AFTER MANY YEARS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19892, 10 March 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

AFTER MANY YEARS.

REMARKABLE MEMORY,

MURDER OF 56 YEARS AGO. WRITER RECALLS STORY. STORIES OF IRISH HUMOUR. ' Sir John Ross, the last Lord Chancellor oI Ireland, has never kept a diary, and the brisk and entertaining reminiscences in his book "Pilgrim Scrip," says an American paper, are drawn entirely from the depths of a retentive and remarkably alert memory. How keen Sir John's remembrance remains can be seen from the chapter dealing with the Newton-Stewart murdor, which took place more than fifty-six years ago. Sir John has every point at his finger-tips, long as the interval is sir.ce these things happened. It was the murder and robbery of a bank clerk at his desk; and the ingenuity of one of the witnesses, a retired commander of the Royal Navy, brought the crime home to the most improbable of all people concorned, the very police inspector engaged

upon the case. The farrativa is admirably terse and vivid, and quite a3 exciting as any detective tale in modern fiction. But Sir John's most characteristic mood is that of the narrator of humorous stories, and his pages simply bubble over with good tales, capitally told. Every newspaper reporter will sympathise with the unlucky Irish journalist who was reporting Baron Dowse in the Divisional Court. The baron remarked that a resident magistrate was no more able to state a case than was he able to write a Greek ode. The reporter had never heard of a Greek ode, and he got the remark into his paper in the form of an assertion that a resident magistrate could not ride a Greek goat ! Irish wit, as all the world knows, has a delightful freshness. Mr. McLaughlin, Q. C., was the source of many such pleasantries. It was he who described a notorious drunkard as "a man whose whole life had been one spirited protest against the errors and extravagances of total abstinence," while on another occasion when a tedious witness utder crossexamination explained that he could not cross to a certain point because there was a yawning chasm before him, Mr. McLaughlin demanded, "Had it begun to yawn before you appeared ?", Father Healy, again, had a pretty wit, with a verbal twist to it. When discuss-

irg the case of Jonah and the whale, he declared: "I have seen to-day a greater miracle. I saw Dr. M. (a very fat Dublin physician) coming out of a fly." Again, when the proprietor of an oyster bar informed him that his daughter had gone to Milan to have her voice trained for opera, Father Healy interposed: "I see. You mean to make an oyster Patti of her." The Irish Bar is full of stories. A witness in an assault case was asked if the defendant's attitude was threatening. "My lord," said he, "such was the violence of his demeanor that a lady, who was with me, was obliged to advance and kick him twice in the stomach." Dublin policemen were famous for their humour. "Where will I find a Blackroek tram 1" asked a flurried old lady of a constable on point duty. "In the small of your back, madam, if you don't get off the line," was the repiy* Anothor policeman, describing how atold horse pulled up, said, "When he- got to the gate he stopped unanimously": while another, when contrasting the traffic on the road beside the Liffey outside Dublin in old days and the present time, averred, "I've seen the time when thero were more dead horses or that road than there are living ones now."