Ogden Hoffman. trator upon the bench was his inferior in learning and temperament. Famed in the drawing-room and salon for gentlemanly instincts and poise, he carried these into court. He was never a Sergeant Ballantyne in bullying a witness, nor did he forget that even prize-fighters shook hands, and duellists saluted, before going to the ropes or measuring weapons; or while it was pistols for two it was also coffee for one. Be cause of his geniality, consultations with him made delightful meetings for his colleagues. His forte at the bar came in tort and crim inal trials, although he was equally masterful in commercial cases, and especially in those relating to marine matters wherein such col leagues as George Wood, Daniel Lord, and Wm. Curtis Noyes figured, — their special ties being commercial controversies. Ogden Hoffman exhibited profound know ledge of human nature. He had enjoyed op portunities of studying it. He was born, nurtured, and schooled near Goshen, in Orange County, New York, and not far from the Headquarter-House that is linked with the memory of Washington. Thereabouts, in a region flowing to this day with milk and honey, his father owned a country resi dence. Wm. Henry Seward was there one of his boyish school companions. Both of them, in the rough and tumble of village life and in Justice's courts, found opportunities for "cramming human nature," as Mark Twain has put it, and of learning how to avoid the pettifogging arts of a Mark Meddle, or a Jenks, who have been satirically immortalized in the widely known comedy of " London Assurance." Upon his rural admission to the Orange County Bar, young Hoffman's command of cleverness, tact, and persuasion immediately won attention, as did Seward's ability in the Cayuga County district, to which the latter removed. While yet in appearance an urchin, Mr. Hoffman was chosen district-attorney. After his full removal to New York City he was there chosen to serve two terms as such prosecutor in the criminal courts, where more
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human nature was necessarily studied. The traditions of the New York Bar afford best remembrances of his legal skill in prosecut ing or defending accused persons. As dis trict-attorney he never — to use his own phrase — spelled prosecutor as persecutor. If he thought a case for the people was doubtful, he had the moral courage to obey the law, yet to give the benefit of any rational doubt of guilt to an accused. He never fell into the common error of some prosecutors by seeking a conviction for the mere sake of personal victory. In both civil and criminal forums, judges received his statements as equal to technical affidavits. Neither his emotions were allowed to con quer his judgment, or this to destroy his emotions. Editor Bennett once named him the Admirable Crichton of the Bar. Musically educated auditors claimed that his voice possessed a gamut upon which he played as if it were an instrument. It could impressively denounce, it could strike a pathetic tremolo, and it could lightly enun ciate wit or humor, rise to an alto in sarcasm, or attune itself to the faintest of tender tones. No one at the New York Bar has been his full successor in the arts of oratory, or as a nisi prius persuadant. In banco his argu ments were permeated with logic, and the sketches of his briefs given in the State or Federal Reports between his meridian of fame in 1830 to its closing hours of 1855, provide testimony to the fulness of his learn ing, and the close application of it to favor able or unfavorable facts of any case which he conducted. His greatest success was won by the acquittal of a young man named Robinson, who was charged with the murder in her bed of a nymph du pave named Helen Jewett at a noted maison de plaisance, when opportunity, means of access, motive, and presence at the scene of crime through a dropped cloak and a deserted hatchet — each traced to his pos session on the day of the deed — seemed to concur. But the advocate pressed the theory of doubt and the probability of a
