AFTER MANY YEARS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20361, 19 March 1928, Page 12

AFTER MANY YEARS.

REMARKABLE MEMORY. MURDER OF FIFTY-SIX YEARS AGO. Sir John Ross, the last Lord Chancellor of Ireland, has never kept a diar” and the brisk and entertaining • reminiscences in Ms book “Pilgrim Scrip, says an American paper, are drawn entirely nom the depths of a retentive and remarkably alert memory. , _ How keen Sir John’s remembrance remains can l3e seen from the chapter dealInf wRh the Newton-Stewurt murder, which took place more than 56 yeait. ago. Sir John has every point at Ms fingertips, long as the interval is isuce thege things happened. It was the murder and robbery of a bank clerk at ins 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 concerned, the very police inspector engaged upon the case. The narrative is admirably terse and vivid, and quite as exciting as any detective tale in modern fiction. . But Sir John’s most characteristic mood is that of the narrator of humorous stones, 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 Ms 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. Air M’Laughlin, 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 under cross-examination explained that he could not cross to a certain point because there was a yawning chasm before Mm. Air Al'Laughlin demanded: “Had it begun to yawn before you appeared?” . Father Healy, again, has a pretty wit, with a verbal twist to it. When discussing the case of Jonah and the whale, he declared: “I have seen to-day a greater miracle. I saw.Dr AI. (a very fat Dublin physician) coming out of a fly.” Again when the proprietor of an oyster bar informed him that Ms daughter has gone to Alilnn 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 demeanour 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 Blackrock tram?” 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 reply. Another policeman, describing how an old 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 there were more dead horses on_ that road than there are living ones now.” I