JOHN ALLEN

PRIVATE JOHN ALLEN, of Mississippi, who had frequently represented his state in Congress, was once called on for an address on "The Mistakes of the War." It was at a Confederate reunion and Allen was surrounded by Confederate officers of high rank. He was nonplussed for the moment but finally responded as follows: "You have called on me to speak on 'The Mistakes of the War.' I do not feel as though it would be profitable, or, indeed, necessary, for me to go into the subject at length in this presence. When I look around upon this brilliant assemblage of generals and colonels and majors, it seems to me sufficient to point out one of the mistakes of the war, and if it was a fatal mistake I was not responsible for it. I was only a private." His hearers saw the point, and the speaker was roundly cheered.

"I WANT to tell you of the greatest legal victory of my life," said Allen once to a group of congressmen. "It was down in Tupelo, just after the war. I was at that time a practicing lawyer-that is, I practiced when I had any cases. to practice with. One day 'Uncle' Pompey, a negro of the settlement, came into my office and said: 'Mars John, I wants you to cl'ar me. I'se gwine to be 'rested for stealin' two hams outen de cross-road store.' 'Well, Pompey, did you really steal the hams?' 'Mars John, I just took 'em.' 'Did any one see you?' 'Yas, boss,' said the old negro disconsolately, 'two ole white buckrats.' 'Well, Pompey,' I replied, 'I can't do anything for you under the circumstances.' 'Now, Mars John,' said Old Pompey, 'here's ten dollars. I jist want you to try.'

"Well, I consented to try," said Allen. "The case was to be heard before an old magistrate named Johnson. He was totally uneducated, and was moreover a perfect dictator. No negro ever came before him who was not fined the maximum penalty. The magistrate heard the case. That Pompey stole the hams there could be no doubt from the testimony. I did not cross-examine the witnesses; but when the testimony was

all in, I arose, and in my most dignified manner addressed the magistrate: 'May it please your honor, it would be useless for me to argue the position my client now holds, and before one who would adorn the Superior if not the Supreme bench of this grand old commonwealth; and I may say that those who know you best say that you would grace even the Supreme Court of the United States-the highest tribunal in the land. It will be useless to dwell upon the testimony; you have heard it, and know the case as well as I do. However, it may not be out of order for me to call your honor's attention to a short passage in the old English law, which clearly decides the case, and which for the moment your honor may have forgotten.'

"Then I fished down into my pocket and drew forth, with a great flourish, an old copy of 'Julius Cæsar.' I opened it with great dignity, and read the line familiar to every schoolboy-'Omnia Gallia in partes tres divisa est.' 'That decides the case,' said I, throwing the book upon the table. 'That clearly acquits the defendant.'

"With great dignity and solemnity I took my seat. The old magistrate was completely nonplussed. He looked at me a moment quizzically, and scratched his head; then, turning to Pompey, he raised himself to his full height, and said: 'Pompey, I know you stole them hams, but by the ingenuity of your lawyer, I've got to let you go. Git out! and if you ever come here again, lawyer or no lawyer, you git six months.'"

BILL ARP

"In the summer of 1863," said the late Fitz Hugh Lee, "Bill Arp-we called him Major Charles H. Smith then-was in the Richmond Hospital. The hospital was crowded with sick and dying soldiers and the Richmond ladies visited it daily, carrying with them delicacies of every kind, and did all they could to cheer and comfort the suffering. On one occasion a pretty miss of sixteen was distributing flowers and speaking gentle words of encouragement to those around her, when she overheard a soldier exclaim: 'Oh, my Lord!' It was Bill Arp. Stepping to his bedside to rebuke him for his profanity, she remarked: 'Didn't I hear you call upon the name

of the Lord? I am one of his daughters. Is there anything I can ask him for you?' Looking up into her bright, sweet face, Bill replied: 'I don't know but you could do something for me if I wasn't married.' 'Well,' said she, 'what is it?' Raising his eyes to hers and extending his hand, he said, ‘As you are a daughter of the Lord, if I wasn't married, I'd get you to ask him if he wouldn't make me his son-in-law.'

THOMAS H. BENTON.

MANY anecdotes are told illustrative of Benton's egotism. When his great work, 'Thirty Years in the United States Senate,' was about to come from the press, its publishers, (the Appletons), sent a messenger to him to get his views as to the number of copies that should be printed. The messenger having presented the case, the old man loftily said:

"Sir, they can ascertain from the last census how many persons there are in the United States who can read, sir"; and that was the only suggestion he would condescend to make. That he believed his book would be read by everybody who could read at all, admits of little doubt.

WHEN the Czar Nicholas was the most conspicuous personage in Europe, some one was telling how strangers knelt in his presence. On finishing the narrative, the speaker said to Benton:

"I suppose, Colonel, that you would not think of kneeling to the Czar?" to which he responded, with most imperial emphasis:

"No, sir! No, sir! An American kneels only to God and woman, sir."

A SHORT time after Calhoun's death, a friend said to Benton, "I suppose, Colonel, you won't pursue Calhoun beyond the grave?" to which he replied:

"No, sir. When God Almighty lays his hand upon a man, sir, I take mine off, sir."

In a stump speech Benton was once denouncing the New York Tribune and its editors: "Horace Greeley wears a white

hat, his hair is white, his skin is white, and I give it to you as my candid opinion that his liver is of the same color."

He then began a similar tirade against Greeley's assistant editor, Richelieu Robinson: "He is an Irishman, an Orange Irishman, a red-headed Irishman, and"-but noticing a number of red-headed men and women in his audience he concluded as follows: "Fellow citizens, when I say that Robinson is a redheaded Irishman, I mean no disrespect to persons whose hair is of that color. I have been a close observer of men and affairs for forty years, and I can on my veracity declare that I never knew a red-haired man who was not an honest man, nor a redhaired woman who was not a virtuous woman, and I give it as my candid opinion that had it not been for Robinson's red hair he would have been hanged long ago!"

LOGAN E. BLECKLEY

THE legal decisions of the late Chief Justice Bleckley, of Georgia, would alone place him in the front rank of modern humorists. Following are extracts:

It not infrequently happens that a judgment is affirmed upon a theory of the case which did not occur to the court that rendered it, or which did occur and was expressly repudiated. The human mind is so constituted that in many instances it finds the truth when wholly unable to find the way that leads to it:

The pupil of impulse, it forc'd him along,

His conduct still right, with his argument wrong:
Still aiming at honor, yet fearing to roam.
The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home.

Lee v. Porter, 63 Ga. 346.

THE legal unity of husband and wife has, in Georgia, for the most purposes, been dissolved, and a legal duality established. A wife is a wife, not a husband, as she was formerly. Legislative chemistry has analyzed the conjugal unit, and it is no longer treated as a compound. A husband can make a gift to his wife, although she lives in the house with him, and attends to her household duties, as easily as he can make a present to his neighbor's wife. This puts her on an equality with other ladies and looks like progress. Under the new order of