A man of high spirit and feeling, he was genial and companionable, yet very sensi tive and easily elated or depressed, as such natures arc apt to be. While at the bar, he stood in the foremost ranks. He was a man of most gracious courtesy, and especially charming and gentle in his intercourse with young men. When elected to the bench the measure of his ambition was satisfied. Its duties were congenial to his tastes, and he devoted him self with great assiduity to judicial labor. As his associate, the venerable Chief-Justice Cole, said, " He was an able, honest and up right judge, trying always to do the right and to administer his high office with impar tiality and firmness, never yielding to any popular prejudice or partisan feelings. He seemed to desire above all things to see justice done in all business matters; and he sought to settle all controversies on the eternal principles of equity and right." Upon the retirement of Chief-Justice Lyon, he became chief justice, and so presided until his death, July 4, 1895. In his judicial work there were at times traces of strong personal conviction, if not feeling. It would be unfair to call it preju dice for or against persons, for in decision he was above that; but he disliked to see a seeming hardship in an individual case wrought by the application of a general rule of law, and he had some views and convic tions not perhaps supported by the weight of judicial authority. This intense personal ity, not to say eccentricity, crops out here and there in his opinions. They are always interesting, always readable, both for matter, style, vigor and lucidity, even when they fail to carry conviction. In the case of Duffie v. Duffie, 71 Wis. 236, he held that a wife could not maintain an action against the woman who seduced or one who induced her husband to leave her and alienated his affections. In other words, the wife had no action for loss of consortium. She, who, of the two, suffers most keenly the
loss of the affections and society of her spouse, " the pangs of despised love," was remediless in the olden time, he reasoned, and therefore, until some statute had inter posed, she is remediless полу. Не seemed to think that the old Aryan idea of the wife's station and relation to the husband still in hered in our law, and that she is — "Something better than his dog, A little dearer than his horse."
So thought some who dissented from the opinion. The decision called forth very spirited criticism. Several courts had decid ed the other way. Indeed, in this case, Mr. Justice Cassoday handed down a forcible dissenting opinion. Among other articles evoked was one by Irving Browne in 26 "American Law Review," which attracted wide attention. His decision, severely as it has been criticized, must not be taken as in dicative that Judge Orton did not perceive "in the general light of modern times, the true situation and position of the wife in the mar riage relation." Of all that is humane in the law, and all which has mitigated its ancient harshness, all that tends to protect and exalt women or shield the helpless of any class, he approved, not only with the intellectual assent of the judge, but with the warmth of heart of a chivalrous gentleman. Serving twenty-three years as judge, and thirty-four years at the bar, he was, and will always be, remembered as an interesting figure in the profession. Standing as the peer of Ryan, Carpenter, Arnold, Whiton, Howe, and a long line of worthies in their palmiest days, he was a giant at the bar, with whom none could strive unprepared, nor without being " put up to all he knew." DAVID TAYLOR was born in Carlisle, Schoharie County, New York, March 11, 1818, of a blending of Irish and Dutch blood. He graduated from Union College in 1841, and was admitted to the bar at Cobleskill, in 1844. He practiced for two years in his native State and then came to
