JUDGE CHARLES H. BRYAN.

 

            WHEN I first knew him he was a young man, perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age, handsome as Adonis, light-brown hair, blue eyes, the complexion of a carefully-housed girl, but with a singularly expressive and strong face, a firmly-knit frame, say five feet nine inches tall, and weighing perhaps one hundred and sixty pounds. A marked feature was his voice. Even in ordinary conversation there was a lyric resonance to it, with cadences that reminded one of the echoes of music that, sounding out over still waters, strikes a promontory and floats back partly in music and partly in murmurs. But when speaking to an audience, especially if the occasion or the theme had called out all his power, that voice took on organ tones and held men spell- bound.

            In those days, half a century and more ago, learned men had been more drilled in the classics, as a rule, than they are at present; men's thoughts seemed to be different from what they now are ; the shadow of ancient renown was beckoning them on toward the height of great scholarship and toward a sphere where the language is as pure as that which Cicero in Rome and Demosthenes in Greece framed their sentences from.

            Now the shadows of sky scrapers, and the stockboard are upon the eyes of students ; the thought is not to climb the heights which are lighted eternally from above ; but rather up those other heights where success, often bruised and scarred, and befouled and stained by the soil on which it camped on the trail, is found. And we sometimes think it can be detected in the voices of men. They seem to have a metallic ring, not the old sonorous rhythm. The first time I heard Charlie Bryan speak in public was in a court room. He was defending a surgeon for malpractice. A man had been shot through the muscles of the arm between the elbow and shoulder, the shot graz-

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ing but not severing the main artery. The surgeon amputated the arm and the victim had sued him, claiming heavy damages, on the ground that the amputation was needless. Eminent counsel were pressing the suit, and Bryan was alone in the defense. The suit hung on the question of how serious the wound was to the main artery. Bryan established that the outer coat of the artery was wounded. Opposing counsel insisted that it was but grazed and not seriously injured. An old army surgeon was called to the stand, the nature of the wound was described to him and he was asked what the practice would be in the army, if such a wound was encountered. He promptly replied : 'We would take no chances, but amputate the arm," but at once added, 'You know, we have not much time when a battle is on and many a limb is amputated that ought to be saved."

            Now, when Bryan's client amputated the arm he had plenty of time, but was in a mountain mining camp where there were not many facilities for nursing the sick or attending to the wounded. All the facts were brought out but, boy that I was, I thought no especial skill had been exercised on either side. When the arguments began, one of the attorneys for the plaintiff stated the case briefly, that the man w r as shot through the arm, a mere flesh wound that should have been healed in ten days at most, whereas the bungler in charge, either through ignorance or a desire to make a large fee and some fame, had amputated the limb, crippling the man for life.

            Then Bryan spoke. His voice to the jury was like a caress at the opening, as he explained to them their high duty as jurors, instruments selected to speak in the very name of justice. He then swiftly reviewed the testimony and declared that all of importance that had been delivered was by the army surgeon. Then his voice took on a shriller cadence. In half a dozen terse sentences he described a battle in progress one could hear the volleys and the shouting, the tread of men and horses and now and then it seemed a strain of marshal music, the blare of a trumpet and the roll of drums. Then a wounded man was pictured, a man with a shot through the arm. A whole corps of surgeons are near ; the probing of the wound

72 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

reveals a wounded artery, and the order is without hesitation : 'The arm must be amputated."

            Then the picture was changed to a rough mining camp ; the room a miner's cabin ; the lights but a few candles ; a lone surgeon with but few instruments ; the wounded man faint from loss of blood brought in, the wound still bleeding; and in those rude surroundings the surgeon does the best he can, and what he does saves the man's life. Then to the jury, in a solemn voice he said : "Shall this devoted man be punished for saving that life?"

            The speech was but twenty-three minutes in delivery, but it had woven its spell. The associate counsel for the plaintiff tried argument and ridicule and scorn in vain against it.

