BALLATA. A COMPOSITOR BEWAILETH HER CASE. It was a type-setter, A gentle, modest maid, And every word she said One, a reporter, listening, wrote of her : "I've tried in vain to read this manuscript; It looks as though a spider had been dipped A map; or with her claw The office-cat had written With musical Persian words for mew and purr. "There are some letters that look cuneiform, The punctuation-points are in a swarm, Of pay, which is by the em, "They write of peculations in high places, We type-setters, perplexed before our cases, To indignation stirred, I scruple not to state: Those authors peculate Who write as ill as you, and you, do, sir! "That journalist my gratitude engages, Is found on one side only of his pages; That all the time I gain A rightful favor kindly doth confer. "If you take pity of my sad complaint, Misprints, sufficient to provoke a saint, Shall be my type-setting This is no little thing To promise that no errors shall occur! "And if in haste-for such things have been don— (For Homer had his naps), With plural noun should war, I will hide your failing from the proof-reader. "For author and compositor being com› The reign of amity, Of syntax the desired millennium, And of orthography The reading world shall see The apotheosis solemn, Complete in every column, Of the ideal, the perfect newspaper!" It was the type-setter, A gentle, modest maid, And every word she said One, a reporter, listening, wrote of her. —E. Cavazza, in Literary World. THE SUPREME Court of THE UNITED STATES has some 1,500 cases on the docket, and the new cases average 650 a year, while it is able to dispose of little more than four hundred yearly. As fully half the cases are those which arise under the patent laws, it would be quite feasible to create a special court of highest appeal to dispose of these. This would be vastly better than to create a second Supreme Court under some other name, with final jurisdiction over cases involving less than a specified sum. Frequently the most important cases are those which involve but small amounts of money. The last decision of the Greenback question was upon the sale of a single bale of cotton, for which payment in reissued greenbacks was refused. And then it might happen that the two courts would decide the same question differently in suits which varied only as to the amounts involved, and we should have two contrary rules of law, the one for big transactions and the other for small. There is something very undemocratic also in drawing a line of this kind across our methods of appeal, as though the rich were given access to the highest tribunal of the land, while the poor had to pay just as high for a decision from an inferior court. The existence of a natural distinction which sunders patent cases from others points to the true solution; and in the course of time it may become necessary to constitute a third court of final appeal for the decision of revenue cases, like the English Court of Exchequer, in its original intention. The American. SOME TIME ago a negro took a seat in one of the cars of the Richmond & Danville Railroad Company. When the conductor came along he produced a ticket. The conductor told him he would have to pay twenty-five cents extra. He fished the quarter from his pocket and handed it over, remarking as he did so: "The road will never see that money." Thereupon the conductor gave him a thrashing. The assaulted and battered passenger brought an action for damages against the railroad company, and last month a Georgia jury awarded him $700. The Augusta Chronicle invites attention to this verdict as a proof that the negro gets justice down in those parts, and certainly, so far as it goes, it appears to be evidence in that direction. Now let us hear more of such.-The American. A TICKET-SCALping Story GOOD ENOUGH TO BE TRUE.-A railroad ticket agent, in commenting upon the indiscriminate cutting by brokers, tells this to the Minneapolis Tribune: Judge Cooley has a way of rounding up the scalpers that puts a stop to their operations in short order. He does not wait for the railroads to bring in evidence against them, but just goes out on a still hunt by himself, and generally goes home with his bag full. The last time he was in Chicago he dropped in sort of incidentally upon one of the most obnoxious of the brotherhood, and brought him into camp in a manner which gave the other scalpers cold feet for a month. 44 What can I get a ticket to New York for?" said he, leaning confi. dentially over the counter, and tipping a wink to the man behind. "Seventeen," replied the broker briskly. "Can't you do any better than that?" responded Judge Cooley persuasively. Well the broker thought he could, and finally arranged to give the Judge four tickets away down below the legal rate. Well bring them around to my room at the Grand Pacific to-night," said the Judge. "I haven't the full amount with me." So at the appointed hour the broker appeared at the rooms of the Judge. The Judge received him kindly. "Hold up your right hand," said he casually. The broker did so with some amusement. "Now," continued the Judge, "do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" "I'll be d-d if I do anything of the kind," said the broker, as his expression changed to blank amazement, and his hand dropped like a shot. "Oh, I guess you will," returned Judge Cooley with a careless drawl: "here's my friend, the United States Marshal, sitting by my side, and you will be given over to his custody if you don't. So, now, sit down in that chair, and tell Judge Cooley, of the Interstate Commerce Commission, all about those tickets you offered to sell him below the legal rate this afternoon. I want to know exactly how much each road got for them and your commission. The broker fell in a limp heap in the chair, and before he left the room the Interstate Commerce Committee had exacted some information which struck the brokers all in a heap the day after.