east, or west of you.

What do you mean by that, sir?" Whereupon the witness "came back." "I thought perhaps you were competent to form the impression that we lived in a flat," said the witness calmly; "but I see I must inform you that he lives next door above me."

In the Supreme Court of the United States the President interrupted counsel in the course of a long speech by saying: "Mr. Jones, you must give this Court credit for knowing _something_."--"That's all very well," replied the advocate (who came from a Western State), "but that's exactly the mistake I made in the Court below."

In a suit for damages against a grasping railway corporation for killing a cow, the attorney for the plaintiff, addressing the twelve Arkansas good men and true who were sitting in judgment, and on their respective shoulder-blades, said: "Gentlemen of the jury, if the train had been running as slow as it should have been ran, if the bell had been rung as it 'ort to have been rang, or the whistle had been blown as it 'ort to have been blew, none of which was did, the cow would not have been injured when she was killed."

Although not strictly a story of either the Bench or the Bar of America, it is so pertinent to the latter that we cannot omit the following told by the Scottish clergyman, the late Dr. Gillespie of Mouswold, in his amusing collection of anecdotes.

A young American lady was his guest at the manse while a young Scottish advocate was spending a holiday in the neighbourhood. He was invited to dine at the manse, and took the young lady in to dinner, and kept teasing her in a lively, good-natured manner about American people and inst.i.tutions, while it may be guessed his neighbour held her own, as most American girls are well able to do. At length the advocate asked, "Miss ----, have you any lawyers in America?" She knowing what profession he belonged to replied quick as thought, "Oh yes, Mr. ----, lots of lawyers. I've a brother a lawyer. Whenever we've a member of a family a bigger liar than another, we make him a lawyer."

A quaint decision was given by Judge Kimmel, of the Supreme Court at St. Louis, in an application for divorce by Mrs. Quan. The judge directed Patrick J. Egan, a policeman, to supervise the domestic affairs of the couple, and to visit their home daily for thirty days. After questioning the wife closely on her att.i.tude towards her husband and his treatment of her, Egan wrote down for the wife's guidance a long array of precepts. Among these were the following:

"Don't remonstrate with your husband when he has been drinking. Wait until next morning. Then give him a cup of coffee for his headache.

Afterwards lead him into the parlour, put your arms about him, and give him a lecture. It will have more weight with him than any number of quarrels.

"If he has to drink, let him have it at home.

"Avoid mothers-in-law. Don't let them live with you or interfere in your affairs.

"If you must have your own way, do not let your husband know you are trying to boss him. Have your own way by letting him think he is having his.

"Dress to suit your husband's taste and income. Husbands usually don't like their wives to wear tight dresses. Consult him on these matters.

"Don't be jealous or give your husband cause for jealousy.

"When your husband is in a bad humour, be in a good humour. It may be difficult, but it will pay."

The policeman-philosopher's precepts were duly printed, framed, and placed against the wall of the family sitting-room. After paying only fifteen of the thirty visits to the house directed by the judge, the results could not have been more gratifying. Mr. and Mrs. Quan were delighted, and presented the guide to martial bliss with a handsome token of their grat.i.tude in the form of a gold watch.

Many of the droll sayings of the American Bench of past years are attributable to the fact that the judges were appointed by popular vote, and the successful candidate was not always a man of high attainments in the practice of his profession at the Bar, or of profound learning in the laws of his country. Too often he was a man of no better education than the ma.s.s of litigants upon whose causes he was called to adjudicate. For instance, a Kentuckian judge cut short a tedious and long-winded counsel by suddenly breaking into his speech with: "If the Court is right, and she thinks she air, why, then, you are wrong, and you knows you is. Shut up!"

"What are you reading from?" demanded Judge Dowling, who had in his earlier life been a fireman and later a police officer. "From the statutes of 1876, your honour," was the reply. "Well, you needn't read any more," retorted the judge; "I'm judge in this Court, and my statutes are good enough law for anybody." A codified law and precedent cases were of no account to this "equity" judge.

But these are mild instances of the methods of early American judges compared with the summing up of Judge Rodgers--Old Kye, as he was called--in an action for wrongful dismissal brought before him by an overseer. "The jury," said his honour, "will take notice that this Court is well acquainted with the nature of the case. When this Court first started in the world it followed the business of overseering, and if there is a business which this Court understands, it's hosses, mules, and n.i.g.g.e.rs; though this Court never overseed in its life for less than eight hundred dollars. And this Court in hoss-racing was always naterally gifted; and this Court in running a quarter race whar the hosses was turned could allers turn a hoss so as to gain fifteen feet in a race; and on a certain occasion it was one of the conditions of the race that Kye Rodgers shouldn't turn narry of the hosses." Surely it must have been Old Kye who, upon taking his official seat for the first time, said: "If this Court know her duty, and she thinks she do, justice will walk over this track with her head and tail up."

