"It would be a halting and very defective sketch of this eminent jurist which failed to speak of his striking originality. Negatively speaking, there were little or no common-place and hum-drum in his forensic arguments, his debates in the Senate or his addresses from the hustings to his constituents. In a positive sense, his speeches, at least on great occasions, and when his powers were thoroughly roused, rarely failed to be marked by some flash of genius. I recall a conversation just after the close of a protracted and laborious term of the Augusta Circuit Court, in which the late Judge Lucas P. Thompson and Gen. Briscoe G. Baldwin bore the leading parts. The last named was paying generous tribute to Mr. Peyton's force and originality. Judge Thompson remarked, that he had never seen Mr. Peyton go through a cause, deeply interesting and moving him, in which he did not utter some view or sentiment illuminated by genius, or, at the least, some illustration marked by a bold originality, and he instanced two causes, tried at the late term, one a civil suit and a very heavy will case, in which he made a novel and searching application of a familiar fable of Æsop. I forbear to give its details, because both the critic and his subject have passed from earth. "In the same cause, three signatures were to be identified and proved, that of the testator and also of the two attesting witnesses, all three having died since their attestation. Many witnesses were called to prove the genuineness of the three names. Opposing counsel sought to badger the witnesses, by urging them to specify what peculiar marks there were in the handwriting and signatures, whereby they could speak positively as to their identity and genuineness. This, of course, for the most part they could not do, and in the argument of the cause before the jury, the same counsel strove to throw discredit and contempt upon those witnesses (all men of good character) for their failure and inability so to describe the quality and the peculiar marks and the calligraphy of the signers as to show they were familiar with their handwriting. In his reply to those sallies of his opponents, Mr. Peyton swept away the whole airy fabric by a single happy illustration: