repartee, although occasionally interjecting some caustic, but dignified rejoinders in re membrance that his client was a bishop. The criticism alleged to be libellous had no apparent provocation and on its face seemed gratuitous. But Nash saw that in legal rules, and not with jurors, the prospective safety of his client laid. The danger of every libel suit for a plaintiff resides gener ally in proving too much and overlaying evidence with prejudicial incompetency of proof or irrelevancy. Smith rampant with argumentum ad hominem rashly opened doors and threw down fences,of which Nash adroitly took legal advantage through objections and exceptions. So that although Smith got a large verdict this was set aside on appeal, and on grounds which allowed the plaintiff an opportunity to drop his prosecution of Nash's client. The case was tried before the late Justice Van Vorst, whose excessive amia bility was likely to find his legal balance overthrown by sitting through a bitterly conducted libel suit. No sketch of Mr. Nash would be com plete without reference to the learning he displayed in several cases involving the per plexing doctrine of the suspensive power of alienation. These cases are well worth the attention of the profession, and may be found in Cutting's case, 87 N. Y. 52 1; Cruikshank.zv. Home, 113 N. Y. 337; Dana w. Murray, 12i N. Y. 604; and Haynes vs. Sherman, 117 N. Y. 433; in which report also, the learning in opposition to Mr. Nash may be found, through the briefs of the late great jurist of the New York Bar, A. J. Vanderpool, and of the veteran Samuel Hand — whom the witty Evarts once ad dressed as the right hand of every Bench. Almost every reader of a New York newspaper (and during time immemorial) has read about a Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce suit that even yet threatens to crop up against the Trinity Church corporation, — one speculatively brought by alleged heirs of an early Knickerbocker dame of
Dutch New York, known to the New York law reports as Anneke Jans, or initiated through a descendant named Bogardus, whose claims to a large tract of Trinity Church real estate, its counsel, Nash, pretty effectually buried out of legal sight. Trinity Corporation suffered a great legal loss in the departure of Mr. Nash, for he was the best pilot it could have amid litigi ous storms. In years gone by his legal skill defeated the scheme of an underground arcade railway to run under Broadway and threatening foundations of edifices, includ ing historic Trinity Church. He also com pelled the City Corporation to pay a proper price for a Trinity burying-ground which it was seeking to confiscate. He was also a species of private almoner of the church for needy clergymen; and indeed so alert was he in his interest in such cases, that the bon mot of a fellow member of the vestry came apposite — " the Episcopacy ought to put Nash in honorary or ex-officio orders." He was equally zealous as one of the Trustees of Columbia University, which, in 1888, conferred upon him one of its usually parsimoniously conferred degrees of LL.D.; and no member of the New York bar from the time of Thomas Addis Emmett and James Kent, better deserved or adorned the doctorate. That university will, in sym pathy wfth the Trinity vestry and the Bar Association, long mourn their loss of the society and advice of the departed Stephen Payn Nash; but the university keeps his memory green by still retaining as its treas urer his son. Vestryman Nash for many years past served regularly as lay delegate to all the minor and important conventions of his church. It is doubtful if at any General Convention, the House of Bishops in attend ance would have felt that ecclesiastical mat ters could run smoothly unless they saw that lay-delegate Nash was in the con course. In such capacity of lay delegate he on one occasion attended an international ec
