JUDGE R. S. MESICK.

 

            THREE SCORE years ago a man who possessed $200,000 was considered very rich. When the Comstock was discovered and it seemed to be pitching to the west, the hillside below the great lode to the east was covered with locations wherever there were croppings of ore. When suddenly at a depth of about two hundred feet the Comstock was found broken off, and with a little sinking, and drifting to the east found again, pitching to the east, then the question at once arose as to the titles on the surface hillside.

            The claim of those on the lode was that with their location they had a right to trace the vein wherever it pitched, west or east. Then there were such pitched legal contests created as had never been known. The fees paid to attorneys were such as had never been paid before, and that naturally drew to the Comstock an array of attorneys more able than had ever been gathered together.

            Perhaps General Charles S. Williams was the Nestor of them all. He had been a great lawyer and attorney general in New York. But around him was an assemblage of attorneys, all of whom were great. We may name such men as C. J. Hillier, Thomas Williams, Moses Kirkpatrick, Wm. M. Stewart, Judge Joseph Baldwin, who had made a great reputation in Alabama before he went to California; his son. Judge "Sandy" Baldwin, C. E. DeLong, Horace Smith, Jonas Seeley, Sunderland, Crittenden, Mitchel, Aldrich, Hundley, Judge Cy Wallace, John B. Felton and a score more.

            But the first obstacle was the courts. The United States courts were made up as a rule of broken-down politicians, sent west to pay political debts or to get rid of their importunities. They were in a strange field ; questions that had never been submitted to courts before were before them. In a legal way, as a rule, they were utterly incompetent, and a great many of them were corrupt. The brightest one of them all in a little while got to selling his opinions; and worse still, a little later

JUDGE R. S. MESICK. 261

he got to selling out to both sides, which was a sure sign, under the ruling of Zinc Barnes, that he must be a little crooked, because Zinc's definition of an honest man was "a son-of-a-gun who would stay bought."

            The suits were multiplied, the courts were far behind, and it was a pitiable spectacle to see those great attorneys trying to get a little information through the brains of those in- competent judges. The situation was one of the impelling causes that led to making Nevada a state before it had either a population or developed wealth to entitle it to statehood. But the state was admitted, and R. S. Mesick stooped down to accept a district judgeship that he might help clear the calendars and get the court running on a legitimate basis.

            Just as Judge Mesick had finished his regular course in Yale and afterwards at the law department of Yale he joined the Argonauts who went to California. He located in Marysville. In those days Marysville had a wonderful bar. Judge Stephen J. Field, who afterwards sat more than thirty-three years as justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was practicing law there. There were many other great lawyers.

            Mesick's legal abilities were acknowledged at once, but in those days he was a little shy, clue perhaps to a lingering provincialism which made him rather think that with his accomplishments and his training he had a certain dignity to maintain. In those days he was as good a lawyer as Judge Field and practiced law in Marysville until the Comstock was dis- covered.

            When he went upon the bench in Virginia City he was surrounded by more temptations than ever a judge was before ; but he so bore himself in that office that when his short term was out, he had the full respect of all the bar and of all the people. Beyond that it was plain to the bar and to the people that he was about the greatest man that ever gave the best years of his life to the golden coast. He was not only as great a lawyer as Field, but he possessed elements of statesmanship which were denied Justice Field.

            In Nevada his exclusiveness wore away. Some people

262 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

had called that exclusiveness pride, but really it was but a dignity which he held to be due his profession, mixed with a little natural shyness, and while he mellowed down, he maintained that dignity to the very end. Through his friction against men on the Comstock, he took on the wisdom to note that all around him in every walk of life, were intellectual giants ; that in the original elements into which society was there resolved, the brightest brain could only aspire to be an equal and not a superior. And he was surrounded by brains, some of which were cleavers and battle axes, some Damascus blades, and in the wielding of those weapons they were all trained until they had become real gladiators. There were trials in which a spectator saw only flashings of great lights; there were arguments which Burke would have listened to enchanted ; there were bursts of legal eloquence which would have charmed Clay or Prentiss. It was an arena where giants contested.

