1867 and after 191

futile in Maryland. Records have been trans-
formed into reproductions of bundles of papers
and testimony without much condensation, and
briefs have gradually been expanded into argu-
ments at length. And now the total printed mat-
ter submitted to the judges at a term of court often
exceeds the reading capacity of any ordinary
man,¹² and it is questioned by some whether oral
argument is of any assistance to the reading judges.
There has been an overturn in the conception of
a judge's work.

And an incidental change is that in the
work of the official reporter. Far down in
the last century, it was from the court room argu-
ments that the reporting was customarily done.
The notes of arguments made down to 1851 are
in the possession of the court, but none of the later
notes have been found, and lacking these the work
of the successive reporters cannot be followed, but
until after the beginning of the present century the
reporter attended all sessions of the court, sitting
at a desk at the left of the room, in the corner by
the bench. And a reporter's desk was included in
the arrangements for the new, and present, court
room in 1903, and is still there. Mr. William T.
Brantly, who was State Reporter down to the year
1912, reporting 116 Maryland Reports as his last,
occupied the accustomed place and followed the
arguments closely—yielding at times to the temp-
tation to give young lawyers discreet hints from an
abundant understanding of the law which he pos-
sessed. Now it is realized that the printed records

12. At some recent terms of court the records and briefs submitted
have equalled in combined thickness eighteen volumes of Mary-
land Reports.

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