nsible to Garcia for all the money the Grand
Master of Avarice had made out of it. Mr. District Attorney was
apparently distressed, but resigned. Messrs. Biggs and Thatcher were
really distressed and combative.

And then, to advance a few years in this chronicle, began real
litigation with earnestness, vigor, courage, zeal, and belief on the
part of Biggs and Thatcher, and technicalities, delay, equivocation, and
a general Fabian-like policy on the part of Garcia, Roscommon, et al.
Of all these tedious processes I note but one, which for originality and
audacity of conception appears to me to indicate more clearly the temper
and civilization of the epoch. A subordinate officer of the District
Court refused to obey the mandate ordering a transcript of the record
to be sent up to the United States Supreme Court. It is to be regretted
that the name of this Ephesian youth, who thus fired the dome of our
constitutional liberties, should have been otherwise so unimportant as
to be confined to the dusty records of that doubtful court of which he
was a doubtful servitor, and that his claim to immortality ceased with
his double-feed service. But there still stands on record a letter by
this young gentleman, arraigning the legal wisdom of the land, which
is not entirely devoid of amusement or even instruction to young men
desirous of obtaining publicity and capital. Howbeit, the Supreme
Court was obliged to protect itself by procuring the legislation of
his functions out of his local fingers into the larger palm of its own
attorney.

These various processes of law and equity, which, when exercised
practically in the affairs of ordinary business, might have occupied a
few months' time, dragged, clung, retrograded, or advanced slowly
during a period of eight or nine years. But the strong arms of Biggs and
Thatcher held POSSESSION, and possibly, by the same tactics employed
on the other side, arrested or delayed ejectment, and so made and sold
quicksilver, while their opponents were spending gold, until Biggs,
sorely hit in the interlacings of his armor, fell in the lists, his
cheek growing waxen and his strong arm feeble, and finding himself in
this sore condition, and passing, as it were, made over his share in
trust to his comrade, and died. Whereat, from that time henceforward,
Royal Thatcher reigned in his stead.

And so, having anticipated the legal record, we will go back to the
various human interests that helped to make