A client went to consult him as to the proper redress for an intolerable insult and wrong he had just suffered. He had been in a dispute with a waiter at the hotel, who in a paroxysm of rage and contempt told the client "to go to ——." "Now," said the client, "I ask you, Mr. Choate, as one learned in the law, and as my legal adviser, what course under these circumstances I ought to take to punish this outrageous insult." Choate looked grave, and told the client to repeat slowly all the incidents preceding this outburst, telling him to be careful not to omit anything, and when this was done Choate stood for a while as if in deep thought and revolving an abstruse subject; he then gravely said: "I have been running over in my head all the statutes of the United States, and all the statutes of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all the decisions of all the judges in our Courts therein, and I may say that I am thoroughly satisfied that there is nothing in any of them that will require you to go to the place you have mentioned. And if you will take my advice then I say decidedly—don't go."
Choate defended a blacksmith whose creditor had seized some iron that a friend had lent him to assist in the business after a bankruptcy. The seizure of the iron was said to have been made harshly. Choate thus described it: "He arrested the arm of industry as it fell towards the anvil; he put out the breath of his bellows; he extinguished the fire upon his hearthstone. Like pirates in a gale at sea, his enemies swept everything by the board, leaving, gentlemen of the jury, not so much—not so much as a horseshoe to nail upon the doorpost to keep the witches off." The blacksmith, sitting behind, was seen to have tears in his eyes at this description, and a friend noticing it, said, "Why, Tom, what's the matter with you? What are you blubbering about?"—"I had no idea," said Tom in a whisper, "that I had been so abominably ab-ab-bused."
A veteran member of the Baltimore Bar tells of an amusing cross-examination in a Court of that city. The witness seemed disposed to dodge the questions of counsel for the defence. "Sir," admonished the counsel sternly, "you need not tell us your impressions. We want facts. We are quite competent to form our own impressions. Now, sir, answer me categorically." From that time on he got little more than "yes" and "no" from the witness. Presently counsel asked: "You say that you live next door to the defendant."—"Yes."—"To the south of him?"—"No."—"To the north?"—"No."—"Well, to the east then?"—"No."—"Ah," exclaimed the counsel sarcastically, "we are likely now to get down to the one real fact. You live to the west of him, do you not?"—"No."—"How is that, sir?" the astounded counsel asked. "You say you live next door to the defendant, yet he lives neither north, south, east, or west of you. What do you mean by that, sir?" Whereupon the witness "came back." "I thought perhaps you were competent to form the impression that we lived in a flat," said the witness calmly; "but I see I must inform you that he lives next door above me."
In the Supreme Court of the United States the President interrupted counsel in the course of a long speech by saying: "Mr. Jones, you must give this Court credit for knowing something."—"That's all very well," replied the advocate (who came from a Western State), "but that's exactly the mistake I made in the Court below."
In a suit for damages against a grasping railway corporation for killing a cow, the attorney for the plaintiff, addressing the twelve Arkansas good men and true who were sitting in judgment, and on their respective shoulder-blades, said: "Gentlemen of the jury, if the train had been running as slow as it should have been ran, if the bell had been rung as it 'ort to have been rang, or the whistle had been blown as it 'ort to have been blew, none of which was did, the cow would not have been injured when she was killed."
Although not strictly a story of either the Bench or the Bar of America, it is so pertinent to the latter that we cannot omit the following told by the Scottish clergyman, the late Dr. Gillespie of Mouswold, in his amusing collection of anecdotes.
A young American lady was his guest at the manse while a young Scottish advocate was spending a holiday in the neighbourhood. He was invited to dine at the manse, and took the young lady in to dinner, and kept teasing her in a lively, good-natured manner about American people and institutions, while it may be guessed his neighbour held her own, as most American girls are well able to do. At length the advocate asked, "Miss ——, have you any lawyers in America?" She knowing what profession he belonged to replied quick as thought, "Oh yes, Mr. ——, lots of lawyers. I've a brother a lawyer. Whenever we've a member of a family a bigger liar than another, we make him a lawyer."
A quaint decision was given by Judge Kimmel, of the Supreme Court at St. Louis, in an application for divorce by Mrs. Quan. The judge directed Patrick J. Egan, a policeman, to supervise the domestic affairs of the couple, and to visit their home daily for thirty days. After questioning the wife closely on her attitude towards her husband and his treatment of her, Egan wrote down for the wife's guidance a long array of precepts. Among these were the following: