ANIMAL LIFE ABOUT DUNFORD'S FARM 297 



in Spain or in Germany. A lord ! ! That is a thing to 

 be scofifed and sneered at while he remains in England, 

 but let one come out here, and the announcement of his 

 arrival appear in the papers, and immediately every lady 

 in the land will have palpitation of the heart, and before 

 he is fairly settled in his hotel a full description of him, 

 from the colour of his teeth to the fit of his boots, will 

 have had a prominent place on the front page of every 

 journal published in Uncle Sam's territory, 



I have said enough about military titles in the States, 

 especially as it is a hackneyed subject which has long 

 been a favourite skit of the humorist ; but it is certainly 

 not so well known generally to Englishmen that every 

 class in America abounds in titles of honour, to which, 

 for the most part, they have not the slightest legal claim. 



To commence with the legal profession. I knew a 

 judge who was a slaughterman in a village near Chicago, 

 and who when work was slack travelled the country as 

 an itinerant pig-sticker. His honour used to swear and 

 get drunk; and I have seen him with a black eye on 

 more than one occasion. I do not know if he ever sat on 

 the bench; but I am quite sure that he could not adju- 

 dicate in grammatical language. Who is, or who is not, 

 a judge in this country it would be difficult to say, for 

 many members of the learned professions do not think it 

 beneath their dignity to follow very humble manual 

 occupations in daily life. For the emoluments of a pro- 

 fessional man in an outlying and sparsely populated 

 district are not sufficient to support him ; indeed it seems 

 to be the honour, rather than the profit, of official position 

 that is sought after. This remark applies chiefly, if not 

 solely, to obscure appointments in obscure places. I am 

 not writing of the great officers of State. 



To resume, I knew two other judges who really acted 

 as such, one of whom was a barber and the other kept a 

 ver}^ small store, equal perhaps to a huckster's shop in an 

 English hamlet. I heard one of these gentlemen, in 

 delivering judgment, tell a defendant that he believed 



