Good-Natured

Charles Erskine was, at the age of twenty, a teacher of Latin in Edinburgh University. On one occasion, after his
elevation to the Bench, a young lawyer in arguing a case before him used a false Latin quantity, whereupon his
lordship said, with a good-natured smile:

“Are you sure, sir, you are correct in your quantity there?”

The young counsel, nettled at the query, retorted petulantly, “My lord, I never was a schoolmaster.”

“No,” replied the judge; “nor, I think, a scholar either.”

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