Slack

    versus

   Small wood, it is said that

    primus

    strocus sine jocus, absolutus est provokus

   . Now who gave the

    primus strocus?

   who gave the first offence? Why, the cook; she brought the driping-pan there; for, my Lord, though we will allow, if we had not been there, we could not have been thrown down there; yet, my Lord, if the dripping-pan had not been there, for us to have tumbled down into, we could not have tumbled into the dripping-pan." The next counsel on the same side began with, "My Lord, he who makes use of many words to no purpose has not much to say for himself, therefore I shall come to the point at once; at once and immediately I shall come to the point. My client was in liquor: the liquor in him having served an ejectment upon his understanding, common sense was nonsuited, and he was a man beside himself, as Dr. Biblibus declares, in his Dissertation upon Bumpers, in the 139th folio volume of the Abridgment of the Statutes, page 1286, where he says, that a drunken man is

    homo duplicans

   , or a double man; not only because he sees things double, but also because he is not as he should be,

    profecto ipse

   he; but is as he should not be,

    defecto tipse

   he."

   The counsel on the other side rose up gracefully, playing with his ruffles prettily, and tossing the ties of his wig about emphatically. He began with, "My Lord, and you, gentlemen of the jury, I humbly do conceive I have the authority to declare that I am counsel in this case for the defendant; therefore, my Lord, I shall not flourish away in words; words are no more than filligree work. Some people may think them an embellishment; but to me it is a matter of astonishment how any one can be so impertinent to the detriment of all rudiment. But, my Lord, this is not to 

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