Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/172

 Daniel Dougherty and the Philadelphia Bar, Philadelphia!!. He to his home to indulge in further reminiscences, and I to make notes of a pleasant meeting. Much might be interestingly added to the views of the veteran Philadelphian about Dougherty and the Philadelphia bar. His portrait, which forms the frontispiece — taken a few years before his death — shows in the contour of his massive head and in his ex pressive eyes why he was so grand an ora tor. But the portrait cannot, unfortunately, indicate the graceful pose that he always occupied in speaking, nor the grace and appropriateness of his gesture, nor the mo bility of feature which interpreted emotions. Spurzheim and Lavater alike, having been shown Dougherty's head, would have agreed that it belonged to a born orator. Which indeed he was; for while a schoolboy he was accustomed to declaim in his walks abroad — not like Demosthenes, facing the roaring sea from its pebbly shore, but in the quietude of nature. Many a schoolfellow of his in after life must have recalled the aston ishment of their pedagogue on the occasion when young Dougherty pronounced, as his "piece for speaking" before him and the school, Marc Antony's address over the body of Julius Сгезаг. There are veterans at both the bar of Philadelphia and New York, and in many other cities in which he gave his renowned lecture on Oratory, or his various political addresses, who will assert that Daniel Dougherty stood as an orator on the plane of greatness in eloquence beside such Americans as Patrick Henry, William Wirt, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Edward Ev erett, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, and Roscoe Conkling. It was his grand bur3t of oratory in his closing address in a New York court-house in behalf of his client's alleged briber, Alderman Cleary, made while the advocate was yet resident of his native city — specially engaged — that impelled his change of professional venue to the metropo lis in which his career closed. Several of his client's aldermanic comrades had been

previously convicted of bribery under much popular and press clamor, and Dougherty's moral courage was called into play to stem the clamorous tide. He did not entirely succeed, but he equally divided his jury and substantially acquitted the alderman; for Dougherty's dissection of the evidence was so able when read in the newspapers, al though divested of oratorical glamor, that it turned the popular adverse opinion, and it practically acquitted another alderman who was next arraigned. Oratory, like a musical instrument, has a gamut, and Dougherty sounded in turn every note of it as occasion demanded; gliding from the persuasive conversational tone before a jury into impassioned decla mation that fell impressively upon eager ears, and alternating tender pathos with breezy rhetoric or anon with impetuous ar raignment or invective. The orator who merely delights without also persuading his hearers misses his cue and his vocation. Daniel Dougherty also had the logical power that convinces, as well as the mellifluous power that steals persuasion upon the senses. His widow, Cecilia Dougherty — who was throughout his professional triumphs a valued helpmeet — speaks enthusiastically of his persuasive powers, even in domestic and social life, as well as in court circles. Like David Paul Brown and Rufus Choate, Dough erty's brilliancy never weakened his plodding and patient investigation in preparing his cases. Yet he was matchless in oratory for any sudden occasion — such as, for instance, when summoned for a speech suddenly in an assembly or postprandially. Few public banquets, therefore, were held without a guest invitation being sent to him in hopes to challenge his brilliancy in an after-dinner speech. Many lawyers who listened in 1888 to Daniel Dougherty's address at the annual festival of the New York State Bar Associa tion, with the theme, " The integrity and independence of the bar," sorrowed, when