392
The Green Bag.
tribunal he continued in the Circuit, the farm-laborer and got a little schooling. He lawyers of which have not yet forgotten the was graduated from the Law School in 1861 gait at which they had to go to keep up with after two years' study, and after setting up a business as he drove it. He spared neither country office and losing all his books by himself nor them; he wrote his charges, fire, he went to Bay City, where he became kept voluminous notes of his trials in his justice of the peace, city attorney, and prose own handwriting, and held frequent night cuting attorney, and in 1872 was in the sessions, — a practice he resumed in after- Legislature during a short extra session. years when he was Chief-Justice. This over

Being a very active and conspicuous mem exertion invited paral ber, and looking even younger than he was, ysis, and he resigned he acquired the politi from the Circuit in cal nickname of " the 1 866 only to be chosen in the following year boy from Bay." In 1 874 he was Attorneyto succeed Chief-Jus General for nine tice Martin in the Su months to fill a va preme Court. Eight cancy, and discharged years later he was the his duties so effectively nominee of both po that it was taken for litical parties, but at granted that the next the expiration of six State convention teen years he declined would nominate him. to be again a candi date. During the No pains were taken, time when his associ however, to insure this ates were Christiancy, result; and when Campbell, and Cooley, written ballots were — between 1867 and collected in the con 1875, — the court fusion just before reached the acme of adjournment, ii was its fame; and about found that a rural that time a certain prosecutor named legal editor, who is Smith had the ma
now a distinguished jority, for no better judge himself, wrote reason, apparently, me that he believed there was no court in than that his name was easier to spell. This the country of equal ability. mischance of course helped to make MarsIsaac Marston, the only judge of foreign ton judge a few months later, when Chris birth and the first to have been graduated tiancy resigned. But judicial work was not from the law school of the University of altogether to his taste; he preferred the Michigan, was born at Poyntzpass, County rough-and-tumble of the bar, and after eight Armagh, Ireland, Jan. 2, 1839; was baptized years of service he resigned in 1883 at the into the Church of England, and having lost age of forty-four, — an age at which few his father was brought up by his mother, men could now hope to attain the honors who apprenticed him to a grocer, for whom which he was already tired of. He has he worked when between the ages of thir since practised in Detroitteen and sixteen. Then he emigrated and One of Judge Marston's acts while Attor came to Michigan, where he hired out as a ney-General should be recorded here as a