John K. Porter. he positively refused to be recognized by his military title, and insisted always on being known as "Deacon," — esteeming that office more than the other. Dr. Porter was, I be lieve, an indulgent parent in most things, an affectionate and self-sacrificing man; but he must have been rather severe in his judgments of his boy. Having already de termined that he could not make a good doctor, he appears to have been disinclined to accept the neighborhood reputation which the young man was fast gaining in the law. It is said that the doctor heard John K. but once in court, being led then by public interest in some trial to slip in at the back of the court-room while his son was speaking. The only opinion which could be elicited from him afterward by friends was that John did not do so badly as he had expected. The circumstances of Dr. Por ter's death show continuance of this heroic strain by descent from the hard and pious Revolutionary Major. He was in perfect health, visiting his patients as usual, when he died suddenly by the roadside. His horse was found standing near him; he was lying in an angle of the road-fence, his hat placed upon a high stick to at tract attention, and his body in such posi tion as he would have selected for a patient threatened with apoplexy; and with lancet in hand, he was trying to relieve himself from the threatening attack by blood-letting. But the remedy had come too late, and he was dead. This calmness in a most critical personal emergency was characteristic of his son. I believe that for a number of years he bore great pain in perfect silence, and in that way concealed from his friends the ap proach of an insidious and obscure disease of the spinal cord, which, after producing a variety of misleading symptoms, kept him prisoner in his bed for the last three years of his life, enduring much of the time the extremest suffering. His study of the law was begun in the office of Nicholas P>. Doe and Richard B. Kimball at Waterford, N. Y. The young
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student was admitted to the bar on reach ing his majority; and came at once into competition and companionship with the bar of Saratoga County, at that time dis tinguished throughout the country. He met there Deodatus Wright, Nicholas Hill, Wil liam A. Beach, Augustus Bockes, and others whose names were only less eminent. Re ferring to one of them, whose activity and pertinacity were notable, Porter used to say that " to have one case with X. was to be in full practice." And I fancy that practice at the Saratoga Bar in those days was a man's work. One of the earliest cases of which I have heard, and which is said to have been con tested with utmost vigor, learning, and en thusiasm, was a dispute before a Justice of the Peace about a pike-pole, — a pole used by boatmen in the perilous navigation of the canals, — the value of which was ap praised in the action at less than one dollar. The trial lasted two days and two nights, the court being held until twelve o'clock each night. The result of the suit has been lost in the greater interest of the contest, my in formant declaring that each lawyer made the case his own, and fought it as if not a pike-pole, but an oil-well had been the prize of controversy. Another interesting early incident of his career must have been disheartening. It came out when the Bar Association of the City of New York rejected by blackball the candidacy of a certain practitioner here. On hearing of the circumstance, Judge Porter, with great confidence in the correct ness of his judgment, expressed the opinion that the rejected person was unfit for asso ciation with gentlemen anywhere, and made it good by telling the story of one of the first, if not the very first, important case which was ever in his hands. When he en tered the bar, there was immediately placed in his hands the defence of a suit against Judge Doe, as shareholder in some corpora tion. There were reasons for asking for an extension of time to answer, which the young
