ery
one knows, in a small village, to be accounted its richest man, but that
was the least of Abijah's honors. It appears by record that Abijah
maintained the responsible--and, since Squire Adams has been gathered to
his fathers, the solitary--dignity of justice of the peace in and for
the county of which East Hampton formed a highly respectable portion. It
was not the mere flourish of 'Esq.' at the end of the great man's
name--it was the essence of the great man himself. It found him, as he
was proud to think, an ordinary, commonplace individual. The good people
of East Hampton saw what it had made him, and trembled. And well they
might, where justice herself, in the person of the magistrate, stood in
awe of her own responsibility and power.

We have been told that, at the outset of Squire Witherpee's
administration, he held his breath at the thought of venturing upon
judicial grounds with much the same uneasiness that the tyro in science
exhibits in some new and hazardous experiment. The honors of office had
grown scarcely a week old upon him, when opportunity offered for a full
display of the 'feeling and perspiration' (to borrow the words of our
informant) 'with which he dispensed justice at the lowest cash price.'

It was bright and early one winter morning that two tall, raw old
farmers drove up to the 'West India Goods and General Emporium'
establishment, and emerging from an avalanche of buffalo robes, made
good their way into the back part of the store, where the customary knot
of hangers-on was gathered around the stove, to drag through the day,
doing nothing and talking politics. A single look convinced the
proprietor that he was wanted 'professionally;' he was informed that
they wished to have a deed executed. With great presence of mind, Abijah
concealed every symptom of growing palpitation, and led the way out of
the store into the kitchen of his house near by, where Mrs. Witherpee
was busy ironing, and several little Witherpees at 'sixes and sevens'
about the floor.

Like all justices, he thought it of prime importance to be assured that
the instrument had been drawn up in proper shape, though he consumed
about five times the time ordinarily devoted to such preliminaries. His
protracted scrutiny would have alarmed the parties in waiting, less
gifted as they were in the mysteries of legal lore, had it not been for
a generous approval that he gave at intervals, of 'Wells' and 'Ahems',
in a tone that was