vocate who undertook the task had to
make the best of it, and the plea he put forward was that the accused
was so drunk at the time he did not know what he was doing. It was the
best thing he could do in the circumstances, as all the success he could
expect to make with a well-known felon was a mitigation of the sentence.
When it came to his time to address the Court, he set out in the
following fashion: "My lord and gentlemen of the jury, you all know what
it is to be drunk."

It is most important to be exact in stating the times of the movements
of a person accused of murder. In a recent case this point was very
minutely examined by an advocate in the Scottish Court. One witness
deponed that she saw the accused in a certain place at 5.40 P.M. "Are
you sure," asked the learned counsel in a tone calculated to make a
witness not quite sure after all, "are you sure it was not twenty
minutes to six?" And then he seemed surprised at the laughter his
question had raised.

When Mr. Ludovick Mair, who was a very short man, was Sheriff-Substitute
of Lanarkshire, he was called upon, at an Ayrshire Burns Club dinner, to
propose the toast of the "Ayrshire Lasses." After alluding to the honour
that had been conferred upon him, happily said that "Provided his fair
clients were prepared to be 'contented wi' little and canty wi' mair,'
he had no compunction in performing the agreeable duty."

In the Glasgow Small Debt Court where the sheriff frequently presided, a
young lawyer's exhaustive eloquence in striving to prove that his client
was not due the sum sued for, drew from his lordship the following
interruption: "Excuse me, sir, but throughout the conflict and turmoil
engendered by this desperate dispute with the pursuer I presume the
British Empire is not in any danger?"--"No, my lord," came the reply,
"but I fear after that interrogation from your lordship my client's case
is?"

On one occasion the sheriff, becoming impatient with an agent's
protracted speech, rebuked him thus: "Be brief, be brief, my dear sir;
time is short and eternity is long!" And again on being asked by an
agent not to allow a witty old Irishman to act as the spokesman of "the
defendant" on the ground that the Irishman was not now in the
defendant's employment, the sheriff sternly said to the would-be
witness: "Now, answer me truthfully, mirthful Michael, are you or are
you not in the defendant's employment?"--"Well, my lord of lords," was
the reply, "t