A bright ten-year-old girl, whose father is addicted to amateur photography, attended a trial at court, the other day, for the first time. This was her account of the judge's charge : '• The judge made a long speech to the jury of twelve men, and then sent them off into a little dark room to develop."
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course you did a great deal of work, and six hun dred dollars is not a big fee; but to be frank with you, Mr. Conkling, my deliberate opinion is that he might have been convicted/or less money."
NOTES A female witness, in a court in Maine, the other day testified somewhat injuriously to the side she was supposed to favor. This made the examining lawyer mad, and he sharply asked her : " Has not Brother So-and-so," meaning the opposing coun sel, " been talking to you and told you what to say?" She replied fully and sharply and in a higher key : " I don't know whether he is a brother to you or not; he can never be one to me."
The latest volume of Massachusetts Reports contains many decisions unfavorable to Judge Thompson of the Superior Court. Meeting a well known lawyer, Judge Thompson asked him if he had read his new book. "No," replied the lawyer; " who are the pub lishers?" '• Little, Brown, & Co," said the judge. "What is the title of the book?" asked the lawyer. "Thompson's Overruled Cases," was the dry response. Roscoe Conkling came into Charles O'Conor's office one day in a nervous state. "Vou seem to be very much excited, Mr. Conkling," said Mr. O'Conor, as Roscoe walked up and down the room. "Yes, 1 'm provoked, — I 'm provoked," said Mr. Conkling. " I never had a client dissatisfied about my fee before." "Well, what 's the matter?" asked O'Conor. "Why, I defended Gibbons for arson, you know. He was convicted, but I did hard work for him. I took him to the Superior Court, and he was con victed; then to the Supreme Court, and the Su preme Court confirmed the judgment and gave him ten years. I charged him six hundred dol lars, and Gibbons Is grumbling about it, - says .it is too much. Now, Mr. O'Conor, I ask you, was that too much?." "Well," said O'Conor, very deliberately, " of
Some years ago the court-crier at Keene, N. H., had the habit of exclaiming quite frequently in conversation, " by the way," with which he often prefaced his remarks. When the court opened at Keene he began in the usual form to announce the fact with " All persons having anything to do be fore the honorable, the Justices of the Court of Common Pleas, now sitting at Keene, within and for the County of Cheshire, may now draw near, give their attendance, and they shall be heard." Here the crier dropped into his scat, when the thought occurred to him that he had omitted the customary invocation, and up he jumped with the startling exclamation : " By the way, God save the State of New Hampshire! " — New York Law Journal.
Some years ago, in one of our smaller New England cities, there occurred a succession of lires, evidently of incendiary origin. They were clearly the work of the same hand, and so skilfully executed that for a long time no trace could be found of their author. Every one was alarmed, every one was on the watch, and a large reward was offered for the detection of the "firebug." Private and public buildings were set on fire, the churches were not spared, and in no instance could a motive be assigned for the act. At last an attempt failed, and by the side of the building was found a wooden box filled with combustible material on which kerosene had been poured. In the box was found a St. Paul newspaper. The detective employed to work up the case found that only one man in the place received this paper, a carpenter, a man of good family and irreproach able character, with some property, apparently in offensive, and one of the last persons to be sus pected of crime. In his absence his shop was examined, and it was found that the boards of which the box had been made had been sawed from boards still in the shop, as was shown by putting the parts together, when every little vein in
