a Walter Scott memory, yet freed from pe dantry, fertile with figures of speech that were never misplaced or incongruously used, quick at apt quotation, ready with popular selections of illustration, happy adaptions of manner to his audience, whether the twelve or thousands,—Ogden Hoffman was an orator worthy of ranking with Wirt, Webster, and Wendell Phillips, among past Titans of elo quence, or with many of their successors, although these are often handicapped by a "trade" atmosphere, as it were, that of late surrounds the practice of law in New York (land of codes and form books, and procrustean statutes), and by an atmosphere not as congenial to oratory as it was when Marshall reigned in the realms of law, or Story was accepted as premier to the legal profession. But while cultivating persuasion and the picturesque to an extent never since Ogden Hoffman's death equally known to the New York Bar, he by no means neglected the plod of analysis, the patient search after pre cedent, or the beauty and force of the maxim eadem ratio ibidem lex. He was in whole a rare combination of the old-fashioned lawyer, like Simon Greenleaf, and of the pyrotechnic French Maitre. Ogden Hoffman was proficient in what Irish hedge-school pedagogues used to call the "humanities." He had been an avid reader of history and poetry. Like many an actor, his mind was stored with Shakespeare of his own mining, — for he lived before the era of the Bartlett quotation manual. One of his sayings to his juniors — who loved him for his courtesy, urbanity, and readiness at giving advice without accom panying it with any of the " I am Sir Oracle" behavior — was, " When you prepare or try a case, treat your brain as a sponge, and satur ate it with precedents, as ready for the occa sion sudden, and facts on both sides; try your opponent's case first ' in your mind's eye, Horatio.' Go prepared to meet obstacles by anticipating them, and do not be too con fident in your own biased view of the case."
Not alone for oratory or persuasive power was Ogden Hoffman famed, but he was noted also by watchful contemporaries and attorneys who employed him for his skill at direct and cross examination. When he had extracted from his own witnesses the pith of his case, he did not attenuate it by any "linked sweetness long drawn out," nor did he expose flanks or centre to be turned, or to be pierced by too much cross-examina tion. He was accustomed to refer to that procedure as the lawyer's maelstrom. He has been heard to say that before putting a cross-question the counsel should in framing it consider whether an answer in one possible way could prove damaging, and if so, not to take the risk. He was not likely to neglect the art of laying a trap on his own direct ex amination of a witness into which an adver sary could fall on the cross-examination by the latter pursuing a topic or fact so as to reck lessly emphasize it in real aid of the direct examination. What skill and prudence were to the surgeon when lancet or scalpel come near to artery or vital point, those qualities were to Ogden Hoffman whenever probing into the mystics of his opponent's case. He was a fencer and swordsman in examinations from knowledge acquired while a midship man under Decatur off Tripoli. He there had learned tact, finesse, and had salted his courage. Hence, at the bar he practised well its own play of tierce, carte, and lunge. If ever disposed to move a nonsuit or the dismissal of a criminal charge, he would first consider what effect a refusal by the court would have upon jurors, who often construe such refusal as a judicial hint to them to wards a verdict. He was a firm believer in those legal ethics as to duty towards a client which Henry Brougham enunciated during the trial of Queen Caroline. And while he remembered that kind of duty, and that ad vocate was in his way as much of a sworn officer of a court as was its judge, Ogden Hoffman rendered to the latter a respectful deference, and often the more when the arbi
