JUDGE B. C. WHITMAN.

 

            SO FAR as I could ever see, there was not one flaw in the character of Judge Whitman. A gentleman, a gentleman always ; educated, refined, so exalted in his integrity that it was never questioned ; the most devoted father and husband ; the most considerate of the faults of others ; mingling with all that throng on the Comstock in the first wild days in perfect accord, and still making it absolutely clear that he had nothing in common with anything coarse or rude or unclean, he was to men what the Gulf stream is to the common waters of the sea, moving amid it with a current distinctly its own, fed by a different fountain, bound on a separate voyage, utterly unlike in temperature, and pursuing a different course.

            He was always genial and gentle ; he loved his friends, loved to associate with his fellow men; he had an exquisite sense of humor, and still he always gave me the impression that he would have been perfectly at home in some great institution where only high thoughts were permitted, only classic language spoken.

            He practiced law many years in Virginia City in those years when gladiators in the profession met in the arena and fought to the limit, and held his own there.

            No spoken nor mental reproaches ever followed Judge Whitman out of court. The thought was : ''Whether right or wrong, he thinks he is right."

            When elected to the supreme bench, and he took his seat, it seemed to those who watched as though the seat had been long waiting for him, so natural was it to think of him as a judge.

            I do not think he was as profound a lawyer as Judge Mesick, or C. J. Hellyer or General Charles H. Williams, but he was great enough to have the perfect confidence of the whole bar, not only in his absolute integrity, but in his knowledge and his utter absence of prejudice.

            Outside of his profession he was a most valued citizen.

176 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

            He was a massive man physically and intellectually; he had most pronounced opinions on all subjects relating to the government and country; he could express them without offense and in a way to influence those who heard him. And so he moved, an example of high manhood and of exalted patriotism all his days.

            In those first days on the Comstock, when the clouds of the dreadful war gathered and broke in their fury, the bar of Virginia City was about equally divided between northern and southern men, and sectional differences between them were bitter in the extreme.

            These had been nursed during the five preceding years in California after the Democratic party had divided and the tattered remnants of the old Whig party had been picked up and woven into the Republican fabric.

            This had been greatly intensified by the death of Broderick and Ferguson in California; their friends declaring, in their sorrow and wrath, that they had been slain to get them out of the way, the friends of Terry and Penn Johnson insisting that both had acknowledged the code and that they were fairly killed.

            For many months the dropping of a match would have kindled a civil war. Among these contending forces Judge Whitman moved with his life-long serenity, and though as fixed in his convictions as any of them, and as perfectly understood, his presence made for order and for law, not only among the men who were prominent, but among their respective followers. It was natural, too, for to have assailed him would have been like knocking the scales from the hands of Justice or bespattering the white robes of Peace.

            The influence for good of such a man cannot be estimated. As the years move on he gains in his influence, and it is more difficult for men to do unmanly things when they meet such a man every day.

            When Judge Whitman left the supreme bench the Comstock was going into temporary borasco, and he removed to San Francisco and resumed the practice of law there, which he pursued for a few years until one evening he went into one

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of the gentlemen's clubs in the city and feeling drowsy laid down upon a lounge. Soon after he lost consciousness and a little later died.

            It is a welcome memory that when his call came it was without pain and that death to him was but passing from a troubled sleep into the sleep of everlasting peace.

            In life his was as nearly a perfect character as I ever met.

            Men can live calm lives in a cloister; if their lives are absolutely devoted to the service of God, many men can live blameless lives ; but Judge Whitman assumed all a man's duties as husband, father, citizen, and fought for a place and name against all the sharp competitions necessary to forge out unaided his way, and so did his work that there was not a stain on his character, not a reproach attaching to his high soul to the last.

            He was the highest possible type of man, and those who revered him most were those who understood him best; those who loved him best were those who had been closest to him in their relations.

            To his family he was at once a king and a guardian angel.

            He was in the sharp contests of business, and every night emerged from the fiery furnace as did the three no smell of fire upon him.