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THE GREEN BAG

gent remainder and an executory devise — and the production of two more bottles of Madeira — his certificate was signed — a much more expeditious, and, perhaps, more agreeable method of testing professional fit ness than the methods prescribed and pur sued nowadays by the State Board of Law Examiners. The "subsequent proceedings interested" a large concourse of persons attending court, and in "the game that ensued" of "fip-loo," to which Stevens was then something of a stranger, he lost nearly all of the fifty dollars he had brought with him. The minute of the court next day thus records his admission: "Upon the application of Stevenson Archer, Esq., for the admission of Thaddeus Stevens, Esq., as an attorney of this court the said Thaddeus Stevens is admitted as an attorney of this court and thereupon takes and signs the several oaths prescribed by law, and repeats and signs a declaration of his belief in the Christian religion." The day after he had qualified as a lawyer in Maryland, Mr. Stevens rode from Bel Air to Lancaster, scarcely escaping drowning while crossing the Susquehanna River at McCall's Ferry, took a hasty look at the town, and (for come unaccountable reason) quit it for Gettysburg, where he started upon a career as a lawyer, without friends, fame, family, or fortune. Tradition, based, however, most likely upon his own personal narration, has it that, just when he had begun to despair of suc cess, fortuitous employment to defend a notorious murderer brought him a large fee and great reputation, followed by many re tainers. Confidence in the entire accuracy of all the details of the incident is disturbed by the reflection that a $1,500 fee in Adams County, at that time, paid to a yet obscure local lawyer, by a murderer whose case never reached the Appellate Court, and who was himself hanged, seems somewhat improb able. Certain it is, however, that Mr. Stev ens, to his death, protested the mental irre

sponsibility of his client and acknowledged this case to have been the beginning of his professional fame and the basis of his for tune. Thenceforth he leaped to the front of the local Bar and to fame. In all the courts of his county, especially in the Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions, he became engaged in the very miscellaneous practice which crowds the desk and throngs the office of a busy and successful country lawyer. From 1821 (7 S. & R.) to 1830 (2 Rawle) he seems to have appeared in every case in the Supreme Court from Adams County. Compared with the modern volume of business and reports, or the multitude and variety of cases from pop ulous counties, this record is not, in itself, a very extensive one; but the fact that, out of the first ten appeals in which he appeared, he was successful in nine — six times, as plaintiff in error, reversing the court below — may help to account for his sudden rise to eminence and his lucrative returns in fees. The first reported case in which Stevens seems to have appeared in the Supreme Court was Butler, et al., v. Delaplaine (7 S. & R., 378), heard at Chambersburg, where the court then sat, Tilghman being chief jus tice, Gibson and Duncan the justices. Oddly enough, he appeared against a colored wo man claiming freedom for herself, her hus band, and two children. The Adams County Court, on a writ of homine replegiando, sub mitted the case to determination by a jury, who, duly charged, found a verdict against the slaves under the following circumstances : "Charity Butler was admitted to be the slave of Norman Bruce, an inhabitant of the state of Maryland, and still to continue a slave, unless she obtained her freedom by the laws of this state; and if she were free, her children after her emancipation were likewise free. Norman Bruce, in 1782, was the owner of a tract of land in Maryland, stocked with a number of slaves, and de mised it, with the slaves to cultivate it, to one Cleland, and removed to a place seventy miles distant in the same state. Shortly after the lease, Cleland entered into a con tract with one Gilleland, respecting Charity. Gilleland, for her services, was to feed and