college course — your transcendent qualifi cations for public life; and as attentive ob servers of your progress since the termina tion of that course, we write in extending to you our hearty congratulations, believing you will prove the able and sincere exponent of the principles of which you are now the chief representative." Young Bryan's first case was at Jack sonville before a justice of the peace, for the collection of an assumpsit debt of forty-four dollars, with a ratio in interest and costs to his fee of sixteen dollars to one. His prog ress at the Lincoln bar was tedious, for it had meritorious and older members. His first case there was in the Christmas week of 1887, with a plaint for an injunction. Another suit of a similar chancery charac ter in the ensuing spring brought him ad ditional notoriety, but it was not until 1889 that he can be said to have successfully at tacked the bandaged vision of Themis. Then he championed a damage suit be fore a jury for an injured client against the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, wherein he succeeded against a strong array of counsel. His practice began to be varied in character. He won successively a divorce suit, a mandamus action, and was chosen standing attorney for a local manufacturing corporation. His divorce suit became noted from the large alimony that he obtained for his client, Mrs. Mattie Hcrrick. He had now associated with himself A. R. Talbot, Esq., and later the firm became Talbot, Bryan & Allen. How promising and profitable had been their business appears from a suit brought by it in 1891, to obtain four thousand dollars counsel fees from an ungrateful client. In the same year against odds he excited attention by an action for insurance moneys against the German-Amer ican Insurance Company: in which that corporation, without success, appealed from the two thousand dollars verdict Mr. Bryan had obtained. He appears to have been, as the calendars of the Supreme Court of
Nebraska show, the favorite counsel, often employed against the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway, and also the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Co., be cause he had become recognized as a serviceably persuasive and oratorical advocate before juries, especially in cases where sym pathy for an injured plaintiff existed. He had a magnetic presence and address, like McKinley, nor did either disclaim a liberal use of tropes and figures. YourWestern jury cares more for oratory than an Eastern twelve. Like lawyer McKinley, lawyer Bryan soon attracted political attention, and was sent to Congress, where both crossed foren sic swords — the one being, as may be said, counsel for the plaintiff protective tariff, against the other as counsel for defendant revenue tariff, although Congressional rec ords show that on a currency question — wherein now they are retained by their parties against each other — their opinions sometimes retained them on the same side. Mr. McKinley equally with Mr. Bryan ex celled in oratory, although when at the bar, lawyer McKinley preferred logical force to floridity. Mr. McKinley had the advantage of age and experience, but Mr. Bryan held the confidence of youth, and if ever taunted with being a boy orator, doubtless he thought of the celebrated speech of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, when taunted by the Duke of Grafton in the House of Lords with his youthfulness. That speech began — a favorite with schoolboys on speech days — "My lords, the atrocious crime of being a young man," etc. Neither McKinley nor Bryan, as it has been remarked by their associates, ever lost the pose and manner which every lawyer legislator seems to have whenever addressing House or Senate, as being the pose and manner of addressing a jury — the pose somewhat satirized by Dickens in the sentence, " Bar, with his jury droop and eyeglass," and for which the late Roscoe Conkling was noted both in court room and senate chamber.
