"But, tell the Court more precisely?"
"Well, I should say it was a right smart fight."
"But how much of a fight?"
"Well, then, just about an acre, I reckon."
It is needless to say that the crowd enjoyed the joke hugely.
"It is easier to pay a small debt than a larger one."
Uncle Abe Believes in the Intelligence of Oysters.
In the year 1860 or thereabouts, when a great patent case was being tried in Chicago, and champagne and oysters were the favorite viands served nightly to Counsel and Jurors after the adjournment of Court, it happened that one Ed. D———n, a young patent lawyer from New York, was present on one of those occasions. Now, Ned is terribly afflicted with a determination of words to the mouth, and managed to monopolize the whole conversation. Ned had a speech to make upon everything, and kept buzzing around like a musquito, dipping his bill into everything animate or inanimate, no matter which. At last he began to officiate at serving out the oysters, and with ladle in hand, said in his usual stilted style, "I wonder whether this bivalve, this seemingly obtuse oyster, is endowed with any degree of intelligence." Uncle Abe looked at the puppy, who, by the way, had prevented him cracking a single one of his favorite jokes for the entire evening, and quaintly remarked, that "he was satisfied that an oyster knew when to shut up, and that was more than some New York lawyers knew." Ned has never propounded the query as to the intellect of oysters since.