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NOTES.
WHEN the son of a well-known judge argued his first case before the full bench of a State Court, some of the members of which were noted for badgering youthful counsel, the Chief Justice was particularly active, and began his questions before the counsel had finished stating the facts. When the young advocate came to the law thereof, he was constantly interrupted by comment and inquiry. " If it please your Honor," was the invariable reply, " I will come to that point later." Finally, the Chief Justice burst forth : " This is a most extraordinary pro ceeding, Mr. Blank. You say that it is a suit on a judgment recovered in New York for alimony. I never heard of such a proceeding. What is your authority for bringing such a suit? " " If it please your Honor," was the quiet reply, " my authority is, I admit, rather questionable and one that has often been impugned, being only the Constitution of the United States, Article 4, Section i." The Chief Justice did not see fit to ask any more questions during the argument of that case. LORD HERSCHELL used to tell the following anecdote. When he was vice-chancellor, he gave judgment in a case argued before him against a very prosy and uninteresting, but emi nent, queen's counsel, who appealed the cause. When it came on to be heard before the Court of Appeals, Sir George Jessel, master of the rolls, after exhausting all the means in his power to induce the learned advocate to be as brief as possible, at last resigned himself to the infliction of the tedious argument. After some time the queen's counsel stated a point, which at once awakened the master of the rolls from his state of apparent somnolence, and he asked sharply of the advocate why the point had not been argued before the vice-chancellor. " If it please your lordship," was the reply, "the learned vice-chancellor stopped me by fraudu lently pretending to be upon my side."
CHARLES SUMNER, says Major J. B. Pond, in his Eccentricities ofGenius, was an aristocrat. He was my father's ideal. After I had got back from Kansas and visited my father's home in Wisconsin, father said to me: "James, the
Honorable Charles Sumner is going to speak at R—. We must hear him." So we arranged to go. We walked nine miles to hear him speak. My father never spoke of him without giving him his title. He had enjoyed that speech immensely. 1 do not know whether I did or not. Father occupied a front seat with the intention of rushing up to the platform and greeting him by the hand when he had finished, but the Honorable Charles was too quick for him. He disappeared, got to his hotel, and no body saw him. Father said : " James, the Honorable Charles Sumner is going to Milwaukee to-morrow morn ing, and we can ride with him a part of the way." We were on the train early the next morning, and so was the Honorable Charles Sumner. He was sitting reading in the drawing-room car. Father stepped up and said : " The Honorable Charles Sumner? I have read all your speeches. I feel that it is the duty of every American to take you by the hand. This is my son. He has just returned from the Kansas conflict." Honorable Charles Sumner did not see father nor his son, but he saw the porter and said : "Can you get me a place where I will be un disturbed?" Poor father! His heart was broken. During his last twenty-five years he never referred to the Honorable Charles Sumner.
THE following anecdote is quoted by the Law Times as illustrative of Lord Langdale's fastid ious sense of honor. There was a little room in his chambers in the Temple, overlooking the gardens, a favorite of his in summer, but in which he could never sit in winter because the chimney smoked beyond endurance. On being made, ¡later on, a king's counsel, he found it necessary to move to a more eligible position, and of course wished to let the chambers he then occupied, but conscientiousness kept him in a state of perpetual excitement lest the laundrywoman should not tell every person who applied for them that the chimney smoked. So he wrote in large letters on a sheet of paper and placed it over the mantelpiece in the room : " The chim ney of this fire-place smokes incurably, and every experiment has been tried to remedy the evil and no expense spared."
