Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/126

 before me as master, and knowing nothing whatever about the circumstances of the cause, he occupied an hour or two in talking about the solemnity of a seal to a deed. He always maintained a hostile attitude towards his brother. Judge F. Carroll Brewster, who, more able and less candid, was Attorney General of Pennsylvania.

While sitting in my office, one day, I heard an unusual noise in Crawford's room. When I hastened inside I saw a very thin man wildly ejaculating in front of a table and whacking away with his cane at the head of Crawford, who struggled to arise from a chair on the other side. Approaching from the rear, I caught the intruder around the waist, lifted him from his feet, carried him through my room to the street, and there deposited him on the front door step. He turned out to be Major S. B. Wylie Mitchell, the founder of the Loyal Legion.

When I entered the Law Academy, a bright, vigorous young man, who had taken an active part in its affairs, named John G. Johnson, a few years older than myself, was about leaving it to meet the broader requirements of life. The son of a blacksmith, without means, he held no college diploma, and he began his career with no advantages of any kind to give him help. Save that he would occasionally go to see a game of baseball and that he developed a taste for and acquired a knowledge of paintings in oil and made an important collection, he has devoted himself exclusively to the practice of the law, permitting nothing to tempt him aside. He did indeed once write an historical pamphlet on what was then called “The Wars of the Grandfathers,” being a controversy between George Bancroft and the descendants of several of the generals of the Revolution over the respective merits of these officers, but he has ever kept silence upon the subject and the fact is not generally known. It is universally conceded that he is today the leader of the Philadelphia bar and one of the foremost lawyers of the United States. He has acquired a large 116