The illustration of the science of humour on the judicial bench is now the province of ermined jokers. Perhaps nothing could give a more vivid idea of the decadence of the bench in this respect than a comparison of the Ally Sloperian japes of certain living judges with the polished shafts of the late Lord Justice Bowen. Lord Bowen’s was the true Attic salt. And because he knew its quality, he never offered it to either the groundlings or the gallery. The reappearance of his shafts—bright and polished as they were—only caused him to shudder, even when followed in the newspaper by the reportorial “(laughter).” To some of our Judges, the constant appearance in the columns of their jokes, followed by “laughter” in brackets, would appear to be a chief end of their existence. Indeed, a Judge, quite recently dead, has occasionally supplied me, what time I sat in an editorial chair, with little impromptus which he has let off in the course of the day. For verily all is vanity. Two examples of Lord Bowen’s wit may be recorded here. Bowen was a Liberal in politics, but, like a great many other thinking men, he deserted his party when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill. Tackled by one who regarded him as guilty of political apostasy, and challenged as to his then opinion of Mr. Gladstone, he replied, in those mincing, modulated tones which he had acquired at Balliol: “Mr. Gladstone’s is one of the greatest and most complex minds of our time. He possesses all the apostolic fervour of St. Paul with all the moral obliquity of Ananias.” On the occasion of the Jubilee of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, the Judges met to decide on an address from their body to be presented to their Sovereign. A draft was submitted by one of their number. It commenced with the words: “Madam, conscious as we are of our own infirmities.” But immediate objection was taken by their lordships to this opening, and suggestions were invited. The measured calculated drawl of Bowen made itself heard: “Suppose we substitute for the paragraph this: ‘Conscious as we are of one another’s infirmities!’” Mr. Commissioner Kerr was a Judge whose rasping voice and strong Glasgow accent issued from the bench of my time utterances both strange and strong. The old gentleman was, in effect, brutally rude, and that’s a fact. He was particularly hard on solicitors. On one occasion I heard him open a charge in this way: “There are a number of hairpies who infest this coort. An’ when I use the words ‘hairpies,’ I do not wish to be meesunderstood. I refer to the soleecitors who lie in wait about the corridors of the coort.” I was present also when the following colloquy took place between the bench and a perfectly respectable witness to whom Kerr had evidently taken an instinctive dislike: KERR: “What air you?” WITNESS: “I’m a merchant.” KERR: “What’s your mairchandise?” WITNESS: “I’m an importer of lemons.”