frained from mentioning his name; also why I kissed the bride. I did not yearn to kiss her. There were others who had claims on me, but I did not wish to give needless pain to the groom, and so I did it. He had no money, but said that he had a saddle which if I could use I was welcome to. I did not have any thing to put the saddle on at home, but rather than return empty-handed I took it.

It was soon after this that I decided to give my hand in marriage to my present wife. Concluding that I had more poverty than one person was entitled to, I made up my mind to endow some deserving young woman with a part of it. There was really something rather pathetic in the transaction, viewing it from this distance across the level plateau of gathering years. But it did not seem so then.

The sorry office with its hollow-chested wood-box and second-hand stove, red with the rust of time and the rain of heaven, the empty docket, the shy assault and battery, the evasive common drunk, the evanescent homicide, the far-away malice prepense, the long-delayed uxoricide, the widely segregated misdemeanor, the skittish felony,-all, all seemed to warn me and admonish me against matrimony, for there were two other justices and they got all the business.

I was elected fourteen years ago, and it never occurred to me that it was a piece of political humor until last week, when I was thinking over my past life.

Thus I married, and one evening while the town lay hushed in slumber, and only the mountain zephyr from the grim old Medicine Bow range rustled the new leaves of the quaking aspen and the cottonwood, I moved. Not having any piano or sideboard I did the moving myself. It did not take long.

Later on, the legislature, seeing that the county would have to provide for me in some way, decided to abolish one of the other justices. Then trade picked up. I was also ex-officio coroner. I would marry a quick-tempered couple in the morning, sit on the husband in the afternoon, and try the wife in a preliminary way in the evening for the murder. Thus business became more and more brisk. Sometimes a murderer would escape the grand jury and get lynched, but he did not escape me. If I could not try him in life's bright summertime, I could sit on him and preside over his inquest after the lynching. We had consider able excitement, too, in those days, for the town was young and laws were crude. Lawyers were still cruder. I know this because I was admitted to the bar at that time myself.

I rose early each morning while my heart and the dawn were breaking, and while the coyotes sang in the suburbs of the city. I VOL, XLIII.-9

lived on the side facing the cemetery, for rent was cheaper there. In the early dawn a coyote band of soloists used to come over between the cemetery and my 'dobe house and sing. Those who have never heard a coyote's chastened welcome to the jocund day do not know what compressed despair and unavailing regret can be concealed in the wail of a wild animal. To a man who was doing his own work, and cutting enough jack-pine firewood before breakfast to do for the day, the shrill notes of the coyote, echoing among the gray slabs which marked the lonely resting-places of the dead, were not filled with delicious joy. I judge that the coyote has been politically on the wrong side for three or four thousand years, and that his sorrow has become chronic and his nature soured. Possibly it is something else, but the bitterness, the diatonic hopelessness and forbidding despair which he gets into one little bar of music would do a good business in the drama if it could be properly staged.

The most attractive day's work that I remember was the preliminary examination of a band of stage-robbers, captured by Sheriff Boswell and a posse in the early morning. I examined them in the forenoon and held a double inquest in the evening on two gentlemen from a tie camp in the mountains. That was my busy day. I think Bronco Sam called that day also to be married to Mademoiselle WalkAround-the-Block. Bronco Sam was a semiGreaser, whose parents on his father's side came from the Congo Basin and settled among the peanut vines and citron groves of Middle Georgia. I was too busy to marry him that day, and so he went elsewhere, fearing that if he put it off he might change his mind. Later he shot his wife, and then blowing out his brains instead of turning them off he closed his career with the regular red fire and fortissimo bassdrum of the new West.

The stage-robbers had among them the gentlemanly, genial, and urbane Irvin and the brainy but somewhat erratic and felonious "Kid." They were captured by a band of gritty frontiersmen under Sheriff Boswell. Boswell was not a toy frontiersman with long, accordion-plaited hair, tied back with blue ribbon, in which at springtime the swallows come to build their nests and rear their young. He was a plain, quiet man, with the scars of Indian arrows all over him, the record of an early day when you could not fight Indians by means of a Pullman car. I always admired him because he cut his hair and manicured his nails even in the early days. Boswell was not reckless of human life, and in fact killed very few people, but if a bad man had to be captured and brought to camp in good order, he generally had the job.

Once I heard a shot in the hallway of my place, and going to the porch on the second floor rather cautiously, I saw the rest of the tragedy. Windy Smith had been shot by a gambler whose name I 've forgotten, though I had to try his case a day or two afterward. Some shouted, "Take away his gun."

I said, “Yes, certainly, take away his gun." I am not a good hand to remove guns at such a time, but I can direct others. I was born to command.

Then some one yelled, "Lynch him." A dozen healthy men made a grab for him, but Boswell came along then and took the gentleman home with him. A day or two after, fearing that he would be lynched if brought to my office, I examined him at the courthouse, which also contained the jail.

Reading a charge of wilful murder to him, I asked him to plead, but he said nothing. Then I asked him his reason for killing Smith. He had none. His reason had fled. The scare he got at the time when he expected every moment to be lynched had driven him mad.

These road agents, however, were a picturesque little picnic party. They had probably not slept in a house for two or three years, and they needed repairs. They removed their spurs and piled them up in the corner of the room like a large bed of cactus. Their side-arms and Winchesters made quite a little hardware store on top of my desk. They were disagreeable men in some respects, and yet they did much to elevate the stage, especially the Rock Creek and Black Hill stages. Irvin was tried finally for some minor felony and got nine years. On top of this, in some way, he was also indicted for murder in the first degree and got a life-sentence. The jailer found him in tears afterward, in his cell.

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Why do you weep?" asked the gentle jailer, looking sadly into the uncertain light. Because," said the sobbing outlaw, "I shall be so busy serving out my life-sentence that I do not see how in Sam Hill I am going to get time to serve out those nine years for plain robbery."

But incidents of six years' life on the bench would require too much time and space for a short sketch like this, and so I will not add to those given already, except one which will show that courts do not always receive that respect and reverence to which they are entitled.

We had a German restaurateur who could cook well, but prosperity overthrew his good resolutions, and so about every thirty days he would give way to a taste for the native-grown wines of Kentucky, and he would then start out as a painter and decorator of an otherwise quiet

and gentlemanly little town. At such times it became necessary to extend the strong arm of the law, and to issue the ukase for the arrest of Wilhelm in order that the peace and dignity of the Territory might be maintained. After several such arrests, and a fine with its attendant trimmings, Larry Fee, an officer, was again required to take him to the fountainhead of justice.

"Who makes owid dot vorrand?" asked Fischer.

"You will have to go before Judge Nye," said the officer.

"Chudge Nye!" says Fischer. "Chudge Nye! Dot feller dot comes down py der debo fen der drain gomes een? You baid your sweed life he ish no chudge. He looks more like dot beenuts poy on der drain."

At another time I was alone with a criminal called Dirty Murphy. The officer had gone to get witnesses for the prosecution of Murphy on the charge of larceny. I needed some more coal on the fire and I had no valet. The coal was down a flight of stairs in a crypt under the sidewalk. I could not leave D. Murphy alone for fear that he would steal the rapidly cooling stove and fly with it; so I asked him if it would be too much trouble for him to go down and a get a hod of coal for me, so that at his trial we could make it warm for him. He said certainly not. I gave him the hod, and although it has been something over thirteen years he has not yet returned. On leaving the woolsack to my successor I told him about Dirty Murphy, and said that he was liable at any moment day or night, footsore and weary, to come back, and that it would be a good idea to leave the door ajar for him; but it was not done, and so at this writing I do not know where he is.

Of course, during the six years of my judicial life I met with many reverses, especially at the hands of the Supreme Court, but I am proud to say that during all that trying time I was sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust in the people even though the higher courts did not sustain and soothe my decisions as I wish they had.

