"Impossible," answered young Daly; " I am honorably bound to advocate the claims of my friend. It would be treason to friend ship to think of the proposition." In some way the incident soon reached the knowledge of the retiring judge, who, becoming convinced that his political affilia tions with the Whigs of the period prevented his re-appointment, and that the choice of some successor from the dominant Demo cratic party was inevitable, voluntarily re leased Mr. Daly from his position, and him self preferred a magnanimous request that his successor should be Mr. Daly. But I am anticipating. The details of his youth are interesting. He was the son of Irish parents who had arrived in New York City a year before the battle of Waterloo. The future judge was born two years later, in a house built upon the site cm which the scandalous and wicked execution of the Dutch patriot Jacob Leisler occurred, by command of an English governor with the appropriate name of Sloughter. The elder Daly had been a Galway architect, but in New York assumed the calling of a boniface; and his small but popular hotel was where the tall tower of the " Tribune " newspaper now looks down on the statues of Greeley, Franklin and Nathan Hale. The Daly house was next door to a law bookstore, and only a few doors from the then Tammany Hall, where the Bucktails, immortalized by the verse of Fitz Green Halleck, held political rev els. The daily sight of the law books, and of lawyers and witnesses attending the City Hall immediately opposite, and some furtive excursions at campaign times into the partisan temple, produced impressions upon young Charles. He attended a neigh boring school — at that time, early in the twenties, down-town New York teemed with residences. He there had for class mates the after Cardinal McCloskey and the shortly to be popular advocate James T. Brady. All were Catholics, and diligently
studied the ' humanities,' as was the phrase of the clergy applied to mundane studies. While young Daly was still de clining the latin noun lex, from nominative to ablative, at his school, his father died, and he, to adopt a traditional phrase, was cast upon his own resources. He bethought him of travel — the thought really presaged, unknown to himself, the time when he would become president of the American Geo graphical Society as well as an honorary and frequent corresponding member of all the Geographical Royal Societies of Europe; and would publish a piquant and learned treatise with the title, " What we know of maps and map-making before the time of Mercator." The adventurous boy, with the blessing of Bishop Dubois who predicted great things of all those three scholars, sailed for Savannah, where he had heard of a clerical situation. He obtained it only to also obtain such treatment as was accorded to the South Carolina slave of the period, and to be overworked. Chaf ing over it, his constitutionally plucky spirit asserted itself; and like Erskine in his own youth, young Daly took to the sea — going before the mast, as in after years young Richard H. Dana went. Three years of a life on the ocean wave, and of being rocked in the cradle of the deep, ensued. His ship in 1830 happened to be anchored in the harbor of Algiers at the time when it was being besieged, prior to its capture as a colony, by the French. The rugged marine school taught him what the vicissitudes of life meant, and unfolded to his mind views of diversified human nature that were destined to become valuable lessons to his, then undreamed of, career as lawyer and judge. Voyaging back to New York the young sailor found that he must work. On ship board he had made friends with the ship carpenter, and had found pleasure in use of adze, chisel and plane. He inherited from his father skill in form and design.
