WANTED IN THE LAW COURTS
A junior who will wear his gown straight, and not pretend that intense preoccupation over dummy briefs prevents him from knowing that it is off one shoulder.
A judge who can resist the temptation to utter feeble witticisms, and to fall asleep.
A witness who answers questions, and incidentally tells the truth.
A jury who do not look extremely silly, and ridiculously self-conscious, when directly addressed or appealed to by counsel; or one that really understands that the judge’s politeness is only another and subtle form of self-glorification.
A K.C. who is not “eminent,” who does not behave “nobly,” and who can avoid the formula “I suggest to you,” in cross-examination; or one that does not thunder from a lofty and inaccessible moral altitude so soon as a nervous witness blunders or contradicts himself.
An usher who does not try to induce the general public, especially the female portion thereof, to mistake him for the Lord Chancellor.
A solicitor who does not strive to appear coram populo on terms of quite unnecessarily familiar intercourse with his leading counsel.
An articled clerk who does not dress beyond his thirty shillings a-week, and think that the whole court is lost in speculation as to the identity of that distinguished-looking young man.
An associate who does not go into ecstasies of merriment over every joke or obiter dictum from the Bench.
Anybody who does not give loud expression to the opinion, at the nearest bar when the court rises, that he could have managed the case for either or both sides infinitely better than the counsel engaged.
A court-house whose atmosphere is pleasant and invigorating after the court has sat for fifteen minutes.
(Anyone concerned who, on reading these remarks in print, will think that the cap can, by any scintilla of possibility, fit himself.)
Wretched-looking Messenger. “Beg pardon, Mr. Brown, it’s come at larst! I’m entirely dependent on myself. My wife’s been and got a separation order!”
In order to deaden the sense of smell, second-hand clothes-pegs will be used by the bench and the bar.
Lords Justices Bowen and Fry prepared to break the windows of the court, and relieve the asphyxiated bar.
OLD LAW COURT MEMORIES
HUMAN NATURE REBELS
Poor Mr. Wiggles has just been described by a facetious witness of the lower orders as “that there h’old bloke wiv a choker, an’ a cauliflower on ’is ’ed”!!!