SOME AMERICAN COURTS.

Evening Star, Issue 3783, 9 April 1875, Page 3

SOME AMERICAN COURTS.

The San Francisco correspondent of the ‘New Zealand Herald’ vouches for the truth of the following scenes, which he declares happened in the courts of his State in the month of February last:— SCENE FIRST. Judge: A foc-rimile of my last. Witness being examined: A very respectable and very intelligent merchant of this city. Case; Feminine weakness. Examining Counsel (formerly a deck-hand on a ferry-boat): Now, Mr Thomson, will you tell this court what was the nature of your intimacy with the defendant ? Witness : No, sir, I won’t. Counsel: Now, sir, do you mean to tell this court that you never slept— Witness; Stop, sir, the defendant is a respectable lady, and if you speak in that way I’ll put “ahead on you” that your mother wouldn’t know. Court: Silence, sir ! or I’ll commit you for contempt. Witness: You may do as .you darned please, for I have the utmost contempt for you and your infernal court. Counsel: Now, sir, answer my question. Have you not slept— At this point Mr Thomson, who is a noted amateur bruiser, slipt down from the stand, and, in the presence of the whole court, proceeded to close up the eyes of the counsel with annoying rapidity. So severe was the punishment administered that the unfortunate counsel was buried within a fortnight of the assault. The witness, having sent the counsel ont of court, turned to the judge, and addressed him as “the son of a gun’’ and something else, and asked him to come down off the stand and Jtake his whipping like a man. But the judge stayed where he was, and the witness coolly walked off. He was arrested and bailed out the next day, but he was never punished for the offence. SCENE SECOND.—LEGAL AMENITIES Judge Wade counsel for the prisoner. Judge Manchester presiding. Judge Manchester, loquitor: Gentlemen, my honorable friend Judge Wade has endeavoured to impress upon you the belief that he is an honest man. Has Judge Wade told you, gentlemen of the jury, that his early legal life was spent in Tasmania? Yes, gentlemen, he has been candid enough to admit that he was in that famous British penal Colony ; but, gentlemen, he has not told you how he went there.

Judge Wade, loquitor; Gentlemen, my honored friend Judge Manchester has taken the trouble to play the biographer and to treat you to a few chapters in the book of my life, as he is pleased to call it. Very well, gentlemen, we all know the reputation of Jndge Manchester. But have you, gentlemen, any of you, ever taken this honorable individual by the hand? yes, by the hand—or rather by the stump ? Has he ever told you, gentlemen, in what honorable ouarrel he lost hia four fingers ? Just look*at his maimed jaw ; is it not very suggestive of a bowie-knife and a grab for the pool at a faro-table. A fact, gentlemen, I assure you. Wade and Manchester adjourn and take a dnuk.

SCENE THIRD,

About three months age two leading lawyers in this city came to hot words in courts slipt outside, had a dozen rounds went in, and finished the case.

SCENE FOURTH. A leading lawyer, choked by a large quid sticking in his throat, recovers, breaks his baccy-box in court, and “swears off.” Explanation.—All lawyers are judges—just as all tinkers, tailors, and folks of th»t ilk are colonels, captains, or doctors.

Smith spent two whole days and nights in considering an answer to the conundrum—Why is an egg underdone like an egg overdone ? Ho would suffer no one to tell him, and at last hit upon thej solution—because both are hardly dene.