Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/221

"no such calamity had happened the human The more private family reminiscences teem race since the fall of Adam, as the landing with hundreds of the most charming anec of the Pilgrim Fathers." But when a wag dotes of his perennially interesting and gish and gifted young Pennsylvanian in many-sided character. vented the famous Cotton Mather letter The unwritten history of the bar of Penn about kidnapping Penn's Quakers, Judge sylvania abounds with stories of him during Black was the first man to discover the the forty years of his association with it. bogus character of the epistle, — which, by One of the best of these is that inimitably the way, occasionally reappears in the prints told by Mr. Sellers, of Philadelphia, who re of the Interior as a genuine document. He lates in a manner that no other can equal, pronounced Rufus Choate " that very great how he was persuaded one day to tarry sev man; " he declared that Webster was the eral hours in Harrisburg upon the assurance greatest orator if not the most distinguished of Judge Black that after a long talk they man this country ever produced, " gifted would have a delightful dinner at a most excellent restaurant he had recently discov with the most subtle and exquisitely organ ized intellect that was ever bestowed upon ered in the State Capital, then notoriously any of the children of men." Of Thaddeus lacking in such accommodations. After hours of engaging conversation had whetted Stevens he once said, in a private conversa tion : " When he died, as a lawyer, he had their appetites, they started for the restau no equal in this country, and he said the rant, when Judge Black suddenly stopped, smartest things that ever were said; but slapped his big hand on his companion's his mind, so far as a sense of obligation shoulder, and ruefully said, " By George, to his God was concerned, was a howling Sellers, I 'm mistaken; that restaurant is wilderness." in Baltimore." The stories of Judge Black leaving home Ex-Governor Curtin, another most excel without a cent of money and trusting to the lent raconteur, tells of a well-known lobbyist indulgence of railway-conductors to pass and speculator in Pennsylvania, who once him to his journey's end on credit; the engaged Judge Black's services in a matter equally familiar one of his going off to in which the Supreme Court had decided court with a good stock of linen and the in against him. Judge Black, rather suspicious junction of his wife to put on a clean shirt of his client, insisted upon his fee being daily, and of his return with the whole stock paid in advance and received $ 15,000. He on his back, having every morning put on secured a reargument, and, to the agreeable one over the other; how his colored valet surprise of his client, won his case. Mr. carried a hat-box marked " The Honorable Boodle, almost incredulous that such a result George Washington, care of J. S. Black;" could have been achieved, and mindful of his omnivorous reading of every kind of his own methods of convincing and convert book that happened to fall into his hands; ing legislators, gazed at his counsel and said, his chief concern on visiting England to see "Well, Judge, I thought it was a of a Runnymede, an English court of assizes, and big fee, but you did know where to put it the Derby race; how he enjoyed the big to fetch the answer." He died in the fulness of his powers, strawberries at the dinner of famous authors in London, and aided to erect an American stricken while yet his eye was undimmed monumental tribute to La Fayette in France; and his natural force unabated. All his life the many tales of his famous tobacco-box, he had enjoyed good health. He was of vig which he constantly twirled in his left hand orous frame, six feet in height, straight as while he talked or spoke in court, — are well an arrow, with ruddy complexion and shaggy attested by those who were nearest to him. 'eyebrows; he suffered injuries to his right