Romney and Rob Roy, a similar village in an adjoining county; devoting his time out of school to the study of medicine. A friend writes: "For some time every thing went well, but some unpleasantness arose between him and his Rob Roy patrons, and the warrior habit which so distinguished him in later life brought on a sharp collision. Without hesitation, he struck out for Romney one of the coldest days in winter, with the snow a foot deep. In crossing the eight-mile prairie' he lost his way, and never was nearer his end until he went down in the Central America. He reached my father's about ten o'clock at night, with his hands and feet so badly frozen, that, though every remedy was resorted to, he was disabled for the rest of the winter. As soon as he was able to walk, he commenced a school. We had, at that time, a debating society in Romney that was attended by all the natives.' Lockwood did not seem to have the least capacity for extemporaneous speaking; but every Saturday night he was regularly on hand, with a half-hour's speech thoroughly committed, and delivered without reference to manuscript. Some of these efforts gave promise of his maturest powers. You remember his solemn manner, his deep, sepulchral tones, and the force and energy with which he pressed his strong points. They are all associated, in my mind, with the debates at the old log school house."

Lock

About this time he determined to study law, and borrowing a copy of Blackstone, almost literally committed its text. His country school of from seven to twenty pupils did not afford a very promising outlook, and he was induced to go to Crawfordsville. That place, now the flourishing seat of Wabash college, did not then contain material for two schools, and the field was already occupied by one. wood opened in opposition; got into a newspaper quarrel with his competitor; studied law by night; got married without a dollar in the world; was admitted to practice by the circuit court, and went to Thorntown, a new place in Boone county, to establish himself in his profession. He did not wait long for a client; he was sued by his landlord, and made his first appearance as a lawyer in his own case. He pleaded an unpaid tuition bill as a set-off, but judgment was given against him. He was unable to give an appeal bond, and the bed he and his wife slept on was sold by the constable for less than $10. No incidents of his life seem to have made a deeper impression on him than the flogging of his messmate and the constable's sale of his bed. He referred to the first with a shudder, as if the scene were still before his eyes, in the last year of his life. The last burned into his soul a dread and horror of debt; he never forgave its author, and, in the course of his professional life, found an opportunity to take a keen revenge.

thousands were pending. In after years he often referred to the embarrassment he experienced at his first appearance at the supreme court. Morbidly sensitive; his uncouth appearance and coarse, illfitting clothes a burden to him; oppressed by a deep sense of poverty and friendlessness- he shrank from contact of men of the world as one long immured in darkness is pained by the light. He had not the courage to state to the court that he was present for examination as an attorney, and was only relieved from this difficulty by the accidental presence of the judge of his circuit, who made the necessary motion. Lockwood's appearance, of course, attracted attention; and the manner in which he passed his examination, with the exhaustive argument he made in the case he had carried up (Poulk et al. v. Slocum, 3d Blackford, 421), made him known to the court and bar as a man of mark. Even his landlady noted the changed manner toward him, and translated him from a lumber-room in the attic to the floor of his peers.

His new position, however, brought him no new clients at Thorntown. He knew none of the arts by which success is conciliated. He was never the next friend of the clerk, the favorite of the sheriff, the intimate of the judge, familiar with jurors, nor the confidant of witnesses. He realized his disadvantage in the small encounters of social intercourse, and avoided them. He became moody, reserved, abstracted, studious. Never seeking business, what little there was in his sparsely settled country did not seek him. His deep love and ardent study of the law as a science, were rather bars than aids to his immediate success; and his poverty was unrelieved. He was refused credit for a trifling amount at the village store; he wrote the name of the owner in his black-book, and went back to potatoes in the ashes, with salt for a luxury. His home was never a happy one. He knew "the law was a jealous mistress," and in his heart it had no rivals. He was still under five-and-twenty; but he never was young. His life was always a struggle. He would make no terms with Fortune - it was an enemy to be conquered. In all his professional career he never seemed so entirely himself, as when he felt that court and jury were against him, and must be overcome by sheer force of intellect and will.

Albert S. White, of Lafayette, Indiana, had become

acquainted with Lockwood at Indianapolis, and in the year following (1836) offered him a partnership. The offer was accepted, and he removed to Lafayette. His opportunity at length came.

