land in whose bar-office prior to his election to the bench, Scott had also been student in practical details. The judge was a lawyer of the old school, and a heretic as to the value of all law schools — especially as Story and Greenleaf had recently left their professorships — so he endorsed Scott's idea of entering the profession in the old-fashioned method of facing examiners with his mem ory and tact. Despite difference in age Sutherland and Scott became intimate com rades; and to the latter, the former on at taining the bench handed over his clients. But soon Attorney Scott went under his own professional vine with his personal " shin gle " hanging in the shadow of his own legal fig tree. Friends of his father in the Cotton Exchange induced his appointment as its counsel, a post he continued to hold dur ing a quarter-century. Scott's practice lay mainly along commercial rather than liti gious lines. In 1882 the maelstrom of poli tics that draws so many young lawyers into its whirl — and often before they see an ap proach of the vortex — swept Scott into its seething waters. Previously he had only been voting the Democratic ticket with what his party leaders called consistent regularity, and without practical participation in cau cuses. Both his friendship for one of New York's most able mayors, William L. Grace, and his admiration for Samuel J. Tilden as governor and presidential candidate en couraged proclivities toward political action. In 1885 Corporation Counsel William C. Whitney was called into the Cleveland Cab inet, and his vacated post was taken by his assistant E. Henry Lacombc (now federal circuit judge in New York City) who recog nizing Mr. Scott's abilities and his grow ing experience in municipal law invited him to fill his own recent position of an assist ant corporation counsel: which Scott ac cepted. The duties were shared by another assistant David J. Dean — who had been towards several chief counsels what the English bar slangily terms " a coaching
devil "; and who, by reason of his great labors as one of the fabricators of the char ter under which greater New York has re cently begun governmental business, died last year from over-anxiety and over-work. What Scott lacked in experience Dean made up, and what of the professional-or namental the latter lacked, Scott contributed to their operating companionship. When Counsel Lacombe became a fed eral judge, Assistant Scott continued for a time as " coaching devil," along with Dean, for Lacombe's successor, Morgan J. O'Brien, and when this gentleman ascended the bench as Supreme Court justice on the State tribunal (which he now adorns and finds his old comrade Scott his new one) the latter was continued : and again under Henry R. Beekman who succeeded O'Brien and in turn also to become Supreme Court judge. Thus three former counsels to the corporation are during A. D. 1898, fellow judges. In the gossip of the New York Bar Institute the office of counsel is regarded as a judicial nursery. Not only have the foregoing triune graduated from that nursery, but four predecessors (Henry E. Davies, long chief judge of the Court of Appeals; Richard Busteed, made a federal judge in Alabama; George P. Andrews, just retired from the Supreme Court to make room for Scott; and the late Richard O'Gorman) had also become judges while two assistants, Ammiel J. Willard and John K. Hackett also attained judgeships — the one federal wise in Charleston and the other as recorder of New York. A new corporation counsel for New York was sworn in on last New Year's day and doubt less he also is dreaming of ermine. During some of the years while Scott was such assistant, his chiefs deputed him to at tendance upon the legislature at Albany, where a strong lobby yearly attempted stat utory pranks with the debits, credits, and properties of the New York municipality. It was Scott's duty to act as law sponsor to
