his familiar legal deity did not appall him as it might have appalled another. On the con trary, he arose, and, making a low bow, ob served : " Sir William, I wish you a merry Christmas." "I have come upon earth again to enjoy such an one; for our Christmases in the spirit world are monotonous. The planet Venus is now my home; and thither is the community of lawyers to be found; soldiers are bivouacked in Mars, and literary men in Mercury; but communities can visit each other often; for in what you mortals keep on calling the next world — and yet there is only one world of separate divisions — there is neither space nor time. We wish to be in a place and straightway we are there. Michael, I take the deepest interest in you for your fidelity to my memory, and all throughout your life here you shall enjoy my influence. Do you know, I'm going to make a great lawyer of you. In any legal question arising you will have but to summon me in your thoughts, put it, and it shall be answered. With me at your side and my commentaries always in your view, you shall never require a library. "But what is this stuff? Get rid of it!" and the ghost picked up a volume of the Kerr edition. " Faugh! the idea of anyone pre suming to doctor my text. Notes are all very well; and so are additional cases such as Chitty and Christian and Wendell and others have gifted me with; but my immortal text itself is sacred." "Quite so, quite so! " responded the scriv ener, now feeling thoroughly at home with the ghost. " I will banish Kerr." "Not that he is a cur," interrupted Blackstone with a self-conscious grimace at his pun. "However, I fancy," broke in the scriv ener lifting the lid of his desk, " that you will not find fault with this, which I hide away for safety; " and he produced an original edition. "I bought this at an auction. Observe how many autographs of owners it has had."
The ghost took the half-mouldy old vol umes and fervently kissed the mahogany hued, aged covers, saying, " It is long since thou and I have met." "Sir William," asked the scrivener, now wholly at his ease, " do you often visit the sublunary?" "It is my delight. I journey (as you mor tals would say, yet there is no journeying, because we spirits flit as swift as sun-rays fall) from Europe to America daily, enjoying the offices of lawyers and judges and watch ing court procedures. Ned Coke is with me sometimes, but he is unhappy. He dislikes the progress of things legal; but I hail it with delight. I love American legal ways the best. I am really better known and reverenced here than in my native land. But you Americans are true hero-worshippers. That which disgusts Ned Coke in our flittings and confabs is to see how his real-estate views have been obliterated by statutes and customs. Fact is, Coke is jealous of my im mortality." "Then you sec nothing in American Juris prudence and our legal science to find fault with, Sir William?" "Yes, I do. For instance, your judges spawn too many opinions and too long ones, and you publish too many court reports. Then what with your encyclopaedias you are making the practice of law a trade and ruining it as a profession. Almost any clever-brained fellow owning one of these encyclopaedias can rush into practice as a lawyer, while ignorant of foundation prin ciples such as I aimed to teach. Don't you know, for instance, that every offense men tioned in your modern penal codes is simply an offshoot from the foundation offenses com prehended in the ten commandments? Re member this, Michael, in your career at the Bar: don't ever become a case-lawyer, nor ever forget this maxim as the foundation of legal decision in law or equity : ' Eadcm ratio ibidem lex.' The 'tis so's should always be questioned by whys and wherefores. But
