The Judicial Division is charged with an application of the law to the evidence, and the determining of the right of the applicant to the pension. This office is divided into three grand divisions—invalid, widows, and minors. The first embraces all claims preferred by surviving soldiers; the second, all claims based upon the service and death of soldiers and sailors; the third, those of minors. An Examiner of Pensions does not sit upon a bed of roses—or, if he does, it is full of thorns. So various and minute are the provisions of law, applicable to the cases under his consideration, so numerous are the rulings of the office, and the decisions of the Heads of Departments, and of the Bureau, with the opinion of the Attorney-General added, all bearing upon this claim, it demands the most exhaustive examination, the keenest discrimination, and the most wise judgment, to reach a final just conclusion. And when his conclusion is reached, it is not final. In the Judicial Division, are filed all pending claims. These files are arranged with reference to the initial letter of the soldier’s surname, and are divided into sections proportioned to the magnitude of the letter of the alphabet. Upon the receipt of jacketed claims from the mail division, the first step is to see if the party, making application, ever filed a claim before, and this is ascertained by examining the “original records.” These records fill thirty enormous volumes, and contain three hundred and eighty-three thousand applications that have been filed under the act of July 14, 1862. All entries are made therein with reference to the first three letters of the soldier’s surname, and only by this subdivision of names, affording two thousand eight hundred combinations, can convenient reference to any given claim be had; and even when so divided, the examination of the greater combination requires considerable labor. For instance, in two hundred thousand entries under W. I. L., there will be three thousand two hundred and fifty entries; and under S. M. I. you will find two thousand seven hundred and fifty Smiths. If the result of this examination affords no evidence of a prior application by the same person, after noting all other applications based upon the service of the same soldier, the claims are numbered in numerical order and placed upon the record, which includes a full description thereof, and the recorded claims are then placed in the files, to await examination in the order of their receipt.