There was much of romance, and somewhat of mystery, that gathered about the life of Judge Arrington. Born of humble parentage in the pine forests of North Carolina, with no advantages other than those common in the remoter parts of our country a century ago, from the beginning he apparently dwelt apart from the conditions surrounding him. At an early age he removed with his father's family to the then wilds of the Southwest. There, upon the very border line of civilization, his associates for a time were the advance guard, the adventurers and soldiers of fortune that in a large measure constituted the civilization of the southwestern frontier during the early years of the last century. With his early environment, his subsequent career seems a marvel. It can only be explained upon the supposition that through with them, he was not of them. "His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." His companions were his books. Denied the advantages of early scholastic training, he was, from the beginning, an omnivorous reader. He cared little for the allurements and excitement of society. At the age of seventeen, he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was soon after licensed to preach. For four years he rode the circuit, enduring all the discomforts and dangers then and there incident to his calling. His field may be called the _Ultima Thule,_ bordering upon the Rio Grande and inhabited by Indians. Untutored audiences were stirred to the depths by his fervid appeals. Church buildings were yet in the future; the congregations assembled in God's first temples, and listened with rapt attention to the fiery eloquence of the delicate, youthful messenger, whose soul seemed on fire. A gentleman who had heard Arrington writes: "He was then young, delicate, as brilliant as a comet, and almost as erratic. Without research or mental discipline, he could electrify an audience beyond all living men, and arouse in the minds of those who heard him the wildest enthusiasm." For some cause, possibly never to be explained, he suddenly abandoned the ministry, began the study of the law, and when a little past the age of twenty-one, was admitted to the bar. After some years of successful practice in the rude frontier courts of Arkansas, he removed to Texas, where he was soon appointed a judge, and assigned to the Rio Grande circuit. In addition to his judicial labors, he now wrote and published some graphic and interesting sketches of border life, vivid pictures of conditions then existing in the Southwest among a people the like of which we shall not see agin, a people upon whom the restraints and amenities of civilized life sat but lightly, who were in large degree a law unto themselves, and with whom revenge was virtue.