time I saw his _honour_ he was cashier to
a bank at Cincinnati, thumbing American bank-notes--dirtier work than is
ever practised in the lowest grade of the law, as any one would say if
he had ever had any American bank-notes in his possession.

As may be supposed, in a new country like America, many odd scenes take
place. In the towns in the interior, a lawyer's office is generally a
small wooden house, of one room, twelve feet square, built of
clapboards, and with the door wide open; and the little domicile with
its tenant used to remind me of a spider in its web waiting for flies.

Not forty years back, on the other side of the Alleghany mountains, deer
skins at forty cents per pound, and the furs of other animals at a
settled price, were _legal_ tender, and received both by judges and
lawyers as fees. The lawyers in the towns on the banks of the
Susquehannah, where it appears the people, (notwithstanding Campbell's
beautiful description,) were extremely litigious, used to receive all
their fees in kind, such as skins, corn, whiskey, etcetera, etcetera,
and, as soon as they had sufficient to load a raft, were to be seen
gliding down the river to dispose of their cargo at the first favourable
mart for produce. Had they worn the wigs and gown of our own legal
profession, the effect would have been more picturesque.

There is a record of a very curious trial which occurred in the state of
New York. A man had lent a large iron, kettle, or boiler, to another,
and it being returned _cracked_, an action was brought against the
borrower for the value of the kettle. After the plaintiff's case had
been heard, the counsel for the defendant rose and said:--"Mister Judge,
we defend this action upon three counts, all of which we shall most
satisfactorily prove to you.

"In the first place, we will prove, by undoubted evidence, that the
kettle was cracked when we borrowed it.

"In the second, that the kettle, when we returned it was whole and
sound.

"And in the third, we will prove that we never borrowed the kettle at
all."

There is such a thing as proving too much, but one thing is pretty
fairly proved in this case, which is, that the defendant's counsel must
have originally descended from the Milesian stock.

I have heard many amusing stories of the peculiar eloquence of the
lawyers in the newly settled western states, where metaphor is so
abundant. One lawyer was so extremely metaphorical upon an occasion,
when