plain of this, for while others may have equal ly inclined to the opinion that despite its ed him in the other essentials of the great ad apparent color it might have been the de vocate, it is difficult to believe that any could fendant's offspring. In this case, Sampson, have approached anywhere near to him in who appeared for the defendant, cross-exam wit and sarcasm. It is somewhat surprising ined Dr. Mitchell, and it was a brilliant en that Mr. Wallace, in his entertaining work, counter of wits and learning, with the ad vantage not always on the lawyer's side. It "The Reporters," should have made no allu sion to this wonderfully brilliant argument, is safe to say that no other cross-examination which constitutes a third of the little volume; of equal wit, humor and classic learning is to but of this I do not complain, for if he had be found in the law reports. The learned touched upon it at all, he would have left Doctor, after the manner of medical men, delivered quite a lecture on the matter in nothing for me to say. A still rarer book is the third volume of issue, and unlike most medical men in such Wheeler's " Criminal Cases," published in circumstances, he was not tedious. Samp New York in 1823. Its excessive rarity is son's summing-up covers some eighteen the fault of Mr. Sampson, whose argument pages, and so much wit and graceful and in the celebrated case of Commissioners of sportive humor and wealth of classical allu the Almshouse v. Whistclo reported therein sion were surely never before compressed has been so much sought after, especially into such small space. There was no oppor by the younger (and possibly the older) tunity for display of legal research or forensic members of the Bar, in past times, that it logic; it was a pure (or rather impure) has been seized upon and carried away by question of fact to be determined by the aid them with as small regard to the law of of scientific opinion. In his exordium, Samp meum et tuum as if it had been an umbrella. son said : " Before I lose myself in the labyrinth through which I am to tread, that The book was reprinted in 1860. The case is too broad, as well as too long, I may not die in the learned counsel's debt, I for reporting in these chaste columns. To shall first answer all his observations. If I those who have not seen the report it will should miss my way and never return to be sufficient to state that it was a bastardy where I set out, my will is that all concerned proceeding in the General Sessions, presided shall mourn for me — the whites putting on over by Mayor Clinton, upon the complaint black and the blacks white, in token of af of Miss Lucy Williams against the defendant, fection. Item : the manuscript I hold in my "a black man," coachman for Dr. Hosack. hand to be deposited in the city library. Upon cross-examination, she confessed an Item : the fee which I receive in this case to intimacy with a white man at a time which accrue to the benefit of the Almshouse." might have rendered the paternity doubtful, though Franklin and Thompson flourished earlier, yet Dr. but the child was unquestionably white. All Francis, in his reminiscences of "Old New York," terms the leading physicians of New York City, him " the Nestor of American Science." lie was distin including Sir James Jay and Dr. Hosack, guished in politics as well as science, having been a senator of the United States. He was the first surgeon-general of were examined as experts on the questions New York. Frequent references are made to him by whether the child was white or black, and the poet Halleck in the "The Croakers," a series of whether, if it was white, it could pqssibly local, humorous and satirical poems published in the first of this century in the " Evening Post." One of have been the child of the defendant. They quarter the most amusing of those is addressed "to the Surgeon all swore favorably to the defendant, except General," and is wholly given up to Mitchell. In this the the celebrated Dr. Mitchell,' who was strong- poet styles him "mammoth of the State, steam frigate on
- Dr. Samuel T. Mitchell was one of the most versatile,
accomplished and distinguished Americans of his day. Al
the waves of physic." In another his "cookery books" are referred to, and in another he is celebrated as one "who sung the amours of the fishes."
