rdered one of
your men at Pittsburg, is shortly to be tried by the laws of your
country, at which trial you request that some of us may be present.
Brethren! knowing ---- to have been always a very bad man, we do not
wish to see him. We therefore advise you to try him by your laws, and to
hang him, so that he may never return to us again."

* * * * *

There are many stories of the smart repartee of white and coloured
witnesses and prisoners appearing before American judges, but the most
of them bear such strong evidence of newspaper staff manufacture as to
be unworthy of more permanent record than the weekly "fill up" they were
designed for. Of the more reputable we select a few.

Judge Emory Speer, of the southern district of Georgia, had before his
Court a typical charge of illicit distilling. "What's your name?"
demanded the eminent judge. "Joshua, jedge," drawled the prisoner.
"Joshua who made the sun stand still?" smiled the judge, in amusement at
the laconic answer. "No, sir. Joshua who made the moon shine," answered
the quick-witted mountaineer. And it is needless to say that Judge Speer
made the sentence as light as he possibly could, saying to his friends
in telling the story that wit like that deserved some recompense.

A newly qualified judge in Tennessee was trying his first criminal
case. The accused was an old negro charged with robbing a hen-coop. He
had been in Court before on a similar charge, and was then acquitted.
"Well, Tom," began the judge, "I see you're in trouble again."--"Yes,
sah," replied the negro. "The last time, jedge, you was ma
lawyer."--"Where is your lawyer this time?" asked the judge. "I ain't
got no lawyer this time," answered Tom. "I'm going to tell the truth."

Judge M. W. Pinckney tells the story of a coloured man, Sam Jones by
name, who was on trial at Dawson City, for felony. The judge asked Sam
if he desired the appointment of a lawyer to defend him. "No, sah," Sam
replied, "I'se gwine to throw myself on the ignorance of the cote."

A Southern lawyer tells of a case that came to him at the outset of his
career, wherein his principal witness was a negro named Jackson,
supposed to have knowledge of certain transactions not at all to the
credit of his employer, the defendant. "Now, Jackson," said the lawyer,
"I want you to understand the importance of telling the truth when you
are put on the stand. You know what will happen, don't you, if you d