While I am upon this subject of lawyers and officialdom, a few words regarding early jurists and court decorum may be in order. In 1853, Judge Dryden, who had arrived in 1850, was but a Police Justice, not yet having succeeded Dimmick as County Judge; and at no time was his knowledge of the law and things pertaining thereto other than extremely limited. His audacity, however, frequently sustained him in positions that otherwise might have been embarrassing; and this audacity was especially apparent in Dryden's strong opposition to the criminal element. He talked with the volubility of a Gatling gun, expressing himself in a quick, nervous manner and was, besides, very profane. One day he was trying a case, when Captain Cameron E. Thom (who had first come to Los Angeles in 1854, as the representative of the National Government, to take testimony before Commissioner Burrill) was one of the attorneys. During the progress of the case, Thom had occasion to read a lengthy passage from some statute book. Interrupting him, the Judge asked to see the weighty volume; when, having searched in vain for the citation, he said in his characteristic, jerky way: "I'll be ---- _damned_, Mr. Thom, if I can find that law!" All of which recalls to me a report, once printed in the _Los Angeles Star_, concerning this same jurist and an inquest held by him over a dead Indian: Justice Dryden and the Jury sat on the body. The verdict was: "Death from intoxication, _or_ by the visitation of God!" Dryden, who was possessed of a genial personality, was long remembered with pleasure for participation in Fourth of July celebrations and processions. He was married, I believe, in 1851, only one year after he arrived here, to Señorita Dolores Nieto; and she having died, he took as his second wife, in September, 1868, another Spanish lady, Señorita Anita Dominguez, daughter of Don Manuel Dominguez. Less than a year afterward, on September 10th, 1869, Judge Dryden himself died at the age of seventy years.