Does it tell of a tumble in stocks, Or visit of cousinly kin, Or despatch of some well-filled box, Or that Baby has swallowed a pin? No message of direful mishap Appeals to my eager sight, But only a trivial scrap From the tail of my grandsons kite.
Because kite-flying is a lazy occupation. Nobody but Franklin, author of that base maxim, " Honesty is the best policy," would ever have degraded it to a scientific purpose. It is sad to contemplate the great and good men who have broken themselves down in taking exercise for the sake of amusement. One feels pity for poor Grotius in prison whipping a huge peg-top, and for stern John Calvin playing at bowls even on the Lord's day. Erskine flew kites for his boy. Kite-flying is " out of sight," and as " Macaire" says in Stephenson's farce, " My body, thanks to immortal Jupiter, is but the boy that holds the kite-string; and my aspirations and designs swim like the kite, sky-high, and overlook an empire." "Our Greatest Lawyer." — This Chair has re ceived some very disheartening intelligence from its admired friend, Frederic R. Coudert, of New York. It comes in the form of a small cut, purporting to be his likeness, at the head of an article by him, under the title above quoted, in the twelfth anniversary edition of "The World". In the copy sent us, a blue-pencil hand in the margin draws attention to this cut. The color is appropriate; the picture is not handsome. If our good friend has grown to look like this, he should instantly go to St. Louis and put himself under the new treatment for tuberculosis. Such a villainous counterfeit presentment, if made to a grand jury, would induce instant indictment. But the mental picture, shown in the bright and felicitous rhetoric, discloses no sigh of failure or despondency. In answer to the question, "Who is the greatest law yer whom you have known?" Mr. Coudert finds it necessary to name three — Charles O'Conor, Ogden Hoffman, and James T. Brady — each greatest in a certain sphere. O'Conor was greatest in knowledge of the law, but he always kept a tight rein on his imagination, Mr. Coudert thinks. (We should say his imagination needed no more reining in than a milk-wagon horse.) Hoffman he deems to have been irresistible with the jury. Brady he pronounces "the most richly endowed of them all," but the im pression he left was "that he could do anything if he only cared to try." We doubt Mr. Coudert's opinion that "he might have commanded an army or written an epic poem," but we do believe that he was the only one of the three who had what was
worthy of the name of imagination. It is probable that Mr. Coudert did not know Rums Choate. That man had more genius and power and left a deeper impression on law and letters than O'Conor, Hoffman, and Brady all rolled into one. They were simply "not in his class," as "the fancy" phrase it. Mr. Cou dert's judgment, however, is corroborated by that of John K. Porter, who pronounced O'Conor and Brady the greatest lawyers he had known, and he was a competent judge. But as to Porter also, if he had ever heard Choate, he never could have talked of anybody else, for he himself possessed many of the qualities of that greatest of American advocates. After all, these things are mere matter of opinion; hardly any two will exactly agree, and we throw out our own opinion, in our usual modest and diffident manner, for what it may be worth. When reading Mr. Cou dert's brilliant and generous paper, we feel as one did after hearing George William Curtis on Sir Philip Sidney — doubtful whether he had listened to Curtis on Sidney or to Sidney on Curtis. In the same newspaper is an article on "Slipshod Legislation," by that acute lawyer and high-minded citizen, Simon Sterne. Mr. Sterne appears pictorially to better ad vantage than Mr. Coudert; in fact to almost too good advantage, for his likeness was evidently de rived from a photograph presented by him to the lady of his love in the days of courtship. We invol untarily exclaim, "so wise, so young, do never live long." Mr. Sterne wisely advocates the establish ment of some tribunal to scrutinize proposed legisla tion. He says: " The one single element which was accepted by the Constitutional Convention out of the whole scheme of constitutional reform put before it by me to bring method and order into our legislation and give notice to the locality of its proposed enact ment, was that of submitting to the mayors of the cities local laws which affected the cities, and it is admitted that much good has already been accom plished and will hereafter result from the adoption by the people of this State of this tentative and limited reform in the enactment of local measures." Choate. — " The Critic " reproduces from " The World "a clever little picture of Joseph H. Choate as he appeared in the argument of the Income Tax case. He is represented, however, with one foot on the seat of a chair. We find it diff1cult to believe that he ever assumed such an inelegant attitude, espe cially in court. We are only glad that it was not this Chair that he put his foot on. On the Income Tax Choate set his foot, He dealt it many deadly whacks; So glad he pulled it up by the root. And never trod on other tacks!
