Wit and Wisdom of Chief Justice Logan E. Bleckley. keeps his sleeping apartments with the doors ' blanketed ' in a fit condition for privately gaming therein, and who invites his friends at night to refresh themselves with beer, but has in the room, besides barrel and bottles, a table suitable for gaming, together with eleven packs of cards and two boxes of ' chips,' one containing eighty chips and the other three hundred, and a memo randum book with names and numbers entered in it, and whose guests, or some of them, retire hurriedly under the bed on being surprised by a visit from the police at one o'clock in the morn ing, may or may not be guilty of the offense of keeping a gaming-house. A verdict of guilty based on these and other inculpatory facts, such as the rattle of chips and money, and some ex pressions about seven dollars and twelve dollars heard by the police on approaching the premises, is warranted by the evidence, and is not con trary to law." — Pacetti v. State, 82 Ga. 297. "Surely the sheriff is bound to know some law. He says he took the advice of counsel. We sup pose from the quality of the advice that he must have obtained it gratis." — Treadwell v. Beauchamp, 82d Ga., 738. "Indirect suicide gives no title to post mortem reward." — Central Railroad v. Kitchens, 83d Ga., 89. "After the State has yielded to the federal army, it can very well afford to yield to the fed eral judiciary. Our sister States, Alabama and Louisiana, have done so." — Wrought Iron Co. v. Johnson, 84th Ga., 759. "Here then is a debtor having some property, perhaps sufficient property, to discharge the debt. Why should it not be so applied? If any debt ought to be paid, it is one contracted for the health of souls, for pious ministrations and holy services. If any class of debtors ought to pay as matter of moral as well as legal duty, the good people of a Christian church are that class. No church can have any higher obligation resting on it than that of being just. The study of justice for more than forty years has impressed me with the supreme importance of this grand and noble virtue. Some of the virtues are in the nature of moral luxuries, but this is an absolute necessity of social life. It is the hog and hominy, the bacon and beans of morality, public and private." — Lyons v. Planters' Bank, 86th Ga., 490. "The services of religion to the State are of
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untold value; but it is the glory of religion in this country that it serves as a volunteer, without money and without price." — City of Atlanta?'. Church, 86th Ga., 744. "In the ornithology of litigation this case is a tomtit, furnished with a garb of feathers ample enough for a turkey. Measured by the verdict, its tiny body has only the bulk of twenty-five dol lars, but it struts with a display of record ex panded into eighty-three pages of manuscript. It seems to us that a more contracted plumage might serve for so small a bird, but perhaps we are mistaken. In every forensic season, we have a considerable flock of such cases, to be stripped and dissected for the cabinets of jurisprudence. We endeavor to pick our overfledged poultry with judicial assiduity and patience." — Lukens v. Ford, 87th Ga., 542. "Before the translation of our brother Lump kin to this bench, though his judicial accuracy was remarkable, he shared in the fallibility which is inherent in all courts except those of last resort. In some rare instances he committed error, and the very last of his errors is now before us for correction." — Broome v. Davis, 87th Ga., 586. "There is no combination of any two average, every day people so powerful for good or evil as that of husband and wife; and if one spouse is angelic it seems not to cripple the combination provided the other is intensely human." — Hadden v. Lamed, 87 th Ga., 645. "Some courts live by correcting the errors of others and adhering to their own. On these terms courts of final review hold their existence, or those of them which are strictly and exclusively courts of review, without any original jurisdiction, and with no direct function but to find fault or see that none can be found. With these exalted tri bunals, who live only to judge the judges, the rule of stare decisis is not only a canon of public good, but a law of self-preservation. At the peril of their lives they must discover error abroad and be discreetly blind to its commission at home. Were they as ready to correct themselves as others they could no longer speak as absolute oracles of legal truth; the reason for their ex istence would disappear, and their destruction would speedily supervene. Nevertheless, without serious detriment to the public or peril to them selves, they can and do admit now and then, with cautious reserve, that they have made a mistake.
