Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/299

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The Green Bag.

other episode must be mentioned here. In the summer of 1885 the Chief Justice went to England to recuperate his health, and as the guest of the Lord Chief Justice of Eng land, Lord Coleridge, sat upon the bench with him. He also received much attention from Lord Bramwell, Lord Fitzgerald and Barons Huddleston and Pollock. But the Albany Law Journal took umbrage because the Chief Justice of the United States was not tendered a banquet and publicly feted, as the Lord Chief Justice had recently been in the United States. The rather puerile remarks of the above-mentioned periodical, which, among other things, stated that the Lord Chief Justice had gone soundly to sleep upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, came to the notice of Lord Coleridge, who took the pains to reply in a letter of explanation and deprecation. As a matter of fact it appears that every courtesy and attention were shown to the Chief Justice of the United States in Eng land that were possible or that he expected or desired. On March 17, 1888, the Chief Justice caught a severe cold. On March 19 he was

too ill to deliver his opinion in the Telephone Cases, 126 U. S. 1. This was done by Mr. Justice Blatchford for him. Upon the con clusion of the case he retired from the bench, never to sit there again. He was up and about the house for the three succeeding days. There was no apparent danger. On March 22, however, he became much worse, and died the following morning of pneumo nia. He was buried at Toledo with all the ceremonious respect due to his high office. The judgment of an anonymous writer in 22 American Law Review, 301, 303, seems so eminently just that in conclusion I tran scribe it here : " That he should develop any great strength as a judge was not to be ex pected of him, and the public expectation was not disappointed. He seems, however, to have been entirely destitute of that vanity which makes men of humble capacity so dangerous when called upon to discharge the duties of great offices. In fact he was modest, conscientious, careful, conservative, and safe. He did nothing to lower the dig nity of the great office which it was his lot for fourteen years to fill, and this is perhaps as much as will be said of him in future times."