            In that arena, whether on the bench or at the bar, Judge Mesick was a captain. No subtlety could jostle him into making a weak ruling ; no artifice could prepare an argument that he could not seize and puncture if within it there was one weak point or false principle embodied.

            But it was not only as a lawyer and jurist that he was great. Had he remained in the east and married some woman great enough and true enough to have held up his strong arms, there could not have been a place so high that he might not have justly aspired to attain it. He would have been rated the peer of the very highest; as scholar, lawyer, judge, orator, statesman.

            But the customs of the coast had their influence upon him. He was not free from some human weaknesses. Moreover, down deep he was one of the most lovable and genial of men. Despite his reserve he would, could he have had his way, "have lived by the road," where he would have met his fellow-men, met them with their virtues and faults and affiliated with them all.

            He was altogether a manly man, even when he gave way to his weaknesses. The divinity within him shone out always, the same under the light of a tallow dip as under an electric

JUDGE R. S. MESICK. 263

chandelier. He had courage that never failed him, he had integrity and self-respect and respect for his profession that nothing could turn aside.

            A very rich man, on one occasion stated to him the points of a case and asked him if he could win it in court. His answer was : "I might, but I will not try.":

            "Why not?" asked the man. "You are not very rich and there are thousands of dollars in this for you if you will under- take it."

            "But I will not," said Mesick.

            "And why not?' asked the would-be client.

            "Because it is a dishonest proposition; because you are hoping through the power of your money to perpetrate a great wrong, to accomplish which you would have to prostitute the profession of the law and disgrace the court. I will not be a party to it."

            Then the man flared up and intimated that there was a great difference between his own friendship or enmity. To this Mesick merely pointed to the door and said :

            "Get out, and do not stand on the order of your going, but go at once !"

            Half an hour later he looked up from his desk and said to his clerk :

            "I am mad through and through at myself."

            "What for ?" asked the clerk.

            And he replied : "That I did not kick that scoundrel out of this office and all of the way down the street."

            He lived sixteen years in Virginia City, then removed to San Francisco, where he died in 1897 or '98. He died worth only a few thousand dollars, though in a single case the Fair divorce case he received a fee of $200,000.

            The grievous thing is that such a man was never known outside the few who were close to him, when, had he had a little different nature, had he had more desire for selfish glory, he might have stood with the very highest. Never on this coast, never anywhere, was there a more clear-cut mind, a more accomplished man in books and in his profession. While he min-

264 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

gled with his fellow-men on terms of equality, he at the same time moved in a sphere of his own. He was a glorified scholar until the last. When the world got to be a burden to him. he could go to his library and commune with all of the great souls that had preceded him in this world, only when he read the great thoughts, they always haunted him ; a thought of his own was that what he read was not new, that such thoughts had been his familiars all his life.

            He should have gone to the senate from Nevada ; he should have gone with Senator Stewart. That body would have recognized in a moment that a master had come, and the brightest of them would have fought shy of an encounter with him.

            He was surrounded by great souls, but his surroundings were never what they should have been. He never could have found any array of intellects that he would not have stood a peer among ; he never could have found a class of men that could have been his schoolmasters. His brain was acute ; it either held all the knowledge in the world, or an open door to all the knowledge in the world ; and if his thoughts had been directed away from the fierce encounters which were met on the Comstock and led up into the heights of literature or of statesmanship, he would have been at home.

            He died of bronchitis, and shortly before his death, when a friend bending over him sympathized with his great sufferings, and after the medical men around him had tried every way to soothe his pain, his friend spoke to him of his approaching death. And he answered, with a faint smile on his lips :

            "Death will be a cure for the sufferings I am bearing now."

            We hope that rest has come to him and that in the sphere where his soul has found an abiding place, there will be congenial spirits enough of the very highest, to take away from him all regret that he was called so soon from the earth.