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The Green Bag.

most exquisite exhibition of intellect that his contemporaries ever witnessed on the bench; but it is a remarkable fact, so evenly did he balance the scales, and with such absolute candor did he treat both parties, that he had more disagreements than any other judge of his time. In his latter days as a circuit judge he fell into a critical and doubting state of mind, which led a lawyer

to say that " he seemed to think it was impossible for the plaintiff in any case to make out a cause of action." Judge Hogeboom was a person of great dignity and of old-school manners and dress. He always wore very tight trous ers, with straps; hence the irreverent young limbs of the law called him " Old Straps." A natural aristocrat, he never gave anybody anything more than a flabby hand-shake, and to most only two fingers. I cured him of that, as to myself, when I was an impu dent youngster, by giv ing him one finger. DANIEL After that I gota whole hand, and always much friendship and con sideration. He was not destitute of humor. Some ten years ago a young lawyer made his debut at the Troy bar, in the defence of a criminal, at a session presided over by Judge Hogeboom. I said to the judge : " I under stand young So-and-So produced a very good impression." " Why, y-e-s," drawled the judge, who was a great stickler for forensic etiquette, " but he had one habit that annoyed me very much. He had a lemon, and was continually sucking it. I did n't like the looks of it, but I did n't want to hurt the

young man's feelings by a public reprimand; and so I addressed him a little note, intimat ing that unless the lemon was essential to his health, it would be more in accordance with the received etiquette of courts to desist from the exercise, or postpone it until recess. The lemon disappeared; but they told me afterward," continued the judge, with a grin and an indescribable squeal, " that it con tained w-h-i-s-k-e-y." The judge was of a sluggish tempera ment; but when fully aroused, as he was on the famous trial of Mrs. Robinson, the "veiled murderess," he evinced tremen dous power, and it behooved smaller men to stand out of the way. In contrasting his written with his spoken style, I am minded to reverse and apply Garrick's obser vation on Goldsmith, — that " he wrote like an angel, but talked like poor poll," — not that his writing was not respectable, but that he appears to no distinctive advantage CADY. in the reports, while at the bar he was pre-eminent in style. Judge Hogeboom always spoke of the op posite attorney or counsel as " my adver sary," as if he were the devil. Piatt Potter, still living at the age of ninety, is known by his edition of Dwarris on Statutes and a work on Corporations. His opinions exhibit profound learning and patient research. But the most distinguished act of his life was in maintaining the inde pendence and authority of the judiciary against the Assembly in an attempt to over awe it. In 1870 he was summoned to the bar