San Francisco: By the author's wife, 1908. SIGNED hardcover first edition - Nye, who was born in New York and came to California in 1861, was a teacher and lawyer, district attorney in Alameda County, and judge there. He also purchased two large ranches in the Central Valley - one in the foothills east of Visalia, and the other near Fresno. This book includes a long biographical essay by Calfornia state controller, Alfred Bourne Nye, a very distant relative and speeches and letters compiled and published by his wife, Emma M. Nye. The speeches were mostly on patriotic subjects, but also on education, legal aspects of prohibition, emotional insanity and legal responsibility, and also one on ranching in the Antelope Valley area of Tulare County, and the letters, written to his family, were description of his extensive travels - to Egypt and the Holy Lands, to Venice, Germany, Paris and other places in Europe. Among these letters are interesting ones on the Oriental rug trade, on the old orange groves in Central Florida and on the Boer War. Illustrated with a frontispiece and 15 inserted glossy plates. A presentation copy, INSCRIBED on the front endpaper from 'Judge Henry A. Melvin, compliments of Mrs Stephen G. Nye, Fowler, California, March 1908. Melvin served with Nye as on the bench in Alameda County, and in 1908 he was appointed to the California State Supreme Court. 353 pp.