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 agin, 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 strong columns from the bosom of the earth with a sound like a shout of joy. "There," he repeated, "there is the liquor which God the Eternal brews for all his children. Not in the simmering still over the smoky fires choked with poisonous gases, surrounded with stench of sickening odors and corruptions, doth your Father in heaven prepare the precious essence of life—pure cold water; but in the green glade and grassy dell, where the red-deer wanders and the child loves to play, there God brews it; and down, low down, in the deepest valleys, where the fountains murmur, and the rills sigh, and high upon the mountain-tops where the naked granite glitters like gold in the sun, where the storm-cloud broods and the thunder-storms crash; and far out on the wide, wild sea, where the hurricane howls music and the big waves roll the chorus, sweeping the march of God—there he brews it, the beverage of life, health-giving water.
"And everywhere it is a thing of life and beauty—gleaming in the dew-drop; singing in the summer rain; shining in the ice gem till the trees all seem turned to living jewels; spreading a golden veil over the sun or a white gauze around the midnight moon; sporting in the glacier; folding its bright snow-curtain softly about the wintry world; and weaving the many-colored bow whose warp is the rain-drops of earth, whose woof is the sunbeam of heaven, all checkered over with the mystic hand of refraction.
"Still it is beautiful, that blessed life-water! No poisonous bubbles are on its brink; its foam brings not murder and madness; no blood stains its liquid glass; pale widows and starving orphans weep not burning tears into its depths; no drunkard's shrieking ghost from the grave curses it in the world of eternal despair. Beautiful, pure, blessed, and glorious. Speak out, my friends, would you exchange it for the demon's drink, alcohol?"
In Calvary Cemetery, Chicago, rests all that is mortal of Judge
Arrington.
"Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius, for
he was your kinsman!
Weed clean his grave, ye men of goodness, for
he was your brother!"