The Supreme Court of Wisconsin.
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1868, and sought to make capital out of the told in history that Diogenes, the celebrated fact that the chief justice had evaded the cynic philosopher, at one time took up his constitutional bar to increase of salary by a abode in a tub belonging to the temple of resignation and reappointment. They ran Cybele. I suppose the tub became ipso Judge Charles Dunn against him in the facto a dwelling-house, in the ordinary sense judicial election of 1868, but he was elected of that word; and that hereafter strict pro by a large majority. He was chief justice priety of language will require us to say that until 1874, when he resigned, in the midst he lived in a dwelling-house belonging to of his term. The meagre salary ($5,000) the temple instead of a tub. Nay, more, I drove him to seek more lucrative employ suppose the moment the philosopher got ment at the bar. The bench and the bar into the tub, that he might, had he been so greatly regretted to lose his judicial work, inclined, have claimed it as exempt under for he stood admittedly among the foremost the operation of a statute like ours." In a judges in the Union. His reputation had case under the statute forbidding the selling become national. of liquors to minors, the point urged in de fense was that the defendant did not know His decisions are always interesting read ing. They are notable for their logical that the vendee was a minor, and that the statute ought to be construed as if the word strength, and are never wanting in an un studied eloquence and beauty of expression. " knowingly " were in it. Judge Dixon took He was a man of original mind. He did the other view, and succinctly states the law to be that the saloon keeper " must know his own thinking and reached his own con clusions. Free from pride of opinion, he that the person to whom he sells is a quali could review his own decisions, acknowledge fied drinker, within the meaning of the stat errors, and reverse or overrule himself. ute; and, if not, he acts at his peril." Usually of a serious and solid tone and style During the war he very much desired to of discussion, there occasionally crept into leave the bench and enter the military ser his opinions some quaint phrase or meta vice, as he had received in his youth a mili phor or illustration revealing the wealth of tary education, but his services were so much humor which bubbled out in his private con needed in the Court in that crucial period that the governor dissuaded him from it, versation. In one case, where he was com pelled to hold that the " married women's and from a sense of duty he remained in act," allowing the wife to hold and control judicial drudgery, when all his inclinations her separate estate, had not absolved the were towards the field. husband from liability for the ante-nuptial Judge Dixon, after leaving the bench, debts of his wife, he said : " The modern hus entered upon a lucrative practice. He set band is twice happy. First, he is happy as tled in Milwaukee and organized a strong the quiet spectator of his wife's enjoyment law-firm and was retained in much important of her property; and again he is happy in litigation. One of his first appearances was paying her debts, or, if he refuses, in being in the famous " granger cases." The Pa sued and compelled to pay. " (igWis. 336.) trons of Husbandry had become a strong In another case he was combating the posi order among the farmers. Strongly im tion that a person could build a store build pressed with the idea that the railways were ing, rent the lower floors, and live with his charging exorbitantly for freight and pas family in the fourth or fifth story, and claim senger carriage they made a special effort to the whole building as an exempt homestead, carry the legislature in the fall of 1873 and and he illustrates the absurdity, as it seemed the following winter. The Democracy were to him, of the position. He says: " We are shrewd enough to nominate for governor a
