File:A retrospect of forty years, 1825-1865 (1911) (14777664271).jpg

Identifier: retrospectoffort01butl (find matches)
Title: A retrospect of forty years, 1825-1865
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Butler, William Allen, 1825-1902 Butler, Harriet Allen, d. 1914, ed
Subjects: United States -- Politics and government 1815-1861 New York (State) -- Politics and government 1775-1865
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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x-cluding the testimony of any one interested in the result ofthe controversy. The witness passed the ordeal, and Ihad an easy victory in my second suit. I got away from the court room flushed with mydouble triumph in time to go to an uptown evening partyat the house of Judge Samuel R. Betts, then and formany years afterward, the United States District Judgein New York. Since then I have tried innumerable casesin the State and Federal courts, from the lowest to thehighest, but I do not think my head was ever so nearstriking the stars as on that memorable night. My firstfive-dollar fee I applied to buying for my mother a sou-venir, a silver napkin-ring, which still holds an humbleplace among the family heirlooms. My friend Biggar afterward placed in my hands anaffair of his own and of considerable importance to him. Ayoung man of a highly respectable family was a frequenterof his shop, and Biggar discovered, after his apparentlydesirable customer went away, that some engravings had 194
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A RETROSPECT OF FORTY YEARS simultaneously disappeared from his portfolio. His sus-picions being aroused, he had the young man watched,and soon possessed positive evidence that he was thethief. Criminal proceedings would have been of no availto compensate Biggar for the loss of his engravings. Ac-cordingly, I set on foot a civil suit to recover their value,and the friends of the young man lost no time in makinggood the loss he had caused by his misconduct, occasioned,as we were quite ready to believe, by a tendency to klepto-mania. All this was playing at law. But when I began thepractice in dead earnest, it possessed me with a fascina-tion from which, after the lapse of more than fifty years,I find myself hardly disenthralled. I was introduced atonce into companionships and competitions which weremost exciting and inspiring. A young lawyer in activepractice has the immense advantage of learning from hisopponents, and in every contest, whether successful or not,he gains strength and e

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