"Dear me! I wish people would not bring their dogs into court." Then turning to our marshal, he said, "Take Jack into Baron Pollock's room"—the Baron had just gone in to lunch, for he was always punctual to a minute—"and ask him to give him a mutton-chop."
And when, five minutes later, my lord came in, the Baron was enjoying his chop, and I was eating my lord's.
In another court the Judge administered a well-timed rebuke to a flippant and very egotistical counsel, and I could hardly restrain myself from administering another. During the progress of a dreadfully long address to the jury for the defence, he said,—
"Why, gentlemen, there is not sufficient evidence against the prisoner on which to hang a dog."
"And how much evidence, Mr. ——, would you consider sufficient to hang a dog?"
"That would depend, my lord, as to whom the dog belonged."
I thought how like human nature that young man was.
I used to have a very good view of all that took place in court, and could tell some very funny as well as interesting stories about persons I have seen.
One day I was amused so much that, had I not remembered where I was, I must, like my friends mentioned by Robert Burns in his "Twa Dogs," have "barked wi' joy," because I thought it so strange. Here was a Queen's Counsel, a man of so proper a countenance that I do not think it ever smiled in its life, and so very devoted to his profession that he would never think of leaving it to go to a racecourse. I should have as soon expected to meet him in our dogs' home looking for a greyhound to go coursing with on Primrose Hill,—and here he was standing up on his hind legs, and making an application to the court which my lord was never in his life known to grant.
It was the night before the Derby, and we always took care to have a full list of cases for that Wednesday, for fear the public should think we went to the Derby and left the work to look after itself. We generally had about a dozen in pretty early in the afternoon of Tuesday, so that the suitors and witnesses, solicitors and all others whom it concerned, might know where they were, and that they could not go to the Derby the following day.