Some Virginia Lawyers of the Past and Present.
153
you are a lawyer; am I entitled to the punished him the following Saturday by sugar in the bowl or not? I want you to making him pull down and put up fences give your opinion so the whole crowd can on his place all day. He graduated in law hear you and settle this matter." at Harvard College. While he was there "Then," quietly said Mr. Wise, " I advise war began between the United States and you that the sugar is yours. The widow Mexico, and there was a large war meeting cannot take it from you. She has no re in Faneuil Hall which he attended. Some dress in the matter." one announced, during the speaking, that a The man was about to leave in triumph descendant of Patrick Henry was present. with his prize when Immediately there was a great outcry for Mr. Wise called out him, and he was forced to him : upon the rostrum. "Stop, I've given His speech is said to you my opinion; I've have made Faneuil advised you at your Hall shake with ap persistent request, as plause " as it was wont I can prove by all to do when Webster, present. Now I de Everett, Choate and mand payment for Winthrop spoke." In the advice and my 1853 he went to fee is five dollars." Richmond to live. He The man, much wrote for the editorial crestfallen, handed columns of the famous him the money, and "Richmond Exam Mr. Wise gave it to iner." President Bu the poor widow with chanan appointed the request that she him United States spend it for herself District-Attorney for and fatherless chil the eastern district of dren. He died in Virginia and he held Richmond, Septem the office, President ber 12, 1876. PATRICK HENRY AYLETT. Davis having re-ap Patrick Henry Aypointed him, until lett was born May 9, the close of the war. It was said of 1825, in King William County, Va. He him: "His towering intellect found no was the great grandson and namesake of pleasure in the drudging or humdrum of nisi the famous orator, Patrick Henry, and, as prius practice, but give him a case involving it has been said, " came from the best and purest old English Cavalier stock who life, liberty, or great constitutional or legal questions, that expanded the mind and came to Virginia and settled upon land de rived by grant from the British Crown." In called for the exercise of the high intellect his boyhood he attended the Rumford ual powers of man, and he towered like a Academy in King William County, and at legal giant in the front rank of American home he received the most perfect care and lawyers." He was six feet two inches tall, training. It is told that once when he had and was considered a strikingly handsome pulled down a neighbor's fence, against man. On April 27, 1870, a great calamity whom he had a boyish grievance, his father befell Richmond, and Mr. Aylett was one of
