the profession not to bave a sufficient sense of the dignity of his high office." And yet the biographer does full justice to his natural endowments and his honorable and useful career. We rejoice to learn that he had "little respect" for " the technicalities of the law." There is nothing of the lying epitaph in this sketch, and we honor the writer therefor. He is truly a "judicious Hooker." .
INVALID MURDERERS. — In all the persistent ap peals for mercy on behalf of Mrs. Maybrick, nothing more deliciously naive than the following from the "Medico-Legal Journal " has ever been uttered : — It seems clear that the arsenic (whoever administered it) either killed Mr. Maybrick or did him no perceptible harm. Hut even if we waive the point, the difference between a life sentence and one for ten years is immense. And what reason have we to think that, if the jury hail convicted Mrs. Maybrick of a criminal administration of arsenic which endangered her husband's life, the presiding judge would have imposed the maximum sentence on a delicately nurtured woman in feeble health, and a first offender?
Is it good policy to refrain from hanging a mur derer because he is in feeble health, or "delicately nurtured," and is a man entitled to consideration because he has never murdered or tried to murder anybody before? A dog is said to be entitled to one bite, but we have never before heard it intimated that this doctrine extended to reasoning human beings. In another part of the same article, Mr. Clark Bell contends in effect that a woman, especially " a lady in delicate health and a first offender," is entitled to leniency. All this is ultra-sentimental. True public policy is best subserved by holding women to the same degree of criminal responsibility as their hus bands and other men. If in the case in question the sexes of the offender and the victim had been reversed, the whole world would have laughed at the contention that mercy should be shown to the hus band because he was " a delicately nurtured gentle man," and this was his first attempt at wife-killing. Meantime Mrs. Maybrick holds out surprisingly for a delicate lady. In this same number of the " Medico-Legal Journal " is much evidence that doctors disagree, for powerful reasoning and startling statistics are given to show that vaccination is deleterious, that habits of intoxication in parents do not necessarily engender unhealthy children; that consanguineous marriages do not give birth to feeble-minded offspring to any great extent; and, in addition, that women have a right to educate themselves to death. Verily, these learned gentlemen sometimes cause us to doubt that anything is true.
THE SIGN OF THE THREE BALLS. (Goodell v. Lassen, 69 Illinois!, 145.) WHY is it that a financier, Vho lends on chattels small amounts, Is held in estimate less dear Than he who swells his bank accounts With interest on land and houses, And sycophancy thus arouses? Why should there be a prejudice Against the sign of triple balls, Which makes one think it so amiss, As youthful poverty he retails, To sneak to uncle (or to aunt), Or as the French say, i) m ¡г taule? It had a noble origin — The Lombard bankers, Medici, Imagined not a shame or sin In giving their posterity These golden pills, a punning sign For future ages to divine. But Roscoe says, a giant fellow, Who hung with triple balls his mace, And fought against them, one Magello, The terror of that early race, Was by their ancestor o'erthrown And his club taken for their own. A pawnbroker in Illinois, His humble trade to advertise Proposed this signal to employ. And draw the gaze of wistful eyes By hanging out his gilded pills, "Guld cure " for small financial ills. His landlord asked the court to stay The exposure of this badge of penance, Alleging it would drive away The customers of other tenants In the same building, and would shock All who frequented the same block. But the Court said they couldn't see An injury to the reversion; The plaintiff might quite easily Control the matter by insertion In written lease — question of taste — What signs were on the building placed; Besides, the plaintiff mustn't bore 'em — He'd clearly entered the wrong forum. So, I suppose the public run Whene'er they see those balls of gilt Glow in Chicago's blear-eyed sun; As when Magello rudely spilt The blood of ancient warriors flying, And strewed the plains with dead and dying. The difference in the times succeeding Is merely in the form of bleeding.
