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“ Unlike all of these, the lawyer usually finds himself bound to make his greatest and best efforts amid, or at the close, perhaps, of a lengthy or exhaustive trial, in which he must attempt, at least, to apply great fundamental legal principles to a new state of facts—facts which are constantly varying from hour to hour, thus rendering the exercise of all his powers of discrimination and reasoning, in the highest degree, immediate and necessary. ”

“ Without disparagement to either of the other professions, or to the ability, or pretenses to ability, or to the character of those who are more strictly deemed public men, it must be admitted that the evidence of character and ability afforded by a reputation as a lawyer in the front rank of his profession, is, beyond all question, superior to that which is offered by the holding of any mere public position or office ever has, or in and of itself ever can afford. ”

“ With the ever-increasing court business it is but a question of time, in the opinion of attorneys, until it will become necessary to either increase the number of Supreme Court judges again, or once more create a Court of Appeals. Lawyers and litigants alike are entitled to and demand a speedier disposition of cases than a court of last resort of but seven members, with the utmost application and diligence can give them.
When Colorado was admitted to the Union as a state, a United States District Court was established with Denver as the seat of the judge presiding over it. ”

“ Many lawyers were not only honored by their elevation to the bench, but were placed in high positions by the people of the state. Among Colorado's governors, United States senators, congressmen, and other high officials, there are found scores of men whose names are famous in the court's annals of jurisprudence—men whose names are known from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf—men whose achievements have brought everlasting glory to the people of the state who elected them. ”

“ Once a Miners' Court had taken jurisdiction over a case it was not long before the case had been disposed of. To prevent miscarriage of justice and give everyone a square deal provision for appeal was made in every one of the districts. Every litigant and defendant had the right to appeal from the decision of the court to a miners meeting, composed of all the men in the district. The decision of the miners' meeting in all cases was final.
The Miners' Courts, perhaps more than any other agency, were responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the mining communities. ”

“ While the men responsible for and active in the conduct of the "government" of the Territory of Jefferson were thus engaged in creating courts and enacting laws, a considerable portion of the citizens then living in this region, and not the least influential, absolutely refused to recognize the territorial government and the courts which had been created by the territorial constitution and the legislature. They maintained, and rightfully so, that the whole Rocky Mountain country was still a part of Kansas and that only officers elected under Kansas laws legally held office. ”

“ No lawyer has ever made a reputation as such, by mere "smartness," much less by trickery, untruthfulness or dishonesty, and no profession ever opened fairer fields for the exercise of all the essentials of character and ability than does the legal profession. ”

“ Judges Hall and Armour entered upon their duties soon after they had qualified. Hall remained in office two years, holding court in Denver. His successor was Stephen H. Harding, a former governor of Utah; a man who proved very unpopular, not alone with the attorneys practicing at the law, but with the people of his district generally.
Unpopular as Harding was, still he was better liked than Judge Armour, the third of President Lincoln's original appointees. Armour was a very eccentric man and managed to make himself very unpopular by his manners and his decisions from the bench. ”

“ Conditions in other counties created by the Kansas and Jeffersonian territories were not quite as bad as in Denver and Arapahoe county. The vast majority of the settlers lived in and near Denver and the other counties were only sparsely settled. On the plains east of the Rockies there were hardly settlers enough to keep a court busy, and in the mountains the miners had organized courts which were the recognized authorities of all the miners, and which made probate courts, such as provided by Kansas or Jefferson Territory, unnecessary. ”

“ Peoples' Courts were organized whenever an especially serious crime, such as a murder, had been committed. There were three judges and a jury of twelve, composed of substantial citizens. The man on trial was given every opportunity to present his side of the case and offer such testimony as would prove his innocence. The sentence of a Peoples' Court usually was death, though there are a number of cases on record in which the juries brought in verdicts of acquittal. In no case, as far as is known, did a People's Court ever make a mistake when it sent a man to the gallows. ”

“ Splendid even in ashes, they rest quietly under the murmurings of many and mighty conquests, in that temple of silence and reconciliation which affords, at last, a quiet repose to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by contentions, struggles and adversary blows in the defense of the rights of others. ”

“ For the military hero the whole world is making and inscribing a record, while the government which he has served feels bound to honor his memory with monuments of brass or marble that transmit his name and deeds to posterity. The artist leaves the creation of his genius in lines and colors that hand down his name and genius to remote generations. ”

“ Thus the small audience, the interests of opposing counsel, and the fact that the court who decides against one never thinks much of the effort of the one it holds against, and the further fact that, in the nature of the case, no record of such effort is possible, places the lawyer at a disadvantage under which no other profession or calling rests, so far as his record is concerned. ”

“ The physician, whether as a specialist or a general practitioner, by years of study, experience and ability, becomes an authority, and the record of his experience and his dissertations fill the pages of the medical journals, and his name and fame exist in records more enduring than brass. ”

“ Charles Honeyman's type exists not alone in fiction; the statesman, or rather the supposed statesman, since he is where a statesman ought to be, may be destitute alike of character and ability, or, if possessed of either, only in a very limited degree—the creature of circumstances or of accidents, a partisan, the creature of a compromise, perhaps, between a level-headed man and a lunatic, whose only qualification was his availability or his wealth. ”

“ Without boasting, it may be said that our Association has striven constantly and with some measure of success towards the attainment of these ends, and that some of them, at least, are in a fair way towards accomplishment. The Association, through the voluntary contributions of its members, in the shape of three dollars set aside from every five dollars paid in, as the annual dues of each member, has expended ten thousand dollars on its law library in the court house, and is continuing to add to the library at the rate of about one thousand dollars per year. ”

