My friend William Blackburn, alcalde of Santa Cruz, often hits upon a method of punishing a transgressor, which has some claims to originality as well as justice. A young man was brought before him, charged with having sheared, close to the stump, the sweeping tail of another’s horse. The evidence of the nefarious act, and of the prisoner’s guilt, was conclusive. The alcalde sent for a barber, ordered the offender to be seated, and directed the tonsor to shear and shave him clean of his dark flowing locks and curling moustache, in which his pride and vanity lay This was hardly done, when Mr. B, counsel for the prisoner entered, and moved an arrest of judgment. “Oh, yes,” said the alcalde, “as the shears and razor have done their work, judgment may now rest.” “And under what law,” inquired the learned counsel, “has this penalty been inflicted?” “Under the Mosaic,” replied the alcalde: “that good old rule—eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hair for hair.” “But,” said the biblical jurist, “_that_ was the law of the Old Testament, which has been abrogated in the New.” “But we are still living,” returned the alcalde, “under the old dispensation, and must continue there till Congress shall sanction a new order of things.” “Well, well,” continued the counsel, “old dispensation or new, the penalty was too severe—a man’s head against a horse’s tail!” “That is not the question,” rejoined the alcalde: “it is the hair on the one against the hair on the other; now as there are forty fiddles to one wig in California, the inference is just, that horsehair of the two is in most demand, and that the greatest sufferer in this case is still the owner of the steed.” “But, then,” murmured the ingenious counsel, “you should consider the young man’s pride.” “Yes, yes,” responded the alcalde, “I considered all that, and considered too the stump of that horse’s tail, and the just pride of his owner. Your client will recover his crop much sooner than the other, and will manage, I hope, to keep it free of the barber’s department in this court;” and with this, client and counsel were dismissed. SPANISH COURTESIES.