The request was of course denied, and then the jury returned a verdict of one cent damages. The judge thereupon very properly set aside the verdict, fined the offenders ten dollars apiece for contempt, and discharged them from the panel. "What their ver dict would have been," said the court, " had their re quisition been honored, can only be conjectured. The court further observed: — "A court of law is not the place for facetiousness, and however genuine may have been the spirit of sportiveness of these jurors, or however serious they were in addressing such a request to the court, the court cannot regard it but as an affront and impertinence which cannot pass unrebuked and unpunished, for to do so would surely result in the dangerous weakening of public confidence in one of the most cherished of our institutions. . . . The nine jurors are discharged from the panel, as they have de monstrated their entire unfitness and unworthiness to serve as jurors in any case whatever.
"L. S." — It would seem that now that most people can write, there is no longer any sense in the prac tice of requiring a seal to any legal instrument. The reason of the requirement is as obsolete as the doc trine of benefit of clergy. The chief argument in favor of retaining it is that the abolition of it would render inapplicable a good deal of law-learning about the doctrine of covenants. Really it would seem that if a man means a covenant he can and should express that meaning in words, without relying on the affixing of a wafer or scrap of paper with " gumstickum " on the under side. A number of commu nities have recognized the absurdity of the sealdoctrine, and have made enactments for equivalents, such as the word " seal," or a scroll, or the letters "L. S." The only advantage of the equivalents is that they are less likely to disappear than the seal, and thereby deprive the language of a covenant from operating as a covenant because the paper has dropped off or been removed. But the substitution of the letters " L. S." is entirely inappropriate, be cause they do not mean " seal," but only " place of the seal," and if the place of the seal is vacant there is no seal. It only shows how enslaved the lawyers are to forms. It would be just as appropriate to write "Alaska." The truth is that we have outlived this seal business just as much as the " indenture " busi ness, and everybody will admit that a deed is not an indenture, and that in the language •' this indenture witnesseth " the paper lieth. And so we have outlived the " Ss." business, in affidavits, the real meaning of which never was exactly known, but which has been supposed to be scilicet, to wit; and a silly set we are for continuing to employ it, especially in communities which pretendio have abolished Latin phrases. But it is hard indeed for the old lawyers to give up the old lies.
BABY THOMPSON. — In the Publisher's Depart ment, of the current number of the "American Law Review " is a poem about " Sailing around Iceland, evidently from the pen of the St. Louis editor. It is accompanied by reproductions of photographic views. One of the views is " Valla, the " Little Traveller," presumably the baby daughter of the said editor (not granddaughter surely?). We are not going to be outdone. We shall immediately order up our in fant grandson to be photographed, and reproduce him with verses, ad infiniturn, written in his praise in a " Publisher's Department" supplied for the exi gency. Professor Thompson's poem is good, and the baby looks good; but so good a poet should not be so jealous of our poet, Frank J. Parmenter, as his recent criticism indicates. The learned editor, in the same department, pleads guilty to former careless ness, which he should embody in the next edition of his great work on negligence, in the following im portant particular : — "These really sweet and beautiful faces put to shame the ungallant statement carelessly made by me — partly echoed from English travellers — of the lack of female beauty in Iceland; and, being a lawyer, I would now most humbly enter a retraxit." Of one of these ladies he says : " I am bound to say that she will compare in comeliness, grace, intelligence, and all the qualities that adorn a wife, mother, and leader of society, with her sisters of the United States." These statements he accompanies with corroborative photo graphic exhibits. We shall expect soon some lovepoetry from our legal traveller. THE MISSING CHANCELLOR. — In undertaking to correct Mr. Coudert, last month, for confusing Brockhoist Livingston with Robert R. Livingston, we care lessly fell into an equal error by confusing Chancellor Livingston with Chancellor Lansing. It was the latter who disappeared mysteriously in his old age, and of whom it may correctly be said that "it never was known what became of him." He was not a very distinguished man, and it was surmised that he was murdered. Chancellor Livingston was one of the most eminent and useful citizens of his State, the friend and patron of Fulton, a distin guished diplomatist, who as minister to France nego tiated the Louisiana treaty, the introducer of merino sheep into this country, whose statue in bronze adorns the Capitol at Washington and that at Albany. In respect to Mr. Coudert's slips of memory he (Mr. Coudert, not Chancellor Livingston) jocosely writes us : " When it comes to the fame founded on the argu ment of cases. who knows or cares whether it was An drew or Alexander? Indeed, I am inclined to swell with pride that I got half the name right. Besides, what would be the use of you literary fellows acting as detectives, if we did not occasionally slip and give
