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 The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. of deer-hunting, and he accordingly substi tuted the highly dissimilar occupation of making his own miniature in profile. As a iikeness it was found by his friends to be not a bad one, and it has been said to show a pronounced talent for the art, though, naturally, a talent somewhat in the raw. This unschooled tendency never died out in him; and the consulting augurs who after

wards sat with Gibson were from time to time regaled by his improvised cartoons of the advocates who craved their attention in the court-room; and the man who cleaned his drawer out after he had been sitting at Nisi Prius used to find numerous drawings which he had made on slips of paper during the trial of causes. In 1803 Mr. Gib son, on motion of his preceptor Mr. Duncan (afterwards Judge), was admitted to the bar of Cumberland County. He went for atime to practise in the WILLIAM M. town of Beaver, which he approached for the first time astride a diminutive horse, his long legs nearly aground. He was encoun tered by a rustic upon a large white horse. The rustic was of a size appropriate to Gib son's pony, and pointed out how mutually fitting an exchange would be. Gibson hear kened to the argument, paid a bonus, let his pony go, and rode on his new white horse to the tavern, whose landlord expressed surprise at the rider's willingness to trust himself to an animal that was stone blind. He told a iriend in later life that when he went from Carlisle to Beaver to settle and practise law,

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his hours had been spent in "reading East's Reports and shooting black squirrels." Of Gibson's practice in country towns there seems little to relate, but that he filled the frequent leisure it brought him with another surprisingly irrelevant pursuit, that of play ing the violin. Judge Porter suggests an imaginary sketch of the huge young barris ter bending over his music in his solitary office while the rare client knocked at the door unheard. Music, like drawing, never deserted Gibson; but with his violin he ac complished more seri ous and experienced execution than he ever got from his paint brush. By blood he was kin to Benjamin West, and to this his bent towards art may be possibly traced. When thirty, he was sent to the Assem bly by the Democrats. Judge Porter records that he then was "con siderably over six feet, with a muscular, well proportioned frame, and a countenance exMEREDITH. pressingstrongcharacter and manly beauty." From this time his contemporaries gave him an increasing attention, and it was not long before he found himself appointed President Judge of the eleventh judicial district. It was remarked that he showed much energy in performing his duties, but a somewhat hasty judgment. Haste was a temptation that years never wholly removed from him. Some three years later he was called to fill the place of his old friend Brackenridge as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He was now thirty-six; and Judge Porter, of whose essay be it respectfully said that