The bench and bar of San Jose from the first numbered as many able jurists as might be found in any thriving town of equal size in America, To the more refined gravity of sedate societies their manner might scuui a little coarse, and their expletives irreverent, but their law, and the practical application of it, could not be questioned. The court of sessions of San Jose, in 1850, as then organized, exercised jurisdiction in criminal cases of the highest degree. Judge Rogers was a large, broad-featured, big-mouthed, Johnsonian sort of man, able, profane, and almost brutal in his vulgarity, yet withal, below the superficial asperities of his nature, genial and sympathetic.
One day It became his painful duty to sentence a INIexican who had been tried before him to death. The prisoner did not speak English, and the judge deemed it proper that the sentence, as delivered, should be done into Spanish. The clerk of the court being competent was asked to act as interpreter, but as he was a man of shrinking sensibilities, he expressed abhorrence at the thought of being the medium of comnmnicatino- the death intelligcence to a human beino-. There are moods in the temper of strong men in which impediment only excites determination. All early Californians had a smattering of Spanish. When the clerk declined the ofiice of translator, with a big round oath Judge Rogers swore he would make the man understand.
"You, sir, get up 1 levantate ! arriba! Sabe? You been tried; tried by jury; damn you! sabe? You have been found—what the devil's the Spanish for guilty ? Never mind—sabe ? You have been found guilty, and you are going to be hanged; sabe ? Hanged? Entiende?"
The Mexican was as courageous as the judge was coarse. Evidently he did understand, for with the characteristic nonchalance of his race, he replied, illustrating by signs and gurglings the hanging and choking process;
