tion, and financial management of railways; So with these tables, added Mr. Tilden, " I and he came to thoroughly comprehend their did not construct them to be answered, history and requirements. He knew how to i They cannot be confuted, for they are made avoid a wasteful litigation whenever railroads according to the best process of scientific came within purview of an examination of analysis, and step by step are proved from their chartered rights or liabilities. His the records of the plaintiff, and have been professional fame reached even to London, introduced in strict conformity to the rules where European creditors and debenture of evidence." Mr. Tilden's mathematics holders of the Erie Railroad once invited him again won a victory for his clients, whose to act legally in their behalf. By reason of books show a payment to him of a fee of complications in other clientary directions fifty thousand dollars. he was obliged to decline the enormous fee At one time his capacity to deal with cor that they proffered. porate clients, — whose fees accumulated the Another great law case in which he suc large fortune he left after excellent invest cessfully brought to bear for clients his ments, — was only limited by his physical mathematical precision and algebraic facil ability. ity in reaching unknown quantities amid At another period he was called upon to confusing complications wherein supposi argue a case involving the whole doctrine tion only could lead towards developments of trusts, either comprised under English of facts, was the suit in the Supreme Court chancery law or under the modifications of New York in 1858, brought by the Dela thereof in the peculiar New York Revised ware and Hudson Canal Company against Statutes. His brief is indeed a treatise on the subject, which increased the surprise of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, the defend ant retaining Mr. Tilden. The claim was his fellow-members of the Bar, when the for extra tolls consequent upon an enlarge trusts of his will establishing a great library ment of plaintiff's canal, and thereby claimed for the City of New York were, on a contest, to benefit the contract for tolls, that was declared invalid, some years after his decease, entered into before the improvement. Nearly by a majority in the Court of Appeals. a million dollars were at stake. Mr. Tilden Some of his political enemies said — and tabulated all the trips on plaintiff's canal not very amiably — "He could not have during ten years of contract, and contrasted been a great lawyer, for his will was broken the percentage of time consumed in trans on purely legal grounds." So was the will portation over the old or the new canal, and of Lord Chancellor Westbury, and not even demonstrated that by the enlargement in Lord Campbell, had he been alive to add question his client's disbursements for trans another biography to his marvelous " Lives portation were enhanced, and therefore they of the Chancellors," would have been bold had suffered loss. " Those tables shall be enough to allege that Lord Westbury was answered," cried his opponents. To which not an eminent jurist. Mr. Tilden, who possessed a slyness of humor Mr. Tilden, before writing an opinion for for which he never received due credit, replied clients or previous to preparing for a trial or with an anecdote to this effect: the famous an argument, invariably first mentally tried John Randolph of Roanoke having made a the opinion or case against himself, ex speech in Congress, was complimented for amining how his views could be combated. it by a constituent who remarked, " Your An excellent method and worthy of adop argument has never been answered." " An tion by all lawyers. As Abraham Lincoln swered, sir," the eccentric piped in his shrill once said, " How can an engineer testify to voice, " it was not made to be answered." the safety of a bridge unless, before it is
