The two went on to where a camp-meeting was being held. " Here," thought the pious Walker, " I shall have him." He went to the inn, attired himself becomingly, and proceeded to the place of worship. What was his astonishment when he saw Yell in the midst of the congregation, leading the hymn, " How happy are they who their Saviour obey," in a rich, strong voice that Walker could never hope to rival! Walker looked, and saw the handwriting on the wall.1 Arkansas was admitted into the Union on June 16, 1836. By the terms of its first Constitution, which remained in force until the war, the judiciary was elected by the legislature; and at the first meeting of that body Daniel Ringo, Townsend Dickinson, and Thomas J. Lacy were chosen for Su preme Judges. The court was organized on the 24th of January, 1837. The population of the State at that time was probably not in excess of sixty thousand, and these were scattered in small settlements mostly along the courses of the rivers. There were scarcely any roads. At irregular intervals steamboats or barges would make their appearance, bring ing to the settlers the necessaries of civili zation, and carrying away the scant produce of the country. When the traveller left the rivers, he plunged into the wilderness; where game of all kinds —-deer, bears, wolves, and panthers — were almost as abundant as be fore the landing of Columbus. The town of Little Rock, whose striking position at the point where the last foot-hills of the Ozark Mountains meet the river marked it for the capital and largest city of the State, was a straggling village of wooden houses, containing in all probability less than a thousand inhabitants. The^State House was not yet completed; but the* court met in the northeast room, 1 It is proper to say that in the preparation of these sketches I have availed myself freely of the information contained in the histories of Arkansas by Mr. Halluni and Mr. Hempstead.
where it continued to hold its sittings until the present Chief-Justice took his seat upon the bench. The furniture was of rude pine wood, and saw-dust was strewn upon the bare floor. It was not a place where much was to be expected. A Supreme Court sit ing in a barren room in an unfinished build ing, in a poor village buried in the heart of the forest! And yet it was no ordinary body of men that was assembled there. It was a time when the nation was in its lusty youth, — when the spirit of adventure, the love of independence, was strong in the breasts of men. It was the age of our great orators, when men felt strongly, and ex pressed themselves in words that burned, because their hearers were still capable of being swayed by the fire of their eloquence. It was the age when the romantic move ment in literature was in its full develop ment, and when the sad smallness of the realistic school had not come to belittle the souls of men. It was a time of buoyancy, of expansion, — when the love of change, of adventure, the weariness of the convention alities of civilized life, the attraction of a future of unknown possibilities, were draw ing many of the ablest and most ambitious of the nation's youth to the distant West. Their hopes were often chimerical, and now that an iron civilization has forced us all into a common mould, we should perhaps smile at their strongly marked individuality; but of their abilities and their energy there can be no doubt. Indeed, it may well be questioned whether the bar of our court has ever been stronger than on the day when they met in that rude chamber to organize the judiciary of the State. The brilliant Crittenden had found an untimely grave, but others had come to take his place. There was Chester Ashley of Massachu setts, a man of commanding presence, des tined to accumulate a great fortune, to acquire a national reputation, to be one of the most distinguished members of the Senate of the United States, and the only man who was ever honored with the chairmanship of the
