Mr. Peyton was a firm believer in the doctrines of Christianity, and the experience of his life was that true happiness is only found in the observance of her precepts. He held that man must have some religion and the most perfect was that handed by Christ to his Apostles. He did not attach great importance to sects, and when asked whether he was a Catholic, Presbyterian or Episcopalian, answered that he did not find such words in the Testament—he was merely a Christian; he believed in what was revealed to us in the Bible and submitted himself with humility to the Almighty power. He was brought up in the Episcopalian church and died a member of it.
mr. peyton's originality and power of illustration.
"I recall a conversation," says one of Mr. P.'s biographers, "just after a protracted term of the Augusta Circuit Court, in which the late Judge Lucas P. Thompson and Gen. B. G. Baldwin bore the leading parts. Gen. B. was paying generous tribute to Mr. Peyton's force and originality. Judge Thompson remarked in substance, that he had never seen Mr. Peyton go through a cause deeply interesting and moving him, in which he did not utter some view or sentiment illuminated by genius, or at the least, some illustration marked by a bold originality; and he instanced two causes, tried at the last term—one a civil suit and a very heavy will case, in which he made a novel and scorching application of a familiar fable of Æsop. I forbear to give its details, because both the critic and his subject have passed from earth.
"In the same cause three signatures were to be identified and proved—that of the testator and also of the attending witnesses—all three having died since their attestation. Many witnesses were called to prove the genuineness of the three names. Opposing counsel sought to badger the witnesses by urging them to specify what peculiar marks there were in the handwriting and signatures, whereby they could speak so positively as to their identity and genuineness. This of course for the most part they could not do, and in the argument of the cause before the jury the same counsel strove to throw discredit and contempt upon those witnesses (all men of good character) for their failure and inability so to describe the quality and peculiar marks in the calligraphy of the signers as to show they were familiar with their handwriting. In his reply to those sallies of his opponents, Mr. Peyton swept away the whole airy fabric by a single happy illustration:
"'Gentlemen,' he said, 'You have often been assembled in crowds on some public or festive occasion. Your hats have been thrown pell-mell in a mass with perhaps a hundred other hats, all having a general resemblance. Suppose you had attempted to describe your hat to a friend or servant, so that he might go and pick it out for you. It has as many points for accurate description as a written signature—its color, height of crown, width of brim, its band, lining, &c. Do you think that friend or servant could by any possibility have picked out your hat for you? And yet when you went yourself, the moment your eye would light upon it, you instantly recognize it amongst a hundred. Familiarity with it has stamped its picture on your mind and the moment you see it, the hat fills and fits the picture on your mind as perfectly as the same hat fits your head.'
"The jury were evidently won, and gave full credence to the ridiculed witnesses.
"The other instance during the same term (cited by Judge Thompson) occurred in the celebrated prosecution of Naaman Roberts for forgery—in forging the name of Col. Adam Dickinson to a bond for six hundred dollars.
"The body of the bond was confessedly the handwriting of the prisoner at the bar. That was admitted. The signature was a tolerably successful attempt at imitating the peculiar handwriting of Adam Dickinson. But no expert could look at the whole paper and fail to see a general resemblance between the body of the instrument and the signature, raising a strong conviction in the mind that both proceeded from the same hand.
"The defense strongly insisted upon excluding the body of the instrument from the view of the witness, by covering it with paper, or turning it down, and so confining the view to the signature only—upon the familiar doctrine of the law of evidence forbidding a comparison of various handwritings of the party, as a ground for an opinion upon the identity of genuineness of the disputed writing. And this point was ably and elaborately argued by the prisoner's counsel.
"The learned prosecutor met it thus: