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Show XXKXKXXXX0XX) j LORD RUSSELL'S WIT ANECDOTES OF THE LATE CHIEF JUSTICE JUS-TICE OF ENGLAND. Ammlnif Reminiscences of the Famous Fa-mous Irish Jurist tons and liril-liant liril-liant Career at the Bar Skill at Cross Examination. A writer in The New Penny Magazine Maga-zine recently quoted the story of three young barristers who found themselves them-selves on the doorstep of briefless-ness. briefless-ness. "I shall go to India," said one, a man with. quick, bright eyes, a strong Jewish Jew-ish cast of face. "And I to Shanghai." said a youngster young-ster whose very features spoke culture and refinement. The third, an Irishman, a little older than either of the others and with some practice of his own, tried to hearten them a little and begged his two friends not to throw away their lives for want of a little patience. They did not emigrate, emi-grate, and after many years the young scion of Israel's house presided over , the house of lords, first of his race, by the style of Farrer, Baron Herschell. The youth who dreamed of Shanghai led the great northern circuit first and is now speaker of the house of commons. com-mons. William Court Gully was his name. And the young Irishman, after a career at the bar almost unexampled in brilliancy, became a queen's counsel, attorney general, a lord of appeal and afterward lord chief justice of England. Eng-land. At the time I speak of he was plain Charles Russell. Lord Russell of Killowen in America came into contact with many members of the bar, Including Mr. Evarts. It was while walking with Mr. Evarts one day along the banks of a stream that Lord Russell was shown the point at which Washington had thrown a dollar right across. The water was wide, and Lord Russell looked doubtful. doubt-ful. "You know a dollar went farther in those days than it does now," the American lawyer blandly insinuated. "Ah," said Lord Russell, quite equal to the occasion, "and it must have been easy enough to Washington, who threw a sovereign over across the Atlantic." His long and brilliant career as an advocate was with happy good fortune linked by one herculean labor with his almost equal fame as a politician. He undertook to lead the defense of Mr. Parnell and the Irish M. P.'s before the Parnell commission of 1888, and nobly he acquitted himself. The smash of Pigott at that fatal tribunal tri-bunal will long be remembered. Sir Richard Webster on Feb. 21 had barely sat down in examining Pigott in chief when Sir Charles Russell was on his feet bolt upright. Mr. John MacDon-ald MacDon-ald tells the tale. He had a clean sheet of paper in his hand. "Take that" holding it out rapidly, and he asked Pigott to write down a few woi'ds from his dictation. It was a dramatic opening open-ing "He has him," a barrister whis- pered, turning round to the present writer. The audience saw that Sir ' Charles Russell was coming to the point at once, and in the silence one might hear a pin drop. That was the fatal secret for Pigott. ne wrote the word "hesitency," which j was misspelled as in the famous Par- i nell letter. Next day the ruthless cross j examiner reached that point and irn- j paled the wretched tool of the Tory party on it Pigott had to admit that he had misspelled the word in just that way in a letter of June. 1881. He shuffled shuf-fled and wriggled, but the keen thrust had searched out his secret On Feb. 2G the court and the world were startled star-tled with the tidings, Pigott had escaped. es-caped. Where was he? Sir Charles rose then in his wrath, with his extended right arm. "Whatever you may do," he declared to the dismayed ranks of "Figottism and crime," "we shall search this matter to the bottom, for we deliberately say that behind Houston Hous-ton and Tigott there is a foul conspiracy." conspira-cy." He well fulfilled that pledge, and in his great philippic, which lasted from April 2 to April 12, 18S9, he vindicated vindi-cated his country and his party from the aspersions cast on them. Ireland owes him much for that great, that almost al-most titanic struggle that he maintained maintain-ed on her behalf "the old sod" that he still loved. At the bar Sir Charles Russell was by far the greatest cross examiner of I LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWES. i his time. He was slow and deliberate I in cross examination. "For a quarter of an hour the clear and rather sweet I voice may ask questions In a monoto- nous tone," an admiring critic wrote during his closing days at the bar, "and then will come crisp and sharp 'a poser' something 'deucedly awkward to answer, you know.' It reminds you of the gentle purring of the cat, and then the pounce on the too confident mouse. One could hear It and watch it for hours, that wonderful cross exami-, nation. The question, the pinch of snuff with the delicate, shake of the lawn ruffled hand lestJthe fragments should scatter, the nice adjustment of. the morsel to the nostril, then the flirt of the great common bandanna, a dab of color among the black robes and somher XX00KKX0XXK hangings in tzt court; finally, the reply. As a hapless witness might remark. 'Ye dunuo w'ere ye are.' It is all done so pleasantly, so courteously, that the poor fish takes the bait without hesi- tation. The counsel lands it also with-j with-j out hesitation." A correspondent writes: "The late ' lamented lord chief justice h$S, I be-j be-j lieve, little in his accent to indicate j that he was born on the other side of j St George's cho.nnel, but now and I then, like all his countrymen, he would ! betray his nationality by perpetrating j what is called a bull. I remember a j good many years ago I was at a politi-j politi-j cal meeting at Ralham. It was in 1SS0 or thereabout when coercion was the j burning question. Lord (then Sir Charles) Russell made an impassioned speech in favor of liberty, in the course of which he said, 'Ladies and gentle- CniEF JUSTICE RUSSELL. men, if the coercion bill is carried no man in Ireland will be able to speak upon politics unless he is born deaf and dumb.' Curiously enough, nobody laughed. Every one seemed so overawed over-awed by the eloquence of the speaker that the bull to all appearance passed unnoticed, a testimony surely to Lord Russell's power as an orator." Lord Russell apart from racing made a habit of collecting snuffboxes. When one of his friends desired to make him a present jewelers' and curio dealers' shops were ransacked for anything historical his-torical or quaint In that particular form. A certain distinguished actor to whom Lord Russeil as Mr. Charles Russell. Q. C, had rendered a service one day entered the shop of a jeweler in the Haymarket and asked to see something really original and old in the way of snuffboxes. "Lord Russell, I suppose, sir?" was the assistant's preliminary pre-liminary question. The answer cleared the ground. The assistant knew almost exactly what the chief justice possessed possess-ed and what would be a welcome addition addi-tion to his 'collection. '. A lawyer once asked him, "What is the extreme penalty for-bigamy?" and, quick as a flash, the' chief justice replied, re-plied, "Two mothers-in-law." It is whispered, in Temple circles that the late lord chief had in the plenitude plen-itude of his success at the bar realized the enormous income of 23,000 a year. Mr. Benjamin, the great American lawyer law-yer who came to this country and joined join-ed the bar here, is reputed to have made f 30,000 a year put of English litigants, liti-gants, and it was said to be the late I chief's ambition to overstep this rec- ord. It is not known that he ever succeeded suc-ceeded in making over f 30,000 a year, but he must in some years have gone very near these figures. But he worked for his money as few men would care to work. By day. in court, pitting his I keen intellect against intellects as i keen, by night in parliament and j thence to his study tri peruse the briefs I which poured in upon jam. He was a i man of rigorous and active life and an I ardent horseman, ne attributed his j health and enormous capacity for work I largely to his morning gallop, i ! |