Soon after the presidential election of 1836, a homicide was committed at Lafayette that caused the most intense excitement. Mr. J. H. W. Frank — a very young man, the junior editor of a democratic paper — had won a small wager from Mr. John Woods, a prominent merchant, on the vote of the city of New York. Frank called for settlement, and was accused by Woods of being in possession of the returns at the time the bet was made. A quarrel and rencounter ensued, in which Frank killed Woods by stabbing him with a pocket-knife. Woods was a man of high social position, and his party regarded him as a martyr whose blood was to be avenged.

White and Lockwood and John Pettit were engaged for the defense. White and Pettit prudently, perhaps, insisted that the safer course was to delay the

trial, get the prisoner released on bail, and forfeit the bond. Lockwood urged a speedy trial- that it was better Frank should take his chance at once of suffering the penalty of the law, than to be a wanderer over the earth, liable to be hunted down any hour of his life. Frank coincided with this view; and Pettit and White, though continuing to counsel with Lockwood, took no further part in the active management of the defense. The case was continued one term, on motion of the state, and Lockwood had ample time for preparation. He realized that, in the event of conviction, the blood of the accused would be upon his hands. It would not answer to reduce the crime to manslaughter: Frank preferred suicide to the penitentiary, and his lawyer applauded the choice. Those who knew counsel and prisoner could not tell which felt he had the greater stake in the result.

When the case came on for trial, Edward A. Hannegan was employed to assist Lockwood, and Henry S. Lane and Isaac Naylor appeared with W. P. Bryant for the prosecution. It was, perhaps, the most remarkable criminal trial that has ever occurred in Indiana. Of the counsel engaged in it, White, Hannegan, Pettit and Lane afterwards represented that state in the United States senate.

A trial for murder is essentially dramatic, with the added awful interest of a human life at stake. In the trial of Frank, the legal parties were strongly cast. Lane was an impetuous speaker, moving straight as a cannon ball to his mark. In his younger daysand he was young then- his speech was a stream of fire. Hannegan, as an orator, was not unlike Colonel Baker: inferior to him in sustained power, he was his equal in vivid imagination, and his superior in emotion, tenderness, and pathos. Naylor was a plausible man, who won the confidence of jurors, and magnetized them into the impression that he was, by turns, the candid friend, the impartial judge, a disinterested witness, a fellow-juror bound by his oathany thing but an advocate. Bryant (afterward United States district judge) was cool and watchful; instant to see, and call attention to, any loose joint in the armor of his adversary.

Fox said of one of his own speeches, "If it reads well, it is a poor speech." In reading Lockwood's speech on this trial, it seems, with the exception of the law argument, declamatory and overwrought; but no perusal can give an adequate conception of its living effect. It was level with the occasion; fervid with the excitement of the hour. The orator fairly met and turned back the tide of popular passion, by he greater passion of his single breast. At times, nis delivery swelled to the fury of the storm; at others, sank to the plaintive moaning of the autumnal wind. His invective was terrible. He poured the gall of years of bitterness into his denunciation of the "society" that demanded, and the clique that had contributed money to secure, a conviction. His statement of the law was clear and exhaustive, raising the distinctions between murder, manslaughter, excusable and justifiable homicide, with metaphysical stability, and mathematical precision. In shaping the testimony, he seemed to make his own case; and in applying the law to the facts, was severe as logic. The speech lasted nine hours, and one who

heard it said, "It was the best jury-speech ever made on this continent-or any other."

Frank was acquitted. The case was for Lockwood more than Erskine's "nonsuit of cow-beef:" it was his supremest triumph, bringing him, at twenty-six, from obscurity and neglect into the full blaze of popular attention and applause.

White was soon afterward elected to congress, the partnership was dissolved, and Lockwood entered upon an extensive practice.

