in Boston named Choate and he'd get us off if they caught us with the money in our boots."

But Choate was not the man to grumble at an occasional knock, especially if it were a witty one, for he dearly loved a jest, and was brimful of wit and humour, which he could use himself with good effect.

In a case tried before a judge of the United States District Court, Choate, in his address to the jury, alluded to certain rumours as set afloat by a party's enemies.

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"You mustn't assume that, Mr. Choate," interrupted the Court; there's no evidence that he has enemies."

"He's in large business and must have made foes," said Choate impatiently.

“There's no evidence,” replied the judge, “ that he's in business. He's a physician."

"Well, then," replied Choate instantly, with a roguish smile, "he's a physician, and the friends of the people he's killed by his practice are his enemies."

And as the laughter of judge and all in court died away Choate was returning to the matter in hand and pressing forward his point.

You could fill a book of anecdotes with Choate stories, but these tales of bygone wit baldly remembered seem too often to have lost their savour. One wants the voice and the manner, the accent and occasion of their utter

ance.

I like that saying of his about Judge Shaw: "I always approach Judge Shaw as a savage approaches his fetish : knowing that he is ugly, but feeling that he is great."

That is distinctly witty to-day; but how delightful it must have been to have known Judge Shaw and to have heard Rufus say it in the robing-room!

He seems to have had the Charles Lamb touch in some of his quaint, inverted thoughts of wit. Coming into a lawyer's office, he saw a narrow, winding staircase leading up to the consulting-room. He looked wonderingly at its corkscrew curvings, and, turning to the lawyer, meditatively observed: "Dear me! How drunk a man must be to go up those stairs!"

Again, at a season of illness, a friend of Choate visited him and urged him to pay more attention to his health.

"Sir," said the visitor, "you must go away; if you continue your professional labours, you will certainly undermine your constitution."

Choate looked up with grave irony and replied: "Sir, the constitution was destroyed long ago; I am now living under the by-laws."

And of the rougher American humour he had his share, too. Speaking to some young advocates of the misery of losing cases, he told them they must remember their ministerial positions and accept defeat philosophically and be ready to go on with the next.

"When a case has gone against me,” he said, “I feel like the Baptist minister who was baptizing in winter a crowd of converts through a hole made in the ice. One brother-Jones, I think-disappeared after immersion and did not reappear: probably he had drifted ten or fifteen feet from the hole and was vainly gasping under ice as many inches thick. After pausing a few minutes

the minister said: 'Brother Jones has evidently gone to Kingdom Come: bring on the next '!"

Of Choate the citizen many interesting things might be written in praise of his works and days, but this is only an attempt to picture Choate the advocate, and the best triumphs of advocacy are largely beyond the power of literary recall. We read of Rufus Choate as he "strode the streets with majestic step," we accept in faith the records of the marvellous music of his voice, the flashing glance of his dark eye and his bewitching smile, but we must sadly own that these memories of hearsay are not evidence and scarcely bring conviction. to our legal minds.

This, however, we can ascertain—that in Rufus Choate we have for all time the example of a noble advocate. Ruskin tells us that " the chords of music, the harmonies of colour, the general principles of the arrangement of sculptured masses have been determined long ago and in all probability cannot be added to, any more than they can be altered." And if this be true of the greater arts it is certainly not untrue of advocacy. Rufus Choate devoted his life to the study of the principles of the great profession he adorned, and, without foregoing any liberty that genius and originality suggested to his mind, kept steadily before him the duties and limitations of the art of which he was a master. Doubtless there have been more outstanding figures at the Bar, men of greater position and larger influence. There has been none that I have read of who brought to his work a wider love and a more noble industry. His enthusiastic affection for all that his profession meant to him is best expressed in his

own words to a friend who begged him in his last illness to take a vacation.

“Ah, my dear fellow !" he said, with playful sadness, "the lawyer's vacation is the space between the question put and the answer."

Chapter XIII: Concerning Jumbo in

A

Chancery

N elephant in a Chancery Court may seem at first blush to be as much out of place as a bull in a china shop. But "Jumbo "-as the astute Mr. Barnum said to himself-was some elephant.

Barnum coveted Jumbo, the largest African elephant in the world. The great showman dangles £2000 before the Committee of the Zoological Society. The hardfaced, wooden-hearted men on the Committee stretch out their hands for the money-bags. Jumbo is sold! Jumbo who has carried generations of metropolitan children in his big howdah! Jumbo the friend of our youth who shared our buns out of paper bags! Jumbo whom we loved and honoured! Just for a handful of silver he leaves us sorrowing unless, indeed, the Law can help us!

For when the terrible truth filtered slowly through the long ears of the British public, and the horror of it filled their generous hearts, a great wave of indignation swept the country the like of which has never been witnessed before or since. From the throne to the garret protests were addressed to the Committee. Even John Ruskin protests! One question, and one question only, dominates the thoughts and talk of the people and the columns