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The Green Bag.


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offence of " walking the streets with a university man." The court has granted the application for rule nisi, declaring that no immorality was charged; and the municipality has determined to present a bill to Parliament that will deprive the university of its authority in such cases.

Jteeent fiDeatftf. Judge Silas M. Clark, a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, died on November 20. He was born at Elderton, Penn., in 1834. After grad uation from Jefferson College at Canonsburg, in 1852, he was Principal of Indiana Academy for two years, and then became a student of the law under William M. Stewart of Indiana County, and was admitted in 1857 to the bar of that county. He was a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1872-1873, and was among the foremost in the practice of his profession until his election, in 1882, as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. The strong char acteristic of Judge Clark, as a lawyer, was his readiness to seize and present the essential fea tures of each case, which he always did so clearly and forcibly as to be easily understood by layman and lawyer alike. Eloquent in speech, he knew when he had said enough, and whether arguing a question of law before the court, or a question of fact before a jury, he presented his case simply, concisely, and without unnecessary waste of words. In his death the State loses the services of one of its purest and able representative men. (An excellent portrait of Judge Clark was pub lished in the February (1891) number of the "Green Bag.") Judge Rufus Percival Ranney died at Cleve land, Ohio. December 6. He was born at Blandford, Mass., Oct. 13, 1813. When he was fourteen years old. his father moved to a farm in Freedom. Portage County, Ohio, where Rufus was brought up with but small educational advantages, yet by manual work and teaching he obtained the means to fit himself for college. He studied for a short time at Western Reserve College, which he left to study law in Jefferson, Ohio. He was admitted to the bar in 1838, and was taken into partnership

by Benjamin F. Wade. In 1845 he opened an office in Warren, Trumbull County. He was chosen by the Legislature a Judge of the Supreme Court, and in 1851 was elected by the people, under the new Constitution, to the same office, which he held till 1857. In that year he was ap pointed United States District Attorney for Ohio, and in 1859 was defeated as the Democratic can didate for governor. In 1862 he was again elected a Judge of the Supreme Court, but in 1864 re signed and resumed practice in Cleveland. He was at one time President of the State Bar Asso ciation, and in 1875 was President of the Ohio Board of Managers of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. The venerable jurist, George W. Dunn,1 Mis souri's most noted nisi prius judge, died peace fully at his country home, one mile north of Richmond, Mo., on Saturday evening, Oct. 24, 1891. For more than half a century Judge Di-nn was a conspicuous figure in the jurisprudence of his adopted State; and few are the lawyers who have been at Missouri's Bar, for any length of time, who will not cherish tender memories of "The Old Roman," as he was called by his ad mirers long before that title was given to Judge Thurman of Ohio. To the older members of the bar he was courteous and patient in hearing, and to the young beginner he was ever ready with kindness and encouragement. He was, like most of our great men, born a farmer's son, near Harrodsburg. Mercer County. Ky., Oct. 15, 18 15. His father, Maj. Lemuel Dunn, a pioneer farmer of the Blue Grass State, justly celebrated for its beautiful women, brilliant orators, and eminent jurists, was a son of Michael Dunn, a native of Virginia, and a soldier under Washington in the war for American independence, whose parents came to Virginia from Ireland. His mother was Sarah Read Campbell, from an old Virginia fam ily, also of Irish descent. From this ancestry came Judge Dunn's strong sense of justice, yet always tempered with mercy. Major Dunn died in 1829, when the subject of this sketch was in his fourteenth year, leaving his family but little besides the farm on which they resided; and the future jurist, being the eldest of several children, 1 For much of the data for this sketch the writer is indebted to an obituary in the " Richmond Conservator." by Hon. George W. Trigg, its editor.