Leaves from an English Solicitor s Note Book. his client's interests against what conscience dictated. He regards Tucker's Commentaries, Davis's Criminal Law, and Robinson's (Old) Practice, as the great landmarks of Virginia law. He was very careful and painstaking in the preparation of his opinions. He be lieved in arguing causes to juries and thinks the successful lawyer must never omit this important feature in the trial of his client's cases. We must not omit to state that Judge Moore, in connection with Dr. Letterman (deceased) founded the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity in 1850 when a student of Jefferson College. The membership of this Fraternity numbers the ablest literary grad uates of every State.
193
In 1865 Judge Moore was united in mar riage with Miss Urilla K. Kline who was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, her father being a native of Virginia. She was gifted with a wonderful voice and was in every way well fitted to be the wife of the illus trious subject of this sketch. Unto the union four daughters were born who, with their father, mourn the death of the devoted mother, which sad event occurred April 20, 1897After retiring from public life Judge Moore located on the estate in Mason County, be queathed to him by his foster father. There he yet resides, and though approaching the evening of life, his 'friends will not forget the noontide.
LEAVES FROM AN ENGLISH SOLICITOR'S NOTE BOOK. V. THE SELF-WILLED LADY CLIENT. BY BAXTER BORRET. 10NCE overheard a clerk of mine solemnly invoke — well, it was not a blessing, upon my head for a fussy fidgetting old fogey. I am afraid I smiled a grim smile, and adopted the somewhat blunt epithet as a veiled compliment to myself. For I confess I always was both fussy and fidgetting, if those words signify nothing worse than persistent care and precision about small details of office work; and I am now at all events, if I was not then, "an old fogey " in Thackeray's sense of the term. The life of an English solicitor, in active and varied practice, brings him in contact with many strange phases of life and char acter. In abler hands than my own the ma terials to be collected from my " note books" would, I dare say, furnish plots for well spunout works of fiction. But I take it that the
readers of "The Green Bag" look to its pages for fact, not for fiction; and the old adage still holds good that " truth is often stranger than fiction." Amongst my clients at Georgetown was an old lady who had come to reside in the town some years before I myself settled clown there. I made her acquaintance casually, in the course of some business in which I had occasion to search through some title deeds which she kept in her own custody; and, from what she told me in after years, I be lieve that she was struck with my persistent care and precision over some small details of the business; (others, besides my clerk, might have called it fussiness and fidgetting.) Be that as it may, her own solicitor died shortly afterwards; and, upon his death, she called upon me, and asked me to act for her in
