Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/66

 The

Vol. IV.

No. 2.

Green

BOSTON.

Bag.

February, 1892.

A LETTER TO POSTERITY. SOME humorous compliments fabricated may possibly reach you. In that event I bespeak by the good humor of the " Albany- for it your attention for one moment per generaLaw Journal " 1 have rendered me conspicu | tion, which, on a fair division of your valuable time, will be my full share and something over. ous in the eyes of that restless part of man kind, the seekers after photographs and I claim no vested right to your notice. If I have biography. To supply photographs is only any color of title, it is contingent upon the quality of my services to the public as a member of the to increase the cost of living, but to concoct Supreme Court of Georgia. Of these services autobiography involves psychological dis there is documentary evidence, though of a per tress, especially to a person whose stock of ishable nature, in certain volumes of the Georgia materials is no larger than mine. Reports,1 to which I refer with unaffected diffi One of the applicants for a sketch of my dence. I must not be understood as requesting life insists that I ought to lay open my you to read all of my opinions, but on the con career and expose my true inwardness to trary, I give friendly warning not to read half of posterity. Protesting that my reluctance them, unless you desire to undergo a certain drowsy has been overcome by his importunity (that experience which is commonly called being bored. is, by an irresistible force impinging upon In that state of feeling scores of them were written. a movable body), and that it would never It is not to be expected that the reader would have yielded to anything less powerful, I have suffer less than the writer. I have a theory that written with my own hand the following such writings might be terse, crispy, graceful, ani epistle to that portion of the human race mated, and entertaining; but mine afford few speci mens of that kind. Yet, to treat them with justice, for whose enlightenment my kind-hearted I am sensible that they are not more dry than tormentor is so anxious. those of some other judges. I came to the bench as an Associate Justice of Atlanta, Ga., a. d. 1891. To PosTERriY : Greeting. I regret that I shall be the Supreme Court in the summer of 1875, and absent when you arrive, and that we shall never resigned early in 1880, worn down and tired out. My last deliverance was " In the Matter of Rest," 2 meet. I should be pleased to make your acquaint a brief judicial poem. I would conciliate the crit ance, but it is impossible to await your coming, the ical taste of future generations by craving pardon, present state of the law of nature being opposed to such dilatory proceedings. There is no hope of not for the verses, but for the doubtful decorum amending that law in time for my case. Though of reciting them from a seat traditionally sacred to aware of your approach collectively as a body of the oracles of prose. The loss of my ability to respectable citizens, I shall never hear of a single labor without great fatigue made me long for rest, individual among you. Nor is it likely you will but did not weaken my conviction that labor is the twin brother of happiness, — the moral of the ever hear of me by name, fame, or reputation, un less with the aid of a microphone of extraordinary poem. Others might have suggested it as well or power. Nevertheless, if the highways between better in prose, but I could not. Perhaps I ought the ages remain in good condition and repair, this to confess that divers other poems (happily none communication, though virtually anonymous, 1 54 to 64 Ga. 77 to 83, and some not yet published. 1 See, besides other instances, vol. xxiii. p. 264. - 64 Ga. 452. 7