Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/143

good judgment in the management of cases, it is related that in the second year of his practice he was retained to defend a client before a country justice on a charge of as Death has no terrors, fears, nor pains, From life to bar my way : sault and battery. After the complainant's I go as from Siberian plains testimony was all in, he did not deem it suf To gardens of Cathay." ficient to convict his client, and declined to offer any evidence in defense. The prose ARTEMAS LlBBEY, associate justice of the cuting attorney insisted that the defendant Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, was born should be compelled by the court, accord at Freedom, in the County of Waldo, on the ing to the then prevalent custom before a eighth of January, 1823. In 1825 his justice of the peace, to put in his side of the family removed with him to Albion, where case; but Mr. Libbey firmly refused. This he continued to reside, attending the town was a new method of procedure to the jus tice, who began immediately to consider the schools, working upon the farm, and acquir ing as best he could the rudiments of com situation, and, after a little reflection, turned to the young lawyer and said : " Sagacious mon-school education. His youthful ambi tion was for something higher than a farmer's young man! Know better than to put your life, and so at the early age of seventeen client on and ' spile ' your case! The defen years we find him pursuing the study of law dant is discharged!" in the office of Samuel S. Warren, of Albion, All the information I have been able to where for the subsequent four years he con elicit directly from Judge Libbey himself, tinued his studies, varying it winters by for he was always reticent in purely personal teaching the town schools. In the summer matters, is contained in the following words : of 1844, Mr. Warren removing to Massa "I was admitted to practice at the October chusetts, Mr. Libbey then entered and com term of the Supreme Judicial Court, Ken pleted his course of studies in the office of nebec County, 1844, at the age of twentyZ. Washburne, of China, and in the fall of one; and my practice was mainly in that that year was, at the age of twenty-one, ad county, but was extended into several other mitted to the Kennebec Bar, and shortly counties, in important cases, Lincoln, An afterward opened an office at Albion. Here droscoggin, Sagadahoc, Somerset, Franklin, he continued in the practice of law with and some others, and in the Federal courts varying success, and somewhat increasing somewhat." His reputation at the bar, how clientage, until at the end of eleven years he ever, was soon established, and for many removed, in 1858, to Augusta, where he years before he went upon the bench he resided until his appointment as one of the stood in the very front of his profession. justices of the Supreme Bench, April 24, Wholly devoted to his chosen calling, he 1875, a fitting successor to Judge Cutting, added great industry to perceptive qualities to whom he bore considerable resemblance that were remarkably quick and clear as for directness and simplicity of character. well as strong. Besides rare powers of dis Mr. Libbey must have had an early con crimination, he had a good deal of natural sciousness and premonition of his intellectual sagacity and common sense. In a fine and strength and acumen, for he began at once discriminating analysis of his prominent to manage and try cases, relying solely upon judicial qualities, Chief-Justice Peters has himself, — a most important condition of well said: "These qualities were supple success to the young lawyer. As an illus mented and supported by a strong will. He tration of Mr. Libbey's early sagacity and was a resolute, self-reliant man, independent sessing a deep and unostentatious religion that embraces the whole human family, he could well say : —