will remain. I have heard you do most everything else, judge, and I am disposed to remain and hear you pray." Not the least disconcerted by this light rejoinder, Judge Broadnax asked him to kneel in prayer. It was on a hard, uncarpeted, ashen floor, and the prayer was long-rendered longer than usual by earnest supplications for mercy to his impenitent friend.

Calhoon's impiety was descanted upon at great length and his pardon was asked for—of the Being to whom all things were possible. But afterward Judge Broadnax parted very kindly from his old friend, and the latter went on his way considerably knee-worn by the hard floor.

"I made diligent inquiry," says Hon. James H. Bowden in a letter to the author, "but could hear of no one who had ever seen a likeness of Judge Broadnax. It is not so hard to get a picture, more or less distinct, of the moral and mental man. Indeed, the many anecdotes his old acquaintances easily recall, are told as illustrations of his peculiar modes of thought and feeling. They all present him as a man of active and persistent prejudices, which were roused whenever the religious or political opinions of others came close enough to his own to be struck at.

"Doubtless he was a man of something more than ordinary talent, and a lawyer of very much more than common acquirements. As a judge he had favorites; but while he manifested his personal preferences, he was able to forget them in making his decisions. In a case in which John J. Crittenden and Solomon P. Sharp were attorneys on different sides, he interrupted the latter so often by stating cases which Sharp regarded as irrelevant and intended merely to harass him, that he at last said: "May it please your Honor, if the heavens should fall, how many larks do you think you would catch?" Sharp was a Democrat, Broadnax a Whig, and it is not impossible the judge thought that political heresy ought to have been an indictable offense.

"From the marrow out he was an aristocrat. A man whose ancestors were not satisfactory had a poor chance for his esteem. He even formed an adverse opinion of a man who wore a cap such as had been worn by some good-for-nothing people he had known in Virginia. He seemed to think that merit always succeeds, and, therefore, poverty was in his eyes conclusive evidence of the lack of merit; he had no respect for a weak character; and poor people by their poverty proved their weakness.

"Mr. M- told me he was with the judge once when suffering from a disease which it was thought would prove fatal. Mrs. V, a neighbor, between whom and the judge social relations had been disturbed, came over to see him in his extremity. Mr. M— said: 'Judge, here is Mrs. V——, who has come over to see you.' The judge looked at her and turned his head away, saying: 'I don't know her.' Mr. M—, supposing he had

failed to recognize her, told him who she was-his next-door neighbor. At last he said: 'Oh, yes! I know who she is a woman of a great deal of pretension and very little piety.' Thereupon she began to lecture him on his short-comings, lamenting that he was so poorly prepared to meet his impending death; and she kept it up until he got so mad as to break up the disease. But he did not attribute his recovery to the reaction thus produced. He had sent for Mr. B, an old and reverend minister, who prayed for him. If that prayer doesn't cure me,' he said, 'it will not be

Mr. B's fault.'

"But for all these peculiarities, he was kind-hearted and ready to help the distressed. It seems that he was not averse to having his good deeds known-not that he published them, but he was not in any degree secretive in regard to them. He seems to be remembered more distinctly on account of his eccentricities and rough virtues than for serious faults. Many illustrative anecdotes could be given. For example: Meeting a poor man, who had a house full of children, he stopped him and asked if he wasn't named B. 'Well you're no account; you have no right to have children; you're a trifling fellow; all of which was merely the prelude to his directing B― to send one of his children to school at the judge's charge."

ALNEY MCLEAN.

By change of districts Judge McLean, of Greenville, in 1822, succeeded Judge Broadnax in the Breckinridge district. Mention has already been made of some of the events in his life in speaking of his congressional career. He was always an active politician. His accession to the bench and twenty years service there did not diminish his interest in public affairs.

He had served as a captain at the battle of New Orleans, and while not with the Kentucky troops, who, in the language of General Jackson, ingloriously fled," yet he resented this stigma cast upon his State. He was ever an opponent of "Old Hickory." Naturally. enough he was the friend of Mr. Clay. He was, while judge, chosen a Clay elector in 1824 and again in 1832. His taste for and activity in politics shocked those of his constituents specially sensitive as to the proprieties of the bench.

He was pronounced by one who knew him, and was well qualified to speak on the subject, "a model gentleman, of great courtesy and kindness to the junior members of the bar, an honored citizen, and a just judge." He died in office in 1841. Thirteen years later the State Legislature created a new county and named it in his honor.

* Chapter VI.

JOHN CALHOON.

Judge Calhoon was born in Henry county, Kentucky, in 1797. He had such advantages as a sprightly youth could make of the primitive schools of the Green river country, to which his father had removed at any early day. His father was an associate justice in Daviess county, while circuit courts had officers of that character.

