sits. This might be termed a modern in stance of what the unlettered sometimes call fragrant delight. A brief anecdote of Mr. Tilghman shows that he too had his notion of decorum. One day the Court broke up without formally ad journing, the other judges scattering in a haphazard and miscellaneous manner. " Gen tlemen," said the Chief-Justice, mildly, from his chair, "shall we adjourn, run away, or resign?!' It should also be recorded to Judge Tilghman's honor, that he devised a scheme by which his slaves were gradually freed. He died on Monday, April 30, 1827. Since his work ended, sixty-four years are gone, and in that time has gone also all recollection of him that was contemporary. No one to-day goes down the street to court who can declare from a living experience of his excellence that " it will be long, very long, before we open our eyes " upon his like. So Tilghman's voice and his way and his un written words, and what of a man will sur vive him for the little while those who kept his company are still here to exchange mem ories in the comfortable evenings, are all passed into silence. But quietly the books preserve and proclaim his unshaken and per petual worth; and of him there is but a sin gle verdict, — that he was the ideal ChiefJustice, the soundest that Pennsylvania has had, the one whose light shines steadily on after the more brilliant blaze of reputations less remote has waxed and waned. Of him there is a single verdict; of his picturesque successor there are two. John Bannister Gibson was commissioned May 18, 1827. After him the system changed, and the office was made elective, — " the heaviest curse," observes Judge Porter, " which in my judgment ever fell upon the people." A short sketch of Gibson, by Colonel Roberts, has lately been published, and from it are taken the account of his early life and certain anecdotes. But most anec dotes here to be given come straight from those who talked with Gibson once, and to whom many thanks are due for their friendly
interest in providing new personal touches that reveal the judge as a man. This country boy was born, Nov. 18, 1780, in a steep, empty region among the moun tains of Cumberland, where civilization had not begun to infest and destroy the healthy wilderness. Of this existence, shut away from towns and trade, he writes that " fox hunting, fishing, gunning, rifle-shooting-, swimming, wrestling and boxing with the natives of my age, were my exercises and my amusements." Let it be said, shortly, that he had a grandfather six feet eight inches high, and that his military father when in town " would be invited to four parties of an evening, and wherever he went, the men would follow, so much was he admired." So young Gibson came rightly by his stature and his vivid personal attraction. It is plain that these days in the playground of the woods set that common ancestor of man, whom Mr. Stephenson has so well named " Probably Arboreal," stirring in the veins of the fox-hunter and fisherman. He never could have forgotten them wholly. The luxurious charm of their irresponsibility lurked and tingled somewhere in him, and long afterwards bubbled out into his solitary attempt at verse-making. Seeing his birth place once again was the direct cause of this; and when we find him speaking of " the shade of the wildwood " and a " fnwn-footed urchin," we surprise the man of hot court rooms inwardly turning from their daily stench to the time when he was less useful to his fellows, but breathed a cleaner air. When he was about seventeen, he entered Jefferson College, Washington County, and there was singled out by the discerning eye of Judge Brackenridge, of whom mention has been made in connection with ChiefJustice Shippen's impeachment. Bracken ridge befriended him in a manner he never for got. A few years later, while still a law student at Carlisle, he performed the surprisingly irrelevant feat of painting a very tolerable portrait of himself A rainy holiday at home with his mother had kept him from his plans
