- Connecticut - for divorce for desertion, and gets his decree by default on service of process by publication in the newspapers. Providentially one of these newspapers falls into the hands of the wife's friends; providentially her father is an old lawyer up in Maine, who always hated the husband, and who starts by next train, and reaches the court just in season, is admitted on motion, makes an inflammatory speech, and providentially then and there tumbles down in a fatal paralysis. The scene is tolerably exciting, but cheap. Miss Woolson tells a wonderful tale of circumstantial evidence, how a left-handed rascal's left hand found him out. All this is well enough for the readers of "Harper's" and "Century," but neither can be pronounced a great success so far as depicting court-scenes is concerned. In this respect, a little story, written by Mr. Deming of Albany, N.Y., and published in "The Atlantic" for April, 1882, is far superior. Indeed, I have never read any thing more correctly realistic. As the author is an old court stenographer, he had the advantage of knowing something of what he was talking about. But as nobody tumbles down in paralysis, or is discovered by his left-handedness, of course it is "dull" in comparison with the serials aforesaid. Of course I shall not include newspapers in the term "literature." For obvious reasons, I shall not say any thing against newspapers; but they are not literature. They do have a great deal to say against lawyers, and very little in their favor. This is somewhat singular too for as Napoleon said, if you scratch a Russian you find a Tartar; so I believe, if you scratch an editor, you very often find a lawyer. Mr. Lecky attributes much of the force and influence of the modern English press to the strong infusion of lawyers in recent journalism. But these lawyer-editors are so powerful individually, and there are so many of them, that it is the part of discretion to let them alone. Their power is a surprise to me, however; for the man who should stand on the corner of the streets, and utter his sentiments on any subject, political, legal, or moral, and would find no one to pay him any attention, will command wide-spread attention and considerable acceptance if he sets up as an editor, and prints the same sentiments. Such is the superiority of written to parol evidence. The nearest approach to a newspaper to which I shall pay any attention is "The Spectator." I am confirmed in this determination by a recent number of the London "Truth" newspaper. When a newspaper assumes superior correctness, not only by its name, but by its conduct, we are entitled to look for something a little above the ordinary in its representations of this subject. Yet in a recent number of this newspaper, we find a story not a whit behind the average newspaper in legal absurdity. A lawyer is called on by an utter stranger to draw his will, and is offered the executorship and a legacy of five hundred pounds for his trouble. This is in strict confidence and secrecy; because the testator proposes to cut off his family, and substitute his valet as beneficiary. The lawyer complies without any inquiries, and it does not even appear that any extra precautions in the execution are taken on account of the benefit which he is to take under the will. After this he gives the testator his check for two hundred pounds as a loan. Of course, the testator is the valet in disguise. Of course, too, the affair comes out all right; but it is on account of the superior shrewdness of the lawyer's clerk. So much for Mr. Labouchere, the editor who writes "I” instead of "we," and assumes always to tell the "truth." I do not pretend that the following review is |