awberries, really!"

Mrs. Kennedy: "Yes, sir, she was eating strawberries."

Mr. Coleridge: "How shocking!"

Mrs. Kennedy: "It was forbidden, sir."

Mr. Coleridge: "And did you, Mrs. Kennedy, really consider there was any
great harm in that?"

Mrs. Kennedy: "No, sir, not in itself, any more than there was harm in
eating an apple; but you know, sir, the mischief that came from that."

When as Lord Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge visited the United States, he
was continually pestered by interviewers, and one of them failing to
draw him, began to disparage the old country in its physical features
and its men. Lord Coleridge bore it all in good part; finally the
interviewer said, "I am told, my lord, you think a great deal of your
great fire of London. Well, I guess, that the conflagration we had in
the little village of Chicago made your great fire look very small." To
which his lordship blandly responded: "Sir, I have every reason to
believe that the great fire of London was quite as great as the people
of that time desired."

There are few of Lord Bowen's witticisms from the Bench in circulation,
but his after-dinner stories are worth recording, and perhaps one of the
best is that given in _Anecdotes of the Bench and Bar_, as told by
himself in the following words: "One of the ancient rabbinical writers
was engaged in compiling a history of the minor prophets, and in due
course it became his duty to record the history of the prophet Daniel.
In speaking of the most striking incident in the great man's career--I
refer to his critical position in the den of lions--he made a remark
which has always seemed to me replete with judgment and observation. He
said that the prophet, notwithstanding the trying circumstances in which
he was placed, had one consolation which has sometimes been forgotten.
He had the consolation of knowing that when the dreadful banquet was
over, at any rate it was not he who would be called upon to return
thanks."

* * * * *

The following story cannot be classed a witticism from the Bench, but
the judge clearly gave the opening for the lady's smart retort.

Mrs. Weldon, a well-known lady litigant in the Courts a generation ago,
was on one occasion endeavouring in the Court of Appeal to upset a
judgment of Vice-Chancellor Bacon, and one ground of complaint was that
the judge was too old to understand her case. Thereupon Lord Esher said:
"The last time you were he