Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/179

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156
The Green Bag.

dangerous to the interests of the client who has a brow-beating attorney. Jurors sympathize quickly with a terrified witness. If witnesses be of the willfully forsworn sort, bullying never confuses them; they have their story pat, and enjoy the anger of the crossexaminer; they feel that he is baffled. It takes infinite patience, perfect coolness, and the utter most semblance of good humor to entrap a welldrilled perjurer into a fatal lapse. On the other hand, an honest witness easily may be led into an apparent contradiction concerning some imma terial point. It is a mistake on the part of a lawyer to seek for contradictions on trivialities. They are apt to make a judge indignant, and they rarely deceive a juror. Very often the counsel whose witnesses have been led into such trivial lapses makes a strong point in his closing address by showing the vast importance of the main evidence that has been left unassailed, while every petty extra-judicial circumstance has been attacked by his opponent. Far more cases are lost by too much cross-examination than by too little. Hints against the character of an opposing wit ness always are dangerous, and generally fatal, unless sustained by direct impeachment, and an aspersion of the character of a woman witness rarely fails of damage to the aspersing counsel. It is the duty of the courts to put a stop to "this kind of thing." No witness ought to be subject to the rudeness of a naturally ill-tempered or a professionally irritated lawyer. A person is as reputable when on the witness stand as when off it. A person loses no right of citizenship in court. — Inter- Ocean. >

RECENT DEATHS. Mrs. Myra Bradwell, who was the first woman in the United States to apply for admission to the Bar, and who founded and edited the " Chi cago Legal News," died in Chicago, February 16. Mrs. Bradwell was born in Manchester, Vt., Feb. 12, 183 1, but at an early age she removed, with her parents, to Chicago. In 1852 she was married to James B. Bradwell, whose father was among the pioneer settlers of Illinois. When Mrs. Bradwell first began the study of law under the tutelage of her husband, she had no idea of

becoming a practicing lawyer, but subsequently felt that she might be of valuable assistance to her husband in his business. She applied her self vigorously to her studies and passed a most creditable examination, but on account of being a married woman was denied admission to the Bar. She did not despair, but bent all her ener gies in the direction of removing this legal defect. Her application was refused by the Supreme Court of Illinois, and she sued out a writ of error against the State of Illinois in the Supreme Court of the United States. Her case was argued in 1871 by Matt Carpenter, United States Senator from Wis consin. Though the decision was adverse to Mrs. Bradwell's application she never again renewed her application for admission to the Bar, but was much surprised to receive a certificate of admis sion upon the original application from the very court that had refused her admission years before. Her public career never detracted from her wo manly tenderness and refinement, nor from her efficiency as a wife, mother, and the director of a household. She was remarkable for her firmness of character, but still more so for her gentle and noiseless methods. She possessed wonderful tact, and seemed able to ingratiate herself at will in the favor of all with whom she had dealings, and held a high place in the confidence and affection of her acquaintances.

LITERARY NOTES. The March number of the Atlantic Monthly opens with the third installment of Mrs. Deland's "Philip and his Wife." Charles Egbert Craddock's "His Vanished Star" appears for the last time be fore its publication, as now completed, in book form. The Rev. Walter Mitchell's "Two Strings to his Bow" is also ended — in its second part. The re maining piece of fiction is a fanciful, pathetic tale of New England, " The Fore-Room Rug," by Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin. Of uncommon interest to students of modern European politics is Professor Jeremiah W. Jenks's account and estimate of " A Greek Prime Minister : Carilaos Tricoupis," a statesman whose recent return to power has brought him conspicuously to the attention of all Europe. Greece, in the earliest days of her life, is represented in Maurice Thompson's "The Sapphic Secret," a study of the peculiar charm of Sappho's diction. Still farther into the East and the past goes Sir Edward Strachey's "Talk at a Country House" on Assyrian Arrowheads and Jewish