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Vol. VI.

No. 8.

BOSTON.

August, 1894.

THE LEGAL GRAHAM FAMILY. By A. Oakey Hall. CITING the rules and precedents of Lavater and Spurzheim, it is evident that the faces and heads of the three Gra hams, whose portraits are now presented, show rare possession of logic, mental force and language. The traditions of the New York Bar claim for them such a possession; and although David Graham, the elder, and David Graham, Jr. (who used the youthful suffix long after his father died, perhaps to show pardonable pride of parentage), have long been dead, their legal fame will doubt less never die in the city wherein the mem ory of Hamilton and Kent is treasured by its citizens, who point out proudly to stran gers the houses in which dwelt the author of the Federalist or the author of the Com mentaries. There have been carpers and cynics, even in the legal profession, who claim that the fame of a great lawyer is as evanescent as that of an actor, and belongs only to his own generation. Possibly this is true if the memory of laymen be alone re garded; but lawyers themselves are always loyal to the fame of their great jurists, and in the temples of Themis lawyers keep jeal ous guard over the undying flame from the lamp of their science, which has been said to have been lighted, and kept incandescent, as proceeding from the sparks of all other sciences. Over that temple hangs ever an atmosphere of bright tradition. Prior to the year 1808 there had lived in the North of Ireland a celebrated young Presbyterian clergyman who was fast becoming a recog

nized pulpit orator. He had married young; and he became impressed with the idea that the new land in which, as its chief ruler, George Washington had recently died, and to which had recently emigrated Thomas Addis Emmet — whose monument confronts every Broadway pedestrian in New York city who passes by its St. Paul churchyard .— was a land where he might win a better competency than in his native isle. Where fore, in that last named year, this young clergyman, named David Graham, and of historic ancestry, who was born in the year when impended the revolutionary perils of Valley Forge, took passage from London in a sailing ship bound for the port of New York. While awaiting passage in the for mer city Mrs. Graham gave birth to a son, who became his father's namesake. Arrived, the Rev. David Graham was welcomed warmly by the Emmets and other Irish emigres to whom he brought letters. But in a short time, then in his thirtieth year, he concluded to embrace the legal profession. Being a plucky man, and of studious habit, and having saved some patrimony, he soon mastered terms of admission to the New York Bar. Nor was his progress slow; for his acumen and powers of oratory soon at tracted popular attention. As early as 18 1 5 the pages of the City Hall " Recorder " and the reports of Caines and Johnson began to show David Graham — no longer wearing clerical silk — as an active practitioner at nisi prius and before benches of judges who