Eugenius Nesbitt—Washington Poe—Yelverton P. King—Preparing to Receive the Court—Walton Tavern, in Lexington—Billy Springer, of Sparta—Freeman Walker—An Augusta Lawyer—A Georgia Major—Major Walker's Bed—Uncle Ned—Discharging a Hog on His Own Recognizance —Morning Admonition and Evening Counsel—A Mother's Request— Invocation—Conclusion.
To-day I parted from Eugenius Nesbitt and Washington Poe, two of only four or five of those who commenced life and the practice of law with me in the State of Georgia. We had just learned of the death of Y.P. King, of Greensboro, Georgia, who was only a few years our senior. The four of us were young together, and were friends, but I had been separated from them for more than forty years. Yet the ties of youthful attachment remained, and together we mourned the loss of our compeer and companion in youth.
I was a member of the Legislature when Judge Nesbitt, by act of the Legislature, was admitted to the Bar, he having not attained his majority, and by a rule could not be admitted in the ordinary manner. Nesbitt, though so young, was known through the up-country of Georgia as a young man of more than ordinary promise. The same was the case with Poe. They had so deported themselves as to win the confidence and affection of the wise and the good. There were some in the Legislature who were lawyers, and who conscientiously believed that no one so young as Nesbitt was could be sufficiently matured mentally to properly discharge the duties of the profession. These men themselves were naturally dull, and ignorantly supposed all minds, like their own, were weak in youth, and could only be strengthened and enlightened by time and cultivation. They honestly opposed the bill admitting the applicant. There was one though, who held no such ridiculous notions—himself an example to the contrary—but from some cause he strenuously opposed the bill. It was the celebrated Seaborne Jones, one of the very ablest lawyers the State ever produced. It seemed ever a delight to him to bear heavily upon young lawyers. It would be difficult to divine his motives. He was at the head of the Bar, unapproached by competition, especially by any young man.
I was young and ardent, and felt offended at this opposition, and gave all the aid I could to the passage of the bill. Fortunately for our cause, there were many young lawyers in the Legislature, and these were a unit, and we succeeded in carrying the measure. From that day Nesbitt seemed nearer to me than any other of the Bar in our circuit. We have been separated over forty years, he remaining in his native State, while I have wandered away to the West. Still that warmth of heart toward him has never died out. And now, when both are on the grave's brink, we meet, not to renew, but to find the old flame burning still. King, Nesbitt, and myself were born in the same county, and our ancestors worshipped at the same church—Old Bethany—and to-day we recalled the fact as we mourned the death of our early friend and compeer at the Bar.
Time has swept on. Our children are gray with years. One by one, all who were at the Bar with us are gone, save two or three, and to-morrow we shall be gone. But the oblivious past has not curtained from memory yet the incidents and the men of that past, and while I may I will bear testimony to these, and to the men who were their chief actors. Nesbitt justified in his subsequent life all that his friends and the public hoped from him. In every relation of life he has done his duty ably, honestly, and purely. As a member of the Legislature, of Congress, as a judge of the Supreme Court, as a worthy member of the Presbyterian Church, and, above all, as a father, husband, and citizen, he has been good, wise, and faithful. Is not his measure full? Who deserves it more? We were sad to-day. One said, "King is dead." "Yes," answered the other, and we were silent. Memory was busy. We could not talk. In his office, where yet he wears the harness of the law, surrounded by musty, well-thumbed books, and piles of papers with hard judicial faces, we sat and mused. Perhaps we thought of the past, when those to whom eternity is a reality were with us and joyous. At such times the mind turns quickly back to youth's joys, nor lingers along the vista of intervening time. All of that day will revive, but these memories sadden the heart, and we are fain to think, but not to talk. Perhaps we wondered what were the realizations of the dead. What are they? Who knows, except the dead? Do the dead know? Unprofitable thought! Faith and hope only buoy the heart, and time brings the end. Well, time has whitened our heads, but not indurated our hearts, and time is now as busy as when in the joyousness of youth we heeded not his flight, and to-morrow may bring us to the grave. Ah! then we shall know the secret, and we will keep it, as all who have gone before. Oh, what a blessed hope is that which promises that we shall, forgetful of the cares and sorrows of time, meet those whom death has refined, and be happy as they in eternity! But the doubt, and then the fear! But why the fear? We come into time without our knowledge or consent, fulfil a destiny, and without our knowledge or consent die out of time. This is the economy of man's life, and was given him by his Creator. Then why should he fear? If it is wise for him to be born, to live, it is surely wise that he should die, since that is equally a part of his economy. Then why fear? Reason is satisfied, but instinct fears.
