ordered in the schools by the Board of Education. After much discussion on the streets and at the corners, a public indignation meeting was called for Saturday evening at the east door of the Court-house. Meanwhile the indignation against the offending Board intensified, and there was some apprehension even of serious trouble. At the appointed time and place, the meeting assembled and was duly organized by the selection of a Chairman. Calls at once began for wellknown orators at the bar and upon the hustings. "Ewing,' "Fifer," "Rowell," "Prince," "Lillard," "Phillips," "Kerrick," "Weldon," were heard from the crowd in rapid succession. It was like "calling spirits from the vasty deep." No response was given, no orator appeared; and, as is well known, an indignation meeting without an orator is as impossible as "Hamlet" with the Prince of Denmark omitted. But sure enough,

"Fortune sometimes brings in boats that are not steered." At the auspicious moment, from the rear of the crowd Tom Hullinger called out, "Doctor Rogers, Doctor Rogers!" The hour had struck. Without waiting further call, the Doctor promptly took the stand and waiving the formality of an introduction, began:

"I am deeply gratified to have this opportunity to explain to my fellow-citizens who have known me from my early manhood my vote upon the Lake Front Bill," and a twohour vindication immediately followed. No allusion being made to the object of the meeting, or the change of schoolbooks, of which the Doctor knew as little and cared as little as he did of the thirteenth century controversy between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, with the waning hours the excitement subsided. The change of readers became a dead issue; the era of good feeling was restored; and to this blessed hour, except in a spirit of mirth, the school-book question has never been mentioned.

XX

A LAWYER OF THE OLD SCHOOL

JUDGES

JUDGE ARRINGTON, THE IDEAL LAWYER EULOGIZED BY OTHER BOOKS HIS EARLY COMPANIONS BECOMES SUCCESSIVELY A METHODIST PREACHER, A LAWYER, AND A JUDGE WRITES SOME SKETCHES OF LIFE IN THE SOUTHWEST HIS APOSTROPHE TO WATER RECITED BY GOUGH.

IN

N the old Supreme Court-room at Ottawa, almost a halfcentury ago, I saw and heard Judge Alfred W. Arrington for the first time. For two hours I listened with the deepest attention to his masterly argument in a cause then exciting much interest because of the large amount involved. The dry question of law under discussion, "as if touched by the enchanter's wand," was at once invested with an interest far beyond its wont. As I listened to the argument of Judge Arrington, and witnessed the manner of its delivery, he appeared in the most comprehensive sense the ideal lawyer. He seemed, indeed, as he probably was, the sole survivor of the school of which Wirt and Pinckney were three generations ago the typical representatives. His dignified bearing, old-time apparel, and lofty courtesy toward the Court and opposing counsel, all strengthened this impression. He had a highly attractive appearance, and as was said by a contemporary, "to crown all, a massive Websterian forehead, needing no seal to give the world assurance of a man."

"Sage he stood,

With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night

Or summer's noontide air."

Since then I have listened to advocates of national renown in our great court and in the Senate sitting as a High Court of Impeachment, but at no time or place have I heard an abler, more scholarly, or more eloquent argument than that

of Judge Arrington in the old court-room at Ottawa, Illinois, on that day long gone by.

The most eminent members of the Chicago bar were the eulogists of Judge Arrington when he passed to his grave, near the close of the great Civil War. Judge Wilson, in presenting resolutions in honor of the deceased, voiced the sentiments of his associates when he said:

"For more than thirty years at the bar and upon the bench, I have been associated with the legal profession; and I may say without offence that of the many able men I have known I regard Judge Arrington, take him all in all, as the ablest."

The venerable Judge Drummond said:

"I have rarely heard a man whose efforts so constantly riveted the attention from the beginning to the close of his discourse. For while he trod with firm and steady steps the path of logic, his vivid imagination was constantly scattering on each side flowers of fragrant beauty, to the wonder and delight of all who heard him. He was a great lawyer in the highest and largest sense of the term-great in the extent and thoroughness of his legal learning, in the vigor and acuteness of his reasoning, and in the power of his eloquence."

The Hon. Melville W. Fuller, the present Chief Justice of the United States, said:

"When he arose to discuss a question, he exhibited a perfect knowledge of every phase in which it could be presented; and men never grew weary (especially if the argument involved Constitutional construction, in which department he stood primus inter illustres) of admiring the amplitude of his legal attainments, the accuracy of his learning, the compactness of his logic, and the majestic flow of his eloquence, and more than all, that firmnes and breadth of mind which lifted him above the ordinary contest of the forum.

"It is a source of the deepest consolation that he found peace at the last; that that grand spirit, before it took its everlasting flight, reposed in confidence on the Book of Books; that its departure was illumined by that precious light which ever renders radiant the brief darkness 'twixt mortal twilight and immortal dawn."

And yet, alas, his name has now almost passed from the memories of men; the veil of time has settled over him; no

distinct image is recalled by the mention of his name. How suggestive this, of the ephemeral fame of even a great lawyer: "Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,

Brief as the lightning in the collied night.'

Words long since uttered by an eminent jurist have not lost their significance:

"There is, perhaps, no reputation that can be achieved amongst men that is so transitory, so evanescent, as that of a great advocate. The very wand that enchants us is magical. Its effects can be felt; it influences our actions; it controls and possesses us; but to define it, or tell what it is, or how it produces these effects, is as far beyond our power as to imprison the sunbeam. In the presence of such majestic power we can only stand awed and silent."

There was much of romance, and somewhat of mystery, that gathered about the life of Judge Arrington. Born of humble parentage in the pine forests of North Carolina, with no advantages other than those common in the remoter parts of our country a century ago, from the beginning he apparently dwelt apart from the conditions surrounding him. At an early age he removed with his father's family to the then wilds of the Southwest.

There, upon the very border line of civilization, his associates for a time were the advance guard, the adventurers and soldiers of fortune that in a large measure constituted the civilization of the southwestern frontier during the early years of the last century. With his early environment, his subsequent career seems a marvel. It can only be explained upon the supposition that though with them, he was not of them. "His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

His companions were his books. Denied the advantages of early scholastic training, he was, from the beginning, an omnivorous reader. He cared little for the allurements and excitement of society. At the age of seventeen, he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was soon after licensed to preach. For four years he rode the circuit, enduring all the discomforts and dangers then and there incident to his calling. His field may be called the Ultima Thule, bordering upon the Rio Grande and inhabited by Indians. Untutored audiences

were stirred to the depths by his fervid appeals. Church buildings were yet in the future; the congregations assembled in God's first temples, and listened with rapt attention to the fiery eloquence of the delicate, youthful messenger, whose soul seemed on fire.

A gentleman who had heard Arrington writes:

"He was then young, delicate, as brilliant as a comet, and almost as erratic. Without research or mental discipline, he could electrify an audience beyond all living men, and arouse in the minds of those who heard him the wildest enthusiasm."

For some cause, possibly never to be explained, he suddenly abandoned the ministry, began the study of the law, and when a little past the age of twenty-one, was admitted to the bar. After some years of successful practice in the rude frontier courts of Arkansas, he removed to Texas, where he was soon appointed a judge, and assigned to the Rio Grande circuit. In addition to his judicial labors, he now wrote and published some graphic and interesting sketches of border life, vivid pictures of conditions then existing in the Southwest among a people the like of which we shall not see again, a people upon whom the restraints and amenities of civilized life sat but lightly, who were in large degree a law unto themselves, and with whom revenge was virtue.

One of his publications, "Paul Denton," still has a place in many of our libraries. It is, in part, a narrative of the thrilling experiences of an early Methodist circuit-rider- presumably himself - upon the southwest border. In this will be found his marvellous apostrophe to water, which, as was said by Judge Dent, "was so familiar to the lecture-going public of the last generation owing to its frequent declamation from the rostrum by the temperance lecturer, Gough."

The hero of the book, Paul Denton, had been announced to preach at a famous Spring, where "plenty of good liquor" was promised to all who would attend. During the sermon, a desperado demanded: "Mr. Denton, where is the liquor you promised?"

"There!" answered the preacher in tones of thunder, and pointing his motionless finger at a spring gushing up in two