talking together and discussing their prospects with their solicitors in high spirits at the certainty of success; while others in blank despair await hopelessly a foregone conclusion, which probably means the seizure of their goods and perhaps their imprisonment. Sometimes the proceedings are relieved by an amusing scene, such as that shown in our illustration, where a voluble young lady is sued for the price of a pair of boots, which she declares to be a misfit. "They are too large," she persists. "She said she would not have them if they were tight," the plaintiff protests. Such an opportunity to bring off smart witticisms is not neglected by the counsel on either side. Eventually the learned judge decides to see the boots tried on, and, sinking the lawyer, figures for the nonce as a judge of feminine fashionable attire. Cases of this sort are by no means rare. Only the other day a County Court Judge had to give a decision as to the fit of three elegant gowns supplied to an actress and her two sisters. It is a curious fact that the most amusing cases in the County Court are usually those in which members of the fair sex are engaged. Ladies, as a rule, seem unable to appreciate the laws of evidence, and when in the witness-box often take the opportunity to indulge in family reminiscences, and to pile satirical obloquy on their opponents. The judges (who, when the parties to a suit are without professional assistance, examine the witnesses themselves) have great difficulty in keeping them to the point, and nothing but the fear of being committed for contempt will induce some excited females to give their evidence in a lucid manner. Incidents of this sort frequently relieve the tedium of the proceedings, but they are a source of considerable delay, and this is a serious matter to those suitors and witnesses who have had to give up a day's work in order to attend the Court. It is indeed a hardship for suitors who, perhaps, have brought their witnesses from long distances at serious expense, to have their cases postponed from one sitting to another in consequence of unexpected delays. But this only happens occasionally in the busy Courts, the working of the County Court being, as a rule, expeditious enough. [Illustration: "A MISFIT."] A glance at the history of the County Court is enough to show that from very early times it has always been the most popular of all legal tribunals. It is, in fact, the oldest of our Courts, having been instituted, according to Blackstone, by Alfred the Great. Mr. Pitt Lewis, in his most valuable work on County Court practice, remarks that the origin of the County Court is to be traced in the Folkmote, the gathering of the people, of Anglo-Saxon times. Hallam, in his "Middle Ages," describes it as the "great constitutional judicature in all questions of civil rights," and states that to it an English freeman chiefly looked for the maintenance of those rights.