364

The Green Bag

with him very early, but later it was only when the litigation was of exceptional impor tance that it received his personal attention. We were together in the trial of what was called the Quadruplex Telegraph Cases in the Superior Court of this city, which turned out to be a very complicated patent case in a State Court, the form of action being a bill quia timet to settle the conflicting claims of the Western Union Telegraph Co. and Mr. Jay Gould to the inventions of Thomas A. Edison for sending two messages in each direction at the same time over one wire. The case turned in part on the identification of certain inventions with the descriptions in certain contracts earlier in date than that with the Western Union Telegraph Co., and under which Mr. Gould and the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Co. claimed to take superior title to those particular inventions, as against the Western Union Company. The trial lasted for two months, and the technical testimony instead of being taken before a Master or an Examiner, as in patent cases pending in the United States Courts, was taken in the presence of the court, — which constituted a novel spectacle. Other matters originating in our office in which Judge Porter took part, were all the various litigations which established the legal rights and status of the elevated railways in the city of New York. My first impression of his manner before a jury was got in a trial in Albany, which I witnessed some time be fore he went on the bench, and while he was still a member of the firm of Cagger, Porter, & Hand. The " Albany Law Journal " said ot him, in an article published in 1875 : "If he has the last word, the day is his; but we ex I saw Porter try but few jury cases. After pect that if he is to be answered by a strong we became partners, his services were so man, his wondrous spell might fail." Of the constantly sought by other attorneys and shrewdness of the doubt expressed in the solicitors that he was not called into many last phrase, I had a personal illustration in cases originating in our office. I tried a few that case. The trial was at Albany, and the times to disapprove the things shown. This was regarded case was damage by personal injury. Porter as an effort to make evidence; but if so, it was espe cially unsuccessful on one occasion, when Mrs. Parish represented the defendant. When he came undertook to interpret Mr. P.'s views of some particu to sum up, he sympathized so deeply with larly fine woodcock which an old dealer was persuaded to the sufferings of the plaintiff, — he treated submit to his judgment.

doubt of his sanity or his piety excited when this communicant, before his lips were dry of the sacra mental wine, ' evinced strong displeasure, both by his looks and contemptuous mode of expression, frowning and saying, " Nah, nah, nah!" shaking his hand towards —' Towards whom? Towards a co-communicant! And the ' devout and humble ' Henry Parish crowns this exhibition of Christian temper by throwing backward to his wife a small package of gold! The credulous Doctor saw nothing in this to require the application of any discipline whatever, and dismissed the case, merely decreeing the missile to be a deodand. ' It was $15. I received it, of course, and retired.' It came out, on his being cross-examined, that Mrs. Parish either could not interpret her husband's wishes, or that she would not allow him to dis pense even inconsiderable sums of his own money without her concurrence. . . . "Even this did not cause the scales to fall from the eyes of the single-minded rector. As little did his presence restrain them. Of two, — to whom he had just broken the bread of life, — one com municant is exhausting his last remnant of strength in assaulting the other, his wife; and that other contumaciously resisting her husband's active be nevolence, and by a fraudulent pretence of not understanding him, striving to pick the pocket of ' Pious and Charitable Uses ' of two hundred dol lars, for which the check had already been drawn. And in this the rector sees nothing to rebuke; fines the offended party $15, and retires. "Dr. Taylor is free from suspicion of having absorbed the $15, — expecting the two hundred still to come. There is nothing either in the testi mony or the character of the communicants to warrant it. Nevertheless it did come. "What a commentary upon the artlessness of Dr. Taylor, upon the consciousness of Mr. Parish, upon the good faith of Mrs. Parish! "