TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ALVERSTONE
LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND
THIS VOLUME IS
BY KIND PERMISSION
DEDICATED IN AFFECTION AND RESPECT
BY
THE AUTHOR
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| ‘The Box Office’ | [1] |
| The Disadvantages of Education | [21] |
| Cookery Book Talk | [45] |
| A Day of my Life in the County Court | [52] |
| Dorothy Osborne | [75] |
| The Debtor of To-day | [103] |
| The Folk-Lore of the County Court | [114] |
| Concerning Daughters | [129] |
| The Future of the County Court | [137] |
| The Prevalence of Podsnap | [158] |
| An Elizabethan Recorder | [165] |
| The Funniest Thing I ever saw | [190] |
| The Playwright | [196] |
| Advice to Young Advocates | [212] |
| The Insolvent Poor | [220] |
| Why be an Author? | [236] |
| Which Way is the Tide? | [265] |
| Kissing the Book | [273] |
| A Welsh Rector of the Last Century | [290] |
PREFACE.
To a sane world one must offer some few words of excuse for writing judgments in vacation. One has heard of the emancipated slave who invested his savings in purchasing a share in another slave and of the historical bus-driver who made use of his annual holiday to drive a bus for a sick friend. And so it is with smaller men. One gets so used to giving judgments upon matters, the essence and properties of which one really knows very little about, that the habit remains after the sittings are over into the vacation. And on that rainy day, when golf and the more important pursuits of life are impossible, one finds oneself alone with pen, ink and paper, and thoughts that voluntarily move towards written judgments. And there is this excuse, that a Judge of a County Court can offer which would not be possible to his ermined brother—or should it be cousin, a poor relation had best be careful in claiming relationship—of the High Court. If we have any lurking desire to write our judgments, we shall not find leisure or opportunity to write them in term time. There is such a vast number of cases to try that judgments must be given forthwith, relying on authority perhaps rather than accuracy for the kindly manner of their reception. Well do I remember a great Judge giving a parting word of advice to a friend of mine on the Northern Circuit who preceded me to the County Court Bench: “Better be strong and wrong than weak and right.” The wisdom of the world is on the side of this epigram, and demands that all judgments of real importance should be given forthwith and spoken rather than written. Thus that most influential arbitrator in the larger affairs of Englishmen, the umpire in the cricket field, is never allowed to write his judgments.