Keen observers, richly stored in experience and delightful in talk, as many lawyers of the Southwest have been and are, very few of them have written on other than legal subjects. James D. Lynch's _The Bench and the Bar of Texas_ (1885) is confined to the eminence of "eminent jurists" and to the mastery of "masters of jurisprudence." What we want is the flavor of life as represented by such characters as witty Three-Legged Willie (Judge R. M. Williamson) and mysterious Jonas Harrison. It takes a self-lover to write good autobiography. Lawyers are certainly as good at self-loving as preachers, but we have far better autobiographic records of circuit riders than of early-day lawyers. Like them, the pioneer justice of peace resides more in folk anecdotes than in chroniclings. Horace Bell's expansive _On the Old West Coast_ so represents him. A continent away, David Crockett, in his _Autobiography_, confessed, "I was afraid some one would ask me what the judiciary was. If I knowed I wish I may be shot." Before this, however, Crockett had been a J. P. "I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on law learning to guide me; for I had never read a page in a law book in all my life." COOMBES, CHARLES E. _The Prairie Dog Lawyer_, Dallas, 1945. OP. Experiences and anecdotes by a lawyer better read in rough-and-ready humanity than in law. The prairie dogs have all been poisoned out from the West Texas country over which he ranged from court to court. HAWKINS, WALACE. _The Case of John C. Watrous, United States Judge for Texas: A Political Story of High Crimes and Misdemeanors_, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1950. More technical than social. KITTRELL, NORMAN G. _Governors Who Have Been and Other Public Men of Texas_, Houston, 1921. OP. Best collection of lawyer anecdotes of the Southwest. ROBINSON, DUNCAN W. _Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson, Texas' Three-Legged Willie_, Texas State Historical Association, Austin, 1948. This was the Republic of Texas judge who laid a Colt revolver across a Bowie knife and said: "Here is the constitution that overrides the law." SONNICHSEN, C. L. _Roy Bean, Law West of the Pecos_, Macmillan, New York, 1943. Roy Bean (1830-1903), justice of peace at Langtry, Texas, advertised himself as "Law West of the Pecos." He was more picaresque than picturesque; folk imagination gave him notoriety. The Texas State Highway Department maintains for popular edification the beer joint wherein he held court. Three books have been written about him, besides scores of newspaper and magazine articles. The only biography of validity is Sonnichsen's. SLOAN, RICHARD E. _Memories of an Arizona Judge_, Stanford, California, 1932. Full of humanity. OP. SMITH, E. F. _A Saga of Texas Law: A Factual Story of Texas Law, Lawyers, Judges and Famous Lawsuits_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1940. Interesting. 15. Pioneer Doctors