Looking back over those eight years of life in the new West where a State has since blossomed into being, and where the eagle's nest of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains has given place to the mare's nest of doubtful political methods, I am forced to ask myself this question: Is there anything in the way of of ficial triumph and official honor in all this that cannot be attained by most any bright young American? Certainly not. Patient endeavor, untiring industry, and political purity, coupled with a profound intellect and massive thoughtworks, will surely win in the struggle for prefer

ment, and there is no reason why any young man so equipped who reads these lines may not ultimately rise also to a position as justice of the peace.

Every year, and in fact almost every month, some justice of the peace dies. Who are to fill these places? The young men of the nation. The bright-eyed students and farm

hands who are just attaining their majority. Fit yourself, therefore, young man, that you may be able, when the time shall come, to Occupy the woolsack thus left vacant by the death of older justices of the peace, and if you do so with credit to yourself I shall feel that this brief bit of autobiography has not been written in vain. Edgar W. Nye.

The name of Ashurst is not altogether unknown in America. Frequent mention of it occurs in the life of William Lloyd Garrison written by his sons, and Mr. Garrison himself has told us, in his introduction to a volume upon "Joseph Mazzini: His Life, Writings, and Political Principles," issued shortly after the exile's death, that it was at Mr. Ashurst's beautiful home at Muswell Hill that he first met the great Italian. "There," he says," our personal friendship began [1846], which revolving years served but to strengthen." Twenty-one years later, on a visit to England in 1867, Mr. Garrison and Mazzini met again. "The interviews I had with him- alas, all too brief! for of his company one could never tire- were," says Mr. Garrison, "at the residence of Mr. Ashurst's son... and of his son-in-law, James Stansfeld, M. P."... His "altered appearance affected me sadly. There were, indeed, the same dark, lustrous eyes; the same classical features; the same grand intellect; the same lofty and indomitable spirit; the same combination of true modesty and heroic assertion, of exceeding benignity and inspirational power, as in the earlier days, but physically he was greatly attenuated, stricken in countenance, broken in health, and evidently near the close of his earthly pilgrimage. But no marvel! During our long absence from each other what mighty intellectual forces he had brought into play!... What hairbreadth escapes, what fiery trials, had been his!"

The intimacy between the Italian exile and the Ashurst family began soon after he succeeded in proving the fact that his correspondence had for a long period been violated by the English Government. His letters were sys

tematically "opened and resealed, with all the ignoble arts of a Fouché," before being delivered at his house. This, incredible as it may seem, was done in a room set apart for such purposes at the Central London Post-office, and the information obtained by this means was regularly forwarded by the English Ministry to the Austrian Government, which was thus enabled to entrap and arrest the brothers Bandiera and other Venetian exiles at Naples, and to cause them to be shot by the Neapolitan Government in cold blood, without even the semblance of a trial. All these things, and the indignation they called forth in England, are matters of history, matters upon which it would be more interesting to dwell had the popular wrath been carried to the point of compelling the abandonment of the system; but that, unhappily, survives to this day. Special interest, however, lies for us in the fact that indignation at the wrong and sympathy for the personal sorrow thus inflicted upon Mazzini impelled Mr. Ashurst's son and eldest daughter to seek his acquaintance and to invite him to their father's house. It is obvious that the exile was as much attracted toward them as they were drawn toward him; for although it was his habit to shun English society, he at once agreed to go to Muswell Hill on the following Sunday, and it quickly became, to use his own phrase," an established institution" that he should there pass his Sundays with those whom he called his second family. The tone of his letters when separated from them is indeed that of a son and brother, and they regarded the relationship given and accepted as their highest honor.

