Or looking at a sound. Reflected through my tears, "My professional income for those two years, not counting insolvent fees, amounted to between thirty-five and fifty dollars per annum. Having no means with which to establish myself elsewhere and wait for a clientage, I determined to suspend practice and engage in a more lucrative department of labor until I could accumulate a small capital. I sought and obtained employment as bookkeeper in the State railroad office at Atlanta. In this situation I remained for three years, my compensation ranging from forty dollars to sixty-six dollars per month. In the fourth year I was transferred to Milledgeville, then the capital of the State, being appointed one of the Governor's secretaries, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars. A new incumbent of the executive chair was inaugurated in November, 1851, and both my health and my politics needing repairs, I returned to private life. I had saved enough from my earnings to supply me with the skeleton of a library and to support me some months as a candidate for practice." "In March, 1852, being then nearly twenty-five years of age, I opened an office in Atlanta, and my thoughts and dreams were again of law and of nothing else. The phantom lady haunted me as before and seemed as beautiful as ever. Indeed, though I had been cool, I had been constant in my devotions to her through the four years I was out of her service. Clients gradually ventured within my chambers, and I soon had a moderate prosperity, due chiefly to acquaintance made in railroad circles during my three years' service as a railway clerk. In 1853 I was elected to the office of solicitor-general for my judicial circuit, which embraced eight counties. My term of service was four years, in the last of which happened the crowning success of my whole life,-I was married. "Until 1861 I continued the practice in Atlanta. The first battle of Manassas, alias Bull Run, occurred while I was in a camp of instruction, endeavoring to acquire some skill in the noble art of homicide. By nature I am pacific. The military spirit has but a feeble development in my constitution. Nevertheless, I tried the fortunes of a private soldier for a short time in behalf of the Southern Confederacy. I was discharged on account of ill health, after a few months' service in Western Virginia, without having shed any one's blood or lost any blood of my own. The state of my martial emotions was somewhat peculiar : I loved my friends, but did not hate my enemies. Without getting 'fighting mad,' I went out to commit my share of slaughter, being actuated by a solemn sense of duty, unmixed with spite or ill will. When I consider how destructive I might have been had my health supported my prowess, I am disposed to congratulate 'gentlemen on the other side' upon my forced retirement from the ranks at an early period of the contest. To the best of my remembrance, I was very reluctant but very determined to fight. However, all my military acts were utterly null and void. After my discharge from the army, I served the Confederacy in much of its legal business at and around Atlanta. Occasionally I took part also in short terms of camp duty as a member of the militia. In 1864, about the time General Sherman left Atlanta on his march to the sea, I was appointed to the office of Supreme Court reporter. After reporting two volumes, the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth Georgia, I resigned that office. This was in the spring of 1867. From that time till I was appointed to the Supreme bench in 1875, I practiced law continuously in Atlanta. "Such education as I received in my boyhood was acquired at the village academy of my native county, an institution of meager resources and limited range of instruction. Although in the course of a somewhat studious lifetime I have added considerably to my early stock, the plain truth is that while not illiterate, I am destitute of real learning, lay or legal. My highest aspiration, so far as this life is concerned, is to do good judicial work. Service is better than salary, duty more inspiring than reward. My devotion to law is the spiritual consecration of a loving disciple, a devout minister." We close this sketch with an observation from Chancellor Walter B. Hill, himself one of the most radiant members of the Georgia bar, who at the height of his professional success, was called to preside over the fountain-head of the State's educational system, and who, in the midst of his usefulness, was summoned to his crown. Says Chancellor Hill: "Judge Bleckley's disclaimer of learning 'lay or legal,' is of a piece with his reason for resignation in 1880. His point of view is the pinnacle which not many so-called learned men ever reach,-the knowledge of the extent of the domain of ignorance. He is one of the few men in Georgia who could hold his own in a discussion of German metaphysics." This reference of Chancellor Hill to the modest estimate which Judge Bleckley has put upon his judicial accomplishments suggests the apologetic meekness with which he also refers to what he calls his "metrical transgressions"; but the fact remains that Judge Bleckley has produced some excellent verse. He has not only made Blackstone clutch the fiddle and dance the Virginia Reel, but he has made the waters of song gush from the Horeb of law and chant the music of Miriam. CHAPTER XLIX. W The Jacksons. HEREVER the Jacksons have appeared in American history they have been the uncompromising champions of local self-government. Moreover, the national annals will sustain the additional observation that they have been the relentless foes of whatever has savored in the least degree of hypocrisy or sham. "Old Hickory," of Tennessee, and "Old Stonewall," of Virginia, are most illustrious embodiments of the characteristics in question; but not less emphatically were the same Spartan traits exemplified in Governor James Jackson, of Georgia, who called down the elemental fire to extinguish the records of the Yazoo fraud. The story of this dramatic incident in the history of Georgia has already been recited; and mention is again made of the episode only for the reason that Governor Jackson was the distinguished pioneer immigrant who brought to Georgia the family escutcheon. The exact relationship between the various branches of the Jackson family in America does not appear from the records; but in the absence of direct testimony the inferential evidence of kindred attributes suggests that the common ancestor of all the various clans must have lived some time during |