Judge Calhoon for a considerable period was a deputy in the clerk's office of Ohio county. In 1817 he came to the bar and began practice at Hartford. In 1822 he was an applicant to the governor for the appointment of Commonwealth's attorney in the newly-created district of which Ohio was part. He had for a competitor Mr. Hardin's cousin, John Hardin McHenry, then of Leitchfield. Judge Calhoon met Governor Adair, at Frankfort, but soon learned that his aspirations were in vain—that the governor had already decided to appoint McHenry. It was, perhaps, to McHenry's advantage that his kinsman and preceptor, Martin D. Hardin, was near the throne—in the capacity of secretary of State. At the instance of Calhoon, the commission for his rival was prepared and he brought it to Leitchfield on his return he and McHenry being warm personal friends. Meeting the latter, Calhoon gravely informed him that he had obtained the appointment, whereat McHenry warmly congratulated him. "Yes," said Calhoon, "I have got it-here is my commission." McHenry glanced over it and discovering his own name in it, asked what that meant. "Why that is strange," said Calhoon, with feigned surprise, "it is evidently a mistake." But it was not possible to carry the deception further, and the next day McHenry accompanied his friend to Hartford, where he began a long, honorable, and successful career.

Judge Calhoon was for several years a member of the State Legislature; in 1820 as a member for Ohio county, and for Breckinridge county (to which he had removed) in 1829, 1830, and 1840. He served two terms in Congress (1835-39), defeating Thomas Chilton, a noted politician, for the first. Chilton and Calhoon had been competing candidates for Congress in 1827. The election was close, but the former had a small majority. The officers in declaring the result excluded a precinct for irregularity, and gave Calhoon the certificate. Both gentlemen started to Washington, but meeting at Louisville they agreed to resign and have a new election. At the new election Chilton's majority was decisive. On Judge McLean's death Calhoon was appointed circuit judge by Governor Letcher-an office he held until the new Constitution displaced him. For this appointment he had

again contested with Mr. McHenry, but this time with better success. At the election of 1851 he was defeated by the eminent jurist and statesman, Elijah Hise, for judge of the Appellate Court, after a brilliant canvass.

The county seat of McLean was called by his name, and there he spent the close of his life. Judge Calhoon was a life-long Whig—ever the friend and admirer of Mr. Clay. In a letter to Francis Brooke in 1839 Mr. Clay wrote: "Mr. Calhoon, of our State, being on a visit of business at Richmond, I have given him a letter of introduction to you. He is intelligent, shrewd, and trustworthy. You may give him all confidence." Hardin and Calhoon were also friends. They met at the bar and on the circuit as lawyers. Both brilliant-like attracted like. In 1829-30 they were both in the State Legislature, though in different houses. In 1835-37 they were colleagues in Congress. After Judge Calhoon was in failing health (not a year before his death) Mr. Hardin visited him and spent a day or so with him. On his return he observed to an acquaintance that the signs of death were visible on his old friend. Hardin himself had apparently good prospects for many years of life-yet they died within a month of each other-Hardin preceding. Judge Calhoon was in Louisville under treatment of an eminent physician when the end came, and his professional brethren of that city appropriately expressed the public loss at a meeting held at the time.

He was an orator, a wit, and an able, skillful, and accomplished lawyer. He was a profound judge of human nature, and at his best before the jury was omnipotent. It is related that he obtained the acquittal of a negro girl who had burned her master's house by depicting the cruelties of the latter to his slaves. His faculty for humor and power of repartee had many illustrations. In a case in Hancock Circuit Court, Judge McLean presiding, he and Mr. McHenry were on opposite sides. Calhoon suggested that an order had been made at a former day of the term, which opposing counsel denied. The record was examined and the order found to be as stated. Said Judge McLean, "the court must have been asleep or bereft of its senses when that order was made." "Possibly your honor is right, "retorted Calhoon, but my esteem for the court prevents me taking either side of the question."

66

After his career began he supplied in large measure the defects of early training. He was a large, handsome man-over six feet in height, and of fine presence and address.

M

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PROFESSIONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

R. HARDIN was in active practice as a lawyer during a period extending over forty-six years-1806-1852. During that period he was a regular and successful practitioner, not only in the courts of the county of Nelson (where he resided), but also in Hardin, Meade, Breckinridge, Grayson, Bullitt, Larue, Washington, Marion, Green, and Spencer-an area of country sufficiently large with its wealth and population-if in Europe and ruled by an emperor-to have ranked among the great Powers." But his labors were by no means confined to that territory. He frequently accepted retainers in other counties of the State, and not seldom beyond its limits. In 1837, during that period celebrated in one quarter, at least, as*"Flush Times in Mississippi and Alabama," he began regular visits to Jackson, Mississippi, for the purpose of practicing his profession. His sojourns there occurring during the winter months were repeated for a number of years, and were attended with profitable remuneration.

Political and official engagements were, as a rule, subordinated to professional interests and duties. In truth, the practice of the law was the business of his life, everything else being merely incidental. The chemist in his laboratory, the astronomer with his telescope, the ambitious general on the battlefield at the head of his army, none of these ever felt greater enthusiasm than he in the court-house dealing polemic blows in behalf of a client. His intellectual and moral nature was nevermore absolutely normal than when some protracted trial taxed his energies and resources to their utmost. He loved his profession as a sailor his ship and a soldier his sword. In its practice he employed all his powers, and his achievements there outshone all he accomplished elsewhere. He respected and reverenced those lawyers who by their talents brought honor to the guild. On the other hand, he regarded as interlopers those who, by creeping into the profession, had "missed their calling." For this latter class he lacked Christian charity. He was charged with antipathy to young lawyers, and, perhaps, was in

Flush Times, etc., by J. G. Baldwin.