As he himself described it, he thought he was dead and that he had not been carried to Abraham’s bosom. He never, indeed, got over the shock, and, moderating his partiality for old port, he exhibited more serious tendencies, and so good came out of evil, and the occupiers of the present palatial chambers are indebted to Mr. Justice Maule for having gone to bed tipsy and burnt down the crazy old buildings.
Mr. Justice Maule had a grim humour of his own, and Serjeant Ballantine used to tell of how on one occasion during the Guildford Assizes a murder case hinged on the evidence of a child to which the Crown attached importance, but to which the prisoner vehemently objected.
“Come here, my little girl,” said his lordship. “Now, if you were to tell a story do you know where you would go to?”
“No, sir,” was the candid reply.
“Neither do I,” was the judicial endorsement; “an excellent answer; swear the witness.”
But that was before the “shock” that brought him to his senses.
Every Army man in the sixties will remember George Goddard. A cheery Irishman, full of anecdotage, universally popular, but, alas! with the proverbial lack of the one thing needful. Appointed by Tod Heatly as one of his touts, he combined business with pleasure by radiating between the various regiments and billeting himself on any one he knew at the Raleigh or Army Clubs.
“Now, Major,” he once said to Gussy Brown after a hilarious mess dinner, “you see that stain on the floor? I bet you I’ll remove it without touching it.”
“Impossible,” replied the little man. “I’ll bet a fiver you don’t,” and before the astonished audience could say “Jack Robinson” the gallant Gussy had been seized by his spurs and smeared across the floor.
But all this was in the days of practical joking.