Depend upon it there is a great deal more kindly human sympathy between two openly-confessed scamps than there is in that calm, respectable recognition that you and I, dear reader, exhibit when we happen to oppose each other with our respective virtues.

“And ye’ll get the appale?”

“I will.”

And he did!  And by a singular coincidence got the District Attorneyship also.  And with a deed for one half of the “Red-Rock Rancho” in his pocket, sent a brother lawyer in court to appear for his client, the United States, as against himself, Roscommon, Garcia, et al.  Wild horses could not have torn him from this noble resolution.  There is an indescribable delicacy in the legal profession which we literary folk ought to imitate.

The United States lost!  Which meant ruin and destruction to the “Blue Mass Company,” who had bought from a paternal and beneficent Government lands which didn’t belong to it.  The Mexican grant, of course, antedated the occupation of the mine by Concho, Wiles, Pedro, et al., as well as by the “Blue Mass Company,” and the solitary partners, Biggs and Thatcher.  More than that, it swallowed up their improvements.  It made Biggs and Thatcher responsible to Garcia for all the money the Grand Master of Avarice had made out of it.  Mr. District Attorney was apparently distressed, but resigned.  Messrs. Biggs and Thatcher were really distressed and combative.

And then, to advance a few years in this chronicle, began real litigation with earnestness, vigor, courage, zeal, and belief on the part of Biggs and Thatcher, and technicalities, delay, equivocation, and a general Fabian-like policy on the part of Garcia, Roscommon, et al.  Of all these tedious processes I note but one, which for originality and audacity of conception appears to me to indicate more clearly the temper and civilization of the epoch.  A subordinate officer of the District Court refused to obey the mandate ordering a transcript of the record to be sent up to the United States Supreme Court.  It is to be regretted that the name of this Ephesian youth, who thus fired the dome of our constitutional liberties, should have been otherwise so unimportant as to be confined to the dusty records of that doubtful court of which he was a doubtful servitor, and that his claim to immortality ceased with his double-feed service.  But there still stands on record a letter by this young gentleman, arraigning the legal wisdom of the land, which is not entirely devoid of amusement or even instruction to young men desirous of obtaining publicity and capital.  Howbeit, the Supreme Court was obliged to protect itself by procuring the legislation of his functions out of his local fingers into the larger palm of its own attorney.