The Editor's Bag "I was a little touched, and said something, but he waved it aside, and we continued with the draft. When it was finished and as I was about to leave the office, the old fellow smiled again his little crooked smile. "'About those ten thousand dollar legacies,' he said, 'there isn't a clerk in my place who has been with me over two years—but it will look well in the papers!'" A RECONSTRUCTION JUDGE RECENTLY the Charleston News and Courier published in connection with his death a sketch of the career of Judge Thomas J. Mackey, who sat on the bench during the reconstruction times in South Carolina. Mackey, though a native of Charleston, was at that time a Republican and was one of the most brilliant and reckless of the unscrupu lous adventurers developed by the recon struction period. To this day, says the New Orleans States, South Carolina is full of the stories of this re markable man. It was he who announced from the bench that after a careful investi gation he had discovered that Franklin J. Moses, Jr., was a lineal descendant of the im penitent thief of the crucifixion. On another occasion, in discussing the habit of "Tharsaparilla" Wright, the lisping Philadelphia negro, who was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, of getting drunk and preaching in the barrooms of Columbia, Mackey said he had investigated Wright's ancestry and accounted for his drunken piety by the fact that his remote ancestor on the banks of the Congo, had, single-handed, eaten a very devout Wesleyan missionary, thereby acquiring religious tendencies which he transmitted to his pos terity. In the year 1876, when the political revolu tion occurred in South Carolina, he went over to the Democrats and became one of Wade Hampton's most daring and effective sup porters. He announced his change of heart by riding into a public meeting at Edgefield on an ox and wearing a red shirt. Once when on his way to appear in the Supreme Court in support of one of his opinions favoring the Democrats he told the people who gathered at a station to hear him talk that he would pre sent to the Court thirteen conclusive reasons in support of his position, which reasons he had then on his person, whereupon he produced two'six-shooters and a Bowie knife. He was the originator of the assertion that the Repub
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lican party had seven distinct principles— five loaves and two small fishes. It is said of Mackey that no more brilliant man ever sat on the bench in any state. When he was made a judge he had never practised law, and so far as can be ascertained never had studied it, yet he was able to find law for any decision he desired to make, and in the event that he could not find it invented what was needed as he went along, but nev ertheless he had a way of arriving at sub stantial justice.
USELESS BUT ENTERTAINING The Client—How much will your opinion be worth in this case? The Lawyer—I'm too modest to say. But I can tell you what I'm going to charge you for it.—Cleveland Leader. "Convicted?" exclaimed the prisoner in disgust. "Well, I'm not surprised. My lawyer made a fool of himself." "I tried to represent you faithfully," re marked the lawyer, mildly.—Judge. Lawyer — "Did you take the prisoner apart? Witness—"Yes, sir." Lawyer—"What happened then?" Witness—"He told a disconnected story." —Baltimore American. Upgardson—"Isn't a lawsuit over a patent right about the dullest thing you ever saw?" Atom—"Not always. I attended a trial of that kind once that was too funny for any thing. A tall lawyer named Short was read ing a 6000-word document he called a brief." —Chicago Tribune. A prisoner at the sessions had been duly convicted of theft, when it was seen, on "proving previous convictions," that he had actually been in prison at the time the theft was committed. "Why didn't you say so?" asked the judge of the prisoner angrily. "Your lordship, I was afraid of prejudicing the jury against me."— Home Herald. The burly prisoner stood unabashed before the judge. It was his first time in a court and before a jury, says a writer in the Argo naut. "Prisoner at the bar," asked the clerk, "do you wish to challenge any of the jury?" The prisoner looked them over carefully and with a skilled eye. "Well," he replied, "I'm not exactly wot you calls in training, but I guess I could stand a round or two with that fat old geezer in the corner."— Youth's Companion.