There was nothing in the history of litigation in Indiana like the unsettled land titles, and the conflict between old court and new court which made Kentucky the battle ground of legal giants; but thirty years ago she had a strong bar, and, with Blackford, Dewey, and Sullivan on the bench, as able a supreme court as ever adorned the jurisprudence of any state of the Union. The habit of following a circuit makes a different, and, in many respects, a better lawyer, than a city practice. The circuit lawyer in a new country should be well versed in every branch of his profession. There is no chance for a division of labor. He must be ready for the "occasion sudden;" for he will often learn for the first time the leading facts of his case while it is on trial. He will seldom have access to any but the most meagre libraries, and he must carry his books in his brain. With a supreme court above him that passes no mistakes, and a backwoods jury before him that would be wearied and disgusted with a display of technical learning, and would "tolerate no nonsense," he must be so grounded in elementary law as to be able to try his case closely without his books, and adhere to the lex scripta while arguing to the jury as a man rather than as a lawyer. In the early days of Indiana, lawyers in good practice would ride hundreds of miles on horseback. In the small country towns the people would flock to the court-house as to a show, and in every important case the whole neighborhood would take sides. There was not often any assumption of dignity in judicial manners and bearing. Sometimes the court would adjourn to allow the bar, jury and witnesses to go to a horse-race, where "his honor" would preside with the same impartiality that distinguished his rulings on Kent and Blackstone. On one occasion, a judge whose decisions usually stood fire, is reported to have said to a lawyer who afterward acquired a national reputation, “Ned, you can go to the jury, but those horses are to start in thirty minutes, and I advise you to be brief." Ned was brief, and the judge remembered it in his charge. In the evenings, judge and lawyers would meet at the village tavern in a social game of old sledge, and discuss with the same freedom, a false play, and any mistake that had been committed, or absurdity that had been uttered in the court-room. It was a rough school, but thorough, and those who passed through it fairly, learned their degrees. In addition to this training, Lockwood was always a close student of books. He read nothing superficially. He analyzed, made his own syllabus for, and commonplaced every case he ever had occasion to examine.

One who knew him well, and was, at one time, his partner, writes: "Some subjects in connection with Lockwood suggest themselves at the moment, upon

which I would enlarge if I had leisure: I allude to his strong sense of natural justice; to his conservatism; to his indefatigable pursuit of details; to his hatred of shams; to his contempt for the narrowness of parties and partisans. How he loved his profession! | How he identified himself with his clients! How proud in his successes, and how gloomy in his reverses! I think I never knew a man of finer impulses.

"The finest tones of his eloquence were due to his reverence for sacred things-the corporal oath, the conscience and religion: a reverence not paraded for effect, but unconsciously permeating his speech, and giving him, with juries, a surpassing power. He seemed almost morbidly attached to the study of such cases upon wills, as turned upon the distinction, shadowy and vague, between sanity and insanity. His own mind was an instructive instance of the painful narrowness of this line of demarkation -- the boundary between the fine frenzy of the poet and the dark frenzy of the lunatic."

For a few years his professional business was large; but, at that time, every man in the "West" was a speculator, and in the revulsion that followed the flush times, he found himself involved in debt beyond his immediate ability to pay. In the spring of 1842 he deposited what money he could raise in bank, for the benefit of his creditors, reserving only a few hundred dollars; placed his son at a Catholic school in Vincennes, and disappeared. He had communicated his intentions and plans to no one, and it was not known, even to his own family, until long afterward, that he had gone to the city of Mexico. For some months he had devoted himself to the study of Spanish and the civil law; but it would have been as rational to have expected to make a fortune teaching Mexican children their mother tongue as in the practice of his profession. He was simply flying from his demon. He had no acquaintances in Mexico; it is not probable that he made any. To add to his helplessness, not long after his arrival, he was attacked with inflammatory rheumatism, and saw his small means melt away, until he had barely enough left to pay a caravan passage to Vera Cruz, He set out for that place before he had fully recovered, and arrived there with $2 in his pocket, which he immediately staked at monte. He won, and pressed his luck until he had won $50; paid his passage to New Orleans, and went from there to Natchitoches, where he had a cousin living. He resumed the name of Jessup, and again applied himself to the study of the civil law and the Louisiana code. After spending a year at Natchitoches in study and occasional practice, he returned to New Orleans, and applied for admission into the higher state courts. He had successfully passed his examination, and was about to take the attorney's oath, when he accidentally saw in the courtroom a man of whom he could expect, and from whom he would receive, no favors - a man he had humiliated with his most merciless ridicule, and tortured with his cruelest sarcasm the man who had sold his bed under execution; from the shadow of whose memory he was fleeing. Dreading an exposure of his changed name, he instantly quitted the room. A few days afterward, Sam, Judah, a distinguished lawyer

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from Indiana, met him on the street, wearing a straw hat, negro shoes," and clothing to match. He wanted to borrow $20 to redeem his trunk. Judah had but ten with him. It is of no consequence," replied Lockwood, declining the ten, and went on and on, until a recruiting station attracted his attention. Fairly at bay with fate, he saw the words, "Twenty Dollars Bounty"— hesitated a moment - then enlisted as a common soldier in the United States army; took his bounty and paid the bill at his lodgings, and was sent to join his regiment in the Red River (Arkansas) country.

