The comet. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1877-1882, 1880-09-11
JEWS HARP TO BILL ARP. ON THE
NEW MISSISSIPPI CODE.

Dear BILL see by the papers, that
! you intend to take up your satchel,
and start out on lecturing tour. If
so, I've got a suggestion to make, and
that is, to come over here and estab-
lish law school.
] think l could guarantee to you a
lot of the most Anticipated scholars
that ever fell to the lot of legal tutor.
The melancholy truth is, that the old
fogies of the Bar here will have to rub
out and begin at their A B Cs. They
have to become fossil ncophyteS.
If Vesuvius were to be choused into
the Bay of Naples, and begin to spout,
/ doubt whether the old navigators
of the Bay aforesaid would be more ut
terly ut fault to find the channel, than
our ancient navigators will be in nav
igating the New Code-so to speak.
Old currents are damned up, new
channels are formed, new buoys are
floating here and there, and many an
old hulk will be stranded before they
can get the proper soundings, and I'M
derstand the "cut offs"
pve got my Lord Coke by my side,
as | write, and think can hear him
groan as he hears of the terrible slaugh-
ter of his favorite children. He signs
to think that, like the obsolete armor
of the knights of chivalry, he is to be
laid on the shelf forever - literally
Coke with the gas eXuded.
First and foremost, Bill, private
"seals" are defunct. None but the
lordly corporations can use them after
the first of November, proximo. Never
again are we to have learned DISGUST
tiOns as to whether they must be of
wax or wafer. Never more are we to
close our deeds in the grandiloquent
style of "signed, sealed and deliver
ed" You know we had made some
advance in that line by enlisting a
substitute in "scrOll," and that's
what hurts us now. The scroll was
the spot for our master flourish how |
ever illegible our other chirography, |
when we came to that we were at |
home; there, with involutions and
and decorations, we |
could redeem ourselves and do fine
1t was our scrOLL-saw, and |
with it we could work out such del
Icate tracery as to excite our own al
at least, and make our mark.
But, alas, in that branch now Othello's
gone.
Seals, they tell us, were a relic of
invented when the old
Cavaliers couldn't write in any other
way, except by the sword-hilt; but
low, as every body more or less, can
write more or less, the wax, the wafer
md the scroll have been consigned to
he tomb of the Capulets, at the Cap
tOl.
" a deed is not deed indented, I'M
ess it is indented indeed" says my
lord Coke. Whether he intended
louble entendre or not, / can't say,
'ut presume he did, but if so, it's dry
Wit. But the question of decd or no
Iced, after the first of November
'roximo, will be .fURctts. Non est
actuH viii be the plea, because the ,
non est.
Doubtless We have yet left many ,
ingIe bills, but Wills single" will lie i
mong the things that were. Bonds !
7ill be free of seals and the only sine !
ud non will be the signing. In after !
ears, the young student will be in !
uiring as TO what those two enegmat- I
al letters, al. s." mean, and will be '
answered by the following epitaph: .,
" Beneath this lies all that remains of a
ocHs Sigitti, character Of ancient date. !,
hose mission was to give peculiar sOlem-
ty TO documents. Emigrating to this
ate in its earliest days, he served lis day
nd generation in his day, to a good old
&c, and was gathered to his fathers. pen-
ally mOurned by the members Of the
gal profession. lie has left surviv- r
2 only one relative, who is now in the :
,eping Of Corporations. Obit Nov. 1. n
80 his last request was that this epitaph =,
ould be under 'seal'' u
Leaving you to digest the multidi- !"
'us consequence that will flow from
lie act Of emancipation from seal. - 81
Id promising to post you farther, be- pr
we me, yours at sea, 70
Jews HARP ~ ~