education. For more than thirty-seven years he was a member of the Board of Trustees of Bowdoin College. He was an original and also an active and useful mem ber of the Maine Historical Society, organ ized April 11, 1822. He was the first pres ident of the Portland Natural History So ciety and remained Such from 1843 to 1848. He received the degree of LL.D. from Colby University in 1842, and from Dartmouth in 1845. When he retired from the bench in 1855, the Cumberland bar, voicing the general sentiment regarding him, adopted resolutions fitting the occasion and recognizing with the liveliest sensibilities the debt which it and the whole State owed to him for his long continued labors and services upon the bench, his eminent learning and ability, his unbending integrity, the untiring and con scientious devotion to duty with which he discharged all the functions oi his elevated and responsible station, looking with pride to his judicial career marked by a dig nity which ever commanded respect and by a learning which ever justified confi dence. He died January 15, 1877, full of honors and years at the house of his son Judge George F. Shepley, U. S. C. Court for the N. E. Circuit, in Portland. Just men carried him to his burial, attended by lawyers, physicians, clergymen, civic officials and crowds of citizens. Of this sedate and sober-minded judge we would hardly expect much of humor and wit. Nothing of the kind has come down by way of tradition to the present genera tion; yet the reader will not fail to perceive a slight touch of grim humor in the follow ing extract from his opinion in Pratt v. Leadbetter, 38 Maine, 17 : — "Upon the construction of this will there have been, it is said, different opinions and doubts among members of the profession for thirty years. If it be so, it may not have been wholly without a precedent; for Lord
Eldon commences his opinion in the case of the Earl of Radnor v. Shafto, 11 Ves. 453, with the remark : ' Having had doubts upon this will for twenty years, there can be no use in taking more time to consider it. ' "With the best light to be obtained by a more limited consideration and examination, the Court has come to a very satisfactory conclusion respecting the correct construc tion of the devise to Othniel Pratt." His associate on the bench, the late Judge Howard, says, " He had no taste for indulgences outside of his duties, not even for recreations so fascinating and usually esteemed so necessary to the health of body and mind. He appeared to need nothing of the kind. Unremitting labor in his high vocation gave him constant delight. In all his ways he had the inspiration of great faith, and the accomplishments that are born of it. He loved the law, conscientious ly sought its distinctions, anJ gained them with liberal rewards." We conclude with the following extracts from Judge Howard's eulogy, which give Chief Justice Shepley's true and exalted place in Maine's judiciary. "The mental powers of Judge Shepley were vigorous and strong, and his intellectual vision very clear. He saw as with a light ahead, the solution of seemingly abstruse problems, with broad distinctions, often not readily perceived by others. If he was sometimes apparently positive in his manner and opin ions, it was because he had great confidence in his own matured reasonings and conclu sions. His will was sustained by an energy that never flagged in the accomplishment of his duties. "Learned broadly in law and equity, as much in the spirit as in the letter, he ap plied his great knowledge with matchless skill and force to the work before him; for he estimated largely the value of human pursuits by their bearing upon human rights and interests. His independence and im partiality were always refreshing. . . .
