Judge — May 22, 1920 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

i t ! a TTS nee me ls EO men ee CO Pe FEN a ok PEAKING of lawyers reminds me that it was but a few short days ago that I visited the Tombs Prison—oh, yes, quite volunta I was visiting an acquaintance and was assured there was no need for send ing a card; the gentleman was in all right There had been some minor matter of delin- quency in trust funds, or a trifle of a forged will, or something, and in the midst of our conversation a rude fellow in the next ce— ipartment let loose a raucous, unpleasant laugh and remarked in the minor treble of a load of cobblestones being dumped into a sheet-iron cellar *T’ank heavins I never done nothin’ but burn wna cupla orphan asylums an’ a ole woman's fe home. I never seen a lawbook in me life, an’ I've got a kick comin’ when they lets guys like that into a respectable joint like this.” Apparently there was quite some litte feeling in the matter, but I pointed out that it took all kinds of people to make a jail, and that every man was entitled to his own opinion of his neighbor—so long as he kept it to himself But you really can’t blame the legal profession. They start out in life with a terrific hand that few professions outside of dog-catcher to cope with. rybody distrusts them, and everybody employs them. And then heredity and history and human perversity and etymology are allagainst them. How? Gadzooks, peek into yon adjacent dictionary! See you not that the word law comes from the old Anglo-Saxon root, licgan? What of it?) Well—I rather hate to say this; it sounds so ungentle, even trite, but the origin of the word law—licgan—means, lie! 1 can’t help it. It’s there, and now you see what a strain of cruel suggestion the entire profes- sion labors under. Of course it is unjustified. Of urse. Why, it is almost a certainty that each lawyer who one of us has heard at some time of was alleged to be above reproach. The really humorous part of it all is that not- withstanding the fact that we pick our police chiefs and our Secretaries of State and our presi We Need ’Em By Camprect. MacCurroci Lawrence Fecrows collectors, dents of corporations and our custor and everything, from the ranks of the law, originally the lawyers had no civil standing at all. In the very beginning the lawyer was an inter- f religious statutes. Fact. You see there {7 days, Harold, amount religion. a Hun is full preter was only one law in them and it was the law of the And this law was as full of craven excuses. Back in the days when the first all history was engaged in losing his head over a particular matter. young Michael J Alpheus, the son of Old Man Jercboam.olive king of them parts, made an engagement with a—well. with a Certain Party, and then discovered that the next day was Sunday and he couldn’t under the law move more than five furlongs from his hor Now this was mighty awkward. for she—I mean the Certain Party aforesaid—had laid plans for—well anyway, you will have to take it from me that a way just had to be found around t law. And so young Alpheus hiked for the office of a lawyer and put it up to him. Even in those ys when folks got into trouble they went toa trouble-maker to get them out “Look her stid Alpheus, “I have to beat it y from the ancestral nest tomorrow on some big business, and if you can dig up a good scheme to side-step the law there's fifty piastres in it for you.” You've all heard of a legal technicality. It’s only a few years since the State would sit up nights plugging up some corporate rat-hole, while the corporation lawyers would sit up more nights with wet towels around their occiputs boring holes into the new law. They could find a misplaced comma, or a period with curvature of the spine, or a semicolon that was afflicted with conjunctivitis quicker than you could draw a check for such services. Maybe it was only that the Governor winked at the blonde secretary when he signed it, or the State Comptroller held a night session with the Judiciary Committee in a plot to raise the Eighth Assistant Janitor’s salary or something Anyway—Old Doe Ahasucrus leaned back in the jer in doc Just the Same Some Hard Truths and a Soft Word for Members of a Certain Profession Judaic equivalent for a swivel-chair, rus through a bin of papyri, and let loose a sr toothed grin. *And none shall venture forth more than furlongs from his dwelling on the Sabbath quoted from the law. “Some law, that, so and then his fine old carved-mahogany feat lighted up with the radiance of inspiration. “Where a man shall find his meat there i is his home,’” he remarked again, reading ascroll. “Wow! That's the gravy, son. He where we stick a javelin into the law that make it squirm unto seventy times seven squir Where does this here dame—I mean Party—lis “About two miles down the Jericho pike,” s young Alpheus. Ahasucrus hurled his mangled copy of the at the camel drowsing in the corner and point his stubby digit at the young man. “You take some small hunks of Ally, and tonight you put one picce under stone every four furlongs all down the pike at 1 side thereof, and tomorrow you're fixed.” “I don’t get you, Steve,” remarked Ally “Listen, son. Tomorrow you start out a when you get to the stone you take the me and eat it and you say: ‘Well, b’gee, here I at home at last,’ and you start out on anoth little jaunt to the next stone, or ‘home a on. Get the idea? Some scheme, ch, boy Leave the fifty with the baby in nile green the cashier’s cage as you go out.” Well, that was the way they worked it the and the method hasn't changed. That example on the level too, mes enfants. The fellow wit the green bag has been at it ever since. And did you ever get a bill from a lawyer Now most of the professional sharps hand y« a little bill which says “Professional services $11.42,” and that covers all the incidentals ar sundries. You can make a guess as to what means; it may be anything from an amputatio: to a report on a salted mine, including the silt But you don’t catch the lawyer doing that. If (Continued on next pe goat me comicbooks.com