constructors.  I could have told you stories without number, full of interest, of the Judges of California, State and Federal, who preceded me on the bench, and of members of the profession; of Hastings, Bennett, Lyons, Wells, Anderson, Heydenfeldt, and Murray, of the State Supreme Court; of Hoffman and McAllister of the Federal bench; of Robinson, Crittenden, Randolph, Williams, Yale, McConnell, Felton, and others of the Bar, now dead, and of some who are at its head, now living; composing as a whole a bar not exceeded in ability, learning, eloquence, and literary culture by that of any other State of the Union.  But you asked me merely for personal reminiscences, of occurrences at Marysville and during the days preceding my going there.  I will, therefore, postpone until another occasion a narrative which I think will be more interesting than anything I have here related.

[1] These sketches were in the main dictated to a short-hand
    writer at the request of Mr. Theodore H. Hittell, of San
    Francisco.

[2] The letter is printed at the end of this narrative at
    page 135.

THE CAREER OF JUDGE FIELD ON THE SUPREME BENCH OF CALIFORNIA, BY JUDGE JOSEPH G. BALDWIN, HIS ASSOCIATE FOR THREE YEARS.

[From the Sacramento Union, of May 6, 1863.]

“The resignation by Judge Field of the office of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California, to take effect on the 20th instant, has been announced.  By this event the State has been deprived of the ablest jurist who ever presided over her courts.  Judge Field came to California from New York in 1849, and settled in Marysville.  He immediately commenced the practice of law and rose at once to a high position at the local bar, and upon the organization of the Supreme Court soon commanded a place in the first class of the counsel practicing in that forum.  For many years, and until his promotion to the bench, his practice was as extensive, and probably as remunerative, as that of any lawyer in the State.  He served one or two sessions in the Legislature, and the State is indebted to him for very many of the laws which constitute the body of her legislation.[1] In 1857 he was nominated for Judge of the Supreme Court for a full term, and in October of the same year was appointed by Governor Johnson to fill the unexpired term of Justice Heydenfeldt, resigned.  He immediately entered upon the office, and has continued ever since to discharge its duties.  Recently, as the reader knows, he was appointed, by the unanimous request of our delegation in Congress, to a seat upon the Bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, and was confirmed, without opposition, by the Senate.

“Like most men who have risen to distinction in the United States, Judge Field commenced his career without the advantages of wealth, and he prosecuted it without the factitious