Murphy of the Brooklyn bar. Silliman had a felicitous manner of carrying his habitual bonhommie before jurors and even before the impressive Samuel Nelson on the bench. Silliman and Davis had bonhommie of man ner equally. That of Noah Davis — while he was for over a quarter century on the Supreme Bench of New York — was shaded by dignity but never entirely overwhelmed. Davis, like Silliman, became a Federal Dis trict Attorney in an intermission between his judicial terms; and also a Congressman; but such was his recognized judicial temper that the people at an election returned him to the Bench : from which an absurd prohib itory age clause had retired him when he was at the very zenith — like Chief-Justice Charles P. Daly — of his judicial fitness. No judge was ever more genial — yet full of firmness — than Noah Davis of sturdy Welsh ancestry. His fascinating smile emboldened many a timid young advocate. His mas tery of logic tripped many a presumptuous senior who undertook sophistry or to draw unsound parallels from precedents cited. Silliman was equally logical, and equally a lawyer grounded in principles. Both ex hibited remarkable memory of cases. Both used persuasive rather than strictly ora torical tones. Each was equally happy at a post-prandial impromptu speech. Each was as free from affectation as Abraham Lincoln. Each one svas an incarnation of probity and truth. I have coupled them, because years ago, on a certain occasion, when Silliman — who always so pointedly contradicted his family name — was arguing before Judge Davis — always happiest as an appellate judge — I detected the obvious similitude of mind and bearing in the twain, and thereafter I never thought of the one without mental recurrence to the other. While the reputation of Silliman was more or less local, that of Davis became national through his patriotic and judicious congres sional participation in an era when the Union was recovering from Secession hysterics;
and also from duty summoning him to pre side at the criminal trial of Supervisor William M. Tweed when charged with offi cial embezzlement in the city of New York. Indicted for a misdemeanor on several counts comprising distinct acts of embezzlement, Judge Davis sentenced him on a general verdict of guilty upon more than one count. The Court of Appeals — of which Davis had once been a member — reversed sen tence and the action excited universal gos sip among laymen as well as lawyers over the entire Union. Yet substantially, years afterwards, the Judicial Appellate Court in England, wherein I heard the American case cited in behalf of editor Edmund Yates, ap pealing from a conviction for libel on sep arate counts with cumulative sentences, his judges ignored the New York Court of Ap peals, and followed the law of Judge Noah Davis. Another of the Nestors, James M. Smith, had for many years after a successful prac tice at the bar, been also called to preside as a criminal law judge in the office of Re corder of New York City. His claim to old age may well be respected when one hears that he is the sole survivor of that Citizens' Committee who early in the forties tendered Charles Dickens the great banquet and re ception so felicitously written about by John Forster in his biography of the novel ist. A lithographic copy of the invitation with the autographs of the distinguished signers is affixed to one of the volumes; and the signature, James M. Smith, Jr., there found, is no freer than his recent one now before me. But the suffix " junior " has dis appeared, although it properly can be still applied to his head and heart, even if its ap plicability to his physique be contradicted by the sight of his cane. But Smith has been entitled to a cheery life, for it was mainly passed in a poetic atmosphere; amid the lyrics of his late wife Emmclinc, that have delighted myriads of magazine readers in the past. I practiced as a District At
