Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/64

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Vol. X.

No. 2.

BOSTON.

February, 1898.

FRANCIS M. SCOTT. By A. Oakey Hall. UPON last New Year's Day the bar of New York City lost, and its bench gained, a member in the person of him whose portrait constitutes the frontispiece of this number; and who, both bar and bench agree, was the ripest specialist in the complicated municipal law of the Knicker bocker city, which has for its foundation four royal charters, and a half dozen state statutory amendments, with the old and the new ones together working confusion. At the last November election when Chief Judge Charles H. Van Brunt was awarded a new term, Corporation Counsel Scott was chosen his associate for the Supreme Court. Both were Knickerbockers, while the Mayor elected in their company restored to the City Hall the olden Knickerbocker succes sion of chief magistrates. Judge Scott is thoroughly national in his lineage; for his mother was of puritan New Hampshire stock and his father oi colonial New York descent. The latter, Thomas Scott, was a notable merchant half a century and more ago; whom, at his funeral, many of his associates extolled as a commercial potentate of the Chamber of Commerce, who had conducted business since the century commenced without ever failing, or asking an extension of time in order to meet his obligations. Young Francis was born in the paternal residence, No. 29 Broadway, on a site where now stands a sky-scraper of fifteen stories; and where, near to which site, resided scores of notable families, before westward the star of fashionable empire took its residential way, in a metropolitan

sense. Father Scott soon joined the up town 'hegira, so that his son came into the neighborhood of West 13th St. and Fifth Avenue where was the celebrated grammar school, still known as No. 35, and which was in charge of that distinguished educa tor of subsequently distinguished New York ers — Thomas Hunter, now president of the Normal College. Doctor Hunter often re calls memories of the eleven-year-old Mas ter Scott who had previously wasted five years at sundry private schools, and re members that the latter was " strong on mathematics and philosophy, but weak on Latin and Greek; and agnostic as to the value of dead languages when there were so many live ones for utility as ready weapons in the battle of life." A meritable examin ation for entrance into the college of the city of New York sent young Scott thither for his four years of preface to an A.B. Next ensued a course of legal study in the law school of Columbia University, then managed by Professor Theodore Dwight, of scholastic lineage and a LL.D. Any student of it taking the full course could become an admitted attorney by virtue of a statute passed to aid the fortunes of the law school; and Scott, upon recording a copy of his diploma, accordingly became entitled to ready admission, but he preferred not to enter through a back door the great profes sion, founded upon " a spark caught from the ashes of all sciences "; but to enter it through the broad portals of an examina tion in open court. In this he was en couraged by Supreme Court Judge Suther ,15