Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/377

 344

' When will this controversy end, you pray? I say, not for a " good year and a day." ' The argument was remarkable also for other smartness of rhetoric. The length of the pending litigation was being impressed on the Judge for some temporary interlocu tory purpose, when Seward remarked in an aside, ' It is like the century plant' Web ster hearing it, caught at the simile, and with that wealth of language ever at his lingual and picturesque command, para phrased it thus : ' like the American aloes which imparts its beauty or its fragrance of flower only to one century.'" My palms struck each other as if in ap plause, which the ghost noticing, said, "Yes, the beauty of the paraphrase justly excited applause then." Next, striking a reflective attitude, he added, " What a pity the newspapers of that day were not as these are to-day, enterprising, alert, omniv orous of ideas and omnipotent with the in terviewing voices. Had they been, what interesting sayings and doings and anec dotes of the great lawyers of half a century ago this posterity would have enjoyed." "Ah, but my dear ghost, you do your self injustice. Have you not allowed me to discover a raconteur who can recall some of those lost sayings and doings and anec dotes? May I not paraphrase the words addressed by Webster, on occasion of the Bunker Hill Monument celebration, to the survivors of the battle who were in the au dience, and addressing yourself, say, ' Ven erable ghost, you have come down to us from a former generation." The ghost gave another chuckle that I wish I could in words describe, and resumed, "But about my visit to Washington. After all, I was disappointed in one respect, for Seward did not argue. He had previously had his day in court on the first argument, and this time brought his junior partner, Guthrie, to the front, who made a closely logical argument, but without the oratorical graces of his coadjutor, Joseph Choate,

nephew of Rufus, now reburnishing the time-faded lustre of the great Massachusetts name. That partner of Seward will yet make as national the name of Guthrie, as it was patriotically made, forty years ago, by James Guthrie, the first Kentucky-made Secretary of the Treasury. I fear that the reargument, as in the case of the great legaltender case, and the similar fluctuation of decision, will be likely to loosen the regard of laymen for the consistency of legal science, and to revive the old slang first perpetrated by the actor, Charles Macklin, when representing the hero in the last cen tury comedy of " Love a la Mode "; he ob served, ' The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than, the jus tice of it.'" "Yes, dear ghost," I groaned, " that phrase, ' glorious uncertainty of the law,' continues to annoy Bench and Bar, and dis senting opinions have intensified the distrust of laymen. But a truce to digressions. Let me pick up your thread of reminiscence of the New York Bar and Bench where at our last meeting we dropped it, at the year 1846." "Yes, that year of constitution tinkering in New York State," and the ghost here gave a series of chuckles. " Nearly half a century passed with that constitution in force, and reviewed in every possible variety of moot by ingenious lawyers before the courts, and by decision perfected in mean ing and stability. But while we talk to gether, its recent successor constitution is undergoing fresh argumentative manipula tion in yonder court-room. That constitu tion of 1846 revived anew, at nisi prius and in banco, discussion of procedures such as I have told you interested Hamilton, Burr, Kent and the Livingstons at the close of the last, and the beginning of this century. The era of 1846, however, was notable in bring ing to the fore a new generation of young law yers. John Anthon, Ogden Hoffman second,