Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/96

 The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

75

that Gibson said in one page all that Parker the note is written has become current legal said in ten, and that it has never been better coin : " A negotiable bill or note is a courier said by any judge. without luggage." This is the Judge's mar It was becoming gradually evident that the ginal note: "The printer will please print growth of the State made too much work for this luggage, and not baggage according to a three judges, and in 1826 the Supreme Court barbarous American usage." Yet it is known was increased to five. The year following that Judge Gibson had a horror of the pen; Gibson succeeded Tilghman, and became that he never wrote if he could escape doing Chief- Justice of Pennsylvania. He was then so, and that when necessity compelled he

not quite forty-seven. went about cooking His style had been the forthcoming sen growing steadily more tences in his head, and brilliant and charac not until they were teristic, and certain of done did he sit down, his own remarks re then writing without veal bis estimation of erasure. " Such vigor, it. He frequently said clearness, and preci he was sorry that he sion of thought were had never made a habit never before united of writing down the with the same felicity interesting characters of diction. . . . He and incidents that he made others under had seen, but did not stand him because he believe he had the gift understood himself. of expressing what he . . . He never sacri had thought worthy of ficed sense to sound, note. And he named or preferred ornament a friend of his, a to substance. . . . He Western lawyer, whom had one faculty of a he deemed the man for great poet, that of ex it, — the man to bring pressing a thought in out in delicate touches language which could and shades of thought never afterwards be EDWARD M. PAXSON. the things that had paraphrased." These struck himself as de sentences are from the serving to be recorded. Many a pen less art fine eulogy pronounced upon him by his suc ful than Gibson's has ventured to set down cessor, Chief-Justice Black; and for a eulogy striking incidents, and has succeeded fairly there is probably more justness in it than in well. But the Judge evidently had set for most compositions of the sort. For instance: himself a severe standard. A friend asked " Yet he committed errors. ... A few were him, " Is that very concise style of yours caused by inattention, a few by want of time, perfectly natural to you, or did you acquire a few by preconceived notions which led him it? " " It is the result of studious effort," he astray." It has been thought that Judge replied. And as evidence of the value he Black had a turn of mind very like Gibson's, must have set upon each word, a curious and that there was much intellectual sympa note written in the margin of his manuscript thy between them. Certainly a kinship is to opinion in Overton v. Tyler, 3 Barr, 346, may be discerned in their writings. That Gibson be made public. The sentence against which was physically lazy from his young days up,