The offer was not accepted, and the Defendant was not committed. But the story throws light on the rudimentary ideas that some Yiddishers have of the administration of justice.
And now we have finished the list of cases, but there are a few stragglers left in Court. Some of them have been in the wrong Court, or come on the wrong day; some have applications to make, or advice to ask. I always make a point now of finding out what these folk want before leaving the bench. I remember in my early days a man coming before me the first thing one morning, and saying he had sat in my Court until the end of yesterday’s proceedings.
“Why didn’t you come up at the end of the day,” I asked, “and make your application then?”
“I was coming,” he replied, “but at the end of last case you was off your chair an’ bolted through yon door like a rabbit.” I think his description was exaggerated, but I rise in a more leisurely way nowadays, though I am still glad when the day’s work is over.
I do not know that what I have written will convey any clear idea of the day of my life that I have been asked to portray. I know it is in many respects a very dull grey life, but it has its brighter moments in the possibilities of usefulness to others. I am not at all sure that the black-letter jurisdiction of a big urban County Court ought not to be worked by a parish priest rather than by a lawyer. I know that it wants a patience, a sympathy, and a belief in the goodness of human nature that we find in those rare characters who give up the good things in this world for the sake of working for others. I am very conscious of my own imperfections; but I was once greatly encouraged by a criticism passed upon me which I accidentally overheard, and which I am conceited enough to repeat. I was going away from the Court, and passed two men walking slowly away. I had decided against them, and they were discussing why I had done so.
“Well, ’ow on earth ’e could do it I don’t see, do you, Bill?”
“’E’s a fool.”
“Yes, ’e’s a fool, a —— fool, but ’e did ’is best.”
“Ay. I think ’e did ’is best.”
After all, coming from such source or indeed from any source, the suggestion contained in the conversation was very gratifying. I have often thought that one might rest beneath an unkinder epitaph than this: