AN ANTEBELLUM LAW SCHOOL. A. M. Barnes. RIDING over the road from Black phrases, legal terms, etc. And not only Mountain Station, N. C, to the foot are they to be found within the building, of Mitchel's High Peak, you will, when a but outside as well, upon the trees, in the little more than five miles have been passed, rough, unhewn posts of the gate, even upon and the rushing current of the North Fork, the gnarled and whitened roots of the syca forded at Burnett's Mills, come suddenly mores and beeches overlooking the " trout's upon the oft-sung and far-famed valley of glassy pool." the Swannannoa. Near to the road, on a In 1859, Judge J. L. Bailey of Hillsboro, gently rising knoll, is a one-story frame N. C, — ex-judge of the superior court, house, with numerous small, clay-daubed and a man of fine legal ability — no doubt out-buildings. A tall, cross-barred wooden- believing not exactly with Wordsworth, that latched gate, set primly between undressed "solitude prepared the mind for heaven," chestnut posts, and which creaks dismally but rather that it the better fitted it for upon its rusty hinges, gives entrance to the study, decided to remove to this sequestered premises. The roofs of the dwelling-house valley of the North Fork and open a school and of the various out-buildings are weather- of law. There were doubtless other con beaten and overgrown with moss, in many siderations moving the judge, chief among places fallen entirely to decay. A grim which was that of failing health. In the stone chimney, the only unimpaired part of wonderfully invigorating and restorative the whole, stands bolt upright and appar powers of the breezes that blew from off ently immovable, against one end of the the mountain brows of western North Caro frame dwelling. The doors, like the gate, lina, laden with the aromatic odors of the creak dismally upon their hinges, and drag balsams and the pines, was just the tonic upon the floors, as though stubbornly re his worn out system needed. Being the fusing admittance and questioning the right possessor of only limited means, he at the of the bold intruder. The log out-build same time cast about him for some plan ings, with their shutterless windows, their whereby this new move might profit him worm-eaten puncheon doors, and the great, financially as well as physically. Very soon grinning chinks between the roughly plas the happy thought of the law school struck tered logs which give entrance to all kinds him. He had little trouble in carrying it of weather, are even more gloomy to enter. into effect, as he was a man of considerable You would never think as your foot passed legal ability, and well-known throughout the over the threshold and your eye took in all South. So, it came about that, in the very these signs of desolation and decay, as well heart of the wild Carolina mountains, there as the primitive and rude style of architec was established a school of law conducted ture, that here was one of the most famous upon such plans and carried out after such southern law schools of antebellum times. ideas as were never instituted nor put into Yet such was the case, as ample proof is effect in a similar case before, nor doubtless soon given, if one takes the pains to look have ever been since. for it : names cut deep into the logs, figures, The unpretentious frame house was used caricatures, dates of mock trials, names of by the judge as a dwelling, the out-houses those tried, the sentences passed, Latin for school purposes. Five or six of the stu
