King of Israel, 'Thou art the man.' But to do this, he should be a prophet, and not a mere technical levite. He should stand among his brethren like Saul in the multitude, head and shoulders above them all. The man to speak thus to this court should have the mien and the manner of a prophet, his hair whiter than milk streaming down his shoulders. He should be as old as the apostles would have been had they lived to read McCardle's newspaper. With no qualification to perform this duty, except that I have, read McCardle's newspaper, the task is before me, and it will be my aim to show, while conceding that this court is a very grave body, that it does not furnish the law of gravitation either to the material universe or to our political system." With such an introduction he proceeded to close a masterly argument of the great constitutional question involved, and when he had finished his argument, Stanton, with tears in his eyes, exclaimed fervently, " Car penter, you have saved us." Carpenter's personality had a charm about it that was simply indescribable. Of inexhaustible good nature and keen sense of humor, his mind, steeped in gen eral literature, was a storehouse of thought and fancy. Theology, poetry, science his mind greedily devoured. Shakespeare and his Bible were his intimate associates; a sincere believer in the great truths of reli gion, the divinity of Christ and the Father hood of God, although a member of no religious body, and taking his church mem bership as he once said by the courtesy, he numbered among his most intimate friends several distinguished clergymen. When at Racine College, Wisconsin, of which institu tion the Rev. James Dc Koven was then president, the doctor one day called me into his study, and read me a letter just received from Matt Carpenter, which had caused him profound astonishment. Doctor De Koven had just returned from a conven tion of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Baltimore, where he had carried on a debate on the question of the difference between
transubstantiation as held by the Roman Catholic Church, and the doctrine of the real presence, as maintained by the extreme ritualists of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Carpenter's letter showed him to be thor oughly familiar with all the niceties of the ological hair-splitting, to have kept pace with the entire controversy, and to be a theologian of no mean order. Carpenter was literally a book devourer. He seemed to take in whole sentences at a single glance without reading each word. His miscellane ous library in Milwaukee, still preserved ex actly as when he died, would delight the heart of any lawyer of literary taste. Every inch of space, save doors and openings for windows, is lined with books. All the great recorded speeches of the English-speaking advocates, a full set of the Gentleman's Magazine, of Notes and Queries, with all those odds and ends peculiarly suited to the literary palate of a busy lawyer. His charity and generosity amounted al most to a fault, and there was not a sour spot in his nature. Personal prejudices never seemed to sway his professional or public judgment. In speaking in the United States Senate on Trumbull's bill to increase the salary of the United States District Judges, after listening to arguments made by various senators in favor of the bill, principally on the ground of their high personal regard for the judge of their own district, he said : — "Some senators have alluded to and lauded the judge of the district in which they reside; from which it might be supposed that they were actuated in voting this increase of salary by motives of friendship to or admiration for the present incumbent. I am not at all influenced in that way. The judge of the district in which I reside is not a friend of mine, and I am not a friend of his. He thinks I am unfit to be a senator, and I think he is unfit to be a judge. In court I pay him the deference due to the office of judge, and he shows me the respect due to a member of the bar; but out of court
