Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/270

Rh tion to the profession in the office of Mr. Joel Giles, with whom I had studied. He had been a lecturer at Cambridge, a member of the House and the Senate, and of the Constitutional Convention. He was a bachelor, economical in his expenditures, rigid in his opinions, just in every thing, and a most careful student and conscientious practitioner. He was a patent lawyer, and as lawyer and mechanic he was the superior of any other person that I have known. As an advocate his services were not valuable. He seemed timid, and his style was not adapted to jury trials nor to hearings by the court. However, in patent cases he could make himself understood by the court, and he had influence resting upon the belief that he was free from deception which was the fact.

Mr. Giles was then attorney for Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine. He had been counsel for Howe from the first, when Howe was in extreme poverty and unable to pay fees. In the early stages of the contest Mr. Giles conducted the case without present compensation, and at the end, when Howe’s income was enormous for the period, Mr. Giles accepted only very moderate fees, and he was content therewith. Mr. Howe was a peculiar character: odd in his ways, but generous with his income:—so generous that at his death his fortune was very small. In my long acquaintance with Mr. Giles I never knew that he made charges for services against any one or that he ever presented a bill, although he sometimes spoke of the indifference and neglect of his clients in the matter of money. Some paid and others did not. Mr. Howe paid all that Mr. Giles required, but that was very little compared with the service rendered. The litigation over the Howe patent was severe and the questions in a mechanical point of view were nice questions. Mr. Giles began with the invention, and he became a master of the case. Mr. Howe was indebted to Mr. Giles for the success of his