“You have had quite an adventurous life,” we remarked.

“Why, sah,” he returned, “if the history ob my life was wrote up it would be wuth ten thousand dollars.”

While regarding the valuation as somewhat high, we yet regretted our inability to profit by this unexpected though promising business-opportunity, and soon our attention was diverted by a glimpse of the judge’s adobe, and that person himself standing by his carriage and awaiting our by no means rapid approach.  He was about to go to town, and the oats were being sown by an individual of the same nationality as our driver, to whom the latter addressed such encouraging remarks as “Git right ‘long dere now and sow dat oats.  Don’t stand roostin’ on de fence all day, like as you had the consumshing.  You look powerful weak.  Guess mebbe I’d better come over dere and show you how.”

[Illustration:  The judge.]

Judge Bradford’s career has been a chequered one, and it has fallen to his lot to dispense justice in places and under circumstances as various as could well be imagined.  Born in Maine in 1815, he has lived successively in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado, and held almost every position open to the profession of the law.  From the supreme bench of Colorado he was twice called to represent the Territory as delegate to Congress.  In 1852, when he was judge of the Sixth Judicial District of Iowa, his eccentricities of character seem to have reached their full development.  He exhibited that supreme disregard for dress and the various social amenities which not infrequently betray the superior mind.  Never were his clothes known to fit, being invariably too large or too small, too short or too long.  As to his hair, the external evidences were of a character to disprove the rumor that he had a brush and comb, while the stubby beard frequently remained undisturbed upon the judicial chin for several weeks at a time.  The atrocious story is even told that once upon a time, when half shaven, he chanced to pick up a newspaper, became absorbed in its contents, forgot to complete his task, and went to court in this most absurdly unsymmetrical condition.  But, despite these personal eccentricities, a more honest or capable judge has rarely been called upon to vindicate the majesty of the law.  Upon the bench none could detect a flaw in his assumption of that dignity so intimately associated in all minds with the judiciary, but, the ermine once laid aside for the day, he was as jolly and mirthful as any of his frontier companions.  Judge Bradford was no advocate, but by the action of a phenomenal memory his large head was stored so full of law as to emphasize, to those who knew him, the curious disproportion between its size and that of his legs and feet.  These latter were of such peculiarly modest dimensions as to call to mind Goldsmith’s well-known lines, though in this case we must, of necessity, picture admiring frontiersmen standing round while