ent caravansaries in going the rounds of the circuit than he was about himself.

Judge Andrews says that as long as he knew him he never forsook horseback and saddlebags for buggies or railroads.

Living near the Alabama line, Judge Underwood frequently practiced in the Alabama courts. One day an upstart youngster who had just been admitted to the bar taunted him with being ignorant of the law of Alabama. "What you call the law," observed the youthful attorney, "may do for Georgia, but such statutes are not of force in Alabama." Now, Judge Underwood had long opposed the arbitrary methods of dealing with the Indians in Georgia, and this experience gave him an arrow. "You are mistaken," said he, "Georgia takes the liberty of extending her laws over all the adjacent savage tribes, and what concerns the young man personally still more she either hangs or jails, with very little evidence or ceremony, all the young savages who show her the least disrespect."

On one occasion Judge Underwood was employed in a lawsuit at Rome, Georgia, and Colonel Jones, an able lawyer with a weakness for politics, was the counsel for the other side. Colonel Jones had recently changed his party affiliations, much to the surprise of his friends throughout the State; and this gave the point to the joke which followed.

In the course of the trial Judge Underwood was examining an old lady on the witness stand, when, irritated by the close questioning, the old lady became quite turbulent. She wildly gesticulated in every direction, and the judge,

who was standing near, seemed to be in danger of sustaining a blow upon his intellectual frontier.

"Take care of your wig, judge," exclaimed Colonel Jones. "Take care of your wig!"

At first the judge was disconcerted, thinking that perhaps his wig was really out of place, but instantly he regained his composure and turning his batteries upon Colonel Jones, he replied with telling effect:

"Well, Colonel Jones, this is a free country, and I think a man has just as good a right to change his hair as to change his politics."

Judge Underwood was an unsubduable Whig of the Henry Clay type, but his son, John W. H. Underwood, believed in occasional variations. One day a friend asked him:

"Judge, what are John's politics."

"Really," said the judge, “I can't tell you; I haven't seen the boy since breakfast."

But while John was frequently changing his politics, it must be remembered that the period was one of great upheavals in party organizations, and in the course of time John became politically even more distinguished than his father.

Early in his career he applied to the old gentleman for a letter of recommendation to Governor George W. Crawford, knowing that the chief executive was an intimate friend of his father's. The letter was promptly given; and, putting it in his pocket, John set out for Milledgeville. But before he arrived at the Capitol he thought it prudent to scan the document, and this is what the eccentric judge had written:

"MY DEAR FRIEND: This will be handed to you by my son John. He has the greatest thirst for an office, with the least capacity to fill one, of any boy you ever saw. "Yours truly,

"WM. H. UNDERWOOD."

Seated on the front veranda of the old Atlanta Hotel, one of the famous ante-bellum resorts, Judge Underwood was quietly conversing when an elegantly dressed gentleman, whom he chanced to recognize as one of the most cultured men in the State, passed by.

Some cynical wag in the crowd seeing the handsome garb which the gentleman wore observed with borrowed. wit that if he could buy him for what he was worth and sell him for what he thought he was worth, he would never be out of cash.

Judge Underwood instantly spoke up.

"Well," said he, "that beats all. I have frequently seen. a gentleman offering to sell a jackass, but this is the first time I ever heard of a jackass offering to sell a gentleman."

During one of the great Know-Nothing campaigns, back in the fifties, a drummer recommending the tavern at which he had stopped told Judge Underwood it was an up-to-date Know-Nothing house. "Well," said Judge Underwood, "if the landlord knows less than Jim Toney, who runs the other hotel, I'll be afraid to risk myself with him."

Judge Underwood was once holding court during the fall of the year in what was known as the Cherokee district of North Georgia. Chestnuts and chinkapins were just beginning to ripen in the woods, and lawyers, jurors, witnesses, constables and spectators were all eating them

in the courtroom, entirely forgetful of the proprieties of the place.

Anxious to preserve something like decorum in the temple of justice over which he presided, and tired of the ceaseless cracking of shells which punctuated the proceedings, the judge finally observed:

"Gentlemen, I am glad to see that you have such good appetites. You are certainly in no danger of starvation so long as chestnuts and chinkapins hold out. However, I have one request to make of those who compose the juries. I am unable, in the present condition of things, to distinguish one body from another. I must, therefore, beg the grand jurors to confine themselves to chestnuts and the petit jurors to chinkapins."

Several years before his death, while holding court at Marietta, Judge Underwood, in conversation with an old friend, facetiously remarked:

"General, when my time comes, I am coming to Marietta to die."

"Ah!" replied the general. "I'm glad you are so much pleased with Marietta."

"It isn't that," came the quick rejoinder. "It isn't that. It's because I can leave it with less regret than any other town in Georgia."

This was only in jest. He really liked the little Georgia town at the foot of the Kennesaw. It was then, as now, the home of some of the most cultured people of the State: an intellectual center. But the old jurist had his wish gratified. He died in Marietta. Arriving one day on the noon train, he was taken violently ill soon after leaving the station, and in half an hour the soul of the genial old judge, like an extinguished sunbeam, had left the world it had so long helped to brighten.

CHAPTER XV.

Wilde's "Summer Rose."

T

HE author of "Childe Harold" is credited with having expressed the deliberate opinion that no finer American poem had met his eye than Wilde's "Summer Rose." This soulful gem, which came from the pen of Richard Henry Wilde, of Georgia, was originally entitled "The Lament of the Captive," and it first appeared in 1816, one of the Northern newspapers being the medium through which it was presented to the world of literature.

Almost instantly the poem caught the fancy of the reading public, not only in this country, but also in England; and Mr. Wilde became the toast of two continents.

Fame is sometimes most capricious. Overlooking the serious work which absorbs the constant energies and embodies the central life purpose of the busy worker, it often seizes upon some random composition which an idle hour has called forth for diversion or amusement; and this becomes the pinion on which he mounts aloft into the blue empyrean. It was the privilege of Mr. Wilde to represent Georgia in the halls of Congress, and to figure in the trial of many important cases in the courtroom; but all the midnight hours combined in which he