and authority. His clearness and force of argument was so great as often to produce the effect of eloquence, although he did not seek a reputation for eloquence. In the case of Mc Mali on v. Harrison (6 N. Y. 443), Mr. Hill successfully contended that a professional gambler was " incompe tent by reason of improvidence," and thus within a statute of the State of New York, which prohibited letters of administration to be granted to a person thus incompetent, although the evidence showed that, as a gam bler, he had, up to the time that the testimony was given, been successful. It is said that one of the judges of the court remarked, at the adjournment, that Mr. Hill's argument was " the most eloquent and convincing that he had ever listened to." He was not adapted to the conducting of jury trials, and very rarely in that portion of his life which succeeded his removal to Albany, participated in such trials, except as an adviser, and sometimes in the argument of important questions of evidence which arose during the progress of a •trial. The writer has been told by those who knew him while a member of the firm of Hill, Cagger & Porter, that they never knew Mr. Hill to sum up a case before a jury. This was partly owing to the fact that the de mands upon him in the appellate courts, and in important cases on the equity side in the United States Circuit Court, like the Hud son River Bridge cases, necessarily occu pied most of his tirrfe. But it was doubt less still more owing to the fact that he much preferred the preparation of briefs and arguments, and the argument of causes on appeal, to the trial of cases at nisi prius. Those who were associated with Mr. Hill, either as counsel, or as students or assistants in his office, all unite in bearing the highest testimony to the amiability and unselfish ness of his private character. The writer has been favored with a letter from the Hon. William 1). Veeder of Brooklyn, for merly Surrogate of King's County, from
which he is permitted to make the follow ing extract. Mr. Veeder says: — "My first recollection of Mr. Nicholas Hill was early in 1857, when he was in the zenith of his fame as a lawyer, and when he was regarded as one of the leading lawyers of the country. I was then a student in the law office of Nicholas Hill, Peter Cagger and John K. Porter, who were associated to gether under the name of Hill, Cagger & Porter. Mr. Hill was at that time chiefly engaged in the argument of cases in our Court of Appeals and in the United States Supreme Court. I soon found him very pleasant and agreeable, and heard him utter many encouraging words to the students in the office, and to mc personally he was most kind. I remember the beginning of his at tention to me : being in the library, he asked me to hand him authorities or books from the racks, which soon developed into a field of learning for myself, which has been in valuable to mc all my life. He would fre quently state a proposition that he was con sidering, and ask mc to see what I could find that I thought — using his language — ' would fit,' and it is a pleasure for me to say that however clumsily I may have discharged that duty, I was never discouraged by him, but on the contrary, in the most amiable way, he would devote himself to explaining to me wherein the case did or did not apply. He was an untiring worker, often working until the small hours in the morning in the library. At that time the firm's library was the most complete of any private law library in this State. The labor then of finding cases reported bearing upon a point was far greater than it is now, the digests or reports of the cases being then so much less complete. Mr. Hill was exclusively de voted, as I knew him, or saw him, to the consideration of legal questions. He seemed to give no attention to himself personally, and it was a matter of amusement in the office, the almost invariable habit he had of overlooking or forgetting his own matters.
