the second I've lost. He was only three years old, and a bright, promising little fellow. You recollect him?" "Why, sure. What was the matter of him?" "Well, the doctor didn't know. Seemed to be some trouble inside. We sent him to the hospital, and the doctor operated on him and took away two quarts and a half of pus; said it seemed as how he'd had a bruise from a fall. Poor chap! he suffered awful. He lingered along three days and then he died. You remember what a pretty little fellow he was; so affectionate, and had such beautiful hair? Well, sir, my wife she's just about crazy, and I feel just as if there was a big piece gone out of my life. I hoped we could raise this one, but everything seems to be against us, and now we haint got any." At this point there was a moment's silence. I had become quite tearful, and the two men were visibly affected. Then the chief speaker continued, with an undisguised gulp: "The doctor wanted to know if I didn't want his hide to stuff, but I told him no, we'd bury him just as he was." And then for the first it dawned upon me that they had been talking about a dog! But the Chairman thought none the less of them. It occurred to him, however, that if the conversation had ended just before the anti-climax, or the Chairman had left the car at that point, he would have been prepared to go into court and swear that the chief interlocutor had confessed that he had buried two little boys. So it is safest not only to "hear the other side," but also to hear the whole of each side. The Chairman has told this incident to many persons of both sexes, and has never failed to start the tears. In fact he grows rather tearful himself by the mere telling of it, until the laugh comes in. But what says Horace? "If you wish to make others weep, you must first weep yourself." Probably he did not literally mean that, for the actor must not lose his selfcontrol, but he meant you must have wept — been stirred by the divine power of compassion.
A Judicial Joke. — Sometimes it has occurred to us that some one ought to compile an account of jests of the English judges, but it would occupy an ordinary lifetime to collect enough to make anything larger than a pony volume. Whenever we run across a good one we feel moved to record it. Just now one turns up in Evans v. McLoughlan, I Paterson (Sc. App.), 993; 15 Eng. Rul. Cas. 182. This was an action against a justice of the peace for false imprisonment. The plaintiff had been arrested on suspicion of carrying on an illegal still. In the course of argument counsel said: "The principle is to keep the stream of justice pure." On which Lord Chelmsford ejaculated: "You think it does not flow purely through the exciseman's still!"
A Safe Deduction.— The "Albany Law Journal." says: "The court is said to have held explicitly that no insured person committing suicide, and found to be of sound mind, could recover upon his policy." There seems to be no room for doubt concerning that proposition. We do not see how he could recover in any sense.
Balena.—"It is a cold day" when the Chair man cannot find some fun in a law book. So now. Probably not many of his readers know offhand what kind of a thing a balana was or is. But in turning over the pages of Mr. Francis Rawle's new, admirable and sumptuous edition of "Bouvier's Law Dictionary," we discover that it was a whale, according to the Latins. On reading the short paragraph describing the animal's standing (or lying) in law, we found the fun which wrought itself out to our perverted intellect as follows : —
And rendered to him all the good things in life;
And so when a subject did capture a whale,
The King took the head and the Queen got the tail.
And lucky the wife if by womanly ways
She coaxed a few bones from the head for her stays.
"A Boy Lawyer."— Under this title, the "Albany Law Journal," which of late has gone into "illustrations" considerably, prints the portrait and gives a biography of Mr. Byron H. Gilbert, of Atchison, Kan., a gentleman seven years of age, who is an accomplished lawyer, has been accorded a certificate of admission to the Bar to take effect on his reaching majority, and has received a fee of twenty-five dollars from the "New York World" for trying a case for it all alone. It is no surprise that this freak of nature springs from Kansas, nor that the biography is written by his father, the judge. Exactly what is required to gain admission to the Kansas bar we are not informed, but if a seven-year-old boy can get in, we acknowledge to fears about the acquirements of the adults. It is stated, however, that he passed a better examination than many men of more than twenty-one years of age who have studied for years, and this it is not very difficult to believe. A publishing house has sent Mr. Gilbert a copy of the new general statutes of the State, properly inscribed, informing him that all the State stands "amazed" at him, and that "the history of the world furnishes no like instance of legal learning and skill in one so young. Even fiction's greatest prodigies pale before actual accomplishments in Kansas." We regret to observe one or two bad habits in Mr. Gilbert, one of which is that he likes to whistle, for that is indicative of lack of thought; and
