Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/68

 A Letter to Posterity. following two years I had a monopoly of the minor practice, and a fraction of that which was of some importance, the litigation of one sparsely settled mountain county which fell to my share was too inconsiderable to break the continuity of my studies, or rather my legal meditations. I was absorbed, and had visions. I saw Sovereignty. I beheld the Law in its majesty and beauty. I personified it as a queen or an empress. It was my sovereign mistress, my phantom lady. Oh, lady, lady, lady! Since I see you everywhere, I know you are a phantom, — A woman of the air! I know you are ideal, But yet you seem to me As manifestly real As anything can be. Oh, soul-enchanting shadow, In the day and in the night, As I gaze upon your beauty I tremble with delight. If men would hear mc whisper How beautiful you seem, They should slumber while they listen, And dream it in a dream; For nothing so exquisite Can the waking senses reach, — Too fair and soft and tender For the nicest arts of speech. In a pensive, dreamy silence I am very often found, As if listening io a rainbow Or looking at a sound. 'T is then I see your beauty Reflected through my tears, And I feel that I have loved you A thousand thousand years. My professional income for these two years, not counting insolvent fees, amounted to between thirty-five and fifty dollars per annum. Having no means with which to establish myself else where and wait for a clientage, I determined to suspend practice and engage in a more lucrative department of labor until I could accumulate a small capital. I sought and obtained employ ment as book-keeper in the State railroad office at Atlanta. In this situation I remained for three years, my compensation ranging from $40 to $66 per month. In the fourth year I was transferred to Milledgeville, then the capital of the State,

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being appointed one of the Governor's secreta ries, at a salary of $1,200. A new incumbent of the executive chair was inaugurated in November, 1851, and both my health and my politics need ing repairs, I returned to private life. I had saved enough from my earnings to supply me with the skeleton of a library, and to support me some months as a candidate for practice. In March, 1852, l>eing then nearly twenty-five years of age, I opened an office in Atlanta, and my thoughts and dreams were again of law and of nothing else. The phantom lady haunted me as before, and seemed as beautiful as ever. Indeed, though I had been cool, I had been constant in my devo tion to her through the four years I was out of her service. Clients gradually ventured within my chambers, and I soon had a moderate prosperity, due chiefly to acquaintance made in railroad cir cles during my three years' service as a railway clerk. In 1853 I was elected to the office of Solicitor-General for my judicial circuit, which embraced eight counties. My term of service was four years, in the last of which happened the crowning success of my whole life, — I was mar ried. Until 1861 I continued the practice in Atlanta. The first battle of Manassas, alias Bull Run, occurred while I was in a camp of instruc tion, endeavoring to acquire some skill in the noble art of homicide. By nature I am pacific. The military spirit has but a feeble development in my constitution. Nevertheless, I tried the for tunes of a private soldier for a short time in behalf of the Southern Confederacy. I was dis charged on account of ill health, after a few months1 service in Western Virginia, without hav ing shed any one's blood or lost any blood of my own. The state of my martial emotions was some what peculiar : I loved my friends, but did not hate my enemies. Without getting " fighting mad," I went out to commit my share of slaugh ter, being actuated by a solemn sense of duty, unmixed with spite or ill-will. When I consider how destructive I might have been had my health supported my prowess, I am disposed to con gratulate " gentlemen on the other side" upon my forced retirement from the ranks at an early period of the contest To the best of my remembrance, I was very reluctant but very determined to fight. However, all my military acts were utterly null and void. After my discharge from the army, I served the Confederacy in much of its legal bust