JUDGE
courts of Philadelphia. Mitchell was an able lawyer and an excellent judge, being well grounded in the principles of the law and having the intellectual capacity which enabled him to make the application of them. At the same time he had earnest convictions and strong predilections which sometimes amounted to prejudices, and I have felt that he had too little human sympathy to make him altogether safe in the handling of cases where men were charged with crime, especially murder. His most intimate friends were David Sellers, counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and Simon Gratz. Fate interwove our careers, but never brought the men themselves very close together. I was in the convention which first gave him the nomination. Ten years later, when another election approached, he once, to my surprise, appointed me a master in divorce. I attended to the duties, but the parties were too poor to pay me a fee. We were partners in the ownership of the Weekly Notes of Cases. He was president of the council of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania when I was president of the society. We were both vice-provosts of the Law Academy. He was Chief Justice while I was Governor of the Commonwealth.
Mitchell was anxious to go to the Supreme Court, but he had little political support in the city and none whatever in the state. Quay said to me: “I care nothing whatever for Mitchell, but I want to make a place for you on the bench,” and when the State Convention met, Mitchell received the nomination. After his election it grated upon him a little to feel that his high office had come to him rather in the way of a benefit conferred than as a recognition of superior attainments. Two men were suggested for the vacancy in Court No. 2—P. F. Rothermel, Jr., son of the artist who painted the “Battle of Gettysburg,” a lawyer in every way capable, and myself. Among those who wrote to the Governor urging my appointment were: William Henry Rawle,
