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THE GREEN BAG

Bar and who has for more than ten years past been its undisputed leader. Mr. Bonaparte prepared the petition for a mandamus and made the principal argument in support of it, and the case, which attracted much atten tion and interest at the time, was finally decided in his favor, and the court directed the mandamus to issue. The defendants, however, supended further proceedings by taking an appeal; and before this appeal could be heard, the legislative session had expired, and as there was nothing left for the contestants to contest for, the proceed ings were discontinued. From this time began the twenty-years' battle for fair elections in Maryland, which at length resulted victoriously in the enact ment of the Reform League Election Law of 1896. During the last ten years of this period the struggle was carried on mainly in the courts, and in almost every case in stituted or defended in the interest of fair elections, Mr. Bonaparte took a conspicuous part. In the preparation of all his cases, Mr. Bonaparte has always been most laborious and thorough, giving as careful preparation to those involving comparatively small amounts and for poor clients, as he does to the largest and most important ones, for he makes it his rule to give to every client the best that is in him. When he first became my neighbor, he struck me at once as being unusually well equipped for the practice of our profession, and before long I was aston ished at his thorough grasp of all the leading principles of law and his perfect familiarity with the methods by which these principles were applied in each particular branch of the law. It is quite a common thing for prudent lawyers, before acting on their first impres sions upon doubtful questions that may from time to time arise before them in their practice, to submit the point involved to a brother lawyer for his off-hand opinion, in order to observe how the matter appears to strike the unprejudiced mind of a person

competent to understand it. The prox imity of Mr. Bonaparte's office, to say noth ing of his aimability and patience, soon marked him out as the most eligible victim for me to utilize in this manner, whenever occasions might arise, and I confess to have yielded often to the natural temptation to do so. I can not now recall a single instance in which I ever submitted to him a legal question in this way, when he did not seem to be perfectly at home in discussing it intelligently, without turning to authorities although oftener than not he has cited to me from memory the name of some Mary land decision that had a decided bearing upon the point in question. In making his preparations for instituting or trying a case, Mr. Bonaparte does not pursue the methods of the mere "case hunter" who crams himself for the occasion by the use of Digests and the Encyclopaedia of Law and Equity, but adopts one some what analogous to that of Chief Justice Marshall, who used to say that after a diffi cult or important case had been argued before him, his habit was to take a long walk by himself and think it over, until he had arrived at a decision, and afterwards to ask "brother Story" to look up the authorities — only Mr. Bonaparte does not turn over to another the looking up of the authorities but does it for himself, and in consequence his adversaries are rarely able to spring upon him at the trial table a Maryland decision, having any apparent bearing upon the case at bar, which he has not already considered. In presenting an argument, whether be fore a court or jury, he is always strong and generally effective as well as interesting. He has an unusually subtle mind and takes a keen intellectual delight in sustaining his points by nice distinctions which, although logically sound, are not always at first plainly visible of the tribunal he may be addressing; and I have sometimes thought that he might perhaps occasionally obtain somewhat better results if the time and energy he at times consumes in making