Wm. Curtis Noyes, LL.D. the law of differentiated responsibilities and liabilities for forged paper among innocent successive holders. Among all the briefs, those of Mr. Noyes stand pre-eminent for ar rangement, lucidity, and authoritative points. The Railroad Company not only thanked him by formal resolution for his successful saving to it of immense claims, but cheer fully awarded him on the whole controversy fees amounting to a small fortune. Here it may be remarked that during the last quar ter century his annual fees averaged over a hundred thousand dollars. He well remem bered a remark of the elder Bulwer-Lytton, in his Caxtoniana, to the effect that "almost any man of ordinary talent could accumu late money, but only a man of genius could keep it after it was made." He lived at a reasonably luxurious rate of expenditure, was dexterously hospitable, and while spend ing income liberally for books and works of art, — and he possessed fine aesthetic taste, — he made excellent investments. Among these was a purchase of the old revolution ary Tallmadge estate and mansion, near Litchfield, in Connecticut, that belonged originally to the Benjamin Tallmadge who, as a heroic and valuable officer in the Revo lutionary War, is worthily best commemo rated in the pages of Lossing's " Pictorial Field-Book of the American Revolution," and whose memory is kept brilliantly alive by his grandson, Frederick S. Tallmadge, President of the " Society of Sons of the Revolution." The latter became partner with Mr. Noyes, and they proved indeed in a double sense to be brothers-in-law, for Mr. Noyes as a widower wedded the sister of Mr. Tallmadge and daughter of Frederick A. Tallmadge, who, after serving New York as alderman and congressman, became its recorder, and in that capacity, when the mayor, on occasion of the famous AstorPlace Macready cum Forrest riot of 1849, showed the white feather, assumed command of the military and peace-officers present, and under shelter of the riot-act as read by
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himself during a riotous shower of missiles, restored order and saved much loss of life and property: confirming thereby the brav ery of his Revolutionary parent as an heredi tary trait. The widow of Mr. Noyes, who, much his junior, survives, in residence was with that daughter in New York City who is the widow of a son of the Judge Vanderpoel hereinbefore mentioned. In their li brary, which keeps green the Noyes's love of books, hangs a fine bronze bas-relief of the great lawyer, made by the sculptor Park, and also a speaking bust from the same chisel; and on a table always lies the folio volume first herein referred to. A large portion of Mr. Noyes's profes sional income was devoted to private and unostentatious charity. On one occasion, at the end of a certain year, his brother-inlaw and partner asked the bookkeeper of the* law firm to draw an account of Mr. Noyes's expenditures for eleemosynary pur poses during that year, and the balance footed to seven thousand dollars. The junior, mentioning the fact to his senior in a pleasant sort of deprecatory or surprised tone, was answered, " Perhaps it is more than I ought to have spent in that direction; but, Fred, we shall get it all back again, as bread cast upon the waters." Mr. Noyes, as a member of the Charity Committee of the New England Society, gave great atten tion to its benevolent duties. Mr. Noyes also found time to attend to political matters. In early life he was a member of the Whig party, but in 1855 joined the new Anti-Slavery Republican party, and attended in the capacity of dele gate the famous Pittsburg Convention that practically founded the party of Fremont and Lincoln. To the conventions that suc cessively nominated those two leaders, he was also a delegate. He formed his an tipathy to slavery in youth, for his father served as an agent of what was known as the " Underground Emancipation Railway." Fugitive slaves from the South, escaping
