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 The New York Court of Appeals. his old friend, President Arthur, and desert ing our bench for the National Treasury. The life and the occupation were uncongenial to him; but he was determined to stay be cause he thought it his duty, and not because he was ambitious or loved office unduly. He once wrote me from Washington : " I am not ambitious. Give me a competency, — nay, a little more, so that I can have pictures

and books and horses and friends about me, — and though bounded by a nut shell, I count myself a king of infinite space." Of his un fortunate canvass for governor in 1882, this is not the place to speak in detail. I may say, however, that I believe he knew he was foredoomed to defeat, — although probably he did not dream that his party would so scurvily abandon him, — and gave himself as a sac rifice to his sense of duty. I do not believe that he was in any sense the victim of RUFUS W. disappointment. He more than once as sured me that if his party could afford the result, he thought he could. I believe, how ever, that if he had stayed on our bench and not gone to Washington, he would have been President of the United States in 1884. Of Judge Folger's learning, research, wis dom, and acuteness, and of his original and peculiarly forcible and felicitous style of writ ing, the pages of our law reports bear most ample witness. I find his opinions quoted in other States with great frequency and re spect. No one, however, who has not, like 44

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myself, had occasion to delve in the pigeon holes of the reporter, can have any concep tion of the amount of labor he performed as a judge. Scores of opinions were written by him, apparently simply to satisfy his own mind, and marked " Not to be reported," or "To be reported only in part, if at all." Here, as well as in his administration of national affairs, he evinced his unfailing determination to mas ter everything for him self, and to take noth ing on trust. Un doubtedly this trait existed in him to ex cess, and shortened his life. He was an anti quarian in general and in legal literature; he loved the dusty old folios, and their quaint nesses and archaisms frequently affected his own style. As an example of his literary style, I know nothing finer in his own writ ing, or more exqui site in literature, than his characterization of Chief-Judge Church in the memorial of the court in 77 New York PECKHAM. Reports. Even in his engrossment in the National Treasury he found time to carry on with me a literary correspondence, and to send me many curious results of his wide reading, and many acute reflections sug gested by it. He was a great novel-reader, and we used to exchange lists of novels with our estimate of them. Frequently in his let ters I find poetical quotations which I can not trace to their source. In a letter to me, probably the last he ever wrote, he said, — "I am at home sick, but I can read a book; and doing so this afternoon I strike this, which