- Express Gazette. LEGAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.-"Of all the professions, probably the bar is one which presents the most obvious attraction to a young man. As a career it offers great possibilities. But though the prizes of the bar are both numerous and great, there is no walk in life which has so many blanks. Success is well advertised and known to all, but little is heard of those who fail; and the number of failures is out of all proportion to those who attain even a modicum of success. "A moderate amount of success, it may be noted, is not a common thing. A marked line is drawn between success and failure. The more work a man has at the bar, the more he is likely to get; while the man whose practice is small is always liable to lose what little he has. The tendency is for the work to confine itself to a comparatively small number and to leave the many idle. While a mere handful of men make very large income,very many hundreds at the bar earn practically nothing at all. These disappointed ones struggle on for a while and then drift away in different directions, some to undertake work for which they are more suited; others to live at ease on money which they have inherited; others to find themselves stranded, after having wasted the best years of their lives, without work and without means on which to live. The risks of the bar are very great, and demand very careful consideration by any one inclined to make the bar his profession. "No one can practice as a barrister until he has been 'called' to the bar, and the first step toward a call is to join one of the Inns of Court. There are four of these inns-the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn. The choice of an inn is a comparatively unimportant matter, as the functions of the inns toward barristers are confined to providing a dining-hall and library for the use of their respective members and to letting chambers at high rents to any who are willing to take them. Most of those, however, who intend to devote themselves to common law and circuit work become members of either the Inner or the Middle Temple, while those who intend to practice on the Chancery side or to become conveyancing counsel join Lincoln's Inn. There is, however, no fixed rule in the matter. Several of the leaders of the common law bar, with Sir Charles Russell at their head are members of Lincoln's Inn, while the ranks of the Templars are swelled by many 'equity draftsmen and conveyancers.' "The last of the four Inns of Court-Gray's Inn-is a very much smaller society than any other of the three inns, and attracts but few students. The various inns have but few advantages of a solid nature to offer students. In the way of education for practice at the bar they do practically nothing, and fill a position analogous to that of the city livery companies towards their respective trades. It must not be forgotten, however, that they are all the possessors of very fine libraries, which are open to the use of their members. Probably the library of the Inner Temple, which is the richest of all the inns, is the finest ; but all the libraries are good, and kept up to date with new books, legal and otherwise. "The fees payable on admission are practically the same at each of the Inns of Court, and it will be sufficient to quote the following list as a fair example: Deposit (returnable, without interest, on call, death, or with drawal). Total ..... £141 12 "As a matter of fact, the deposit of £100 is often not demanded of students, for it is not required from members of the Scotch bar, nor from members of any of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, London, Durham, or of the Royal University of Ireland, provided that before call they take a degree or produce a certificate of having kept two years' terms. Before commencing to 'keep terms' at the inn which he may have chosen, the student is required to execute a bond of £50, with two sureties, for payment of 'commons' and dues. The 'com. mons' are the dinners which the student is required to eat in order that he may keep his term. Three dinners only every term are exacted from university men, while the number for the other students is six. The cost of commons and dues may be estimated at about £8 or £9 a year for three years. When the regulation number of dinners have been consumed, and the terms duly kept, then more fees are payable before call. Approximately these amount to nearly £100, Stamps and fees, £82 10s; commutation for future dues, £12; total, £94 10s. With them, however, the payment of fees ceases, and the full-blown barrister is mulcted no more by his inn. "The keeping of terms by means of eating of dinners is a survival from the time when the Inns of Court performed some of the functions of a college, and the presence of a student at dinner time was the simplest means of proving residence. A perfect analogy still exists in the various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, where terms are kept by undergraduates by taking a daily commons of bread and butter out of the college buttery. Now that residence in an Inn of Court has ceased to be necessary, the eating of dinners has become a useless farce, inconvenient to students, and pleasing only to the antiquarian. "Before his call to the bar, the student has to pass an examination ; the details of which are settled from time to time by a Council of Legal Education, which is nominated by the four Inns of Court. Roughly speaking, it is divided into two parts-Roman law, in which one paper is set, and English law, which is sub-divided into three branches, with an examination paper for each branch. This exainination entails, of course, the reading of a certain number of legal textbooks; but its nature is not such as to tax severely the powers of any man of ordinary intelligence, and success in the passing of it by no means implies any profound legal learning. |