what does"far down the bar"mean? Actually, his request was entirely reasonable. He was in strange country and plainly needed a guide. He would have been a remarkable magistrate had he been able to act without one. Even in Texas a justice of the peace is far down the bar, an arbiter of petty misdemeanors. The issue here would have taxed a Supreme Court Justice. Elsewhere in the same city at that very moment a federal judge and the U.S. Attorney for a hundred counties were vexed by the relatively simple question of the Presidential oath. During his debut, at least, Ward deserved a sympathetic hearing.