a fair with a hundred pounds in his pocket, took the
precaution of depositing it in the hands of the landlord of the
public-house at which he stopped. Next day he applied for the money, but
the host affected to know nothing of the business. In this dilemma the
farmer consulted Curran. "Have patience, my friend," said the counsel;
"speak to the landlord civilly, and tell him you are convinced you must
have left your money with some other person. Take a friend with you, and
lodge with him another hundred, and then come to me." The dupe doubted
the advice; but, moved by the authority or rhetoric of the learned
counsel, he at length followed it. "And now, sir," said he to Cumin, "I
don't see as I am to be better off for this, if I get my second hundred
again; but how is that to be done?" "Go and ask him for it when he is
alone," said the counsel. "Ay, sir, but asking won't do, I'ze afraid,
without my witness, at any rate." "Never mind, take my advice," said
Curran; "do as I bid you, and return to me." The farmer did so, and came
back with his hundred, glad at any rate to find that safe again in his
possession. "Now, sir, I suppose I must be content; but I don't see as I
am much better off." "Well, then," said the counsel, "now take your
friend with you, and ask the landlord for the hundred pounds your friend
saw you leave with him." It need not be added, that the wily landlord
found that he had been taken off his guard, whilst the farmer returned
exultingly to thank his counsel, with both hundreds in his pocket.

CURRAN AND THE JUDGE.

Soon after Mr. Curran had been called to the bar, on some statement of
Judge Robinson's, the young counsel observed, that "he had never met the
law, as laid down by his Lordship, in any book in his library." "That
may be, sir," said the Judge; "but I suspect that your library is very
small." Mr. Curran replied, "I find it more instructive, my Lord, to
study good works than to compose bad ones.[1] My books may be few; but
the title-pages give me the writers' names, and my shelf is not
disgraced by any such rank absurdities, that their very authors are
ashamed to own them." "Sir," said the Judge, "you are forgetting the
respect which you owe to the dignity of the judicial character."
"Dignity!" exclaimed Mr. Curran; "My Lord, upon that point I shall cite
you a case from a book of some authority, with which you are, perhaps,
not unacquainted." He then briefly recited the story of Strap, in
_R