This bulky Boniface was polite to all, but especially to an Augusta lawyer.  Freeman Walker, of that ilk, usually attended this court, and was the great man of the week.  A man of splendid abilities and polished manners, dressed and deporting himself like a gentleman, as he was, he shone among the lesser lights which orbed about him, a star of the first magnitude.  The choice seat, the choice bed, and choice bits at the table, were ever for Major Walker.  Big Billy, with his four hundred and ten pounds of adipose flesh, was always behind Major Walker’s chair.  He was first served; the choicest pieces of the pig were pointed out, cuts from the back and side bones and breast were hunted from the dish of fried chicken, a famous Georgia dish, for Major Walker.  It was a great thing in those days in Georgia, to live in a little town of three thousand inhabitants, and wear store clothes.  It was this and these which made a Georgia major.

Judge Dooly, upon one occasion, when attempting to usurp the seat of honor, was unceremoniously informed by Big Billy that it was Major Walker’s seat.

Custom since has familiarized the retention of special seats for special persons, and now such a remark from a host astonishes no one.  But in those days of unadulterated democracy, to assume a right to an unoccupied seat, startled every one.  Dooly, amid the astonished gaze of the assembled guests, unmurmuringly retired to an unoccupied seat of more humble pretensions near the foot of the extended table.  The occurrence was canvassed at night with full house in the democratic dormitory.  When the jests incidental were hushed, and one after another had retired to bed, Judge Dooly, then on the Bench, went slowly to the only unappropriated bed, and undressing, folded down the bed-clothes.  Suddenly, as if he had forgotten something, he slipped to the landing of the stairway and called anxiously for the landlord.  “Come up, if you please,” he said to the answering host.  Springer commenced the ascent with slow and heavy tread; at length, after a most exhausting effort, and breathing like a wounded bellows, he lifted his mighty burden of flesh into the room.

“What is your will, Judge Dooly?” he asked, with a painful effort at speech.

Dooly, standing in his shirt by the bedside and pointing to it, asked, with much apparent solicitude, if that “was Major Walker’s bed.”

Springer felt the sarcasm keenly, and, amid the boisterous outburst of laughter from every bed, turned and went down.

A thousand anecdotes might be related of the peculiar wit, sarcasm, and drollery of this remarkable man.  One more must suffice.  When Newton County was first organized, it was made the duty of Dooly to hold the first court.  There then lived and kept the only tavern in the new town of Covington, a man of huge proportions, named Ned Williams, usually called Uncle Ned—­he, as well as Dooly, have long slept with their fathers.  The location of the