On a divorce case coming before a Western administrator of the law, Judge A. Smith, he thus addressed the plaintiff's counsel, who was awaiting the arrival of his opponent to open proceedings. "I don't think people ought to be compelled to live together when they don't want to do so. I will decree a divorce in this case." Thereupon they were declared to be no longer man and wife. At this juncture the defendant's counsel entered the Court and expressed surprise that the judge had not at least heard one side of the case, much less both sides, and protested against such over-hasty proceedings. But to all his protestations the judge turned a deaf ear; only informing him that no objections could now be raised after decree had been p.r.o.nounced. "But," he added, "if you want to argue the case 'right bad,' the Court will marry the couple again, and you can then have your say out."

Breach of promise cases generally afford plenty of amus.e.m.e.nt to the public, both in the United States and Great Britain, but it is only in early American Courts that we hear of a judge adding to the hilarity by congratulating the successful party to the suit. A young American belle sued her faithless sweetheart, and claimed damages laid at one hundred dollars. The defendant pleaded that after an intimate acquaintance with the family, he found it was impossible to live comfortably with his intended mother-in-law, who was to take up residence with her daughter after the marriage, and he refused to fulfil his promise. "Would you rather live with your mother-in-law, or pay _two hundred_ dollars?"

inquired the judge. "Pay two hundred dollars," was the prompt reply.

Said the judge: "Young man, let me shake hands with you. There was a time in my life when I was in the same situation as you are in now. Had I possessed your firmness, I should have been spared twenty-five years of trouble. I had the alternative of marrying or paying a hundred and twenty-five dollars. Being poor, I married; and for twenty-five years have I regretted it. I am happy to meet with a man of your stamp. The plaintiff must pay ten dollars and costs for having thought of putting a gentleman under the dominion of a mother-in-law."

The charms of the female s.e.x were more susceptible to the Iowa judge than to his brother of the former story. This worthy refused to fine a man for kissing a young lady against her will, because the complainant was so pretty that "nothing but the Court's overwhelming sense of dignity prevented the Court from kissing her itself."

"A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind," wrote Garrick, and something of this nature must have actuated Judge Bela Brown in a case in a Circuit Court of Georgia. The judge was an able lawyer, and right good boon companion among his legal friends. The night before the Court opened he joined the Circuit barristers at a tavern kept by one Sterrit, where the company enjoyed themselves "not wisely, but too well." Next morning the judge was greatly perturbed to find a quant.i.ty of silver spoons in his pocket, which had been placed there by a wag of the company as the judge left the tavern the night before. "Was I tipsy when I came home last night?" timidly asked the judge of his wife. "Yes,"

said she; "you know your habits when you get among your lawyer friends."--"Well," responded the judge, "that fellow keeps the meanest liquor in the States; but I never thought it was so bad as to induce a man to steal."

Before the close of the Court a man was arraigned for larceny, who pleaded guilty, but put forward the extenuating circ.u.mstance that he was drunk and didn't know what he was doing. "What is the nature of the charge," asked Judge Brown. "Stealing money from Sterrit's till,"

replied the clerk. "Are you sure you were tipsy when you took this money?"--"Yes, your honour; when I went out of doors the ground kept coming up and hitting me on the head."--"That will do. Did you get all your liquor at Sterrit's?"--"Every drop, sir." Turning to the prosecuting attorney the judge said, "You will do me the favour of entering a _nolle prosequi_; that liquor of Sterrit's I have reason to know is enough to make a man do anything dirty. I got tipsy on it myself the other night and stole all his spoons. If Sterrit will sell such abominable stuff he ought not to have the protection of this Court--Mr.

Sheriff, you may release the prisoner."

The judge of a Court in Nevada dealt differently with a man who, charged with intoxication, thought to gain acquittal by a whimsical treatment of his offence. On being asked whether he was rightly or wrongly charged he pleaded, "Not guilty, your honour. Sunstroke!"--"Sunstroke?" queried Judge c.o.x. "Yes, sir; the regular New York variety."--"You've had sunstroke a good deal in your time, I believe?"--"Yes, your honour; but this last attack was most severe."--"Does sunstroke make you rush through the streets offering to fight the town?"--"That's the effect precisely."--"And makes you throw brickbats at people?"--"That's it, judge. I see you understand the symptoms, and agree with the best recognised authorities, who hold it inflames the organs of combativeness and destructiveness. When a man of my temperament gets a good square sunstroke he's liable to do almost anything."--"Yes; you are quite right--liable to go to jail for fifteen days. You'll go down with the policeman at once." With that observation the conversation naturally closed, and the victim of so-called sunstroke "went down."

