my brother, on the opposite side of this cause.  I shall now beg leave, in a very few words, to show your lordship how utterly untenable are the principles, and how distorted are the facts, upon which this very specious statement has proceeded.”  He then went once more over the same ground, and did not take his seat till he had most energetically refuted himself, and destroyed the effect of his former pleading.  He gained the cause.

A similar circumstance happened in the Rolls Court, in 1788.  Mr. A., an eminent counsel, received a brief in court a short time before the cause was called on, for the purpose of opposing the prayer of a petition.  Mr. A., conceiving himself to be the petitioner, spoke very ably in support of the petition, and was followed by a counsel on the same side.  The Master of the Rolls then inquired who opposed the petition?  Mr. A. having by this time discovered his mistake, rose in much confusion, and said, that he felt really much ashamed for a blunder into which he had fallen, for that, instead of supporting the petition, it was his business to have opposed it.  The Master of the Rolls, with great good humour, desired him to proceed now on the other side, observing, that he knew no counsel who could answer his arguments half so well as himself.

Fools.—­A lawyer of Strasburgh being in a dying state sent for a brother lawyer to make his will, by which he bequeathed nearly the whole of his estate to the Hospital for Idiots.  The other expressed his surprise at this bequest.  “Why not bestow it upon them,” said the dying man; “you know I got the most of my money by fools, and therefore to fools it ought to return.”

Curran.—­A farmer, attending a fair with a hundred pounds in his pocket, took the precaution of depositing it in the hands of the landlord of the public-house at which he stopped.  Having occasion for it shortly afterwards, he repaired to mine host for the amount, but the landlord, too deep for the countryman, wondered what hundred was meant, and was quite sure no such sum had ever been lodged in his hands.  After many ineffectual appeals to the recollection, and finally to the honour of Bardolph, the farmer applied to Curran for advice.  “Have patience, my friend,” said Curran; “speak to the landlord civilly, and tell him you are convinced you must have left your money with some other person.  Take a friend with you, and lodge with him another hundred in the presence of your friend, and then come to me.”  We may imagine the vociferations of the honest rustic at such advice; however, moved by the rhetoric of the worthy counsel, he followed it, and returned to his legal friend.  “And now, sir, I don’t see as I’m to be better off for this, if I get my second hundred again—­but how is that to be done?” “Go and ask him for it when he is alone,” said the counsel.  “Aye, sir; but asking won’t do I’m afraid, and not without my witness, at any rate.”  “Never mind, take my advice,” said the