as certainly different from the ordinary run of probate judges or of
all judges for that matter. The smart law firms that had dealings with
him professed to consider him a poor lawyer, but everybody knows that
eminent lawyers usually have a poor opinion of the ability of judges.
They reason that if the judges had their ability, they would not be
poorly paid judges, but holding out their baskets for the fat fruit
falling abundantly from the corporation trees.

It should be said that the law was not Judge Orcutt's first love:
probably was not his supreme mistress at any time. Perhaps for that very
reason he made a better probate judge--a more human judge--than any of
the smart lawyers could have made. The little gray-haired judge was a
poet, and not an unpublished poet. I will not stop to pass judgment on
those thin volumes of verse, elegantly printed and bound, that from time
to time appeared in the welter of modern literature with the judge's
name. The judge was fonder of them, no doubt, and perhaps prouder of
them than Bright, Seagrove, and Bright are of their large retainers. And
I believe that the published volumes of verse, and the unprinted ones
within his heart and brain, made Judge Orcutt an altogether sounder
judge than if he had mused in his idle hours upon the law or upon
corporation fees. He was one of those rare judges, who even after twenty
years of forms--motions and pleas and precedents--could never wholly
forget the individual human being behind the legal form.

And so in this trivial matter of appointing a guardian for a poor girl,
the probate judge could not ignore Adelle in the mass of legal verbiage
through which such things are done. Who was this Adelle Clark? and what
sort of person was this aunt who seemed willing and anxious to assume
the legal and moral guardianship of the minor? An aunt by marriage only,
wasn't it? Yes, by marriage he assured himself after consulting again
the stiff paper form that the lawyers had properly filled out; and he
gave one of those funny little quirks to his eye which he did when not
wholly satisfied with a "proposition" presented to him. And here was the
characteristic difference between Judge Orcutt and any other probate
judge. He speculated--maybe for only the better part of ten seconds--but
he speculated upon the entity of the small human being that had fallen
within the bounds of his court. Was it really for this little girl's
best good to let this aunt by marri