United States or Tajikistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


He ate dinners, was called to the bar, conducted cases, and took silk in an English court of justice. And in the ripeness of his years and of his services, he wore the honourable ermine and sat upon the envied wool-sack of an English sovereign.

The eloquence of the bar, the pulpit, and the council-board, was deformed by conceits which would have disgraced the rhyming shepherds of an Italian academy. The king quibbled on the throne. We might, indeed, console ourselves by reflecting that his majesty was a fool. But the chancellor quibbled in concert from the wool-sack: and the chancellor was Francis Bacon.

By breakfast time, however, all that would be changed, and I would glory in the belief that one day would see me seated on the wool-sack. By dinnertime I was clothed in sanctimonious lawn; and long before the small hours, I felt myself a second Drake, starting to conquer another Armada, only one even more Invincible." They all laugh at him.

Yes, it is the Southern planter who says to-day to haughty England, Go to war, if you dare; dismiss Dallas, if you dare. Yes, he who sits on the throne of the cotton-bag has triumphed at last over him who sits on the throne of the wool-sack. England is prostrate at his feet, as well as the abolitionists.

To speak truth, I had not looked for such resistance, and seeing that I could not knock him down, out of hand, I grew more cool and began to study what I was doing. "Take off your macaroni coat," said I. "I have no wish to ruin your clothes." But he only jeered in return: "Take off thy wool-sack." And Hugo, getting to his feet, cried out to me not to hurt Marse Philip, that he had meant no harm.

To speak truth, I had not looked for such resistance, and seeing that I could not knock him down, out of hand, I grew more cool and began to study what I was doing. "Take off your macaroni coat," said I. "I have no wish to ruin your clothes." But he only jeered in return: "Take off thy wool-sack." And Hugo, getting to his feet, cried out to me not to hurt Marse Philip, that he had meant no harm.

To speak truth, I had not looked for such resistance, and seeing that I could not knock him down, out of hand, I grew more cool and began to study what I was doing. "Take off your macaroni coat," said I. "I have no wish to ruin your clothes." But he only jeered in return: "Take off thy wool-sack." And Hugo, getting to his feet, cried out to me not to hurt Marse Philip, that he had meant no harm.

Just in front of the throne is the wool-sack of the Lord Chancellor, looking like a drawing-room divan, covered with crimson velvet. Below this are rows of seats for the judges, who are all in their wigs and scarlet robes; the bishops and the peers, all in robes of scarlet and ermine. Opposite the throne at the lower end is the Bar of the Commons.

Strictly speaking, his position was a sort of halfway one, his back being raised by a pile of cushions, with his right leg drawn up before him, as he leant on his left elbow. His judgement seat was a veritable wool-sack, or rather mattress, placed across the left end of a long narrow room, some eight feet by twenty, with a big door in the centre of one side.

He sat upon an ox-skin, which did duty for the wool-sack the very personification of the majesty of the law, with curled wig, and hide as black as the gown of the Lord Chief Justice, with the advantage that both were natural. This was the second negro I had yet seen in the country. The other held a commission as captain in the army, and was in the escort of General Garay.