s mighty dormitory were arranged beds, each usually
occupied by a couple of the limbs of the law, and sometimes
appropriated to three. If there was not a spare apartment, a bed was
provided here for the judge. And if there were no lawyers from
Augusta, this one was distinguished by the greatest mountain of
feathers in the house. Here assembled at night the rollicking boys of
the Georgia Bar, who here indulged, without restraint, the
convivialities for which they were so celebrated. Humor and wit, in
anecdotes and repartee, beguiled the hours; and the few old taverns
time has spared, could they speak, might narrate more good things
their walls have heard, than have ever found record in the _Noctes
Ambrosianae_ of the wits of Scrogie.

There are but few now left who have enjoyed a night in one of these
old tumble-down rooms, with A.S. Clayton, O.H. Prince, A.B.
Longstreet, and John M. Dooly. Here and there one, old, tottering, and
gray, lives to laugh at his memories of those chosen spirits of fun.
Yes, that is the word--fun--for these _ancients_ possessed a fund of
mirth-exciting humor, combined with a biting wit, which, in the
peregrinations of a long life, I have met nowhere else. Were I to
select one of these inns, it would be the old Walton Tavern, in the
mean little hamlet of Livingston in Oglethorpe County, or the old
house, kept long and indifferently, by that mountain of mortal
obesity, Billy Springer, in Sparta, Hancock County. It was here, and
when Springer presided over the fried meat and eggs of this venerable
home for the weary and hungry, after a night of it, that all were
huddled to bed like pigs in a sty.

This bulky Boniface was polite to all, but especially to an Augusta
lawyer. Freeman Walker, of that ilk, usually attended this court, and
was the great man of the week. A man of splendid abilities and
polished manners, dressed and deporting himself like a gentleman, as
he was, he shone among the lesser lights which orbed about him, a star
of the first magnitude. The choice seat, the choice bed, and choice
bits at the table, were ever for Major Walker. Big Billy, with his
four hundred and ten pounds of adipose flesh, was always behind Major
Walker's chair. He was first served; the choicest pieces of the pig
were pointed out, cuts from the back and side bones and breast were
hunted from the dish of fried chicken, a famous Georgia dish, for
Major Walker. It was a great thing in those days in Georgia, to