Buzfustian

Five years and $1,000,000 more or less brought at least a temporary termination of a notorious divorce suit. In one hour and five minutes a jury disposed of several thousand dollars' worth of argument and many hours of legal talent. One Mrs. Helen Elwood Stokes was acquitted of 16 charges lodged by one W. E. D. Stokes, her husband.

Such a case is as good as a medieval tournament to set champions a-jousting. On the one side was the mighty Samuel Untermyer, champion of Mrs. Stokes. On the other side rose Max D. Steuer, challenger for the irate husband. As lawyers both men rank with the Launcelots, Bediveres and Geraints, if not the Galahads. And for the sake of the rich rewards at stake, they jousted at one another as much as at the other's client.

"Buzfuz" was what Mr. Untermyer called Mr. Steuer, referring to the ingenious lawyer whom Dickens devised to send Mr. Pickwick to prison for breach of promise--because a. lady had fainted in his arms.

Mr. Steuer replied: " If ever there was a Sergeant Buzfuz I had to contend with him for five weeks . . . Dickens did not dislike lawyers . . . He wrote the character of Sergeant Buzfuz in the hope that he would eliminate from the English bar the shysters that indulged in deceptions upon juries."

Quotations from pleadings to the jury:

"Don't let yourself be misled by the eloquence of this very wily and resourceful attorney, my adversary. Keep close to the facts, and if you do that we have no fear. If this jury should fail to agree to vindicate this lady triumphantly, she would go out of this courtroom a bowed and sorrowful lady. She wants to go home to her children. She wants to take them into her arms and look into their eyes and tell them that she has never disgraced them. She has done nothing in her whole life that hasn't been open to the public gaze."

"If ever there was a downright plea to the sympathies, the passions, the prejudices of the jury for six hours or more, you have heard it here . . . And that story about the ring. "Why, Munchausen was beaten by hundreds of miles by the man who made up that story."

"Of this man ... I will say little; the subject presents few attractions; and I, gentlemen, am not the man nor are you, gentlemen the men to delight in the contemplation of revolting heartlessness and systematic villainy. It is difficult to smile with an aching heart--it is ill jesting when our deepest sympathies are awakened. My client's prospects are ruined. All is gloom and silence in the house; even the voice of the child is hushed . . . while his mother weeps."

The first paragraph is Untermyer; the second, Steuer; the third, Buzfuz. Fortunately, in this case no matter how innocent either party may be, he will not go to jail like the poor Mr. Pickwick, found with his buxom landlady, widow Bardell, in his arms.

Devotees of Dickens will recall other parts of the clever Mr. Buzfuz's remarks as reported by Dickens:

" Sergeant Buzfuz began by saying that never in the whole course of his profession . . . had he approached a case with such deep emotion or with such a heavy sense of responsibility imposed upon him.

"' You have heard from my learned friend, gentlemen' continued Sergeant Buzfuz, ' that this is an action for a breach of promise of marriage.... But you have not heard--inasmuch as it did not come within my learned friend's province to tell you what are the facts of the case. Those facts you shall hear detailed by me and proved by the unimpeachable female whom I will place in the box before you.'"

And he added : " ' Pickwick still rears his head with unblushing effrontery, and gazes without a sigh on the ruin he has made.'"