Logan E. Bleckley. public service remarkable in length and worth. In the following year, 1895, Judge Bleck ley retreated to his mountain home, and an nounced his permanent retirement from the profession; and this not for the purpose of spending his remaining days in slothful ease or vacuity, but 'in order to pursue uninter ruptedly certain lines of study and intellec tual occupation that had long attracted him. Again the words in which he himself has re cited the aims and aspirations filling him when he retired from his life's chosen pro fession, will come in far more aptly than any of my own. Ingenuous as a boy he always is, in such confessions, more than half humorous, yet wholly sincere. "My retirement to private life," he says, "was voluntary, and I supposed and intended it to be perpetual. Then the public duties of mere citizenship began seriously to engage my attention. The noble ambition to know how to vote took possession of me. I sin cerely desired to qualify myself for the exer cise of the elective franchise. The money question was then, as it still is, before the country, and I longed to understand it and see for myself how it ought to be decided. My ignorance of it was utter and profound. In the summer of 1895, laying aside all other business, I devoted myself to the study of this one subject. At first, the sole end I had in view was to qualify myself as a voter; but I soon found out, from an examination of the standard works and other writings, that no body really understood the subject at bot tom, and that T was hardly less ignorant con cerning it than the rest of mankind. This fired me with zeal not only to master it, but to become its expounder to the world. Ac cordingly I began writing down in note books brief notes of my reflections, medita tions, and acquisitions touching value and its measurement, and touching money and divers related topics. This practice I have continued for five years, and am still engaged
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in it. The note-books have multiplied to more than twenty, and their contents to more than two thousand pages, and I frankly say I have not yet qualified myself to vote intelligently on the money question, though i believe I am almost qualified!" It should be added here that there was universal regret throughout Georgia, as well as other sections, when the destruction by fire of all these notes and manuscripts was rmnounced through the public press little more than a year ago. This serious loss be fell when the Judge's cottage at Clarksville was burned. It had been the hope of the thousands who not only admire but trust this man of wide study and thought, that from these voluminous notes would evolve, in the course of time, a well-digested, carefully moulded, condensed, but comprehensive work upon the momentous question of sound finance. Nor is this hope wholly lost; for the philosophical author, with a mere sigh or two over the ashes, set himself to the task of reproducing his notes and manuscripts, and the work is now moving on with good promise for future fulfillment. Yet what need to dwell upon the unfin ished work of this venerable man? Whether it shall be completed by his own hands, or left to others, is with Him who orders wisely. Rut here stands the eminent jurist's seventyyear record, fair, finished, full; and it is such as the most exacting among us might well be proud to leave behind. To attempt, in a paper like this, to offer an adequate estimate of his achievements in judicature, or the value of his contributions to jurisprudence in the shape of notable de cisions and weighty opinions from the Bench, would be utterly out of place, as well as supererogatory. The profession has already measured the worth of his work in that sphere, and has accorded to Judge Bleckley a place of distinction among the great living jurists. Allusion has been made, on another page.
