25. JO. HEYFRON.
Judge Starling, of Mississippi, had become very sensitive
because the lawyers insisted on arguing points after he
had decided them. So he determined to put a stop to it. But
Jo. Heyfron, an excellent lawyer, who had every thing of
the Emerald Isle about him, but its greenness,—was the
wrong one for the decisive judicial experiment to be commenced
on. Jo. knew too much law, and the judge too
little, for an equality of advantages. On the occasion referred
to, just as the judge had pronounced a very peremptory
and a very ridiculous decision, Jo. got up in his deprecating
way, with a book in his hand, and was about to speak,
when the Judge thundered out, “Mr. Heyfron! you have
been practising, sir, before
this Court long enough to know
that when
this Court has once decided a question, the propriety
of its decision can only be reviewed in the High
Court of Errors & Appeals! Take your seat, sir!”
“If your honor plase!” broke out Jo., in a manner
that would have passed for the most beseeching, if a sly
twinkle in the off corner of his eye had not betokened the
contrary,—“If your honor plase! far be it from me to impugn
in the slightest degray, the wusdom and proprietay of
your honor's decision! I marely designed to rade a few
lines from the volume I hold in my hand, that your honor
might persave how profoundly aignorant Sir Wulliam Blockstone
was upon this subject.”
The judge looked daggers, but spoke none; and Heyfron
sat down, immortal. His body is dead, but he still
lives, for his brilliant retort, in the anecdotal reminiscences
of the South-Western bar. The anecdote has already (in a
different, but incorrect form) had the run of the newspapers.
