Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/619

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
576
The Green Bag.

there is in a case, and counsel find it so in their practice before him. The curious reader will find an apt illustration of this in Rockland v. Farnsworth, 86 Maine, page 534, a tax suit. A love of order and system, combined with industry, enable him to turn off his judicial labors with ease; and when he re turns at night to his home, the cares of office do not follow him. Rather indiffer ent to fame, he would be among the last to

adopt Benvenuto Cellini's advice, "that all men after they have reached forty should write down their own lives"; nor is it diff1 cult for the believer in heredity to see how his favorite judge has become, to use at military phrase, "a chief of staff" of the court in the midst of his varied usefulness on the bench. He received the degree of Master of Arts from Bowdoin College in 1894.

A WAGER ABOUT NAPOLEON THAT DIVIDED THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA. WELL nigh universal as is the attention at present paid to everything Na poleonic, it can be easily demonstrated by reference to the records of his own times, that during the life of the great Corsican, Americans entertained a no less keen inter est in his fate than they now do in his his tory. Indicative of this fact is the cause cclcbre in the annals of Pennsylvania juris prudence known as Phillips v. Ives, decided in 1828, found in the first volume of Rawle's Reports. The case was appealed from the District Court of Philadelphia to the Su preme Court of Pennsylvania, having been brought by Phillips against Ives to recover the amount of a wager, the terms of which had been reduced to writing and were as follows : — "May 14th, 182 r. This day Stephen Ives bet one hundred dollars to fifty dollars with John Phil lips, that Napoleon Bonaparte will, at or before the expiration of two years from the above date, be re moved or escape from the Island of St. Helena. It is understood between the parties that if Bonaparte should die within the above period of two years, and on the Island of St. Helena, Mr. Ives loses the bet. (Signed) Stephen Ives. John Phillips. This bet is made in the presence of John F. Swift."

As the reader knows, when the paper was signed, Napoleon had been dead for more than a week, but the transmission of news was then too slow to prevent Ives from mak ing a public test of his faith in the ex-em peror's good fortune and in his ability to escape from the cage of his British captors. The genius that compelled the whole force of the British Empire to play turnkey against him, and to spy his actual presence in Longwood at least once every twenty-four hours, secured admiration in Ives sufficiently en thusiastic and faithful to have enrolled him among " the old guard." However willing he was to stake heavy odds to prove his confidence in a living hero, Ives refused to pay a wager made after death had already taken from him any possibility of winning it. Phillips was inclined to play Shylock, and asked the law to give him the money nomi nated in the bond, and a jury gave it to him, but the lower court divided over the matter and, notwithstanding the verdict, gave judg ment against Phillips, whereupon he appealed to the Supreme Court of the State. At the argument before the final tribunal Phillips was represented by Josiah Randall, father of Hon. Samuel J. Randall, late Speaker of