PROLEGOMENON. 31 



of justice," mongrel pups and "curs of low degree," are 

 permitted to snarl, snap their teeth, and howl, the crowd 

 of fascinated spectators around this kennel in the mean 

 time being kept under abeyance by that magical wand, 

 the pole of the tipstaff. This is salvation through tht* 

 intellect and morale of the jury-box and bench, in legal par- 

 lance yclept Courts of Judicatory, supposed to be a close 

 adumbration to the modus operandi of the Divine Being in 

 his jurisdiction of the Universe, and consequently the most 

 infallible mode of adjusting difficulties between man and 

 man, and the grandest achievement of that highest and 

 last phasis of development or expansion of the human 

 race called civilization, and of whose duration forever 

 there is no doubt in any lawyer's head, or despair in his 

 stomach. 



Through this dismal swamp of juridical solecisms years 

 have been sadly and mournfully wandered away, the blind 

 leading the blind an agonizing exodus through dreary 

 wastes of deserts, in the vain and futile effort as potter in 

 that wretched " quicksilver, human clay ;" also at squaring 

 circles, making hills without hollows, and other impossi- 

 bilities to God himself, including interesting endeavors at 

 " shovelling sunshine into shade upon a rainy day " but, 

 most absurd of all, the effort to get, by any earthly appli- 

 ance or manoeuvre yet invented, a bona-fide dollar's worth 

 of work for three actual dollars paid, out of any private or 

 even commissioned officer of the rascally brigade of the 

 army of refractory Caucasian men (no division of the 

 more tractable African forces extending in that direction) 

 operating in the wilderness which was to be made to blos- 

 som as the rose. Add to these abortive efforts also " will- 

 o'-the-wisp" hunts to get some solid points of fixity in 

 the bottomless quagmires and quicksand-under-quicksand 

 uncertainties of Alleghany Mountain land-titles, with fre- 

 quent results in the highly-interesting neighborhood of 

 ZERO, and also with occasional culminations truly astonish- 

 ing to all rational beings, even decisions of Supreme Courts 



