Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/309

Rh ; an opinion prepared as a dissenting opinion, but which won over one of the majority, and was made the opinion of the court. He attacks vigorously the doctrine that a creditor is to be treated as a hostile enemy who is robbing his unfortunate debtor. The writer is replying to the position taken in Freeman on Co-tenancy, where the author uses the illustration that a tenant in common may lawfully occupy the whole land, building his house upon it, and planting shrubs and flowers about it. Says Judge Snodgrass in his opinion : —

"A man who yields up his homestead to pay his honest debts plants a flower in his rented lawn that will bloom while he lives as a token of honor, and shed a fragrance above his grave when he is gone that will endure forever. It will be a treasure to his children and his children's children; when the shrubs he might have planted in a co-tenancy which he was able to keep only by allowing his debts to remain unpaid, would have decayed by lapse of time, and been blown away in the revilings of those he defeated or defrauded of justice by refusing to render to them their own."

William C. Folkes was born at Lynchburg, Va., June 8, 1845. He was of English descent. When he was only sixteen years old, and yet a school-boy, the Civil War broke out. He at once enlisted in Moorman's Battery, enrolled at Lynchburg, and took part in the first battle of Manassas. He was severely wounded in that engagement. After his recovery, he rejoined the army. He lost a leg in the bloody charge at Malvern Hill. Notwithstanding he was thus disabled, he continued in active service until the close of the war. The war ended, he again took up his collegiate studies at Chapel Hill, N.C., graduating in a short while. He thereupon entered the law department of the University of Virginia, taking his degree in 1866. He determined to seek a newer community as a location, and he emigrated to Memphis, Tenn. The bar of that city had drawn to it the best of the talent of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas, and was undoubtedly the ablest in the South. The young Virginian took good rank, and soon commanded a large practice. He married Mary, the daughter of Judge Archibald Wright, and became a member of the firm of Wright & Folkes. He continued in full practice down to the year 1886. The Memphis Bar then presented his name as a candidate for Supreme Judge. He was a man of fine appearance and great courtliness of manner; and a personal canvass of the State, added to the very earnest support of the Memphis Bar, resulted in his securing more than two thirds of the whole vote of the nominating convention on the first ballot, over several most worthy and popular opponents.

None of his colleagues set themselves to the heavy task before them with greater energy than he. His loss of a leg made his habits of life sedentary in a large measure and work literally became both his exercise