day, stung him to the quick. Many years afterwards his arraignment for contempt by the Court during his service as an associate counsel of William M. Tweed, on trial for official peculation, increased this morbid ness. Never much given to social inter course, and being a bachelor, reclusive habits fastened upon him until he shunned individual intercourse, and his clientage strongly diminished. So that during several
years before his death, in the spring of 1894, he had become a memory almost as distant as that attaching to David or his father. These Grahams deserve to occupy niches in the legal temple of New York city, because very notable instances of renowned advocacy in the days when the practice of law in that city remained a noble profession; and before the taint of politics effected much toward degrading it into a trade.
THE JUDGE'S STORY. AT a recent conference of the Missouri judges a prominent member of the ju diciary told the following story : — Every lawyer who has ever tried a case in which there is a vigorous dispute as to the facts appreciates what we call a good witness. My observation is that a darky, if he is of the bright, intellectual variety, makes the best kind of a witness. In the first place he thoroughly enjoys it, is prompt in attendance, and you can always rely upon his being in place when you call him. Then again, his asseverations on the witness stand have nothing uncertain about them; his imagination is as strong as that of a woman, and womanlike, he is just as positive of what he imagines he saw as he is of what he act-, ually saw. Added to these virtues is the fact that he is a zealous partisan. If you do him the honor to ask him to be a witness for you he considers it as little as he can do in return to win your case for you if swear ing will win it, and he thinks it will. The law has a mystic fascination for him, he loves its mystery, and loves to drown his senses in the oblivion of its incomprehensi bility. And when he goes to court he keeps his eyes and ears open and really learns and remembers a good deal of its technicalities in a sort of superficial way, and is very fond of making a display of it. The darky whom I now have in mind was called as a witness in my court a while ago
in a case that had originated in a justice's court, where it had been fought with ani mation and brought up by appeal. The cause for action was for a set ofwagon harness alleged to be worth eight dollars, and which plaintiff alleged defendant had borrowed of him and refused to return. Plaintiff, as a witness in his own behalf, traced his title from the harness maker and traced the har ness into defendant's loft. The plaintiff was the principal witness for himself, and the defendant was the principal witness for himself, and the testimony was very conflicting. The line of the defense was to break the force of the plaintiff's tes timony by showing that his reputation for truth was bad in the community and also to show that the harness really belonged to the defendant. Mr. Thomas Jefferson was called as a witness for defendant on both branches of the defense. Now Mr. Jefferson was just the kind of a darkey that I have endeavored to above de scribe. He had been about the court house long enough to learn that a witness was not allowed to tell what he had heard somebody say, but only what he knew himself. He had seen men make fools of themselves on the witness stand by attempt ing to rehearse hearsay testimony, and he was not going to make such a show of him self. Defendant's counsel concluded that it