After a few months' trial, he liked the land, as little as the naval service of his country.

His friend Hannegan was at that time in the United States Senate; and learning of Lockwood's enlistment, obtained from President Tyler an order for his discharge, which he sent him, with $100, and an earnest entreaty to go home to his family. Lockwood afterward repaid this gift by a present of $10,000. After an absence of nearly three years, he returned to Lafayette, found his wild lands sufficiently advanced in value to relieve him from debt, and resumed his profession,

No man on his circuit few men anywhere — equaled him in his power of abstraction and prolonged concentration. He held a subject as in a vice, until he had mastered it. In the preparation of his cases, he knew no weariness; and if his faculties began to flag on trial, he stimulated them to their utmost by the use of brandy, opium, and even tincture of cantharides. He sometimes erred, from over-preparation; from the excessive refinement and subtilty of his distinctions, and the metaphysical cast of his mind. His arguments on legal propositions were apt to run into disquisitions upon general principles. He would hunt a principle down until he resolved it into an abstraction. He erred oftener from an absorbing interest that indentified him with his client — or, rather, made himself the real party in the case — e-from the violence of his personal feelings, the bitterness of his prejudices, and his undisguised contempt for a judgment that did not see as he saw, and rest in his conclusions. He could not leave his likes and hatreds at the door of the court room, without divesting himself of personality. The successful lawyer should conduct the trial of his cause as the coolest gambler watches his game, unmoved by the magnitude of the stake. He may be excited, but must never be carried away by his own vehemence; and in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of his passion, must watch the play of his own feelings, and measure the effect his most righteous indignation and noble anger will have upon the minds he seeks to convince.

These faults were all illustrated in the trial of a case, the result of which was the immediate occasion of his coming to California. In 1848-9 he was employed to contest a death-bed will, where the testator, being childless, had bequeated his property to his wife's relatives, who were comparatively affluent, to the exclusion of his own, who were poor. One of the principal legatees was Holloway (ex-commissioner of patents), who had, at some time previous, refused to pay a fee charged him by Lockwood, on the ground it was exorbitant. Lockwood sued for it, recovered judgment for the full amount, and remitted the judg

ment, with the assurance that he would take his pay in some other manner. In the case of Hill v. Holloway, he saw an opportunity to make his promise good, and he entered upon it with all the interest inspired by a favorite intellectual pursuit, and the ardor of vindictive hatred.

At the trial, he was so intent upon attributing improper influences and raising the presumption of fraud, he failed to bring out the fact, which it is possible might have been established to the satisfaction of the jury, whose sympathies were strongly against the will, and which would have been fatal, that the testator affixed his signature (the name was illegible), in articulo mortis, and that he was dead before the subscribing witnesses had signed. His argument took up three days; he regarded it as the ablest effort of his life; but it failed of its purpose, as what three-day argument does not? While the jury was out, Lockwood sat, as usual after a hard contest, moody and abstracted, fighting the battle over again in his own mind, and seeing perhaps but too clearly where it had been lost, if it were lost. When the jury came in, and the verdict against him was read, he arose, struck the table with his clenched fist, and swore he would never try another case in that court. He never did.

His friend, Mr. E. L. Beard, was making preparation to go to California, and Lockwood proposed to join him. He thought he could do well by shipping a lot of liquors from New York in small bottles, and peddling them to miners! Beard had determined to go through Mexico to Mazatlan; Lockwood, not wishing to renew his acquaintance with the Mexicans, took passage around the Horn. Before parting, the friends provided themselves each with a bugle of the same tones, that they might hear and answer each other's calls, if they should at any time get lost in the Wilderness of California. Beard had been in California some months, and was living at the Mission of San Jose, when, one day, he heard the familiar sound of Lockwood's bugle. Answering the call, he soon met Lockwood-covered with mud, gun on shoulder, knife and pistols in belt, bugle in hand - like a modern Don Quixote going to summon the surrender of a castle; with a sailor companion, loaded down with bundles, for a Sancho Panza.

