It is likely that no American judge ever faced so peculiar and difficult a task as that assigned to Judge Wilfley. It was his duty to take the place of a lacking public opinion, and to raise the drooping prestige of his country. He had behind him no settled code of laws, but merely a few treaties and a few orders from the Department of State. He had not only to judge cases between Americans, but also cases between Americans and citizens of other nationalities, including the Chinese themselves. He had to establish rulings on the most complicated matters of coastwise commerce, in a land where coastwise commerce is involved with perplexing local customs and superstitions. Above all, he had, from the start, to fight a well-organized, well-entrenched band of shady characters who had run their course for so long without anything in the nature of a public opinion to hold them in check that they resented his advent as an encroachment on their vested right to do as they chose. The last and most perplexing of his problems was that in rooting out these evils he was in danger at every turn of arraying against him the citizens of other nationalities and even of arousing the active enmity of the courts and the officials of other nations, most of whom had been content to let Shanghai jog along in its easy-going, sordid way. It is to Judge Wilfley's everlasting credit that, with a full knowledge of the difficulties and dangers before him, he went straight to the heart of the problem. Seeing that certain American lawyers had long stood between the old consular courts and anything which could be called justice, he set to work first to solve the problem of the lawyers. His campaign for a higher standard on the Coast has not been without its humorous moments. Mr. Bassett, his shrewd young district attorney, preceded him to Shanghai to "look the ground over." The little group of American lawyers at Shanghai made haste to get acquainted with him. One of the ablest among them invited him, casually and informally, to dinner. When Bassett arrived at the dinner he found himself, to his astonishment, confronted with thirty or forty "leading citizens," including all the American lawyers and several men of questionable business character whom he rather expected to be prosecuting a little later on. After the coffee and cigars, the host rose, and in a neat little speech called on Bassett to tell the company something about Judge Wilfley and what work he meant to do in Shanghai. It was a difficult situation. A slow-witted man might have found himself in a fix. But Bassett, if I may credit the account which reached me, was equal to the situation. He rose, and looked around the table from face to face.