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EARLY CALIFORNIA JURISTS.
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places made few friends. There was nothing disreputable at that time in being seen in a saloon, and a man would be regarded mean who enjoyed night after night the shelter, light, and society of the place without ever spending a dollar there. Judges of course frequented drinking saloons; men who never patronized such places were seldom made judges. A judge's morals were his own, they said ; his official acts alone belonged to the public.

The men of chivalry, who indulged in the duels and street encounters, being of all men devoid of the pure article, were of all others the most sensitive to what they called their honor. It so happened among those of them w^ho were judges that their ideas of honor accorded with equitable decisions; though like many professors in other directions their practice was in no wise in keeping with thetr tenets. But for the most part chivalrous judges, though they might indulge freely in drunkenness, gambling, and licentiousness, when no one was at hand to bribe them, were just and equitable magistrates.

It so happened again that the term gentleman implied fair judgment; though this by no means was always the case. It was with them as with the pompous and punctilious of other ages who had nothing but their pride to* be proud of As to what constitutes a gentleman depends entirely upon time and place. George the Fourth of England, voluptuary, debauchee, egotist, and false-hearted, was called in his day the first rrentleman in Europe. Later, dandyism, with some intellectual pretensions, in the person of the Frenchman Count d' Orsay. became the orthodox type. To dress well, tc riue well, to swim, shoot, box, wrestle, and play cricket well, were the accomplishments that crowned the gentleman. Lord Chesterfield's gentlemen were made of manners and hollowhearted ness. California's judges were all of them gentlemen, howsoever corrupt or debased they were.

While in the cities, and in the higher courts of the