Yelverton P. King never removed from the county of his birth, nor abandoned his profession, remaining upon the soil of his nativity and among those with whom he had been reared, maintaining through life the character of an upright man. Many memories are connected with his name. When we were young at the Bar, there were as our associates very many who attained eminence as lawyers, and fame as politicians; but these distinctions are not connected with the endearing attributes which make them so cherished in memory—the incidents of social intercourse, the favors, the kindnesses of good neighborhood, the sympathies of young life, the unity of sentiment, the sameness of hopes, little regarded at the moment; but oh! how they were rooting in the heart, to bear, away in the coming time, these fruits of memory, in which is the most of happiness when age whitens the head, and the heart is mellowed with the sorrows of time.
Though all were affectionate and social in their intercourse with each other, yet each had his favorites, because of greater congeniality in nature, more intense sympathies, and more continual intercourse. Little incidents were of frequent occurrence which drew these continually closer, until friendships ripened into confidences—some more special favorites of some, and some more general favorites of all. This latter was Y.P. King; and yet this favoritism was never very demonstrative, but perhaps the stronger and more permanent for this. Such, too, was Nesbitt; the older members of the profession loved him, and those of his own age were unenvious and esteemed him.
Our circuit consisted of seven counties, and the ridings were spring and fall, occupying about two months each term. In each courthouse town was a tavern or two. These houses of entertainment were not then dignified with the sonorous title of hotel. The proprietors were usually jolly good fellows, or some staid matronly lady, in black gown and blue cap, and they all looked forward with anxious delight to the coming of court week. Every preparation was made for the judge and lawyers. Beds were aired and the bugs hunted out. Saturday previous to the coming Monday was a busy day in setting all things to rights, and the scrubbing-broom was heard in consonance with calls to the servants to be busy and careful, as Sally and Nancy sprang to their work with a will. With garments tucked up to their knees, they splashed the water and suds over the floors, strangers to the cleansing element until then for months ago. A new supply of corn and fodder was arriving from the country; stables and stable lots were undergoing a scraping eminently required for the comfort of decent beasts, who gave their lives in labor to exacting man. The room usually appropriated to the Bench and Bar was a great vagabond-hall, denominated the ball-room, and for this purpose appropriated once or twice a year. Along the bare walls of this mighty dormitory were arranged beds, each usually occupied by a couple of the limbs of the law, and sometimes appropriated to three. If there was not a spare apartment, a bed was provided here for the judge. And if there were no lawyers from Augusta, this one was distinguished by the greatest mountain of feathers in the house. Here assembled at night the rollicking boys of the Georgia Bar, who here indulged, without restraint, the convivialities for which they were so celebrated. Humor and wit, in anecdotes and repartee, beguiled the hours; and the few old taverns time has spared, could they speak, might narrate more good things their walls have heard, than have ever found record in the Noctes Ambrosianæ of the wits of Scrogie.
There are but few now left who have enjoyed a night in one of these old tumble-down rooms, with A.S. Clayton, O.H. Prince, A.B. Longstreet, and John M. Dooly. Here and there one, old, tottering, and gray, lives to laugh at his memories of those chosen spirits of fun. Yes, that is the word—fun—for these ancients possessed a fund of mirth-exciting humor, combined with a biting wit, which, in the peregrinations of a long life, I have met nowhere else. Were I to select one of these inns, it would be the old Walton Tavern, in the mean little hamlet of Livingston in Oglethorpe County, or the old house, kept long and indifferently, by that mountain of mortal obesity, Billy Springer, in Sparta, Hancock County. It was here, and when Springer presided over the fried meat and eggs of this venerable home for the weary and hungry, after a night of it, that all were huddled to bed like pigs in a sty.
This bulky Boniface was polite to all, but especially to an Augusta lawyer. Freeman Walker, of that ilk, usually attended this court, and was the great man of the week. A man of splendid abilities and polished manners, dressed and deporting himself like a gentleman, as he was, he shone among the lesser lights which orbed about him, a star of the first magnitude. The choice seat, the choice bed, and choice bits at the table, were ever for Major Walker. Big Billy, with his four hundred and ten pounds of adipose flesh, was always behind Major Walker's chair. He was first served; the choicest pieces of the pig were pointed out, cuts from the back and side bones and breast were hunted from the dish of fried chicken, a famous Georgia dish, for Major Walker. It was a great thing in those days in Georgia, to live in a little town of three thousand inhabitants, and wear store clothes. It was this and these which made a Georgia major.