            For several years Bryan's success as an advocate and rostrum orator was phenomenal; at last he became a judge of the Supreme court. In that office he never made a mark. He was essentially an advocate.

            Soon after it began to be noticed that his mental faculties were breaking down. He bought the great race horse Lodi and was often seen on the race track. He began to drink a good deal ; then as the crisis of the Civil war grew near, as Broderick and Ferguson were killed and old friends grew cold, when it began to be clear what was coming, Bryan was greatly perturbed. He was an Ohio man by birth, but always a Democrat. When the great race between Lodi and Norfolk was on at San Jose, the colored man who had been the stable companion of Lodi since colthood, who, so to speak, had brought him up, had broken him, trained him and petted him until neither the man nor the horse desired any other companionship -this colored man went to a group of gentlemen on the track and told him that he could do nothing, that Massa Bryan so interfered with him that he was helpless.

            They told the colored man that they had laid heavy wagers on the horse, and if Bryan tried any more to interfere, to not mind him, to knock him down if necessary and they would protect him. He went back to the horse and soon Bryan came again and began to order him what to do. The colored man took Bryan gently by the shoulders and said : "Massa Bryan,

JUDGE CHARLES H. BRYAN. 73

you must go away and not bother me any more until this race is over." Bryan, astounded, looked at him a moment, then turned and walked rapidly to a Democratic friend and in a whisper said : "We must get out of here ; the abolitionists have got this town."

            He drifted to Virginia City, Nevada. There he imagined he was commander of a picked army which he called 'The Arizona Rifles." He would explain in the most perfect, classic English what the command consisted of, what its purposes were, how high were its motives ; what it was sure to accomplish the most beautiful English one could imagine, but not one word of sense.

            It was in the days when the lawsuits on the Comstock assumed magnified proportions; it was at the time, too, when so many companies changed the old forms into corporations. In those days some young lawyers did not know everything about corporation laws ; at least their practice had been outside of them.

            One night a young lawyer with two or three clients was discussing an important case which they had on in the courts, when the lawyer frankly admitted that he was extremely perplexed and said he wanted associate counsel or at least the advice of some lawyer who was more familiar with those phases of the law than he. One of the principals who knew Bryan well, said : "Let us go and find Charlie Bryan. He is crazy as a bed-bug, but he might steer us straight."

            They found him in bed in a hotel. He greeted them, first putting up his arms as though he held a gun, and began to speak of the Arizona Rifles. The young lawyer interrupted and explained to him his trouble in making an application of the law to a case in point. Bryan listened and then, sitting up in bed, said : 'The case is simple. You have become confused in trying to make an application from some contradictory statutes which the British Parliament has woven into the law, to distinguish ecclesiastical from commercial corporations. But the point you seek to establish was a fundamental factor in the law as originally framed in old Rome, two thousand years ago." In the meantime his eyes had become fastened on a rude

74 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

picture seen through the dim light suspended on the opposite wall of his room, and he began to address that, as he would a court. He explained the whole history of the laws governing corporations as they had from time to time been expounded and established in old Rome ; linked them together until they became a perfect system, and with a diction altogether faultless and a courtesy and grace exquisite, exhausted the subject and then demanded judgment. Then he ceased, dropped back upon his pillow and in a moment fell asleep. His awed visitors, breathless, on tip-toe backed noiselessly from the room and noiselessly closed the door.

            It was Bryan's last address to a court the last flash of a glorified intellect going into final eclipse. I have often wondered where he thought he was, before what audience he was speaking. Was it a mental reincarnation, and was the opposing counsel some stately Roman like Cicero and the court the senate of Rome? Or was it the lord chief justice of England that he was addressing, with the paraphernalia of England's highest court around him ? Was it an occasion such as he had dreamed of when first from school there were whispers from his own soul of what he might be if he tried ? Who knows ? But what a pity that when he sank to sleep that slumber had not deepened into the final sleep, for a few months later he died a pitiable accidental death in Carson City.

            In all my life I never saw so splendid an intellect shattered : never a life so filled with promise go into total eclipse.