particularly answer whether said defendant did not sign the said promissory note, and whether any part of it has been paid, and whether the same is not due and unpaid, — all as set forth in this Bill of Complaint; and that your orator may have such other and further and additional relief in the premises as to equity and good conscience appertain."
I have abbreviated the formal parts of such a bill, but the foregoing is all that I can now remember of them. Such a formidable document was quite sufficient to carry terror to the heart of an unfortunate debtor whom it assailed for the first time. It is a long time since several young lawyers were commencing practice in a New England town in which there was a college. The professor of mathematics therein was a man without imagination, who never made or appreciated a joke, and who supposed that every one else used words with his own mathematical precision. He was indebted upon a promissory note secured by mort gage which he could not pay at maturity, and which fell into the hands of a young lawyer to be foreclosed, who has since be come eminent in his profession, in diplomacy, and by the closing argument before the In ternational Behring Sea Tribunal in Paris. He prepared the bill to foreclose the mort gage, omitting no word of its formalities, and giving especial attention to the pretences charged upon the defendant in the con spiracy and interrogatory sections. The bill was served by giving a copy to the professor. "I think," said my friend P., "that the most thoroughly angry man from sole to crown that I have ever seen was the professor when he entered my office the next morning. He gave the paper a violent twist, threw it on the floor, and set his heel upon it. ' Are you a gentle man? ' he began; and giving me no oppor tunity to reply, he continued : ' I have lived in this town fifty years; I supposed I had some reputation as a respectable man. What have I done to deserve such treat
ment? I tell you, sir, this paper is full of lies, — awful, horrible lies! Yet your client makes oath to this paper. He does not stop at a little thing like perjury. I wonder the earth did not open and swallow him up when he called Almighty God to hear his wicked false oath. He ought to be punished as a libeller and as a perjurer He says I am a conspirator with tvü-disposed persons, and admits that he don't know the name of one of those evil persons. He swears that I deny the note, and then that I claim that I have paid it. In the very last conversation I had with him, I told him how mortified I was because I could not pay the note, and that I would pay it just as soon as I could get the money. Is the man crazy? What could have induced him to invent and make oath to such falsehoods? And, Mr. P, I did expect better things of you. Before you wrote such libels upon a fellowtownsman why did you not ask him whether they were true? ' "' If you can restrain your wrath long enough to hear a word of explanation, Professor, you will see that there is no occasion for your anger. Those statements mean nothing, — they are merely the formal parts of the bill — ', "' Mean nothing, sir? Does it mean noth ing to call a man a conspirator, an evildisposed person,— to write a lot of infamous lies about him? ' "' But can't you understand, Professor, that these statements are parts of a very old form, and are wholly immaterial? ' "' If they are immaterial, why in the name of common sense don't you omit them? What reason was there for putting them into the bill, as you call it? ' "The professor was too many for me," said P. when he told the story afterwards. "I had to confess and avoid, — to admit that there was no excuse for all that mass of nonsense. I satisfied the professor that I had not intended to insult him, and that as the fact was I had a high esteem for his many excellent qualities."
