tall and slender, and who had originally designed to take orders. The judge observing that the case involved a question of ecclesiastical law, Curran said:

"I can refer your lordship to a high authority behind me, who was once intended for the church; though "-in a whisper to a friend beside him-"in my opinion, he was fitter for the steeple."

A barrister entered one of the Four Courts, Dublin, with his wig so much awry as to cause a general titter. Seeing Curran smile, he said:

"Do you see anything ridiculous in my wig?" "Nothing but the head."

On a bill of indictment in which Curran was interested, the grand jurors came into court to explain "why it was ignored." Curran, vexed by the stupidity of the jury, said to the foreman:

"You, sir, can have no objection to write upon the back of the bill "Ignoramus, for self and fellows. It will then be a true bill."

Being retained against a young captain, indicted for a gross assault, Curran, in his opening, said:

"My lord, I am counsel for the crown, and I am first to acquaint your lordship that this soldier —"

"Nay, sir," says the military hero, "I would have you know, sir, I am an officer!"

"O, sir, I beg your pardon; this officer who is no soldier."

Curran was at Cheltenham when his friends drew attention to a fashionable Irish gentleman who had the ugly habit of keeping his tongue exposed as he went along. On being asked what his countryman's motive could be, Curran readily hazarded the reply: "Oh! he's evidently trying to catch the English accent."

To a prosy member who asked him if he had read his last speech, he replied: "I hope I have."

Hearing that a very stingy and slovenly barrister had started for the continent with a shirt and a guinea, he observed:

"He'll not change either till he comes back.

Curran was pleading before Fitzgibbon, the Irish chancellor, with whom he was on terms of anything but friendship. The chancellor, with the distinct purpose, as it would seem, of insulting the advocate, brought with him on to the bench a large Newfoundland dog, to which he devoted a good deal of his attention while Curran was addressing a very claborate argument to him. At a very material point in the speech the judge turned quite away and seemed to be wholly engrossed with his dog. Curran ceased to speak.

"Go on, go on, Mr. Curran," said the chancellor.

"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, my lord; I really was under the impression that your lordships were in consultation."

Lord Abernethy had the habit of contemptuously shaking his head during Curran's addresses to the jury, and Curran, in one of the cases, fearing the jury would be influenced, assured them his lordship was not expressing dissent. "When he shakes his head there's nothing in it."

Davy, Sergeant. Upon an action of assault and battery, an advocate was warmly laying out the cause of his client: "In short, said he, "I have pledged myself to plead this cause with all the learning, all the law, and all the credit I have."

"That's right," said Davy, "the man who pledges himself to nothing may easily keep his word."

Davy, being concerned in a cause which he wanted put off for a few days, asked Lord Mansfield when he would bring it on.

66

Friday next," said the judge

"Will you consider, my lord, Friday next will be Good Friday?"

"I do not care for that," said the judge petulantly, "I shall sit for all that."

"Well, my lord, to be sure you may do as you please; but if you do, I believe you will be the first judge to do business on Good Friday since Pontius Pilate."

A gentleman once appeared in the Court of King's Bench as surety for a friend in the sum of three thousand pounds. Davy, though he well knew the responsibility of the gentleman, could not help his customary imperti

nence:

"Well, sir, how do you make yourself to be worth three thousand pounds?"

The gentleman specified the particulars up to two thousand nine hundred and forty pounds.

"Ay," said Davy, "that is not enough by sixty."

"For that sum," replied the other, "I have a note of hand of one Sergeant Davy, and I hope he will have the honesty soon to discharge it."

This set the whole court in a roar; the sergeant was for once abashed, and Lord Mansfield said:

"Well, brother, I think we may accept the bail."

Davy looked well to substantial fees for his professional services. He once had a large brief, with a fee of two guineas only at the back of it. His client asked him if he had read his brief. He pointed with his finger to the fee, and said, "as far as that I have read, and for the life of me, I can read no farther."

He was engaged at the Old Bailey, and, a very strong case having been made out, Judge Gould asked who was concerned for the prisoner. Davy replied, "My lord, I am concerned for him; very much concerned after what I have heard."

Day, William R.-Judge Day, of Canton, Ohio, as a lawyer, jurist and statesman, ranks high among the eminent men of his country.

A friend, writing of him, says: Diplomacy has been defined as the gentle art of lying: Judge Day hasn't it, and his success in the peace negotiations of Paris was a tribute to sterling yet tactful American truthfulness. Old World diplomats, accustomed to verbal feints and parries, could not understand this quiet, determined American, who said what he meant the first time and stuck to it. By raising a smudge of argument around the language of the protocol, they expected to confuse the main issue. But this village lawyer of Canton, accustomed to the clear statement of cases before a befogged jury, saw straight through their arts and argued well for his mighty client, the American nation.

A Madrid newspaper, commenting on the personality of the American Peace Commission, said of President Day: "He is a provincial lawyer without knowledge of diplomacy." A witty writer in the London Mail, referring to this remark, said: "They cannot understand him: he means what he says."

One of the most prominent judges of Canton, Ohio, where Day has lived nearly all his life, says of him: “He is a genius at truth-telling. When he states a case he does it so clearly and honestly that the jury cannot help believing him."

Mr. Austin Lynch, one of Judge Day's partners, says that one of the most remarkable things about Judge Day was his untiring industry as a student of the law. Unlike many lawyers, he did not stop his reading with his admission to the bar. There was never a case too abstruse nor even a precedent too remote to engage his attention. His associates in Canton say that they never have known his equal in presenting an honest, comprehensive statement of a case before a court or a jury. He never wasted words, he was rarely oratorical. As a crossexaminer he had the reputation of being exceedingly shrewd, with an astonishing quickness of repartee.

De Facto and De Jure.-A disciple of Coke, in Charleston, South Carolina, when asked by a "brudder" to explain the Latin terms de facto and de jure, replied: "Dey means dat you must prove de facts to de satisfaction ob de jury."

Demurrer.- The old Yankee's answer to "What is a demurrer?" is a quaint definition:

"It's a pleadin' of, 'Wal, sposin' it's so wot of it?""

A young attorney's argument on a demurrer: "May it please your honor, this is a stupendous question. Its decision by you this day will live in judicial history long after you and I shall have passed from this scene of earthly glory and sublunary vanity. When the tower of Pisa shall be forgotten; when Waterloo and Bunker Hill shall grow dim in the distant cycles of receding centuries; when the names of Napoleon, Marlborough, and Washington are no longer remembered; when the pyramids of the Pharaohs shall have crumbled into dust; when the hippopotamus shall cease to inhabit its native Nile,- even then your ruling on this demurrer will still survive in the