HOW TO GET STRONG
was very frequently seen walking either from his home at Mount Washington to his office—nearly ten miles—or from his office to his home. The professional man could scarcely keep in better trim for real work than he did. The following letter from one who for years knew him intimately, and had rare opportunity to judge, will serve to give some idea of the fibre and matchless spirit of this the greatest lawyer that New York has ever produced:
"Library of the New York Law Institute,
"My dear Blaikie,—The substance of our conversation in writing, as requested, and confining myself to the O'Conor items, is briefly this: Charles O'Conor, the famous New York lawyer, was a man of exceptionally fine physique, and with his venerable appearance, pale, scholarly face, and piercing black eyes, possessing chameleon-like power, in anger, of changing their color, he drew to him at once a stranger's attention and interest.
"In height he probably measured nearly six feet. His bearing was noticeably erect, and it often occurred to me that if a mantle were thrown over him, covering head and chest, the rest of his person might easily be mistaken for the graceful proportions of an active athletic youth of eighteen.
"His appearance of vigor and activity was not illusive by any means; and I shall only mention in illustration one or two instances of the many, which came under my observation, at a time when this white-souled man, with record at the bar the purest and cleanest of any advocate of any age, was closely approximating to his eightieth year.
"He had occasion to use our library during several wintry nights in succession, in preparing for an argument in an important case in the United States Supreme Court. The last evening, after finishing his labors, which had lasted well on to the midnight hour, with no fear apparently of the increasing rigor and roughness of the night, he entertained me in his peculiar and quaint phraseology with an interesting talk as to his early professional career; his estimates of the early leaders of the New York bar,
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