ORDINATION EXTRAORDINARY. 263 P.S." It's Thursday next I'll be coming to taste your pot-luck-lashins of champagne, me boy, and it's a night of it we'll make. And so the Hon. and Rev. Fitzroy Stanhope became Dean and Rector of St. Buryan, and punctually drew £4,000 a year from it till his death in 1862. He never went near the place, kept a curate on £80 a year, the church and everything else went to ruin; but the Duke got his money, and the Dean of St. Buryan drew his thousands a year up till 1862, from the outwardly barren shore in West Barbary, to the great benefit of the noble House of Harrington, to whose honours his son succeeded. The accumulation was a great relief to the family estate, afflicted-like the Ailesbury Peerage, which had four of them living at one time-by the longevity of a dowager, who survived till 1867. CHAPTER VII. Serjeant Ballantine's closing career-Minnie mum- "Never read prospectuses”—On advances for costs to SolicitorsLandlord and barmaid: hard case- -The costly chaliceTeetotaller asking for rum, and how he consumed it "Alas, my daughter!"-The Mortgage Deed and the missing plot of land-The rabbit worth £30-How the Solicitor made amends for his slip-Stonehouse Local Board and its Bond Issue-Electrical leakings-The "Conway" and "Worcester" boys-Prince Consort and candle ends— The Bishop's son and his revelations of the futureSixes and sevens. WHE HEN Ballantine's career at the Bar had closed, a subscription was got up for him to which many contributed, and some £700 a year was made up. One subscriber gave £150 a year on condition that the Serjeant withdrew from the Club which was the one pleasure of his life. Of course the amount was not enough; no amount would have been enough. People have but little scruples in this regard. When a similar subscription was got up for Charles James Fox, and there were fears of hurting his feelings, some one asked Selwyn how he thought Fox would take it? Selwyn said, "Why, quarterly, of course." A CASE TOO WELL GOT UP. 265 All, however, who had known the Serjeant were not equally well disposed towards him, and an estimable but retired Judge, who was asked to subscribe £50, turned so savagely upon the applicant that he fled for his life. Once Ballantine was counsellor for the S.E. Railway in an accident case. The plaintiff was brought into court on a stretcher, and gave pitiable answers when examined in chief. Ballantine rose up to cross-examine in his most sympathising and therefore most danger ous manner. "Have you pains in your head?" "Oh, yes." "Feel as if your back was broken, dizzy fits?" and so on for some five or six more questions. Then "Billy" broke out: "You have learned your lesson well. All persons who receive a shock have some of these symptoms, but never all of them combined." Meantime the presiding Judge had been examining the paper mark in the doctor's diary, and found it a year later than the date of the attendances. The case got worse and worse, and the Judge summed up in these few words: "It is hard to account for the idiosyncrasies of doctors." The jury returned at once a verdict for the company, and every one expected some one would be sent to prison for perjury, either the plaintiff or the doctor, but nothing came of it, more's the pity. This committal of a perjurer right off at the moment had a great effect in the Tichborne case, and some of the Judges who really have a backbone, and are not always thinking what the papers will say, might repeat it with advantage. It is a cruel thing to say of Miss Minna Simpkinson (name fictitious, as usual), stout and loquacious, when asked "Do "Do you like the girl of the house?"-" Well, yes; but most when she's a Minnie mum! Mr. Justice Mathew, in a company action, noticed a statement of the plaintiff in the box thus: "Why, that was in the prospectus : who ever believes what is in a prospectus ? There are few of us who have not fallen into that snare, but one case especially points the moral which fell from the Bench. This prospectus was that of a new explosive, which combined a force superior to any previously known forms of quickly generated energy with disregard of damp, and a patience under rough handling superior to even cast iron itself. It was produced, too, at a price which created its own market at the expense of all the others. All these advantages, and many others, such as being positively benefited, and its destructive energy increased by lying about in the wet, were detailed in a prospectus so luscious and enjoyable that one only regretted that A PITIFUL TALE. 267 the writer had not turned his talents in seductive description to the composition of sermons, in which case his promotion to the highest posts, in church or chapel, as the case might be, was a matter to lay odds on. A friend of mine at once took a hundred paid-up £1 shares, but by an accident his application was read to be for a thousand shares with 2s. deposit, and the applicant, a man of position, made no objection to this, until two days afterwards one of the leading financial papers said some such very ugly things about the company that the allottee claimed his money back, with, of course, the usual reply: "Impossible; unfair to other shareholders," etc. Smarting under this treatment, which we may sum up by saying that ultimately the calls were enforced and had to be paid, with 1,500 costs on the top of all, the sufferer wrote to a small financial paper detailing his wrongs, the same being quickly inserted and a letter of sympathy from the Editor returned to say: "The thing is so scandalous that we have handed the letter to a solicitor connected with our journal, who will take proceedings to recover the money you have paid "—this, be it observed, without any retainer on the part of the proposed client, or authority from him to take action. In a post or two comes a letter from the solicitor, who had a few years before been bankrupt and compounded for a shilling |