Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/468

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The Lawyer's Easy Chair.

at political conventions, where men are quite pre pared utterly to lose their mental balance because they have already become dizzy with excitement. Then they are led like lambs to the slaughter, or what is more like, like asses to the thistles. One of the grandest and most useful exhibitions of oratory in recent years, was that of Henry Ward Beecher before the hostile English audiences, in deprecating foreign interference in the American civil war. It fully illus trated Virgil's beautiful description of the power of the orator. We rejoice that the " orator " in Chancery has gone o*it. A Critic Set Right. — The " American Law Re view " does the Chairman the honor to publish his Ode to Caliph Omar, forming the dedication of his recent manual on Bailments. The reviewer criticises the first stanza, which runs as follows : — "Omar, who burned (if thou didst burn) The Alexandrian tomes, I would erect to thee an urn Beneath Sophia's domes." The reviewer says : " It might not be amiss to whisper in the ear of the ungeographical poet that Sophia is not in Alexandria, and that it has but one dome." The poet had no intention of erecting a monument to Omar at Alexandria. He well knew that Sophia is not there, and meant to do the Caliph the highest possible honor by setting up for him an urn in the greatest of the mosques, at Constantinople. As to the matter of the domes, Fergusson may settle that. In his " History of Architecture " he says : " Be yond the great dome, east and west, are two semidomes of a diameter equal to that of the great dome, and these again are cut into by two smaller domes." So there are five domes! Our friend needs to brush up his imagination and his architectural information. NOTES OF CASES. Seething the Kid in its Mother's Milk. — In Port Royal Ry. Co. v. Davis, 95 Ga. 292, the plain tiffs counsel read to the jury from a speech made by the defendant's counsel on the trial of another and similar case, in which the latter was for the plaintiff, and in which he very eloquently depicted the illdeserts of the defendant and appealed for damages. This was objected to on the trial, and urged as error above, but the Court did not deem it substantial error, although it deprecated the practice as likely to pro duce " unnecessary attrition," and bad feelings. "There should be no room in the legal profession," said the Court, " for the indulgence of personal jealous ies and resentments, and the lawyer is the last man in the world who should permit himself by word or deed, to sting the sensibilities or wound the feelings of a

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brother lawyer." The Court put it very mildly when it said that counsel " are many times, in the course of a long professional career, required to take positions which do not seem to the casual observer to be at all times entirely consistent the one with the other." We should say so — somewhat, in a measure, to a certain extent. A Nervous Judge. — In Walker v. Coleman, 55 Kans. 381, a new trial was granted because of the severity of the judge on the trial toward Mr. Solomon, of Atchison, Kansas, one of the attorneys for the defendant. The judge read at him from a law book the following; " A lawsuit is not a game to be won or lost by sharp practice and shuffling devices "; re ferred to him as " the gentleman from Hogtown "; said he "may do very well in his town, but it will learn him a few lessons when he comes down here "; and told him he " should have located in Missouri." The Court on appeal could not see anything amiss in Solomon's conduct, said " The trial judge seems to have considered him in the light of an intruder," and that the rights of parties " ought not to be prejudiced by any ill-feelings of the trial judge against counsel." Possibly Solomon was a " gold-bug." A Darkey and a Mule. — In Love v. City of Atlanta, 95 Georgia, 129, the action was for injury caused by the running away of a mule attached to a cart, under the care of a small negro boy, and engaged in cleaning the streets of the city and carrying away the garbage. It was held that the city was not re sponsible, because the street cleaning was under the charge of the Board of Health, and was a governmental function. The Court concluded : " However incon gruous it may appear to say that this diminutive dar key and this refractory mule were engaged in the per formance of some of the functions of government, it is nevertheless true, and illustrates how even the hum blest of its citizens, under the operations of its laws, may become in Georgia an important public function ary." Does the Court mean to imply that the mule was a citizen and public functionary of Georgia?

"Pints and Pintees." — In Bowdon v. Achor, 95 Ga. 243, the Court makes a protest against raising trivial points on appeal, as follows: "The writer once heard one of the most distinguished and success ful lawyers who ever lived in Georgia facetiously re mark that the questions in a noted case were divisi ble into ' pints' and ' pintees.' We would be very much obliged if our professional brethren would here after omit the ' pintees,' or at least the most trivial and unimportant ones." Why not " pints" and " pinpints?"