“ Many level headed men among the settlers full well realized that any attempt on the part of the settlers to create a territory was without warrant of law, and that such a government never would be recognized by Congress or any other state, but their warnings remained unheeded. Leaders in the movement insisted that the act creating Kansas territory provided that all lands to which the Indian title had not been extinguished, should not be considered within the Kansas jurisdiction. ”

“ Failure of the Kansas, Jeffersonian and municipal courts in Arapahoe county to punish evildoers, according to their deserts, resulted in the organization, by the better class of citizens, of what became known as Peoples' Courts. During the year 1860 there was an extraordinary influx of settlers into the Rocky Mountain region. Reports that gold had been discovered in the mountains and that men were growing rich fast had spread throughout the east. ”

“ Memoirs of pioneer residents and the records of the State's early history fail to give any definite information regarding the territory over which the jurisdiction of this probate county extended—as a matter of fact, Judge Wagoner and the men who had elected him were not quite sure. In February, 1859, one month before Judge Wagoner's elevation to the bench, the Kansas legislature had enacted a law dividing the Arapahoe county of 1855 into four counties, Montana, Broderick, El Paso and Oro. ”

“ Far-seeing men, who realized that the time had come for the organization of a territory in accordance with the laws of the United States, interested President Buchanan and Congress, and in February, 1861, Congress passed the bill which created the Territory of Colorado, with boundaries corresponding with those of our state today. ”

“ I wish that judges would recognize their limitations as readily when they are on the bench as when they are off. When they are off, it seems so easy.
Nor can any reference to the bar of that time omit mention of Major Edward L. Smith, urbane, soft-spoken and courteous, but who would spring with the quickness of a leopard at an antagonist off his guard ”

“ As the territorial movement gained momentum, the people paid less and less attention to Wagoner and his court, until finally it passed completely out of existence. The disappearance of this court, recognized by them as the only court doing business legally within the territory, gave the champions of the Kansas cause their opportunity. They held an election in November, 1859, and elected a full set of officers, including a probate judge, for "Arapahoe County, Kansas." ”

“ They work hard and earnestly; new cases simply are brought faster than the judges can dispose of them, if they wish to give them that consideration which they should give them.
At the same time that Arapahoe County was given five district judges, the General Assembly redistricted the entire state. A bill was passed dividing the state into thirteen judicial districts. These thirteen districts remain today as fixed by this bill. Elsewhere in this volume will be found a list of the districts and of the counties embraced by each of them and of the judges holding court in them today. ”

“ In these later days we have had as many as one hundred seventy-five lawyers and judges at a single luncheon meeting. The present membership of the Association is four hundred thirty-three, constituting a large majority of the lawyers in active practice in the city; and there is no sign that in the increase of numbers and of money there has been any loss in effectiveness in upholding the honor of the profession, and in serving the administration of justice in this community. ”

“ It required men of unusual ability and resourcefulness to successfully meet all the questions which presented themselves to them in this region in the early days. Not only were these qualities required of the men practicing at the bar but also, and if not in a higher degree, of the judges on the bench. With very few exceptions, the judges proved themselves equal to the task. ”

“ He held both places until the merger of the two courts, December 31, 1911, and still he serves, less changing than the law itself, immutable and inscrutable, but still believing:
"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy."
The incumbent is the eighth marshal. His immediate predecessor, Dewey C. Bailey, served more than twice as long as the average term in this office.
Judge Moses Hallett took his seat on this bench January 23, 1877. How different the surroundings from those in which we are assembled! ”

“ Judge Markham said of him that he would rather get off a joke than get a verdict, and that if he had been paid a dollar apiece for all the suits he had appeared in, he'd have been the richest man in the world. ”

“ The genius of American institutions has no better illustration than the method by which the lawyers of the state were made members of the bar of the courts of these United States. Judge Samuel H. Elbert, who had been elected to the Supreme Court of the state, on its admission to the Union, was recognized, in his official capacity, by Judge Dundy, and moved the admission to the bar of—
Eugene P. Jacobson Alfred Sayre Hugh Butler Westbrooke S. Decker John W. Jenkins Mitchell Benedict and Alfred I. Blake as attorneys and counsellors at law, solicitors in chancery and proctors in admiralty. ”

“ Tom Macon, primal man from Missouri, who never willingly ate any diet more civilized than corn pone and bacon, who could beat the devil quoting Scripture, who described a contemporary orator as placing all his emphasis on his prepositions, who could grill a witness until the lid of Satan's cook stove seemed cool to the touch. ”

“ Step by step they were compelled to work out the solution of these problems until the rights of the users of water, the digging of ditches and establishment of reservoirs, had been settled. Years passed before many of the questions had been settled and the law laid down for all time. ”

“ Manuel Vigil, having drawn the lowest number on the docket, was tried first, and acquitted by a jury of Gringoes. The others followed. A careful investigation of the facts will lead any careful man to the firm conclusion that each and every one was clearly guilty and most properly acquitted. Pioneer juries evidently applied the same principle, in the trial of Mexicans, that tenderfoot juries, in these soft days, apply upon the trial of young Piute Indian braves. ”

“ He presided here for thirty years, and thus rounded out a forty-year term upon the bench in Colorado. Nature is not sufficiently fecund, in departing from formula, to lend reasonable expectation that he will be approached, much less duplicated, within the century. ”

“ Born, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, August 17, 1870; graduate Phillips Exeter College, Exeter, New York; married Iva Shepard, February, 1900; four children; admitted Pennsylvania Bar, 1894; Colorado Bar, 1897; State Senator, Sixteenth and Seventeenth General Assemblies; present General Counsel for Denver Gas & Electric Light Company, German-American Life Insurance Company, Hamilton National Bank; member Denver Club, Denver Athletic, Denver Country, Colorado Golf, Denver Motor Clubs, Masonic bodies, Red Cross Constantine. ”