counsel; “do as I bid you, and return to me.”  The farmer returned with the hundred, glad at any rate to find that safe again his possession.  “Now I suppose I must be content, though I don’t see as I’m much better off.”  “Well, then,” said the counsel, “now take your friend with you, and ask the landlord for the hundred pounds your friend saw you leave with him.”  We need not add, that the wily landlord found that he had been taken off his guard, while our honest friend returned to thank his counsel exultingly, with both of his hundreds in his pocket.

Mr. Curran was once engaged in a legal argument; behind him stood his colleague, a gentleman whose person was remarkably tall and slender, and who had originally intended to take orders.  The judge observing that the case under discussion involved a question of ecclesiastical law; “Then,” said Curran, “I can refer your lordship to a high authority behind me, who was once intended for the church, though in my opinion he was fitter for the steeple.”

There is a celebrated reply of Mr. Curran to a remark of Lord Clare, who curtly exclaimed at one of his legal positions, “O! if that be law, Mr. Curran, I may burn my law books!” “Better read them, my lord,” was the sarcastic and appropriate rejoinder.

A Good Example.—­Chamillart, comptroller-general of the finances in the reign of Louis XIV., had been a celebrated pleader.  He once lost a cause in which he was concerned, through his excessive fondness for billiards.  His client called on him the day after in extreme affliction, and told him that, if he had made use of a document which had been put into his hands, but which he had neglected to examine, a verdict must have been given in his favour.  Chamillart read it, and found it of decisive importance to his cause.  “You sued the defendant,” said he, “for 20,000 livres.  You have failed by my inadvertence.  It is my duty to do you justice.  Call on me in two days.”  In the meantime Chamillart procured the money, and paid it to his client, on no other condition than that he should keep the transaction secret.

Legal Point.—­A few years ago it happened that a cargo of ice was imported into this country from Norway.  Not having such an article in the Custom house schedules, application was made to the Treasury and to the Board of Trade; and, after some little delay, it was decided that the ice should be entered as “dry goods;” but the whole cargo had melted before the doubt was cleared up!

Lord Brougham tells the following story.  It is a curious instance of the elucidation of facts in court.—­During the assizes, in a case of assault and battery, where a stone had been thrown by the defendant, the following clear and conclusive evidence was drawn out of a Yorkshireman.—­“Did you see the defendant throw the stone?” “I saw a stone, and I’ze pretty sure the defendant throwed it.”  “Was it a large stone?” “I should say it wur a largeish stone.”