abash Railroad." These were said to have
appeared in the Ann Arbor Daily News when it was conducted by the
judge's most intimate friend, between the years 1853 and 1861. Field
anticipated public incredulity by saying that "people who knew him to
be a severe moralist and a profound scholar will laugh you to scorn if
you try to make them believe Cooley ever condescended to express his
fancies in verse." Then he went on to describe the judge, at the time
of writing the verse, as "a long, awkward boy, with big features,
moony eyes, a shock of coarse hair, and the merest shadow of a
mustache," in proof of which description he presented a picture of the
young man, declared to be from a daguerrotype in the possession of Mr.
Eastman. The first "specimen gem" was said to be a paraphrase from
Theocritus, entitled "Mortality":

_O Nicias, not for us alone
Was laughing Eros born,
Nor shines for us alone the moon,
Nor burns the ruddy morn.
Alas! to-morrow lies not in the ken
Of us who are, O Nicias, mortal men._

Next followed a bit, "in lighter vein, from the Simonides of Amorgas,"
entitled "A Fickle Woman":

_Her nature is the sea's, that smiles to-night
A radiant maiden in the moon's soft light;
The unsuspecting seaman sets his sails,
Forgetful of the fury of her gales;
To-morrow, mad with storms, the ocean roars,
And o'er his hapless wreck her flood she pours._

Field then went on to describe Judge Cooley as equally felicitous in
Latin verse, presenting in proof thereof the following, "sung at the
junior class supper at Ann Arbor, May 14th, 1854":

_Nicyllam bellis oculis--
(Videre est amare),
Carminibus et poculis,
Tra la la, tra la la,
Me placet propinare:
Tra la la, tra la la,--
Me placet propinare!_

Beside such grotesque literary horse-play as this, with a gravity
startling in its unexpected daring, Field proceeded to attribute to
the venerable jurist one of the simplest and purest lullabies that
ever came from his own pen, opening with:

_I hear Thy voice, dear Lord;
I hear it by the stormy sea
When winter nights are bleak and wild,
And when, affright, I call to Thee;
It calms my fears and whispers me,
"Sleep well, my child."_

Then follows "The Vision of the Holy Grail," one of those exercises in
archaic English in which Field took infinite pains as well as delight,
and to which, as a production of Judge Cooley's, he paid the passing
trib