The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-08-13
TESTING WITH THE IDENTITIES.

a banquet of the right sort is an
affair of friends. privileged occa-
sion where reserve is dropped and
professional stiffness laid aside. 1t is
a place for jest and repartee, for per-
sonal drives" and Jokes" where
cares and quarrels are thrown away
and give and take is the spirit of the
hour. No man in his senses gets angry
when epigrams are made over the
walnuts and the wine and no man of
good breediug shows anger If some
inadvertence seems likely to provoke it.
The Ideal banquet means the good
fellowship of comrades, not the spirit
Of the duello or the prize ring; and no
classes of people, as a rule, live up to
the ideal state better than lawyers.
They are accustomed to have fun at
each others expense in court and to
shake hands afterwards: and they of
all others are qualified and expected TO
do the same thing at the banquet
board. That trifling jest should set
such rhetorical post-graduates on edge
and impel three men of the standing of
judges to leave feast and frolic in a
huff. Is incomprehensible. The incident
of Friday night suggests the servants
ball from which lady's maid flew in
dignant to her mistress and said:
Mem, the young man who took me
out, grossly insulted mel"
How did he insult your" inquired
the mistress.
He asked me to supper and when
we were through he said: Miss, is your
program full?'"
The three judges who arose in such
awful dignity when Lawyer McClana-
han cracked a Joke about the bench
are very new to the ermine, two are
very young and one Is as eager as an
actress for the first time starred. TO
have his name mixed up In a daily
sensation. 1t was a combination to
make the most of fancied slight, the
more so because all three judges, sleep
ing and waking, seem to be burdened
with the majesty of their offices. To
them the veriest shadow of the crime
of lese majestic is objectionable. Gray
haired jurists who have forgotten more
law than these novices ever learned
would have sat out the Bar Associa-
tons banquet, Paul Neumann style.
and returned jest for jest an3quip for
quip; IL remained for men whose judg-
ments have not yet had time to be
overruled and whose ermine still sheds
hairs to look aghast at every fitting
witticism and when the omnipotence of
the bench-their bench-was lightly
touched with the breath of raillery to
rise in stilted wrath and walk impe-
riously out of doors. Upon what meat
hath these our Caesars fed that they
have grown so great?
Let the Advertiser commend to these
fresh but yet tumefied jurists study
of the banquet speeches Vf the Grid
iron Club Of Washington, an an
nual function which makes sport
enough of an evening to last the official
society of the national capital until the
next circus. The Gridiron Club Is no
respector of persons, let it's guests be
whom they may. If tho President of the
United States happens to DE there, he
will see his gravest policy put in the
most ridiculous light and lie will take
1t as good-naturedly as he would re-
nomination. If the Chief Justice and
the Associate Justices of the Supreme
Court are there, as is usually the case,
their most ponderous decisions will be
caricatured amid roars of laughter in
which they always join. The Cabinet