"Sheriff, remove the prisoner's hat," said a judge in the Court of Keatingville, Montana, when he noticed that the culprit before him had neglected to do so. The sheriff obeyed instructions by knocking off the hat with his rifle. The prisoner picked it up, and clapping it on his head again, shouted, "I am bald, judge." Once more it was "removed" by the sheriff, while the indignant judge rose and said, "I fine you five dollars for contempt of Court--to be committed until the fine is paid."

The offender approached the judge, and laying down half a dollar remarked, "Your sentence, judge, is most ungentlemanly; but the law is imperative and I will have to stand it; so here is half a dollar, and the four dollars and a half you owed me when we stopped playing poker this morning makes us square."

The card-playing administrator of law must have felt as small as his brother-judge who priced a cow at an Arkansas cattle-market. Seeing one that took his fancy he asked the farmer what he wanted for her. "Thirty dollars, and she'll give you five quarts of milk if you feed her well,"

said the farmer. "Why," quoth the judge, "I have cows not much more than half her size which give twenty quarts of milk a day." The farmer eyed the would-be purchaser of the cow very hard, as if trying to remember if he had met him before, and then inquired where he lived. "My home is in Iowa," replied the judge. "Yes, stranger, I don't dispute it. There were heaps of soldiers from Iowa down here during the war, and they were the worst liars in the whole Yankee army. Maybe you were an officer in one of them regiments." Then the judge returned to his Court duties.

Judge Kiah Rodgers already figures in a story, and here we give his address to a delinquent when he presided at a Court in Louisiana.

"Prisoner, stand up! Mr. Kettles, this Court is under the painful necessity of pa.s.sing sentence of the law upon you. This Court has no doubt, Mr. Kettles, but what you were brought into this sc.r.a.pe by the use of intoxicating liquors. The friends of this Court all know that if there is any vice this Court abhors it is intoxication. When this Court was a young man, Mr. Kettles, it was considerably inclined to drink, and the friends of this Court know that this Court has naterally a very high temper; and if this Court had not stopped short off, I have no doubt, sir, but what this Court, sir, would have been in the penitentiary or in its grave."

There was a strong sense of duty to humanity, as well as seeing justice carried out, in the Californian sheriff after an interview with a self-confessed murderer, who desired to be sent to New York to be tried, when he addressed the prisoner: "So your conscience ain't easy, and you want to be hanged?" said the sheriff. "Well, my friend, the county treasury ain't well fixed at present, and I don't want to take any risks, in case you're not the man, and are just fis.h.i.+ng for a free ride. Besides, those New York Courts can't be trusted to hang a man. As you say, you deserve to be killed, and your conscience won't be easy till you are killed, and as it can't make any difference to you or to society how you are killed, I guess I'll do the job myself!" and his hand moved to his pocket; but before he could pull out the revolver and level it at the murderer, that conscience-stricken individual was down the road and out of killing distance.

Like the sailor who objected to his captain undertaking the double duty of flogging and preaching, prisoners do not appreciate the judge who delivers sentence upon them and at the same time admonishes them in a long speech. After being sentenced a Californian prisoner was thus reproached by a judge for his lack of ambition:

"Where is it, sir? Where is it? Did you ever hear of Cicero taking free lunches? Did you ever hear that Plato gamboled through the alleys of Athens? Did you ever hear Demosthenes accused of sleeping under a coal-shed? If you would be a Plato, there would be a fire in your eye; your hair would have an intellectual cut; you'd step into a clean s.h.i.+rt; and you'd hire a mowing-machine to pare those finger-nails. You have got to go up for four months!"

In conclusion we return to the jury-box of a New York Court for the story of a well-known character who frequently was called to act along with other good men and true. As soon as they had retired to deliberate on the evidence they had heard, he would b.u.t.ton up his coat and "turn in" on a bench, exclaiming, "Gentlemen, I'm for bringing in a verdict for the plaintiff (or the defendant, as he had settled in his mind), and all Creation can't move me. Therefore as soon as you have all agreed with me, wake me up and we'll go in."

L'ENVOI

"THE TASK IS ENDED, AND ASIDE WE FLING THE MUSTY BOOKS TIED UP WITH LEGAL STRING; AND SO GOOD NIGHT, SINCE WE OUR SAY HAVE SAID, SHUT UP THE VOLUME AND PROCEED TO BED; AND DREAM, DEAR READER, OF A FUTURE, WHEN A LAWYER MAY SHAKE HANDS WITH YOU AGAIN."

WILLOCK: _Legal Facetiae_.