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Vol. VI.

No. 10.

BOSTON.

October, 1894.

MATTHEW HALE CARPENTER AS A LAWYER. Bv Henry D. Ashley. BELIEVING as I do that there is no inspiration to a struggling lawyer like the contemplation of one of the giants of our profession, I shall attempt in this paper to give a fragmentary sketch of a man who in my judgment was one of the greatest lawyers America has produced. Born on December 22, 1824, in Vermont, on the banks of the Mad River, whose turbulent and rapid stream the flow of his life some what resembled, Decatur Merritt Hammond Carpenter, as he was christened, Matthew Hale Carpenter as he baptized himself, through love of the law and of that great jurist, passed his youth amid the beauties of the Green Mountains. His grandfather, Cephas Carpenter, a Justice of the Peace, and a man of prominence, cultivated his young grandson's love for oratory and legal pursuits, which had appeared in him almost from the cradle; and he defeated this same doting grandfather, who was opposing counsel, in the first lawsuit he ever tried. When about six years of age, Paul Dillingham, the most prominent at torney then practising in the Mad River valley, afterwards governor of Vermont, visited young Carpenter's father's home, and, attracted by the boy's appearance, told his mother that when fourteen he would take him into his office at Waterbury and put him in training. When his fourteenth birthday arrived, having treas ured this long forgotten promise, the am bitious boy suddenly left his parents to go to Waterbury to enter Paul Dillingham's

office. There he worked for six years, and from thence to West Point, which he left during his second furlough home, humorously saying to his parents, " I do not believe a man can ever become great by learning to walk a crack with a stiff neck and his fingers on the seams of his panta loons." In November, 1847, he went to Boston determined to get into the office of one of his two great idols, Daniel Web ster and Rufus Choate. Choate at first informed him that he had no room for an other student in his office, but impressed by his simple statement and apparent am bition, he at last reluctantly gave him per mission to come back next day. His first day in Choate's office is worth a detailed account. As Choate next morning came from his private office through the library on his way to court and" saw young Car penter browsing among his books, he play fully handed him a letter just received from a country attorney, asking an opinion upon some intricate question of law, which he told Carpenter to give him on his return at night. When he returned in the even ing, Carpenter handed him a carefully writ ten letter of many pages in answer to the lawyer's intricate question. Choate sat down at once and carefully read the letter, and when he had finished the last page, pushed down his spectacles, peered up at the gawky boy standing beside him, and silently studied for some moments his head and face. Completely surprised, he said as he signed the letter, "Well, I guess I can put ' R. 441