Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/83

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The Green Bag.

evangelical church and throwing himself with ardor into the prohibition campaign in Atlanta, he suited the action to the word, and emptied a well-supplied wine-cellar.

exercising his intellect in its science, and who received but never collected fees. When he got a new case that interested him or puzzled him, he became wholly unconscious of all the universe beside. In the friendly Willis A. Hawkins badinage of his brethren at the bar, "he be was the most skilful practitioner that ever haved like a dog with a new-found bone, — he went from the Georgia Bar to the Supreme went off and caressed it." The stories told Bench. He could hear from the lips of a of him on such occasions — that he would witness a piece of testimony that ruined his forget to go home, but stay all night in his case, and receive from a judge an adverse office, taking no note of time — are true de ruling on a vital question with a smile that jure, if not de facto. He had a marvellous memory, — a wonderful combination of the made the jury believe he had scored a tri philosophical memory that co-ordinated prin umphal point. In personal and mental char acteristics he bore a striking resemblance to ciples and of the mechanical memory that enabled him to cite cases by the volume and the late Matt. H. Carpenter. Judge Haw kins's incumbency on the bench was only an page. He was a thorough lawyer and a learned judge. episode in a long career as a successful law Chief-Justice Bleckley aptly said of him : yer. His place was at the bar. He was born for the contests of the forum; and while "The one avocation of his life was the study, his ample legal knowledge and well-disci practice, and administration of law. He rises up plined mind would have made him an able before us, unique and colossal, as the lawyer — judge, yet the bench gave no opportunity for pre-eminently the lawyer — of Georgia. The exthe display of those rare qualities which clusiveness with which he devoted himself to his made him the admiration of the court-room profession is one of the bonds of sympathy which in the trial of cases. attached me personally to his career. Such exclusivencss has been the endeavor of my own life : Martin J. Crawford. and he was amongst the few of my contempo raries who have embraced and adhered to this Sergeant Ballentine ascribes to Lord undivided aim. He dedicated himself to the Lyndhurst the remark that when he selected noble profession of which he was so brilliant an a judge he "chose a gentleman; and if he ornament, so able an exemplar. knew a little law, so much the better." Judge "In thus comparing him with myself, or myself Crawford was the ideal gentleman, — he had with him, I make no pretension to that fulness the urbanity which is well called " surface and richness of legal learning to which he attained. Christianity:" and he knew, not a little law, It was his great distinction that he knew law, that but much of it. What he did not know while he had no narrow limits in his legal learning. He on the bench he learned by laborious study, explored the widest fields, and all departments of and his death was one of the many instances every field. The elementary principles, the re of that new phase of " judicial murder " which ported cases, all treatises, essays, and discussions of legal subjects were familiar to him. When a is wrought upon the overworked and under paid judges of many appellate courts. He novel question arose, he knew where to go for authority, and his search was never fruitless. I was a conscientious, diligent, and able judge. venture to say that he never entered upon a legal investigation or pursued a legal inquiry without Samuel Hall meeting with some return, some really fruitful was a marked type of the unworldly devotee return, for his labor. And then his faith in labor of the law, — a man who loved the law was beautiful. He believed in it. He thought, dearly for its own sake, for the pleasure of as I do, that there is scarcely a problem in the law