Lockwood had suffered severely from scurvy during the voyage. On arriving at San Francisco, he started for the Mission, landing in a whale boat with one boatman; got lost; had been in the swamp all night; had taken short cuts through sloughs and bayous; was chilled, famished, and very ill. On reaching the house, he insisted that he must be bled. The only physician in the neighborhood assured him that bleeding would be certain death. Lockwood maintained his opinion; and as the only way to demonstrate its correctness was by experiment, he tried it-bled himself until the doctor admitted the experiment was a fair one; and confounded his antagonist, and science, by getting better, and eventually well. Before leaving New York, he had been induced to abandon his contemplated traveling bar, and on the voyage had applied himself to the study of medicine. He had quarreled with the law, and thought of going back to his first love; but his hatred of sciolism made

him unwilling to try experiments upon any life but his own, though his success in medicine, where he was his own first patient, was more flattering than in the law, where he was his own first client.

He soon came up to San Francisco, and for six months was clerk in a law-office, where he not only furnished the law, but swept the office, made the fires, and in all respects complied with his agreement to "make himself generally useful." He received his wages every evening; every night found him in a gambling saloon; every morning penniless. His legal services were appreciated in the office, though he was spared no humiliation; and, at the end of his term, he was patronized with the offer of a partnership, if he would stay a year. "I have fulfilled my contract to the letter," he replied, "and you have paid me as you agreed, but I would not remain another hour" The close of the speech would not look well in print.

He entered into a law partnership with and —, which lasted until there was one division of profits. In the allotment to Lockwood there was $500 of state scrip, which he agreed to sell to one of his partners at a price named. When he brought in the warrants next morning, their value had declined, at least, in his partner's estimation, and Lockwood tore them up and left the office.

For a month or two he worked as a day laborer shoveling sand, coaling steamers, and doing any thing that came to hand. While he was thus engaged an old acquaintance sought him out, to get him to try an important law-suit, involving title to real estate in the city. Lockwood at first refused to go; said he was earning an honest living, and did not want to be disturbed. His friend persisted, and, at length, banteringly offered to double his daily wages if he would go to work on his case. This proposition struck Lockwood favorably, and he acceded to it, stipulating that he should be paid every day, and that at no time afterward should any other fee be offered him, directly or indirectly; "for," said he, "I want none of my partners' earnings, and they shall have none of mine." He tried the case successfully; the profit involved was of great value; but he held his client to his contract, and his daily wages was his only fee.

After the term of his "partnership" expired he opened an office alone, and was soon after employed as counsel by Palmer, Cook & Co., and through that connection was introduced to a general and lucrative practice.

Mr. Palmer was at San Jose in the winter of 1851, during the session of the legislature at that place, anxious to secure the best possible legal services for his firm, and particularly for a test-case that involved the "water-lot titles, government reserves," etc. One evening General McD→→ and Judge Hwere in his room, and it occurred to him that he would take their opinion as to who was the best landlawyer in San Francisco. Handing each a slip torn from the margin of a newspaper, he asked them to write the name of the man entitled to that pre-eminence, in their judgment. He was surprised to find the same name written by each, and more surprised that it was a name - Lockwood-of which he had never heard. He returned to San Francisco the fol

lowing day, to find this strange lawyer, who, in the trial of a single case, had impressed two of the finest legal minds in the state with a sense of his surperiority. The interview and its result will be given, as nearly as they can be recalled, in Mr. Palmer's words:

"I found Lockwood in an unfurnished office, apparently absorbed in a black-letter looking law book. I introduced myself, and told him the case in which I wished to employ him. There was no need to go into details, as the case was well known by its title, having been freely discussed by the newspapers. Lockwood, scarcely looking up from his book, said, 'I don't think you have got any case.' Piqued by his abruptness, I answered, 'When you have given the matter as much attention as I have, perhaps you will be of a different opinion.' 'If you will come to-morrow morning,' he replied, 'I will give you a final answer.' When I went back he was in the same position. It did not seem to me that he had moved, or turned a leaf of the volume before him. Without addressing a word directly to me, except to acknowledge my presence, he said, as if reading aloud to himself, 'a conveyance that is void is void forever.' "Not relishing that application of the law, and nettled by his manner, I remarked that the counsel for the other side would probably be able to find that principle without his assistance. Without heeding my interruption, he went on, in the same measured manner, 'But the sovereign power, by a sovereign act, may give validity to the terms of a conveyance which is void.'