The first idea of publishing some, at least, of Mazzini's letters occurred to Madame Venturi as far back as 1851, during a conversation with the exile's mother. Madame Mazzini then suggested that her young friend should write her son's life, and, as a portion of the necessary materials, gave her the complete collection of his letters home, and allowed her to note down certain details and anecdotes concerning his childhood and early youth which

she related. Madame Mazzini said she could not doubt that future generations would do justice to the patriot, the thinker, and the statesman in him, yet, owing to the life of solitude and concealment he had been compelled to lead, she feared the man would never be rightly appreciated and understood. "It is only through his letters to those whom he deeply loved," she added, "that that heart of gold can be known." Mazzini was compelled, in every part of the Continent, to lead this life of concealment, because, being condemned to death by the seven governments of Italy, he was liable to extradition in all monarchical countries save England. Thus "correspondence was the sole method of his ceaseless, persistent apostolate of Italian unity; correspondence, revolutionary and political, formed his only weapon of offense or defense in the lifelong duel between himself and the ignoble governments of Italy'; and correspondence was, in very truth, communion with those he loved; the one consolation of what he sadly alludes to as 'the life I have led for twenty years out of thirty, a life of voluntary imprisonment within the four walls of one little room.'" That such communion was a real necessity of his loving nature explains the childlike spontaneity of the letters themselves. He wrote as he would have talked to his adopted family had he been again in England, a return to which he often spoke of as "coming home." The special charm of the letters now before us consists in the fact that even when they treat of political matters they remain essentially intimate, personal, and confidential. They show us, so to speak, the other side of the medal. All the world is familiar with the picture drawn of Mazzini by the monarchical press of Europe, all the world has heard of the dark conspirator, the teacher of assassination and rapine, who, actuated solely by reckless ambition, aroused the rash, unthinking youth of Italy to rebellion against the paternal governments of the seven states into which the peninsular was divided, and drove them into revolts the danger of which he had not the courage to front himself. But in these letters we see for the first time the tender, loving nature of the man, who, during the years in which they were written, was tracked by the police of Europe like a hunted animal.

Mazzini's English, though by no means faultless, is extremely picturesque and at times even eloquent, and the public will certainly agree that Madame Venturi has done wisely in leaving his occasional errors uncorrected, except in the rare instances in which, to those unaccustomed to his style, they might obscure his meaning.

Madame Venturi, being at the time of Madame Mazzini's suggestion very young, and moreover diffident of undertaking the

1 Written in 1861.

task assigned to her (quite unnecessarily, for it would be impossible for the great subject of the projected work to have had a biographer more completely equipped with the requisite. gifts of insight, sympathy, and literary ability), wrote to Mazzini informing him of his mother's request, and expressing her desire to accede to it (subject to his approval), in association with Maurizio Quadrio, his trusted and devoted friend. Although it was Mazzini's habit to attach very scant importance to matters personal to himself, he promised to help wherever help was possible, but added:

My life is all contained in my writings and in the dominating idea of my soul — to help to create an Italy; a nation powerful in faith, in unity, and in the social European idea pre-announced by her emperors, her popes, her great thinkers, and her martyrs. My individual existence, concentrated in a few affections, might well be left where it is in a few tombs and in the hearts of those who love me.

The nomadic and agitated life Mazzini led during the years that followed rendered it impossible for him to furnish his would-be biographers with the requisite materials to enable them to carry out his mother's wish; but chiefly owing to their urgent and repeated reminders, he began the autobiographical notes which embellish Messrs. Smith and Elder's edition of his "Life and Works," and helped to rescue from oblivion his scattered political and literary writings which were collected for that edition.

Visiting at Muswell Hill forty years ago appears to have been a far more serious matter for Londoners than it is now. By night no help could be obtained from railway or stage, and chartering a cab for the day was too expensive a proceeding for exiles, or indeed for the majority of the English habitués. The little group of friends who had passed the afternoon and evening at Mr. Ashurst's delightful home generally assembled in the porch at about half-past ten, to light their cigars and to journey together on foot as far as the Angel, Islington, where cabs and omnibuses were available.

Muswell Hill quickly became to him what he called it, his heart's home; and the little family festivities, which usually have no charm. for outsiders, were his chief pleasure. Being unable to make one of the circle on the first day of 1847, he wrote to Miss Ashurst, “The initiating day must not be allowed to pass without two words of mine reaching Muswell Hill.” And his letter concludes, "Pray for me that the year do not elapse without my finding an occasion for acting and proving myself worthy of your esteem and affection."

The peaceful gatherings at Mr. Ashurst's house were indeed soon disturbed by the news