Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/499

456 the library, they read on the back of a volume, "Bishop on Marriage and Divorce," and while cognizant of the relation of a bishop towards marriage, they marveled as to what a bishop had to do with divorce. Nor did they address their marvel to Lord Bishop Dowden of Edinburgh, who was a notable guest of the evening; nor to Chief-Justice Fuller, nor ex-Ambassador Phelps, nor the redoubtable Doctor Parkhurst, who were also among the evening visitors.

The lady guests lingered around the oil portraits of ex-presidents. They were impressed with the gravity of William M. Evarts, its first executive; with the clerical look of Stephen P. Nash, who rightfully came by it as the standing counsel, through half a century, of Trinity Church; with the smiling face of Francis N. Bangs, prematurely taken away by fell disease; with the encyclopaedic countenance of James C. Carter, who had flung respectful defiance in the faces of the Supreme Court judges when fighting for the income tax; with the poetic face of William Allen Butler (author of the ladies' favorite poem, "Nothing to Wear") and whose facial resemblance to his father Benjamin F. Butler, the great New York reviser, when the latter's portrait, framed on the walls of another room, was compared with that of the son; with the conundrum-like features of Joseph H. Choate; with the Parisian look of Frederick R. Coudert; with the stern, implacable face of Wheeler H. Peckham : all consecutively successors of Evarts. By and by the portrait of the present president, Joseph Larocque, will be added to the gallery.

I do not know how other guests of the evening felt among the legal throng, but I seemed to feel around me the spiritual presence of such departed old members as the logical John K. Porter, the dogmatic but learned Edwards Pierrcpont, the courtierlike Edwin W. Stoughton, the earnest and eclectic Clarkson N. Potter, the affectionate Vanderpoel, and the Justinian-like David Dudley Field; all of whom, as foundation members of the Bar Association, had done so much to build it up toward its present grandeur and influence.

Almost the cynosures of all attention on this evening were ex-Chief-Justice Noah Davis, — benignly dignified, conversation ally attractive, and magnetic in presence, — and ex-Chief-Justicc Charles P. Daly, sententious and learned in many sciences; who each, by an absurd age-provision of the State Constitution, had in the plenitude of mental vigor been removed from a Bench which for several decades they had adorned and made illustrious.

Many, when walking through the (I was about to write crowd — but the size of the building does not admit of the word — and so I substitute) throngs and groups remarked upon the second and third generations of lawyers that night represented. Sons of Evarts, of Gerard, of Vanderpoel, of Peckham (son of the elder Judge Rufus W.), of Judge Rapallo, of George J. Cornell, the grandson of Chief-Justice Hornblower — William B., a vice-president of the Association — of the brothers Augustus F. and Delafield Smith, and of at least a score of others, whose baby playthings were their fathers' law books in place of blocks for castle-building.

Seldom has there been a social function so successful in New York City as this late reception in the marble palace of the Bar Association. It goes into New York's local history along with the Dickens ball during the forties, with the Kossuth dinner in 1857, with the ball to the Prince of Wales in 1860, and with the reception by Sorosis of many distinguished authoresses and women of mark.

Divinity was at the Bar Association reception to give its blessing; Medicine, to predict health to the Association; and Justice — her eye unbandaged for the occasion — to smile upon her beloved legal disciples. This Bar Association, inaugurated in December, 1869, under the committee au-