"I saw his meaning and its importance as by a flash of lightning, and, applying it to the case, exclaimed, 'Then an act of the legislature may refer to a void deed for a descripton of lands; and it is the law which conveys the title, not the deed?'

"Precisely. I will take your case, and win it.' "From the moment he announced his position, I felt that he would win it; but when the case was coming on for trial, I was amazed and terrified by the quantity of brandy he drank. I remonstrated to no purpose. Outside the court-room he became dull and stolid; within, on trial, he was luminous, ready upon every proposition; and I was constantly asking myself, 'How long can he hold out?' The case was on trial several days; four lawyers, as able as any in the state, were on the other side; and I do not remember a single instance in which Lockwood was taken at a disadvantage, either in argument, authority, or repartee. I recall at the moment one passage between him and Isaac E. Holmes. Lockwood had quoted law to the effect, I think, that, under certain conditions, an easement might be extinguished by a change of the fee. Holmes interrupted him— 'Do you state that as law, Mr. Lockwood?'

"Yes,' replied Lockwood, his manner for the moment slow, almost to drawling, 'I state it as law: and I have tried and gained an important case upon that principle.'

"That case has not been reported, I fancy. It is not in the books, is it? It is Hoosier law, I presume.' "No, sir; the case is not in the books which the gentleman has read. It was tried before an Indiana court, at an Indiana bar—a court and bar on which

the gentleman's transcendent abilities would reflect no credit.'

ance.

"He held out, made his words good, and won the case. He was immediately retained by Palmer, Cook & Co. as their general counsel; and though paid large fees, his legal services were considered cheap. Of course, he was not always successful (the lawyer has had a small practice who never lost a case), but he was always ready. I never knew him to ask a continuA starved lion were scarcely fiercer than he after a defeat. When he was at bay, some one was apt to get hurt. As an instance of his crushing manner: once, when a witness, whose answers had been unsatisfactory, if not untrue, and whom he had crossexamined at great length, was about to leave the stand, Lockwood detained him 'One question more;' finished the sentence he was writing, looked up, and transfixed him with the question, 'Would you believe yourself under oath?'

"Our patience was often taxed by his humors; but you know one can grant every thing to the eccentricities of genius, who would concede nothing to the caprices of a fool."

His large professional gains only fed his passion for gambling. Again at war with himself and the world, he determined, in the summer of '53, to break off his associations, and go to Australia. Some of his clients subsidized the master of the vessel on which he had taken passage to remain in port a week after Lockwood had gone on board, to see if he would not change his mind. When it was evident he would not, one of them visited him to inquire if he had any money. "Yes," he answered, taking a quarter eagle from his pocket and throwing it overboard; "but I will sail free." His friend, Mr. Beard, however, had placed some clothing and money in the hands of the captain, with orders to smuggle them into Lockwood's room "when his fit was over.”

Arrived at Sydney, he set out to walk to Melbourne-about seven hundred miles - through wide stretches of uninhabited bush; over spurs of mountains, where there was not so much as a bridle-path; a journey so lonely, wild, and desolate, that no other white man ever voluntarily made it alone and on foot.

He had always had a great admiration for English law reports, and a high opinion of English courts. He loved the old common-law system of pleading; the distinction between law and equity proceedings; and had little respect for the code of "law made easy,” with its one form of civil action and unlimited liberty to amend. He thought that in an English court he would get into a purer atmosphere of law - where cases would not be argued by the newspapers, and prejudged by the public that makes and unmakes courts. He was not destined, however, to have any such experience; for a law of the colony, or a rule of court, prohibited any one not a subject of the queen from practicing law until after a residence of seven years in Australia.

He remained in Australia nearly two years. At one time he was bookkeeper to a mercantile house; at another, clerk in a law office, from which he was discharged for refusing to copy a paragraph into a brief, which he said was not law; and for some months he was employed in the lonely, but not uncongenial