Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/641

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you know; it has been standing for some time. I should have sent it in sooner, I know ; I am very iiegHgent in money matters, but I do not Hke to inconvenience my patients."

"I remember, some seven or eight months ago, when sufiering with a cold, you advised me—"

"That is sufficient," broke in the judge. "You acknowledge the service. For that advice my charge is $100; in serious cases I never take less. I shall have to enter judgment against you for two dollars and fifty cents and costs, twelve dollars—it would l:ave been forty if taken to the other court—payable immediately, as it is a rule of court for all judgments to be settled at once."

There was no help for the mechanic but to pay the money.

John C. Murphy one day innocently borrowed without permission a horse belonging to William Gordon, a strong-minded magistrate of Yolo county. Hearing of it, the justice sent the constable after Murphy, who was brought before Gordon, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged that afternoon. The magistrate was in earnest; and it was with the utmost difficulty, and only by appealing to his sense of fairness, and to his reputation as a magistrate in criminating a man where the judge was prosecutor, that delay was gained. Finally the case was referred to another court, and the prisoner discharged, greatly to the disgust of Gordon who immediately resigned office, affirming he would no longer be judge where he could not administer justice.

In the days when women were scarce and justice easy, Thomas A. Springer, magistrate near Georgetown, El Dorado county, divorced a wife one afternoon, and married her to a new husband the same evening.