ANNUAL BANQUET. to broad and deep justice. We have heard here in our Association for the last two days those who have gone back to the very first principles and brought them right down to date to make us sure again of them, as though it were an examination of an abstract of title. I remember one man who came to our country to practice and by the way he came from Friend Brown's state-and some how or other he got an idea that the foundations of the law had not been very well or securely laid in our peaceful valley there by the Fox river; the first case he tried was jury case and he undertook to tell the jury all about the history of the law and started out this way: "Gentlemen of the jury, the law is a very intricate science; his Honor upon the bench well knows that the further he pursues it the more stupid he becomes." (Laughter). After having the foundation of the law thoroughly laid, and after the judge had pursued that case until he became quite stupid, it chanced that the lawyer was employed in a sewer case and was arguing it; others had argued it and he addressed the Judge about as follows: "Your Honor, the gentlemen who have preceded me have argued the law of the case; now they have done it well, and it will not be necessary for me to talk about the law; I will now throw law to the winds, I will now make a revolution speech and I will irrigate the dry sewers with the dews of eloquence." And he did. (Laughter). Now, in Chicago they do not have time to do things in that pleasant, easy way, they do not have the disposition, they do not permit it to be done, at least I have not been able to do it here. (Laughter). In our country we have lawyers as they have in the city, who have got into the law for the same reason that Booker T. Washington says a good many colored brethren get into the ministry-in the way described by one preacher; it was about like this: One very hot day he exclaimed, “O, Lord, de cotton am so grassy, and it am so hot, and the work am so hard, I guess dis darky has beeu ANNUAL BANQUET. called to preach." (Laughter). In the country as well as in the city we have those who in the ordinary walks of life think the work so hard and the cotton is so grassy that they have a call to the bar. It used to be that men were called to the bar; I do not know just what form of the call is, and I do not find that they are calling very loudly either in Chicago or in the country. I do not think any of us poor fellows who come from the country to the city come in response to any very loud call for our presence here. Possibly it is a suggestion that comes to us, that everything else, the same as with our natural resources, is drifting toward the great center of population. But, after all, after you take out and take away some of the sort of outside dressing or accoutrements of the lawyer and scratch below the surface, there is not much difference between the fellows from the country and from the city. We, of course, in the country frequently have the experience of having clients say to us when we render our little bill, "Oh, it is so low, do take fifty cents more," or "Do take this bushel of potatoes," or "This basket of eggs," or something of that kind. We do not have anything of that kind in the city, at least I have not discovered it. In the country there seems to be sort of a sin of omission, they say we omit to charge enough. I do not know whether that is true or not. It is a good deal like the little girl who was asked to define what the sins of omission were; she said, "They are the sins which we ought to have committed but did not." (Laughter). So we sometimes, when a client gets away in the city who seems fairly well pleased with his charge, we club ourselves because we omitted to ask him more. We are a good deal alike, we are great on talk. We may say what we please, our weapon is the weapon that is referred to in that book that Brother Brown says you do not know anything about,—our weapon is the jaw bone, after all and sometimes it is pretty near the same kind of a jaw bone which was hurled in the ANNUAL BANQUET. days long ago. I heard our disposition to talk described briefly in verse, it goes like this: "The young man talks with pleasure, The old man talks with ease; The lawyer talks as some folks walk, The preacher talks of sins and things The lawyer hurls his jaw bone At a mad but helpless jury. And each man talks and talks and talks, Each of his talk the proudest, Unmindful of the patent fact That money talks the loudest." Yes, we have come here, many of us from the city, we try to practice at the bar, and some of the country fellows have been practicing at the bench, but under the new order of things I understand that the business is to be transacted with such rapidity and in such a way that as to our country judges who have been sitting here the places which knew them once shall know them no more forever. But no such drastic measures have been taken with respect to the country lawyer in town. I fear that so long as he can make his peace with the railroad companies for his monthly commutation ticket he will continue to come to town and the more he sees of his town brethren, the more he meets with them, the closer his relations and associations with them, the more he will want to come into town, and perhaps after a while he may be cajoled into staying in town. And after all that is said and all that is done we will all work together; we will work and move side by side and shoulder to shoulder for the same great high and ennobling purposes of a high and honorable profession; side by side and hand in hand we will move toward the great end and together we will try to lift the soul of nature up to nature's God. (Applause). ANNUAL BANQUET. PRESIDENT TULEY: Gentlemen, the reference of the last speaker to the fact that our banquet is held in a prohibition district, reminds me that when I left my home, three or four blocks away, I made a solemn promise to my wife that I would not drink any wine at this banquet, because I knew there would be no wine (laughter); we have it in a prohibition district; and the fact that we have it here accounts for our large attendance at this banquet, I think. We did not wish any of the members of this Association to get into the . condition of the good priest who was invited by one of his parishioners to his rooms, where they enjoyed a bottle of w'ne until they both were pretty full. The parishioner took his guest down stairs to the street and said to him, "Now, Father, when you get to the corner, then you turn the corner and you will see two cabs standing there; you take the first one, because there is but one." (Laughter). The next toast is to be responded to by Judge Charles S. Cutting. It is said that statistics show that all property passes through the Probate Court on an average once in thirty years. Now, we know that his court is a court of last resort because unless we get the money that is owing us by proving up a claim in his court we do not get it at all, so that being a court of last resort probably the gentleman can tell us what he means by the toast that he is down to respond to, "A Last Resort." Gentlemen and ladies, I have the pleasure of presenting to you Judge Cutting, of the Probate Court. (Applause). JUDGE CUTTING: Mr. Toastmaster, and ladies and gentlemen: I am deeply grateful to the President of this Association for his introduction, inasmuch as it contains some suggestion as to what this toast means; because, since I have been assigned to it, I have been puzzling my head about it, and although I am usually unanimous in the matter of opinion, as I think I will show you later, I have been somewhat at sea as to this particular thing. I was alarmed in the first ANNUAL BANQUET. instance by doubts as to whether or not the individual was the last resort of this committee (laughter and applause), and I thought at one time that if that were true, there would have to be, if such a thing were possible, even a laster resort than I. But after considering it a while I came to the conclusion that perhaps it may have been intended to refer to something along the line that Judge Juley has indicated. Last resorts, or the expression "last resort," have long had a somewhat technical meaning among lawyers, and those who have had much to do with courts have frequently heard people speak of a court of last resort. Ordinarily they mean the honored Supreme Court of our State as the court of last resort, and at first I assumed that it must mean that, but I knew that if it did I should not have been called upon to respond to the toast; and so, after cogitating about it a considerable length of time I came to the conclusion that it must be along the line of recognition of a court which, up to this time, so far as I am advised, has never had its name before the Bar Association of the State of Illinois. You know it has been customary in times past, and a good custom it was, to invite the Justices of the Supreme Court of this State, the court of last resort, using the definite article, to speak to us about the methods and means by which opinions are written and judgments are rendered in that august tribunal. We have always been anxious to know the secrets of the conference room; we would like to know just how these things were talked about, just how the cases were assigned to the various Justices to write opinions, and after we have heard these remarks on these several occasions, all of us have gone home, I am sure, and thought it over and read again the opinions with which we were somewhat familiar. In preparing our cases we have looked up the authorities and criticized the law, and as we burned the midnight oil we have doubted whether we ought to write in a style a little bit 'drastic and perhaps offend the court, or say it in a mild man |